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Chase Log: May 24-31, 2004
Monday, May 24: South Central NE/North Central KS
In the van this year: Josh, with whom I have chased since 1999; Scott, who has chased with Josh for a few years and with whom I chased for the first time in 2003; and Jessica, my friend from my Penn State days who I brought for her first time out.
First day of chasing is a widespread high-risk day over the Plains. Our target: Fairbury/Hebron, NE. We left from Omaha at about 10:30am, in an entourage with Chris, and toured the damage near Hallam, NE, from Saturday 5/22. We were very impressed by how wide the path looked; we learned later that it was 2.5 miles wide near Hallam. Made our way out of the area as echoes were just becoming visible on Chris's satellite radar and hit it west to the eastern edge of Nuckolls Co. We reached the storm just after initiation and just in time to watch it drop its first rope.
The Nuckolls Co./Thayer Co. NE/Republic Co. KS storm ended up being the best show around. We saw a total of 14 tornadoes from its family, including three separate occasions where there were at least two tornadoes on the ground. One rope developed itself rather nicely as it was crossing the gravel road about 1/4-1/2 mile away from our perch (see pics below). Another one of the tornadoes was more notable, morphing from stovepipe to cone to classic shape; we watched it from something like 1 mile away. All 14 are documented on Scott's video; most of them are documented on my video, but I did get pictures of a few of the tornadoes.
Once the original storm crossed into KS, it stopped producing tornadoes. The rotation and turbulence in the clouds were still impressive, but new towers to our southeast lured us away. Three separate but close towers popped up south of Topeka and looked very impressive from the back. By the time we got to the core of the best one, however, it had become linear and outflow dominant. We did get to see some excellent lighting in it, though.
Spent the night in Ottawa, KS, which was overpriced and closed WAY too early -- the only restaurant still open at 10pm was McDonald's, and nowhere in town sold any alcoholic beverages after 10pm. Never again!
Pictures from 5/24
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