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24th May 2010 |
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24/05 Day
8 Mamma Mia! Here we go again...! Monday morning dawned rather ominous, and the weather was in a rather evil mood. Temperatures were in the mid 20s Celsius and it was very humid, yet there was a 30mph mean wind and skies were leaden and overcast. Sporadic raindrops blew around in the gusty wind and occasional thunder grumbled around North Platte, Nebraska. The forecast for the day was equally ominous, with dangerous thunderstorms and possble tornadoes predicted in a line from the Canadian Border to northern Texas. Exhausted after the last few days, we opted to chase closer to home in Nebraska, where the eastward-moving dryline was due to produce a late afternoon/evening squall. We headed south from North Platte to McCook then, on spotting a developing cell close to the dryline, headed due west to intercept. This storm briefly looked supercellular but died out completely as we watched it. We then headed back east to McCook for a mid afternoon lunch. The wind was unbelievably strong, probably gusting in excess of 40mph with mean wind speeds close to 30mph. Signs and trees were heaving to stay upright, as were we, and opening and closing the car doors was tricky. Yet, despite this, there were clear blue skies and temperatures approaching 30 Celsius! Madness. Whilst in McCook by early evening, the dryline was beginning to light up, with a long line of storms unzipping their way southwards down the line. Each storm was moving northwards at crazy speed whilst the line itself was moving slowly east. As the dryline approached McCook it became clear we were going to go through a gap in the line. We therefore attempted to follow one interesting cell northwards which began to show signs of rotation, but it was just too quick so we gave up. We booked ourselves into the Comfort Inn in Colby on the laptop and decided the start the journey southwards. However, we were driving southwards through the dryline thunderstorms, and thus we knew it would be an interesting drive. South of McCook, one cell became tornado warned so we decided to intercept. We managed to get ourselves right in the hotseat to watch a ragged but weakly rotating wall cloud pass right overhead. It was then followed by the downdraft/RFD which included torrential rain, 50mph gusts (est.) and hail up to marble size. The cloud to ground lightning strikes were numerous and close, with some impressive gunshot thunder. As the storm began to move away, it was backlit by the setting sun as the dryline was now to our east. As well as producing a nice rainbow, the storm also put on another quite spectacular display of mammatus that had us all "oooing" and "ahhing". As the light faded, we let the stunning storm drift away and headed southwards to Colby, Kansas, arriving by around 11pm, shattered but happy with the day's results. Total mileage: 348 miles |
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Parked
up in the hotel in North Platte. The rather excessively-sized Comfort
Inn sign was, for some reason, lying on the floor!
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Matt checks out our
first storm encounter west of McCook. The storm was dying, although
strong winds here manage to blow sand everywhere! |
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Parked
up in the same McDonalds carpark as yesterday in McCook... You don't
need a video camera to see how windy it was, going by the trees and
flags. It was still hot and sunny though.
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A line
of storms was unzipping on the dryline to the west of McCook.
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We chased this cell northwards before losing it, and the sharp downburst of rain was following closely behind a lowering, perhaps a ragged wall cloud. |
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Driving back southwards, the dryline was marked beautifully to our west by this sharp line of cloud, followed nicely by clear blue skies and drier air. |
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South
of McCook, we punched through a line of heavy rain to get to a tornado-warned
storm.
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Looking
south-west towards a weakly rotating wall cloud and the RFD to the left,
filled with rain and hail. This circulation almost ran over the top
of us.
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As the
RFD/downdraft moved over us, it unleashed very strong winds, heavy rain
and marble sized hail.
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As the evening sun cut under the western side of the storm, this rainbow
appeared and falling hail was lit up! |
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After
several minutes of very close lightning, further strikes flickered around
the fading rainbow.
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More
lightning flashes within the thunderstorm.
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As the
storm slowly moved away to the east, the setting sun lit up the boiling
clouds beautifully!
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light continued to fade and the scene just got better and better! Mammatus
was lit up and a newly developing thunderstorm (right of shot) started
kicking out lightning. . |
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| Even
Mr. Knightley, a seasoned USA storm chaser, wandered around in awe of
the cloudscape. |
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mamma just kept getting better the lower the sun became. |
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| The
mamma looked solid enough to reach up and touch! |
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| Lightning
continued to flicker out of the storm to our south which looked like it
was on fire! |
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| Looking westwards into the air behind the dry line, and things were looking sunny for tomorrow. A perfect end to a perfect thunderstorm. |
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