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Storm Clouds at Sunset East of Kearney

Mon, 28 Jun 2010 14:04:04 -0500

Storm Clouds at Sunset East of Kearney
by Michael Tillotson
Monday, June 28, 2010, 2:04pm

Benjamin and Luke Kruciak went up to Columbus last Tuesday, only to find blue skies. Not much happened up there. Everything was the opposite direction down in Kansas. The storms hit Kearney by evening, so my sister Kristin and I met Benjamin and Luke east of Kearney to watch the storm.

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This is one of the few photos worth taking up northwest

The photos below were all taken northeast of Kearney on Poole Road.

Just for fun. This is Luke's car.

My Buick, the traditional chase car up to this point, finally had the transmission fail. It's had troubles off and on for the last three years or so, but first gear seems to have finally gone out. I'm listing it on eBay this week if anyone wants to buy. ;)

Our friends in Holdrege had told us we could have their Ford Escort if we paid to get it fixed. Thankfully the car was fixed by the time mine died, so we had it for a chase vehicle. It has a manual transmission, so Benjamin thought it would be fun to let Kristin learn how to drive it while I was taking photos. First, Benjamin let Luke take it for a drive.

I think Luke is driving in this photo

I liked the background motion blur in this photo. :)

Benjamin's demonstrating to Kristin how to operate the clutch

At least we got a few good photos out of it. :)

Storms in Northeast Kansas

Mon, 21 Jun 2010 14:59:55 -0500

Storms in Northeast Kansas
by Michael Tillotson
Monday, June 21, 2010, 2:59pm

It looked like a decent chase day, and it would a "local" chase, according to Benjamin. We didn't plan to go much more than an hour or two from Kearney. Luke and Josiah didn't come this time, but our sister Kristin and Peter came along for the ride.

We headed south of Holdrege and watched storm clouds start popping up. Benjamin had his eye on a storm building to the east, so we turned onto highway 136 at Alma.

I believe it was south of Franklin that we hit our first storm.

We abandoned this storm for a better one that had developed further east. It had an obvious hook on it near Jewell, KS.

In an effort to get closer to the storm, we took some less favorable roads east. Thankfully it hadn't rained here yet.

There were groups of people stopped along the road watching the storm. Some people were parked in the middle of the road, forcing us to drive in the grass to get around them.

We caught up to the storm and stopped for a restroom break and took some photos of the nice wall cloud. Peter was being train for tripod duty, so he was in charge of setting up and taking down the tripod whenever we stopped. He got pretty fast at it by the time we were done.

We drove through Concordia as the storm closed in. TornadoVideo.net's Dominator was just ahead of us.

The Dominator

Driving through Concordia

The storm was getting exciting here. We were watching the rotation over our heads for any sign of tornado formation.

The core of the storm was nearing us, so we took off east before it hit. We didn't want our dad's vehicle to get hammered by the hail. (My vehicle is out of commission due to transmission failure).

Kristin and Benjamin survey the sky

There was a spin-up on the ground just a few yards in front of us. Benjamin was watching the cone form up above, but I was watching the ground circulation. I grabbed the camera and got out to get a photo, but it was gone. Didn't last much more than 10 seconds. The Dominator pulled up shortly after.

We came to a place were several power poles in a row were snapped off, and some of them were stuck back into the ground where they were broken off.

At this point we decided it was time to head home. We drove along the southern edge of the intense rain as we headed back to Concordia. The sunset was beautiful as it shown through the rain.

Concordia looked like a war zone. Branches and were down everywhere. We stopped at a gas station to get something to eat, but we had to wait a few minutes while the girl at the counter got the cash register running again. On the way out of town we had to re-route to get around downed powerlines. Just outside of town we saw a grain bin that had been blown over.

Water was across the highway in some places. We were pulling into Randall when suddenly we saw rushing water across the road. I couldn't stop before we had gone several yards into the new river. It wasn't very deep at that point, but as I inched forward it kept getting deeper. Benjamin and Peter got out and waded ahead to see how deep it would get. It came up to their knees in the middle, so we realized we shouldn't attempt it. It looked like a river just flowing from between the houses and across the road. I've never seen anything like it. A man in some kind of machine pulled up beside us and told us that even if we could make it through this spot, we wouldn't be able to make it past the next flooded area. He told us the best thing to do would be to go all the way back to the road north of Jamestown, twelve miles away. A man in a white pickup pulled up alongside the first man and he wondered if we could just go to a road three miles back. "I wouldn't send anyone on those roads in a car like this", the first man said.

