We began today in Lexington, NE. During the morning weather briefing, we found two potential areas of storm development. One of them was near the NE/CO border, and the other was along the NE/SD border. That being said, we began to head west towards Ogallala, where we stopped for lunch at Valentino's, a pizza and pasta buffet.
 |
| Lake McConaughy |
Shortly after lunch, we were admiring the beauty of Lake McConaughy, which is about 8 miles northeast of Ogallala. We knew storms were not going to initiate any time soon, so we spent some time at the lake. After we continued heading west, a storm was going up close to the WY/NE border, but we didn't think we would be able to catch it, until it started moving more to the southeast. Even though it was about 180 miles away, we managed to intercept in Crawford, NE a couple hours later. We followed this storm for a while, and then new towers started going up to the southwest of it. Those towers turned into healthy looking storms, so we had our sights set on those. Wall clouds were present, but they never produced tornadoes due to being undercut by outflow. On our way to Alliance, NE, we were treated to a
 |
| First wall cloud of the day |
nice sunset with a spectacular light show. As we were heading west on Highway 2, we were tracking a very large supercell that looked like it wanted to produce. Alas, outflow won again. Along the way, we were trying to find shelter from the large hail embedded in this storm, but we were unable to do so. As a result, we drove through it (aka: a core punch) and made it to Alliance, NE for the night. We drove 465 miles today.
 |
| Second wall cloud |
Good photos. Too bad about the outflow problem. Dennis and I stayed in Alliance. Never seen so many tracks and coal trains in my life before.
ReplyDeleteAs a chaser, I enjoy the railroad tracks. They add scale to pictures! We were going to stay in Chadron, but there were no rooms available.
ReplyDelete