After an extremely slow start to the season, Mother Nature was finally pushing a trough onshore to kick off some severe weather chances. At this point in the season we were running about 50% of average for tornado reports. The trough looked to eject on the 8th, so I set out from Michigan on the 6th looking to play the 7th through the 10th in case the 7th was a day before the day type of event.
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May 27th would have been a good day for a case study regarding the actions of storm chasers who sit too long in one spot. One of my weaknesses, especially in my first year or two, was not being able to just sit and monitor the situation. I always had to be moving or readjusting my target. Sometimes I’d move 30 miles just to move. Brad, Jonathan and I awoke in Grand Island, Nebraska for the start of this day. It was the first time in a while I’d woken up in the target area, and at an optimal spot. We didn’t even check out of the hotel until we were required to. So, we take off from the hotel at 12pm, then proceed to a county park north of I-80 where we sat for nearly four hours until we saw the first cumulus clouds start to take off northwest of town.
Read moreJust a quick entry on this day. Brad an I ran up from Salina to Albion, Nebraska where we grabbed some lunch in the scorching heat. The restaurant where we grabbed lunch was some type of Faraday cage and I had virtually no cellular signal, so we took off to the south side of town and found a little county park with a sketchy outhouse that was sealed shut with rusty wire and a broken padlock. I had to use the restroom, but I wasn’t up for risking a tetanus shot for the privilege. Here we sat watching for any sign of development in the sky. As we continued to check data, it looked like the best chances for development would be up near the NE/SD border where the cap was starting to show a slight erosion.
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After spending the night in Topeka, I hit the road around 11am with the plan to head west to around Russell, Kansas, which was my staging area for the day. On the way, I got a hold of Brad Goddard to find he was already sitting in Russell, so I drove over and met up with him right near the interstate. Keeping an eye on the cap, we were expecting the triple point to be the play and maybe a cell or two down the dryline.
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This day featured a moderate risk setup in Wisconsin. Since I wasn’t going to drive that far, my plan was to play the tail end of the convection that unzipped down the cold front. The big issue for me was whether or not the forcing from the front would overcome the cap that was in place where I had planned on playing.
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