We thanked him and headed back down the highway. We knew our car could do a gravel road just fine, so we checked the first road north that we came to. It was just a minimum maintenance road, so we kept going. At two miles from Randall we found a gravel road. I should have taken better note of the fact that the guy in the pickup was talking about a road three miles east, not two. Maybe that one would have been gravel all the way through.

But this road was great. We just had to go two miles north before we got back to a paved highway, and no need to go all the way back to Jamestown.

We were passing some farm buildings and a line of trees and the gravel abruptly turned to the color of dark chocolate. It took me a whole second to realize that it wasn't gravel. Hitting the brakes confirmed it. The brakes didn't do much besides make us slide at an angle into the ditch. The ditch wasn't more than a slight depression at the edge of the road, and my wheels stopped part way in the weeds at the edge of the wheat field. I put the car in reverse to see if the weeds under the tires might give me a little traction. Not a chance.

The next option was to get out and push. When I stepped out my shoes sank in the mud. Kristin sat in the driver's seat while Benjamin and I pushed. When Kristin pressed the gas, we were bathed with muddy water from head to toe, but the pushing was in vain.

We were stuck.

My reputation with my passengers was very poor at this point. I do not have the heart to repeat the things that were said to me at that time. I deserved it.

We had no choice but to walk the muddy road back to the farmhouse just a few yards up the road. Benjamin, Peter and I walked back up the road while Kristin waited in the car. To our dismay, there wasn't any house. Just a barn and a light illuminating the barnyard.

We were stuck in the mud out in the middle of northern Kansas in the middle of the night, far from help.

I like adventure. But I hate having adventure at other people's expense. The worst part about it was that it wasn't my car. I wasn't sure that all my companions were enjoying it much either.

We have some friends in Red Cloud, Nebraska. Kristin had a brilliant idea to call and ask them to drive the hour to come and rescue us. They seemed almost excited at the prospect of coming out to save us from the mud.

"It was a dark and stormy night..."

After the rain and hail had stopped, I got out and walked back up the road to take some lightning shots. Here are a few of them.

You can see the lightning reflected in the floods of water in the valley

I was very dissappointed that this lightning bold wasn't fully in the frame. :(

We were very happy when our friends showed up around midnight. They had made preparations in case we had to spend the night at their house and return later to extract our car. However, we decided to see if we could push it out with the extra hands.

It took us maybe five minutes to push the car back to the gravel road. It took a little effort to keep the car from sliding into the ditch as we went.

We are forever grateful.

We got home around 4:00am.

Next time I drive a gravel road on a stormy night I'm keeping my eyes peeled...

June 17, 2010 Freeborn County, Minnesota Tornados

Fri, 18 Jun 2010 10:35:10 -0500

June 17, 2010 Freeborn County, Minnesota Tornados
by Benjamin Tillotson
Friday, June 18, 2010, 10:35am

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Almost didn't chase this day as I had a lot of other things going on. But after looking at data that morning I really thought this day was looking to good to pass up. I'm very glad I went as this ended up being an incredible day...

This is the first tornado that we saw. It didn't last long and the wall cloud quickly dissipated. At the same time the cell to the south began to organize...

...and quickly produced a small tornado.

This storm basically went tornado crazy for the next 45 minutes.

It was a bit dark for handheld shots but the lighting was really good.

Things are starting to get fun.

Tornado just missed Kiester, MN to the north. We are on the north side of town. I heard later that trees were falling on the road in town so they closed the road going through Kiester. It's a good thing we didn't get stuck south of town.

Crazy action right over the road. BTW these are mostly taken at 10mm so this thing was a lot larger than it looks.

Another wall cloud forms to the east.

Blurry shot but it tells the story. :P

Time to get close now since we have a good road.

It really beefed up right over the road.

This is still at 10mm so you have to understand how huge this thing was.

Wow!

