Mesovortex.com

Sunday May 22, 2016

Chase Partners:
Randy Baker, Brian Fischer, Steven Peak

Departure Location:
Independence, MO

Target Area:
Trenton, NE

Final Location:
Colby, KS

Distance:
727 miles
The storm south of North Platte with good structure.

After spending the night in the Kansas City area it looks like western Kansas and southern Nebraska just north of Colby will be a good target area. We head out west for Colby then north to Trenton, Nebraska and wait to see what fires up this afternoon.  While we are out there we notice there are some cumulus firing along the dryline. However much farther north in Cherry County, Nebraska a large storm fires up and is Tornado Warned. That storm is too far north to get to in time so we jog east towards McCook then north near Wellfleet as the HRRR insists on firing storms along the dryline in that area late in the afternoon hours. We are finally rewarded around 6 pm CDT as a storm fires off to our northeast. We stay to the storms west as we track north on highway 83, meanwhile a storm fires just to our west with nice structure, but a skinny updraft. This storm eventually joins the storm to the east to form one large cell, which we stay on as we continue on 83 through North Platte and eventually onto Stapleton, NE. We decide to hunker down in Stapleton where we get dime to penny size hail and a nice looking double rainbow. After the storm passes to the east we head back south a bit then east on Highway 92 towards Arnold, Nebraska where we catch another spectacular rainbow. At this point the storms are not looking so great as the time is approaching 8 pm and the storms to the north are forming one big line, so we decide to call it a day and head south towards Colby to be in position for tomorrow's action.

  
Storms are percolating to our east near Wellfleet
  
The updrafts are becoming better organized
  
We finally have an anvil structure
  
A visible updraft to our east
  
Some great structure from a storm to the west of highway 83
  
Dime size hail in Stapleton which was called into the NWS
  
Ran into the CSWR crew while on highway 92
  
The storm as we head back south with a rainbow to the left
  
A full rainbow on display between Stapleton and Arnold
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