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22 Jul
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July 22, 2011 – Flasher, North Dakota Supercell

Nick Nolte / Blog, Storm Chasing / / 0 Comments

A big ass ridge was dominating the weather across the southern two-thirds of the country bringing a substantial heat wave to much of the Central and Southern Plains. The displacement of the jet stream to the north confined most of the severe weather opportunities to the Dakotas and even Canada. This day had captured my interest a few days prior and I was prepared to make the looooooong drive to the Dakotas to play in some of the best chase terrain in the country. Decent shear profiles indicated that isolated supercells were possible early in storm evolution before everything grew upsacle.

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18 Jul
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July 18, 2011 – Stockbridge, Michigan

Nick Nolte / Blog, Storm Chasing / / 0 Comments

Nothing too exciting to report for this day. SPC had most of Lower Michigan in a slight risk for severe storms, but I wasn’t terribly interested in the day. I was sitting at home keeping an eye on the storms near Grand Rapids when the southern cell started to appear very interesting to me. So, being that it was already southeast of Lansing, I headed towards it.

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20 Jun
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June 20, 2011 – Stamford & Pleasanton, Nebraska Tornadoes

Nick Nolte / Blog, Storm Chasing / / 0 Comments

Started the day in Kearney, Nebraska and picked up L.B. LaForce for the chase as his father had to get back to Michigan. We loitered around the hotel parking lot for a while, along with Rob Hurkes, while we waited for something to draw out attention.  A surface low was expected to track across Kansas, slowly northeastward and with easterly surface winds northeast of the low was setting the stage for crazy low level helicity to get the atmosphere spinning…just could the storms stay discrete?

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19 Jun
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June 19, 2011 – Colorado / Nebraska

Nick Nolte / Blog, Storm Chasing / / 0 Comments

I had driven from Michigan to west of Lincoln, Nebraska the previous evening and upon awaking found that I still had a bit of a drive to get to where I wanted to be for the day.  A 300mb jet streak was rounding the base of a deep upper trough centered over Utah and punching into Eastern Colorado to help setup the show for the day.  I left Seward, NE shortly after 14z and began my westward trek down I-80 towards Julesburg.

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02 Jun
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June 2, 2011 – Beautiful South Dakota

Nick Nolte / Blog, Storm Chasing / / 0 Comments

Ah, to be in South Dakota again! A strong trough was expected to move from the Rockies to the Northern Plains which would nudge the cold front eastward across the western Dakotas providing focus for storms to my north. Meanwhile a warm front draped from North Dakota down into Iowa and Missouri would provide a focus for storms to my east.  I opted to play the cold front as the warm sector would be flooded with ML CAPE near the 4,000 J/Kg range along with strong low level winds and curved hodographs would set the stage for a potentially decent severe weather threat.

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