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I left Blair at 9:30 and headed towards the Cheyenne WY area. I sat on both sides of the NE/WY border for hours. Met Steve Peterson near Pine Bluffs WY at 3:30 or so and watched a very sad boundary to our west. We poured over data for a good while, trying to decide where to move to. An MD came out to our south but we opted to sit out the crap that was down there. The problem was we weren't all that unstable in se WY sw NE panhandle and the anvils being produced to our south were not helping us. The day just really really looked doomed. You can only stare at very very very pathetic "cumulus" for so long. We began to get our hopes up some when looking at some obs to our north. The temps right behind this boundary were now at 84/58 in a couple locations. This was much better than our low 70s, with anvil cover.
We decide to drift east, back into NE and watch the boundary. This is north of Kimball I believe, a bit after the svr watch came out. By the way, these first couple pics are of the better "convection" so far. The stuff we had watched all afternoon was even worse thaen this stuff.
Starved tower.
We are now drifting east, south of Alliance somewhere. To think we(I anyway) thought there was some slim chance of this thing intensifying. I think that is called, denial. Like, I'm not out here near WY chasing this am I?
Notice the windmill in the previous pic. Yep we are doing the landscape photo op thingy. Well, these three wild looking horses were way out on this hill, just standing there watching us. They appeared to have a ton of space and I guess that made me think they were wild. It is very desolate out there.
I made a clicking sound with my mouth(sister used to have a horse, maybe that is where I "got it"). I'm thinking the clicking was the trick. I wanted these guys to pose infront of my excuse of a tower to the ne.
Kind of cool how they took their time coming on over.
They were just about to my hand when they stopped dead in their tracks, just a couple feet away. It was so quiet out there with little in the way of other life out there, what would have spooked them?
Vrrrrrroomm, vrrroomm, vrrrroom, vrrrooom. 4 damned probes came over the hill. 3 from CO and 1 from TX-college students I guess.
My friends(yes the horses) wanted nothing to do with them. I took this pic, before the previous pic, as they took off. I then turned around and shot the "probe" vehicles going east.
Sigh, back on their hill, not infront of my "tower". First horse: "He tricked us" Second horse: "Haha, he thinks were coming back" Third horse: "I'm not even looking"
"Tower", without the added beauty the horses would have provided.
I pulled over to shoot some more of the "tower" and noticed Steve stopped well behind me. I came back up the hill and there is this bird, right next to the car, without a care in the world he was there.
Steve trying to get closer. See, you can do things like this without chasers spooking your wildlife. You know you have lost some hope for your chase day when you are out doing things such as these(not to mention we end up missing a tornado by a few mintues...hrmmm). We knew about the storms to our north, but they hadn't looked all that great on radar either. Storm motions north were to the east, not good for us intercepting them. We drove north anyway, watching a pretty good looking cell and another better one to it's nne. There was also a cell near Harrison NE to our nw a good 30+ miles.
We went due north at an unhurried pace, until the tornado warning was issued. Dean Cosgrove was 4 miles from the tornado shooting some nice video. This view here is west, a little while before all this(south of Alliance). I really love the sandhills. They make you feel as if you are on another planet.
Finally, we are on the storm of the day, but we just missed the tube.
Jay Antle can be seen here. He saw the tornado as he headed north, south of this storm. We had to attack it from the se. Notice the small beavertail to the east of the updfraft base.
RFD/gust front pushing south, wrapping up into the storm to the east. This was a really really sweet storm now.
Chaser galore in the panhandle, north of Scottsbluff.
The rest of the pics were shot at various points as we dropped south.
This is when you get into hurry mode. We were too close, it was near dark, and it was moving se in the sandhills with little road options.
Blasted south.
Vid cap. It now has a very round base with a nice lowering.
What a sweet gust front/rfd wrapping east into the storm.
Vid caps.
A perfect curl all the way to its western end.
This was now rather tough shooting conditions for stills. You want bright enough images yet you don't want them blurred. Updrafts were screaming up and east.
NE of Scottsbluff now. It has now taken on a very shelfy look. I grab a motel room in Scottsbluff not long after this.