That collar cloud had some crazy motion. I pretty much just drove up to it at this point. Saw debris flying in the air high above our heads.

Incredible! (I was using that word a lot at this point)

The area smelled real strong like dirt after the tornado passed.

Inflow winds were sustained at at least 60mph. I had a really hard time opening the door to get out. Then when I got out of the car it was too windy to get still shots. So these are all taken out the winshield.

We ran into a bunch of debris after this went through and the roads out of Albert Lea, MN were blocked off so we headed home after this.

Scotts Bluff, Nebraska Tornadic Supercell

Tue, 08 Jun 2010 16:04:17 -0500

Scotts Bluff, Nebraska Tornadic Supercell
by Benjamin Tillotson
Tuesday, June 8, 2010, 4:04pm

We chased the warm front in eastern Wyoming/western Nebraska area on Monday.

Cells began early in the day moving off of the higher terrain in Wyoming. We targeted the Kimball, NE area and watched a couple small high based cells for a while before going north. It quickly became apperant though that the cap was too strong that far south and the only good stuff was further north toward Torrington, WY.

The storm at Torrington had some great structure!

We followed this storm untill it moved over some vast roadless areas in western Neb. After leaving that storm we waited for another storm to the west which was severe warned. This cell eventually developed some decent rotation and produced a short lived tornado east of Scotts Bluff. We did not see this torndao as we were getting buried by the RFD at the time further west. Once we emerged from the core we had fun watching clouds racing south over hwy 26 and wrapping into the wall cloud. It was too dark for pictures at that point though.

Also saw a lot of blowing dust out ahead of these cells.

May 24, 2010 - Central Nebraska Squall Line

Tue, 25 May 2010 11:13:56 -0500

May 24, 2010 - Central Nebraska Squall Line
by Benjamin Tillotson
Tuesday, May 25, 2010, 11:13am

Targeted North Platte yesterday. Cells were starting to form north of North Platte when we arrived. They didn't look very organized though and I decided to head south and catch the cells coming out of Kansas. Bad choice... The cells North of North Platte were soon tornado warned and our storms in Kansas were quickly dying. Storm motion was fast today so there was no chance of catching the stuff up north. We waited around North Platte for a while to see if anything could fire up in the area. Nothing did. It seemed like we were in a big hole and all the action was somwhere else around us. A cell fired at Broken Bow which was a good 40-50 miles east of where we were. That cell raced north becoming tornado warned as well. It was just too hard to intercept and keep up with any individual cell. So we went west to Arthur closer to the dryline and basically followed the squall line it produced back to Kearney.

The rain bands were one of the coolest things to watch here. We really needed a video camera to capture this. There was deffinitly some strong straight line winds in parts of the storm.

It quickly formed a whales mouth type of deal.

Micheal unknowingly lost his cell phone at this point in the tall grass across the road...

Group photo. I just had to insert this photo into Benjamin's blog post. :) -Michael

...and this is where we realized he had lost it. Amazingly we found it probab;y within half an hour. I wasn't sure if we would be able to catch up to the line but we did by the time we got to Stapleton.

The contrast is always cool with these things.

Over next to that power pole is where we found Micheals phone. It survived the torrntial downpour and boots up just fine.

Back ahead of the line in Stapleton.

Very cool.

The sunset colors were incredible. I even managed to get some lightning with it.

I included this last photo just to prove how bad I am getting at photography. I used auto focus to focus on the horizon/ininity. Forgot to check to make sure it was on infinit. It was actually on 1.4ft or something like that. They would have been really good shots otherwise. I even remember looking at them on the camera LCD and thinking that these are probably some of the best storm/night shots I have ever got.

May 10, 2010 Medford, Oklahoma Tornado

Tue, 11 May 2010 14:10:32 -0500

May 10, 2010 Medford, Oklahoma Tornado
by Benjamin Tillotson
Tuesday, May 11, 2010, 2:10pm

Luke and I chased the Setup in Northern OK/Southern KS. We got to the Medford, OK storm just as it put down an incredible multi-vortex tornado. I didn't have the camera ready at that point so I missed some of the best action.

Very strong inflow at this point. This at 10mm and 1/50 sec. and was still blurry. Not sure if the tripod would have worked any better.

