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I was excited about the day until I woke in the morning and saw the lovely mcs in southern NE finding a way to hose good moisture yet again. I wasn't excited enough or sure enough to plow south of that into n KS and figured I'd just drive out to the cold front in northern NE. It wasn't clear until I was on the road just how bad the dews would be near and ahead of the cold front. Basically the area along and north of the morning mcs didn't recover with good moisture soon enough. An area in SD did still have good dews and a supercell went half crazy up there. I think the crap air in NE finally did that storm in as they met later in its life. Everything in NE was extremely elevated and moving se or e into their own precip. All you'll get in these setups are very elevated pulse severe storms...NE was filled with them. Had there been better moisture in place and something actually rooted in the boundary layer then perhaps something could have turned more right/south and had clean inflow and not suck in its own air/precip.   The other problem was the upper jet. NE was in the front right quad and the flow was more nw, like the mid-level flow. Eastern SD was in the front left quad of the upper jet and had more westerly or even southwesterly winds. That tornadic supercell up there moved se and the anvil and precip was vented off to the east or even ene. It was clear right away on radar the day was going to have issues down in NE. I think had there been better moisture and something could root in the bl it would have wanted to turn right/south and still been ok with the nw flow at the upper levels. Who knows, all I know is I noticed this the night before and still didn't go up to SD. The day reminded me a lot of that other chase this year in the same areas with a similar outcome(Scott Olson got a tornado from the SD storm that day). That storm had its anvil and precip blowing off to the ne as it went east while stuff in NE moved east with the anvil and precip going se.

The highlight of the chase! :( This was at least funny. I'm on highway 70 east of Bartlett. I pull over to shoot the cows out in the field with the "storm" in the background. This is a pretty rural highway so I parked on it for a second. I could see forever in both directions so it wasn't a big deal. A good song comes on the radio(I've since forgotten what it even was). I know these guys saw me before I do this. I crank the radio all the way up as I sit there and snap some pics. Right when I do this the whole heard comes running over. Every head comes to the fence and is staring at me with music blaring. You can tell that one with the white head is really listening.

Many miles and elevated pieces of garbage later I find myself near Pierce NE. I noticed this odd bright area forming in the sky to the east. I've seen these rays do this before but not quite this dramatic, nor long-lived.

Driving east into Pierce NE now.

East of Pierce now. How cool is that? All of these are looking east. I made sure to shoot some video of this for those that'll just say, "oh you photoshopped those in."

It's pretty cool how they appear to be beams going up from the ground when they are actually shining down. I wasn't having a lot of luck determining how they were forming while I was watching it. Then again I was a bit busy looking east at them and not west at the tower. I did glance west and up a couple times and could not see where they were coming through at.

One last image of them. Notice the left rays are gone in these last couple. I guess things like this keep me sane in years like this.

I'm now east of Humphrey NE watching a brilliant sunset unfold. These showers were barely showing up on radar at this time, but the elevated bases were rather electrified. The reflection is the wet highway.

I shot several of this but cameras really don't like this kind of environment--pointed right at a setting sun, hoping to capture cloud detail without blowing out the lower portion with the sun. I can't wait till the day real storms return to the plains. The main season of 2006 isn't being very kind to any chasers. Hopefully this will change in the next few weeks or in the Summer....or Fall??? At least it's going to be a while before it's snowing...so there is hope left for 06.