June 2, 2006 Storm Chase - Supercells and Funnel Clouds in the Nebraska Sandhills

June 2, 2006 Storm Chase | Cherry County, NE Supercells and Funnels
All photos © Copyright 2006 Matt Ziebell

I wasn't planning on chasing at all today. The Rockies ridge had built and pushed the better mid-level flow well north of the sfc moisture. There was a decent LLJ progged across W NE by late day with ~25kt NW winds at 500mb; though convective support besides the LLJ was almost non-existent on both water vapor and the models. So, I set up for the next day's target around Valentine and got a motel there by mid-afternoon. A couple of high-based cells had developed NW of VTN by 1700 CDT and slowly looked more interesting. I left my motel room and drifted south on HWY 83 as the convection turned to the SSE. 1838 CDT

The few west road options off of HWY 83 wouldn't cut it, so I had to put up with viewing this southeastward moving cell from the SE quadrant. Here the base is pulling together while displaying one of the smallest and highest based wall clouds I've ever seen! I phoned this into NWS-LBF and the fcstr was jokingly upset to hear that I hadn't seen any hail yet. He really wanted some verification on the SVR they issued. I mentioned that the storm was appearing supercellular and he did confirm that with some mid-level rotation on radar. 1923 CDT

Close-up of the mini wall cloud and nice clear slot working in behind it. It looks backwards, but I'm looking NW while the supercell is moving SE.

Interesting inflow texture into this supercell as it moved slowly towards Brownlee. 1948 CDT

I drove west past Brownlee to get a closer view of this supercell and the newly developing supercell shown here in the distance. Of interest, the radar archive shows a TVS with 132kts of shear and a base of 900ft (!) just to my southeast around this time. The cloud bases were ~5Kft and on video I didn't see anything stand out from this otherwise flat base. The Thedford RDA isn't too far from here and I don't think the 900ft base would be a shortcoming with the TVS algorithm. Interesting nonetheless! 2015 CDT

Radar image w/overlays at 2024 CDT (Note: the TVS symbols are well south of the precip core given there's quite a bit of updraft tilt going on). See bottom for tilt scan.

After letting the supercell pass over me with 1.25" soft/mushy hail and passing along the storm report, I got back on HWY 83 to keep ahead of it. The updraft was now elongating and losing its rotational characteristics. I needed to get west on HWY 2 to intercept the western (and more impressive) supercell, but I stopped briefly to snag some frequent lightning.

While passing through Thedford, the town sirens went off. Even with my external antenna, I didn't have wx radio reception at the moment so I wasn't sure if this was for a tornado or another grassfire like in Akron the other day. About 5min later, Wxworx displayed the TOR warning for the western supercell and I eventually got wx radio for more info. Here's the new supercell looking west from HWY 2 between Mullen and Thedford. 2133 CDT

The drive towards this supercell was certainly entertaining. In the upper right video grab, a funnel cloud had developed under an occluding meso. This meso cycled another wall cloud out (bottom left two images) and yet another funnel (bottom right) very close to me as I neared Mullen. This supercell was also dropping hail up to 2" in diameter.

Man was it getting dark at this point. I wanted to get at least one good still of the laminar base and new meso (just right of dead center). The old meso and funnel cloud was just to my NW at this time and can be seen in the video grabs above. Since 1-2" hail was falling, I had to steady this shot from inside the car. 2145 CDT

Keep in mind that I had already got a motel in Valentine...about 2hrs away now! I decided to stop just south of Mullen and document this supercell as it treked SSE. Here's a nice shot of the moon and flanking line. At the time I forgot I still had the circular polarizer on, so this shot is abnormally blue - d'oh. 2210 CDT

The lightning wasn't that frequent, but made for a gorgeous sight when it did pop. I didn't get back to Valentine until after midnight and had to settle for the only source of food open at the time...a nearby gas station. Okay, slim jims and pringles aren't too cool together; though the chase alone made up for that interesting combination. Note: brightness levels adjusted in some of these pics to highlight the cloud details.

Brief Radar Post-Analysis

0.5° radar slice at 2024 CDT with hail, ETVS and TVS overlays. The far right TVS is the one generating 132kts of shear with a base of 900ft just southeast of my location at this time! The TVS plots are well south of the precip given the storm tilt shown to the right.

Radar tilt composite at 2024 CDT depicting good tilt and a healthy BWER.

Focused rotation was not a problem for these supercells as shown here by the ETVS and TVS history. Had T/Td spreads been lower, there would have likely been a few tornadoes today.

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