On June 14th, I had my sights set on northeast Nebraska and far western Iowa for another chase day. By mid-morning, I began heading west along I-80 in Iowa to find a destabilizing environment which would set the stage for the possibility of discrete supercells later in the evening. A low pressure system helped to back winds across northeast Nebraska and western Iowa along the warm front, but a strong cap was in place throughout most of the evening near the triple point. I spent most of the afternoon waiting and waiting at a rest stop along I-680 south of Missouri Valley, IA not getting too greedy. This would allow me to use I-29 to find exactly the right crossing along the Missouri River. It appeared by late-evening the cap would hopefully break a county or two to my northwest. This obvious target for this chase day featured 4,000J/kg of CAPE, 0-6km shear at 40kts, a moist boundary-layer with dew points around 70°F, a supercell composite of 28, and the significant tornado parameter approaching 3. By 6:00pm, the cap began to show signs of breaking so I hopped on I-29 crossing the Missouri River at Decatur, NE as a supercell began to explode to my west. I ended up on U.S. 77 heading south near Oakland, NE, but vehicle issues ended this chase pretty quick. I knew a potent supercell was on the triple point to my west near West Point, NE and it eventually would progress to my location so I stayed east fixing the power issue. By the time I discovered and fixed the issue it was already close to sunset. I shot a couple photos of this supercell's anvil and mammatus for a few minutes. Shortly after, I began to head back to Illinois quite disappointed I missed out some incredible supercell storm structure. With that being said, I tried to stay ahead of developing convection along the warm front that was elevated at dusk. I nearly got cored on the interstate west of Des Moines, IA as severe elevated hailers were developing nearly overhead. Since I was in no hurry to get to Illinois and not in the mood to core-punch I stopped along the interstate to stay out of the hail and shoot some lightning photos to salvage the chase day. Once I could find a weak portion along the line of elevated severe storms I decided to core-punch on I-80 so I could get home at a decent hour. I arrived back in Illinois shortly before 3:00am. I've added a few photos I was able to capture at sunset in northeast Nebraska and at dusk in Iowa below:
some mammatus featured at sunset!
make a good photo-op...
I'm getting one of these for the backyard!
was to get CG's out these storms...
with intense CG's like I was hoping for...
Forecasting was spot-on on this chase day, but boy it was frustrating having power issues which caused an abrupt end to the chase early. I'm working on another post and I'll post that one shortly in the coming days.
