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There's nothing crazy about this entry as far as how the storm looks visually. What is somewhat crazy to me is the orientation of things, while not too surprising, certainly rare. Mid-level flow(500mb or around 18,000 feet) is considered basically your steering flow, though other factors play into direction and speed. If you get a cut off upper low you can wind up with southerly flow at this height and even southeasterly or more. Your storm can wind up moving around this flow and tending to get pulled back northwest or in some cases maybe west, but most of the time your low level flow(inflow) will be even stronger when this happens(backed to hell mid-level flow close to the upper low gets slower). So while it may move that unusual diretion, the inflow is still often towards the east side of the storm. The storm viewing will typically remain the same, with any beavertail or inflow clouds near the core to the north, and stretching westward to the north side of the updraft. It'd look similar to if you have the more typical southwest flow aloft. I've found even most northwest flow events have the same general appearance. On all these, a viewing location from the southeast and even east works(I prefer as close to east as possible while staying out of the rain...and sometimes even being in the rain is good). One can also get a storm that barely moves which decides to backbuild westward, slowly. Still, the feature orientations remain all very similar. You'd then likely be from a more southerly view and even southeast and have your core east of the updraft with the beavertail forming to the east like the rest. I knew this would be an odd day a few days out when I saw the prog'd east-northeasterly mid-level flow over the instability. One doesn't get that often at all. It's too bad the forecasted 0-6km shear dropped from 50 knots the night before, to around 35 knots the day of. This seems to happen far more often than not. It also became mostly northeasterly. It was prog'd over extreme instability(though with pretty warm mid-level temps around -5c which never seems to provide anything worth a darn). Given the slower flow and the warm mid-levels I wasn't terribly excited about the day. The only exciting part was this very strange flow orientation and wondering what would actually happen. Would one still wind up with a view from the east looking west at the storm, and just have the storm drop south and be a bit anticyclonic? Or would the weak flow lead to a big blob that plows southwest, with the core mainly behind it, and then have a big shelf to view from the southwest looking northeast? This is what I thought was most likely to happen. The third, and the most highly strange option would be something deviates right and moves due west, and has all the normal features flipped 180 degrees. This seemed quite possible, but having never seen such a case in person(nor online that I can think of, though I'm sure examples are out there) I figured it wasn't too likely. Well what happens is a storm forms near York, doesn't organize for a long time, while another storm forms near it closer to highway 30. This northern storm seemed to want to deviate due west from the get go, likely due in part to the other convection south of it near York providing a bit of a cold pool to help guide it that direction(just guessing). I chose this north one. While it went right/WEST the other one organized into one storm which went left/SOUTH. The chase of this north storm, to the west and having to look east at it, was extremely strange. It made sense why it would do what it was doing, but would really mess with one's orienation, after having chased all these storms now, and never doing so in this fashion.
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Here is a pretty early look from the highway 92 and 30 intersection. This is shot looking straight EAST. There was a bit of a detached inflow cloud south of the updraft base which streched on quite a ways, going almost straight west down highway 92. Eastern Nebraska has sucked this year(and last...and the one before I guess) and it is only fitting I get a storm around here, west of home, and it makes me chase it away from home. It was just constantly odd driving west and having to stop to look back east at the approaching storm, with its flipped features.
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Wider angle shot. From the get go this updraft had supercell characteristics. There was constant thunder in the core as well.
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A bit further WEST here.
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The updraft was really leaing over to the southwest. I was sort of surprised I wasn't getting any real close anvil botls, as it looked quite convective well west of the base up there.
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And again, this structure isn't looking west like it would seem, but rather due east. Hell it seems odd for me to try and visualize that this is looking east and I was there.
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Too bad it didn't last longer and become a meaner storm. Also what would have been interesting was for this to go into the late evening hours and recieve direct sunlight on it. I mean picture any cool storm one might have seen, then place direct sunlight on the front of it, like you see on convection to the east all the time. I can't help but imagine it would appear strange/untypcial. Sure one gets some strong lighting filtering in on storms from time to time, but not really direct like you could get with a westward moving storm that has all its inflow on that side and is facing that direction. I hoped another storm could pop and get going for that, but it wasn't to be. A guess says it will be a long time before I chase another storm orienated in this way, since I never have to date before this one.
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