Mike McMahon,
Kris White
Target:
Holdrege, NE
Distance:
˜618 miles
Duration:
˜13.67 hours
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Partners: Mike McMahon, Kris White Target: Holdrege, NE Distance: ˜618 miles Duration: ˜13.67 hours |
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After spending the night in Hastings, Mike and I awoke to see the horrific images from Greensburg on the national news channels. We broke ourselves away to check data and get moving. We chose to head to Hastings, NE to meet Kris and his friend Tom, who drove in from Duluth, MN to meet us on the chase. After meeting Kris, we checked data at a library in Alma. The setup looked amazing, but the dryline pushed farther east than we expected. So we headed east slowly on Hwy 136 waiting on convection to break the cap. A few storms fired, however they could not sustain themselves. We watched storms on radar firing to our south in Kansas...and storm envy began to set in. After assessing the situation, Kris decided the storms were too far away for them, so they headed back to Duluth.
Mike and I did not waste any time zooming down to Kansas toward the storms. We turned west on I-70 at Salina, and approached the storm near Wilson. The storm produced almost constant cloud-to-ground lightning at one point, which was more than nerve-racking. The storm became tor warned, and we placed the tornado to cross I-70 around exit 206. Our last exit before that was 209, which I missed because I answered a phone call from Kris and got distracted...nearly a terrible mistake!
Mike got my attention, and it quickly became apparant that I screwed up. The core of the meso-cyclone was headed toward us...a couple of miles east of where we anticipated the tornado to cross the highway. I turned around and drove east on the shoulder of the westbound lane of I-70, because at first no one was on the highway and I figured any one behind us would stop before driving into the tornado. I certainly underestimated the truckers though...who apparently just don't care. Bad Idea!!! I quickly turned back around, and crossed the median at the earliest chance (at MM 208). The sky was very dark with a visible hail shaft just behind us to the west. From observation of the cloud bases, I could tell we were under the meso...it was 20:10 CDT. I drove east at about 90 MPH and it began to rain hard! All of a sudden, the wiper blades actually bowed into an arc and the car went up on two wheels as we got blasted by what we thought was inflow to the tornado. We thought the car was going to flip on three separate occasions, but luckily it did not. We calmed down as we continued to chase the storm east. We left the highway at Exit 221, and saw another tornado in the lightning...looking NW. After nightfall, we called it a day and headed home...arriving just after 1:00am CDT. Upon checking the video, we could see the edge of the tornado brushing us as we drove on I-70. What we thought was inflow turned out to be a close call...too close...a glancing blow by a tornado. I will post video as soon as I get something to transfer the DV to my laptop...which should be soon. Only a few pics exist from early in the day...as we never got out of the car and just filmed video during the more exciting late evening chase in Kansas.
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Towers begin to go up around 13:30 CDT near Franklin, NE |
 Additional convection did not help the storm near Franklin. |