6/17/09: REPORTS NE/KS/IA/MO/SD/MN

[BMcMillan]

Intercepted a large tornado west of Aurora, NE. Here are a couple pictures taken along hwy 34 looking west.

[Dustin Wilcox]

Holy **** might be a good word to describe today, filmed I don't know how many tornadoes, first one a real nice white cone with entire tornadogenisis tripoded less than a mile away. The ones in between weren't anything to spectacular, but then the monster was absolutely incredible. The most picture perfect close intercept setup, with a tornado moviong right down and E-W hwy. For awhile there was nothing (including other chasers) between me and the tornado, I just poped out my door and filmed as it tore up the earth a conservative 250 yards to my West, with NE winds screaming just drenching me. The roar was insane, esp. as it hit one farm stead, the noise was very deep and erie, I hope there were no injuries, not sure of the damage it was doing, but it didn't look or sound good...

I have so many photos and so much tornado video to sort through now, hopefully will be able to get some stuff online tomorrow...

This is the last still I took, with my wide angle. After this I just shot video as it got to close to do both.

[Josh Murfield]

Amazing night on the Grand Island/Aurora storm! The wife and I are newbies, with our first and only tornado "catch" a long three years ago with mostly busts and a few "missed it by 10 minutes" moments in between. Tonight we proudly added numbers 2 and 3! Caught a very brief touchdown just outside of Alda (west of Grand Island) while watching some crazy motion and rotation as the wall cloud became really well defined. Followed the storm to the east side of Grand Island on Highway 34 as a nice cone developed that quickly turned into a monster. I don't know if it was truly a wedge or just looked like one due to the huge debris cloud, but either way it was truly amazing! Unfortunately our video is a bit shaky (I had a tripod with me but stupidly got caught up in the moment and didn't even think to set it up! :-) But we watched this thing grow and head east towards Aurora before losing it in the rain and darkness- at which point we felt the mission was accomplished and headed back home.

I learned that though the video camera really produced some great footage that we are ecstatic to have, I really need to invest in nicer still cameras- the "point and shoot" digital cameras both the wife and I have are truly crap when it's even slightly starting to get dark- didn't get one good still picture of the beast on HWY 34.

[Olivier Staiger]

awesome T. between Aurora and Grand Island NE

video

http://www.kyte.tv/ch/9038-klipsi/47...f-grand-island

http://www.kyte.tv/ch/9038-klipsi/476556-tornado-video

[Darin Brunin]

Dick McGowan and I got suckered by the early convection in N. KS but stopped at the Missouri border, turning back for Nebraska. We figured it was a long shot but somehow got to Grand Island in time to watch the storm move over the town and then eventually put down the tornado west of Aurora.

Here's one photo...more later.



Darin

[Andrew Stoller]

Chased a severe warned supercell from about Kiowa, CO all the way to the NE border. It was fairly high based most of the time, but near Otis, CO it wrapped up a decent RFD with nice rapid rising/sinking motion contrast at the RFD cut. At that point, it spun up a real nice meso that I thought might have a chance as the base was low enough, but I guess there wasn't enough moisture to get it done. Wish I had been cruising down I-80 near Grand Island!

[Darren Addy]

Chase NEKKID!
I have no data in the car, just an old wifi-equipped laptop... but
things worked out just right for me today. Left work in Alda, NE at
4:45 and drove home through a lot of skinny convection leaning WAAAAY
over. Nothing looked that promising, so just kept going to Kearney. I
needed to buy a driver's side wiper to replace the one that exited my
vehicle in the Junietta HP mess on Mon. night.

KRVN (880 on your AM dial) is the naked chaser's best friend... they
do weather wall-to-wall when it heats up - and cover a LARGE
geographic area. They reported a Severe Thunderstorm that would be at
Pleasanton at 6:00. (It was now approx. 5:45). I put my wiper on and
ran to the nearest WiFi hotspot and pulled up this image:
http://tinyurl.com/mlylfq
That was the last data I got (or really needed).

It was the only show in the area, so I headed north out of Kearney.
The wall cloud area was visible almost as soon as I got out of city
limits, but I drove a few miles short of Pleasanton and then tracked
east with it.

This image was taken from 15 miles north of Gibbon (and perhaps a
couple miles east). I estimate that I was at least 3-4 miles away from
the tornado, which would put it just east and a little north of
Ravenna, NE. All the storm reports the SPC has are relative to Gibbon,
but this was certainly VERY close to Ravenna:
http://tinyurl.com/kjfbbu

I made a turn south, planning to jog east in a mile... and of course
that would be the section of road that had no east turns for about 5
miles, unless you count "minimum maintenance" roads (which I only use
on meteor shower peak nights). Storm got ahead of me and I had an
8:30 appointment, so broke it off.

Sounds like it was the Storm of the Day and scads of chasers followed
it across half the state. Hope y'all got something good out of the
day!

[Brian A. Morganti]

Brief summary and photos here:

http://www.stormeffects.com/recent_events.htm

[William Reid]

Some quick pics of the Phillips, NE, tornado are up on my web site---

http://stormbruiser.com/chase/2009/0...ps-ne-tornado/

Bill Reid

[Scott Weberpal]

Got on the "Grand Island" supercell not too long after initiation and watched the end of a nice white cone tornado between Pleasanton and Grand Island. After that, the storm looked like it was going to shrivel up and die. For numerous radar scans, the storm went downhill fast and became very unappealing visually. When the storm neared Grand Island, it began to crank up again. Moments earlier I had stopped to talk with Brian Morganti about how horrible the storm looked, and within minutes a new area of rotation developed to the east. Just tell a storm that is sucks and it'll get going again Eventaully watched a weak tornado cross Hwy. 281 on the far southern end of Grand Island, there was a nice white cone funnel, with a debris field of mostly tree limbs underneath...I was about 1/8 mile from this. After that, the rotation began to ramp up significantly east of the river along Hwy. 34 and soon a bowl of dust developed under a truncated cone, then the tornado soon developed into a long cone tornado with a huge dust plume under it. I was fairly close to the Aurora tornado at several points (as were many other chasers). Wow! What a day!