Mesovortex.com

Sunday June 6, 2010

Chase Partners:
VORTEX 2

Departure Location:
Omaha, NE

Target Area:
Ogallala, NE

Final Location:
Ogallala, NE

Distance:
495 miles

Headed out of Omaha for a target area in the Nebraska Panhandle. While on Interstate 80 the IMAX crew filmed the VORTEX 2 armada from a helicopter west of Omaha. Once the filming was completed we headed west for Ogallala for some developing storms north of Interstate 80. Although these storms do not look all that impressive they are the only storms on radar so we decided to head west to Big Springs. The storm quickly organizes with a pendant...rotation and a wide TBSS. The storm also shows rotation visually as a wall cloud forms on the south side of the storm. With the storm taking a right turn and heading more south we head back east where we go through the periphery of the core with some hail and wind on our way to Ogallala. From there we dive south towards Grant where the storm develops some great storm scale rotation...wall cloud and lowering underneath the wall cloud. Despite the favorable storm structure no tornadoes developed from our location. We continued following the storm east of Imperial until it became obvious this storm was dying out and additional storms to the north were developing. The downdraft from this storm spun up several gustnadoes and near blinding dust as we were overtaken by several rounds of a wall of dust.

We head back to Ogallala to intercept the storms to the north. While we did not observe any tornadoes with these storms...however the storms produced some great looking shelf clouds. We get out of the way of the storms hail swath just in time to get some 1 inch hail before the storm goes on to produce damaging wind blown 1.25 inch hail in Ogallala.  This storm also becomes outflow dominant so operations cease for the day once this storm passes through Ogallala.

  
The IMAX crew filming the VORTEX 2 armada
  
The storm near Ogallala shows signs of rotation
  
 The storm trying to spin something up north of Grant
  
The storm becomes outflow dominant
  
 The storm east of Imperial develops a hole on the underside
  
Shelf cloud north of Ogallala on the last storm of the day
  
 The storm approaches our location
  
The sun setting on operations for the day


YouTube video of the Shelf Cloud

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