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First chase of 2007.
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There was talk of isolated tornadoes today in southeast Nebraska. Most of the data I had seen today said "Isolated? More like none." I was right, but just for the hell of it I sent a text to my friend Tom to see if he wanted to chase. He didn't have anything going on, so the game was afoot. After a stop at his house so he could show me an image program he's writing to help us with photo management we took off for the Wilber/Claytonia area and would decide what to do from there.
While we were driving through Saline county we noticed this guy pulled off on a gravel road with the typical chaser gear on the back of his truck. Being that we weren't in any hurry we decided to talk to the guy. He was spotting for Saline county but lives in Iowa. What that was about, I'll never know. The guy asked us if we were chasing storms today and I said yes. He then launched into a lecture about how I need to be safe and not drive into storms. I was cordial about it with him, but it was kind of annoying. I've learned my lesson about driving into storms to the tune of a $600 repair bill. I told the guy that I know what I'm doing (which is mostly true) and that I was planning on staying away from the core of any storm. In fact, my plan was to sit miles away and view structure. No desire to get under the bases of these storms since it was likely a crapola day.
So we're walking back to my car when this white car pulls up behind me and this lady steps out. She asks us if we're out chasing tornadoes and I thought she was a fellow chaser. I get all coy and say "Oh us? Why, we'd never do such a thing." Turns out she was just some local yokel wondering what the fuss was all about with two vehicles pulled over on the side of the road. Now some lady probably has a poor impression of storm chasers and thinks I'm a glib asshole. Which I am, but I'm trying to HELP the image of chasers to the general public.
So while we were talking to Spotter Guy we noticed a nice lowering the storm Tom and I were trying to catch up with was devloping near the rain shaft. He calls it in to his net, but by then it was beginning to dissipate, which was a bummer. The storm started to develop another lowering closer to the flanking line. We said we were going to take off and said our goodbye. As an afterthought Tom asked what frequency the spotter net was broadcasting on so we could listen in with his scanner. Spotter Guy then launched into a lecture about how we can't broadcast without a license. No. Fucking. Duh. We assured him that we can't broadcast with out little handheld scanner and parted ways.
We drove a ways north and turned west on the road with the Saline Center and parked on top of a little hill. We were fairly close to the storm but far enough away that we weren't going to get rain, hail, or struck by an unlikely tornado. We were in a good position so that as the storms continued to back build we could sit and watch for a while before we would have to move. From our position we could look pretty much straight up and see the updrafts of the storms when they weren't being obscured by stratus. The storms had signs of weak rotation (some striation of the base and an obvious rounded look). It produced a decent (not great by any measure) wall cloud for a while. I spent too much time looking at the lowering, so by the time I decided to take a picture it was dying. So this is a picture of a dying wall cloud. You can kinda make out a little RFD knotch just to the right of it.
Click me!
After watching the storm for a few minutes I figured I should get a shot of the updraft.
Click me!
I messed with camera settings beforehand, which I probably shouldn't have done. Everything came out much darker than it was. I played with the brightness on the updraft pic:
Click me!
We then drove north a ways, decided it was going linear in a hurry, and drove home.
So I wouldn't call it a bust. The storms did try to do their thing, but the environment was just too hostile. I'll call it a draw.
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