Anything zoomed in from 10mm was blurry. This is at 22mm. Also found out later that the focus was off a bit which added to the softness. They're ok I guess...

Some pretty intense action under that base.

RFD was closing in fast.

Tornado forms off to the north of Hwy 11.

I really wish these 22mm shots turned out sharper...

Storm went further off to the north and got rain wrapped. Not sure if it produced much more after this. It didn't look that great on radar so we dropped south to catch a storm crossing I35 south of Ponca City.

Drove through an intense core too see this.

We saw a very brief tube on this storm just before this shot. I'm not sure if it touched down or not.

Followed this weakening storm to Independence, KS.

This was deffinitly the best chase we've had this year. It was well worth the 1000 miles traveled. Hopefully there will be good setups like this closer to home though.

April 23, 2010 Storm Chase

Mon, 26 Apr 2010 13:56:43 -0500

April 23, 2010 Storm Chase
by Benjamin Tillotson
Monday, April 26, 2010, 1:56pm

Luke and I sat in under a very nice cumulus field all afternoon waiting for what wasn't going to happen till late in the day and way east of our target due to a stronger cap than forecasted.

NWS broadcasted a tornado watch for much of NE by about 1:00pm that afternoon. I have to admit the cumulus was beginning to look impressive in our area. That's as far as it got though. I think the only real supercells that organized in the whole state were east of that watch box. I was first drawn toward Omaha because that was the first convection I saw all day and just wanted something. Once close enough to that storm though I saw how unorganized everthing was there so we went south to some better looking storms west of Nebraska City. Sort of wasted time and gas going to the Omaha stuff. Oh well...

The cells between Nebraska City and Lincoln.

There was one point where it looked like the north cell could almost produce but it never got around to it. Some chasers reported a funnel and possible tornado on the south cell but we didn't see that. We probably just weren't looking.

This is a three image stitch showing both the north and south cells.

Mostly tried to keep up with the north cell as best as we could.

It was getting dark fast. Tried to stay close to the storm on gravel roads. Almost hit a deer in the process.

After driving through west Omaha (bad idea) and getting annoyed by not finding a good place to stop we drove west through the first line of storms then dropped south toward Wahoo and got some good shots of lightning on the backside of these storms.

Cool lightning always makes up for a not so great chase I guess.

Might be another chase day this Thursday.

Western Nebraska Shelf Cloud - 04-13-10

Wed, 14 Apr 2010 11:31:27 -0500

Western Nebraska Shelf Cloud - 04-13-10
by Benjamin Tillotson
Wednesday, April 14, 2010, 11:31am

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This chase was sort of a last minute decision. More than anything I just wanted some good landscape storm shots. Things turned out very good when a photogenic squall line/shelf cloud formed along the cold front. I left around noon targeting Ogallala. Got there around 3:30pm and watched stuff developing in NE CO. A couple cells formed ahead of the cold front. These cells looked to be the only chance for a tornado so I tried to chase one just west of Ogallala but storm motion was at least 50kts and with bad road options this was basically impossible. Plus the alltel card was not working on my computer so I had to go back into town to get updates. :(

This was the storm west of Ogallala. It went tornado warned as it passed further to the north. The only problem was I didn't learn about the warning until getting internet access back in town. This storm was moving fast enough I doubt I would have been able to keep up with it anyway.

After getting updates I decided to go north to Arthur. This is when I get my first view of the squall line. Contrast under this thing was incredible.

Everything about this scene was really cool.

A shot out the windshield as I was trying to get to arthur before the precip hit. That didn't quite happen so I drove at least half an hour in blinding rain and hail before getting out of it east of Arthur.

Back out of the precip east of Arthur.

The sandhills added a lot to the scene.

I like road shots like this.

Now the only thing I had to do was to keep on going east ahead of the line. I knew to start heading east when I started feeling the cold outflow. The line between hot and cold was crazy. One second your hot the next your freezing. The wind was strong as well. At one spot I think it was sustained at least 50mph with higher gusts. I had a tough time holding the tripod down to get some good shots.

It was getting dark enough for some lightning shots. Lightning was still distant though.

The day ended with a cool lightning display.

400 ISO sort of blew out these shots...

This was a really fun chase for me. I really like the sandhills and with a photogenic storm like that it really made up for that last chase.

