May 25 Caught in the Middle

Caught in the Middle

When we started Saturday morning, we hoped to be in the right place for the best storms of the day and headed for far western NE. The most heating and energy should have been there. Some high base storms were expected with great viewing. Unfortunately, mother nature out thought us today and we wound up with less than we expected. Still, the day was not without its highlights.



As the morning began, the forecast called for a surge of energy to come out of the northern Rockies and set off storms that would evolve and move onto the high plains. This would make SD and NE the best places to see severe weather. We headed northwest of I-80 and US-26, passing from KS into NE. The storms began to form as predicted, especially up north. We waited for storms to continue to form to the south in the Alliance/Scottbluff region. Meanwhile to the south, a new line of storms started to form in western KS. These storms, while not severe, turned out to be strong enough to reduce the amount of energy available to the NE storms. Very little formed in NE. The upper air winds from the KS storms kept puling apart the NE storms that tried to form. The one storm that came out of WY later in the day could never establish its upper air dynamics. Father north much stonger storms evolved free of the southern storms' inflience, but these storms did not spawn any tornadoes either.

Around Alliance, NE, we watched a couple of compact storms develop and then fall apart. Their updafts showed some signs of rotation, but the stroms could not maintain their momentum. After an hour or so, the storm fell apart. The next nearest storm was more than 3 hours away in SD and there was not enough daylight to make it. Instead we visited Carhenge, an accurate recreatation of Stonehenge made out of junked cars. While we explored this monument to Detroit and ancient England, another storm develped in WY and worked its way east. We headed out to intersect this new storm. It developed into a supercell, its spaceship form well-defined against an otherwise clear sky. It had enough energy (the day's heating and moisture) to remain intact, but its upper half was too was caught up in the upper air currents of the KS storm complex and could not become the severe behemoth we hoped for. Into the pictureque hills of far northwest NE we headed and saw the storm up close. It showed some rotation, include one impressive funnel-like formation, but then that updraft faded as well. Out day ended with the sunset backlighting the storm. It was a breathtaking scene of the American west. We then headed back to Alliance for the night.
 

For Saturday we traveled 495 miles through KS and NE, bringing our total for the trip to just over 3200 miles.