June 1 was the first day of my 2018 chasecation which I had scheduled for the 6/1 through 6/10 period. It was looking like the first decent shot for significant severe weather since the first part of May. SPC had issued an enhanced risk which they upgraded to moderate at the 1630z update, mostly for wind and hail, while the tornado probabilities remained at 5%.
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May 1 was my second chase day of the season. I had gone out the day before and ran into some golf ball hail in Central Nebraska, but nothing too exicting. So, this day looked like the better opportunity of the two and I decided to leave work early and head south into Kansas.
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August 13th featured a shortwave impulse moving across the Northern Plains with a weak surface low over South Dakota slowly drifting east. A trough extended southwest from the low across Northern Nebraska into Colorado where another surface low resided. Dewpoints were expected to be in the mid to upper 60s across Nebraska while surface winds were expected to be generally southerly with some backing along a stationary front draped across the northern portion of the state.
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August 12th featured a shortwave trough moving across the Northern Plains into the Upper Great Lakes while a lee trough was forecast to develop across western Nebraska and eastern Colorado. With surface dewpoints into the low 60s and modest backing low level wind fields into the Nebraska Panhandle it seemed like there was a good opportunity for organized severe weather.
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June 17th was the last decent shot at severe weather during my week off. A large MCS from the prior day storms traveled overnight across southeastern Nebraska and Missouri. This complex left an outflow boundary which arced from Beatrice, NE to Kearney then southwest into Kansas and Oklahoma. Meanwhile a weak frontal zone was present from New Mexico through Kansas into Iowa. Either of these features would serve as the focus for storms later in the day, unfortunately that meant a zone stretching from western Kansas into the lower Great Lakes.
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