April 5th, 2010 - Northwest Missouri Lightning

Tue, 06 Apr 2010 12:43:36 -0500

April 5th, 2010 - Northwest Missouri Lightning
by Benjamin Tillotson
Tuesday, April 6, 2010, 12:43pm

This day didn't turn quite as I had hoped. I was hoping storms would be able to break the cap earlier in the evening... So it ended up being a mostly night chase without much in the way of good supercell structure. Good lightning display though.

Some towering cumulus late in the evening. First sign that something was actually going to happen. We had been waiting in Mound City, MO for a while.

The hills in MO were cool but not my favorite chase terrain.

MO does have cool roads...

We soon dropped these clouds for better stuff west.

The lightning show begins!

Not sure why this shot is so soft. I can't tell if it is just motion blur from the wind or if auto focus was off a bit. I've been noticing that auto focus on our 10-22mm seems to focus slightly beyond infinity.

Lightning began to get very cool about this point.

Around this time we got some internet connection and saw a couple of storms in norhteast KS that looked good on radar. We headed that direction but the storms quickly disorganized.

Sandhill Cranes & Snow Storm

Mon, 22 Mar 2010 09:25:16 -0500

Sandhill Cranes & Snow Storm
by Benjamin Tillotson
Monday, March 22, 2010, 9:25am

We had a bit of snow/blowing snow on Friday. It was very interesting to watch the cranes in these conditions.

It snowed heavily for a while before the wind started picking up. It was hard to see very far at times. Sometimes I could only hear the cranes in the field and not able see them.

Some of these photos were manual focused because the lens had a really hard time focusing on anything near the cranes. I don't remember if this was manual focused or not. If so I must be getting pretty good at it lol.

Visibility was getting somewhere below a quarter of a mile at this point. The ground was warm though so it didn't accumulate fast.

Sort of hunkered down. The wind is starting to pick up now.

A little ground blizzard starts to form in this field.

They were getting blown around quite a bit at this moment.

Probably wishing they were back in Mexico.

Didn't seem to be too happy with the weather.

The whole field went up at this point. Wind was really getting strong. Definitely time to find more shelter.

Almost got a real close one here. This is uncropped. It looked like it was attacking something in the field next to the road. Wish it would have stayed there longer.

January 6, 2010 - Hoar Frost

Thu, 07 Jan 2010 18:16:13 -0600

January 6, 2010 - Hoar Frost
by Benjamin Tillotson
Thursday, January 7, 2010, 6:16pm

More frost pictures! I don't know if you like snow and frost as much as I do but as far as new blog posts go this what you get this time of year. :)

I went to Cottonmill Park before the snow and wind started blowing most of the frost off the trees.

The frost was very thick in places. I'm guessing there was at least an inch of frost on the most exposed grass and trees.

A miniature forest of sand plumb trees.

Once the snow and wind started I went down to the platte river.

The Platte River is a very cool place in a snow storm.

85mm f/2.2 3200 sec.

Taking a break... At some point I realized how cold it was and started heading back to the car.

The camera bag had some snow on it when I got back.

Dec 8, 2009 Snow Storm & Frost

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 13:54:54 -0600

Dec 8, 2009 Snow Storm & Frost
by Benjamin Tillotson
Monday, December 14, 2009, 1:54pm

Tuesday, Dec. 8 was the big day for this event. Kearney ended up with a total of about 10 inches by the end of the day. But due to work and having to leave early the next morning I was not able to take as many photos as I would have liked. The trip across Iowa the next day was interesting as all of Iowa was under a blizzard warning all day making travel difficult. These are mostly from the morning of the 14th. The day before there had been quite a bit of freezing fog which made for some thick frost on the trees. I don't have a whole lot of time to write as I have a lot of work to do before Christmas so I'll just post lots of pictures and maybe I can write more later. Hope you enjoy. :)

The Platte River was almost completely frozen over.

These dips around the posts were interesting. It was all solid ice. I'm thinking that the water must have soaked into the snow as it drifted around the posts and froze that way.

Here are a few more from that evening.

