6/19/2011 – southwest Nebraska Supercell

Awoke at 3:40 am for a 4 am departure from DeKalb with former graduate student, Victor Gensini. We targeted the area near the border of CO, KS, and NE initially, but eventually adjusted our target slightly west to the Limon to Ft. Morgan area of Colorado as the conditions “appeared” to be coming together for supercell development in that region by mid afternoon.  Storms did develop initially near Denver International Airport, but sustenance was an issue. Further development occurred near our gas stop at Brush, but these storms were multicellular and fairly high based. I’m still not sure why these storms were “unsuccessful” at developing into full-fledged supercells in this sheared environment -- perhaps the somewhat cool temps didn’t promote the instability that had been forecasted.  We noted developing cu east in far southwest Nebraska and eventually blasted after those developing storms.  We intercepted a nice LPish supercell northeast of Wray, CO, but the more mature tornadic supercell  ahead (near Benkelman, NE) of “our” storm  threw out outflow that eventually killed the storm north of Haigler. We eventually caught up with – wrapped around -- the tornadic storm west of McCook. As we drove northwest of McCook on US-83, we caught a couple of glimpses between trees and hills of what appeared to be tornado about 7-10 northwest of McCook. This corresponds with the other reports of a tornado at this time. By the time we were able to stop for a good view, the tornado was gone.  We did see a dust whirl and under the meso, but it quickly dissipated. A big ol’ RFD blast pushed us south and eventually east of McCook. At this point, the storm transitioned into a HP beast. We kept ahead of it until just south of Cambridge, where we let it go after dark. The storm was a huge spectacular spinning barrel near Cambridge. I only wish we had the time to jump ahead about 10-20 more miles to get a full structure shot. Alas, timing, roads, and storm evolution precluded that opportunity.

LP north of Haigler, NE.

Dust whirl under strong low-level meso northwest of McCook.

Pany illustrating storm transitioning into HP beast east of McCook.

 Pany view south of Cambridge, NE.

Animated gif of this view.