Jeff got out of work and blasted south down 75 to get in position for already severe storms that were near Nebraska City, NE. That storm ended up being cut off from a developing storm to the south, so Jeff went south and met that storm In Rockport, MO. There Jeff met with TRC chasers Brian and Nate and we continued our chase. Jeff also ran into friend and fellow chaser Scott Bennett. We filmed the storm as it gained strength just as it was passing Rockport. The storm went tornado warned shortly after. We followed the storm to Tarkio, MO where a funnel was spotted in the dark that was lit up by lightening, which some claim there was a brief tornado. It is possible, but i have not been able to verify it by video. The storms shortly after ended up losing strength and all tornado potential. We did observe a few wall clouds as well.
Jeff and Brian headed out on a last minute decision from Omaha at around 1:30. We arrived at Maryville, KS and waited for storms to develop. Storms did start just north of Emporia, KS but we held off to go down there, since we couldn’t commit to go to far south since Brian had to be at work back in Omaha that night. Soon we noticed more storm development to our south and blasted south of Manhattan, KS. We caught the storm near Council Grove, KS and it became tornado warned near Americus, KS. We saw numerous wall clouds and some crazy upflow and a few funnels. No tornadoes for us this day, but was a fun chase.
Jeff and Sam left Omaha around 1:30pm to head out to storm potential with the main target being around Hays, KS. We arrived in Phillipsburg, KS and noticed a CU field was developing further to the west. We caught up to some small cells that died shortly after. We then decided to wait it out see if more storms would develop along this field. More storms did start up and we followed them to McCook, NE where our storm went severe around sunset. We chased it north to Mayward, NE were it looked to be losing strength plus it was pretty dark, so we decided to head back home. The storm ended up just being in a recycling phase and went tornado warned 40 minutes later. Being too far out of the way to return, we watched the tornado reports start coming in. A tornado had hit North Platte, NE. Disappointed having left the storm too early, we continued our trip back home.
Jeff is releasing his first DVD of his chases. Jeff travels all over tornado alley in search of tornadoes and severe weather. His work has been seen nationwide in the media such as The Weather Channel, The Discovery Channel, Weather Nation, ABC Good Morning America, and NBC Date Line. This has been made possible by teaming up with SevereStudios.com, where Jeff also streams Live Video. This 2011 chase season, Jeff added the Dome cam to get an awesome angle of storm footage. The 2010 season is in SD and the 2011 season is in HD. This is a must have DVD for any chaser or weather enthusiast.
Jeff and Brian and friend Ryan left around 10:30am from with the original target of Barton, NE. Once we got there we waited on storm development for a good hour. During that time, Jeff was able to set up his dome cam, determined not to miss another epic tornado captured on the dome like the Wood Lake Tornado. Storms formed quickly and had some good potential, but soon fell apart. After much seeing these wouldn’t do it, we blasted up north to intercept the tornadic storm that was coming out of Cherry county. We made it there just as the sun was starting to set which lit up the storm so beautifully. A mothership like meso was seen on this storm. We stayed with it until it fell apart as it was getting dark. No tornadoes today but a beauty storm.
Jeff and Brian left from Omaha at noon and headed out west with our target of Valentine, NE. We arrived and waited with no initiation. We waited about 2hrs before tornadic storms initiated. We got in the perfect position just east of Valentine, NE. The first storm had amazing rotation. The RFD came down and created a clear slot with the sunset in between. Rotation tightened up but fell apart. The storm began to recycle again RFD came down a created a nice clear slot. This time however the rotation tightened up and a funnel formed. The funnel was persistent and soon made contact with the ground. The funnel was just about overhead so we then blasted east to keep in front of it. Rain then began to wrap around the tornado making it impossible to go east and see the tornado, so we found a dirt road and let the tornado pass then follow it from behind. The tornado formed into a large stove pipe tornado that was white. Simply beautiful to see in person. The tornado was on the ground for about 12 min then finally roped out. We then went back up to the highway to make an attempt to get in front of the storm again for another play. On the way, we noticed another storm to the north east go tornado warned and produce a brief needle tornado. After watching that storm pass and weaken, we decided to blast south east to get back into position for our first storm that still looked strong. It soon got dark we decided to head back to Omaha. The whole tornado cycle was streamed live. This was also seen the next day on ABC Good Morning America, The Weather Channel, Weather Nation, NBC Night Line, and a lot of local news stations like ABC Ch. 8 Lincoln.Overall was a great late season tornado that few people got to see in person.
Jeff, Brian, and friends headed out of Omaha at 2:30 once Jeff was able to get out of work. We headed west on I-80 and saw the storm further to the south west and seeing numerous tornado reports on Spotter network. Hoping we didn’t miss the big show we planned to get to York, NE and see if storms would fire. We noticed a outflow boundary working its way up toward us so we decided to stop and see if storms would fire along the boundary. Sure enough storms began to fire to se headed a few miles south west to get right up on them. Shortly after we saw a brief funnel. Following the funnel a beautiful slender white funnel came about 3/4th to the ground and then noticed it briefly caused a spin up. After that we the storm got in front of us so we tried to go north and get back to I80 to head east to get back in front of the storm. Just as we were nearing the Bradshaw exit we saw the dust swirl just north of the highway. We exited and followed the storm stopping a few times to film. This was streamed live and was seen on The Weather Channel and WOWT-Omaha live. The tornado grew and became a nice stove pipe and was on the ground for at least 15 min. We tried to keep up with the tornado and then we ran into down power lines crossing the road and were unable to pass and were forced to back track. The storm end up getting away from us and once we were able to catch back up the storm lost its intensity and died. We went then to Fremont to celebrate over a dinner when we noticed half the city did not have power and then we saw many down tress. Later we found a weak tornado went through there as well.