October 10, 2009 - Snowstorm

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 21:19:56 -0500

October 10, 2009 - Snowstorm
by Benjamin Tillotson
Monday, October 12, 2009, 9:19pm

Much of the northern plains recieved early snowfall this year with some areas like North Platte breaking some records for the month of October with over 13". I wasn't expecting anything big but was suprised to wake up on Saturday to several inches on the ground and still snowing. I think we ended up with about 3 -4 inches.

I went west of town to some hills to see what I could find.

Everything had a thin coating of ice. I think things were warm enough at first to melt the snow but froze later on.

I'm sure a lot of farmers weren't happy with how things ended up. It looked like most corn had not been harvested yet.

Its always hard captureing snow flakes in the air but I found the best way was to use the 85mm at f/1.8 and a high shutter speed. The large aperature helps to Isolate the flakes. f/1.8 1/800 sec. ISO 100

This is at the north channel of the Platte. There was still a lot of green stuff around.

Remnants of the burned bridge.

I have never seen poisen ivy in snow before. Usually its mostly gone by the time we start getting snow. Anyway, I'm probably going to get it now that I got so close to it :P. Thats what I call staring death in the face!

This is jumping ahead a couple days to Monday morning at the south channel of the Platte river. It had snowed agian and I was hoping for some more good snow landscapes. I was also looking for some good fall color to go with it, something we don't always get aound here.

A few deer crossing the trail.

This is about as good of "fall color" as I could find at the river. :P The photo's a little shaky perhaps but thats as good as I could do hand held in the low light. I just thought the snow on the leaves looked cool.

Because of the cold temperatures on saturday some trees just seemed to dump all there leaves at once.

Finally some real fall color! I found this maple tree at cottonmill park with a little snow on the leaves that hadn't melted yet.

There was more than one maple tree in the park. They really stand out against the seeming lack of color in most of the other trees around.

Got to meet this alien from another planet. :P Seriously, though, there heads look unnatural.

July 24, 2009 Storm & Lightning

Sat, 25 Jul 2009 10:57:06 -0500

July 24, 2009 Storm & Lightning
by Benjamin Tillotson
Saturday, July 25, 2009, 10:57am

We saw a few severe storms in the area last night, so we went east of town to try for some good storm/sunset shots.

At this point we took a timelapse of the storm as the sun sets. Video will be added later.

24mm f/2.8 ISO100 20sec

Bassett, Nebraska Shelf Cloud

Sat, 27 Jun 2009 20:11:03 -0500

Bassett, Nebraska Shelf Cloud
by Michael Tillotson
Saturday, June 27, 2009, 8:11pm

Yesterday morning my brother saw that there was a good setup for some strong storms in northern Nebraska. The area around Bassett, NE looked promising with good low-level shear. We headed out around 1:30 and took highway 44 to 183. The lack of Alltel broadband coverage between Amherst and Taylor was quickly apparent to us, so we didn't have radar or status updates for quite a while. According to the Alltel coverage map, all that area should have had internet, and the white area north of Taylor should had been the dead area. The opposite was true. I will have to talk to Alltel about this...

We arrived in Bassett around 4:00, and since storms had not begun in the area, waited around for quite a while to see if something would happen. Benjamin kept watching the radar, hoping something would pop in the area. Some locals stopped and asked us what kind of weather we were expecting. A guy who works as an EMT at the Bassett hospital talked with us for a while and gave us a map of the county roads in the area. He warned us not to go down some of them if we didn't want to get stuck. We were assured that they'd be there for us if we got hurt on our chase. We got a photo of him (third from the left) and the other guys who stopped by to chat. They suggested we grab a beer before we went after the storm, but we declined.

Basset, Nebraska locals - sorry guys, I don't remember your names.

A linear storm system came through, ruining our hopes of a seeing a tornado. At least we got good photos of the shelf cloud coming in.

Shelf cloud near Ainsworth, NE

Since my window had busted out on our last storm chase, we tried to keep the opposite side of the car on the windy side to keep the rain out. It worked most of the time. Some incredible lightning bolts struck not far from us when I didn't have my camera going, but we got a few good lighting photos.

The TCS team watches lightning light up the sky and landscape east of Bassett, NE

06/24/09 Kearney, NE Shelf Cloud & Lightning

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 21:15:39 -0500

06/24/09 Kearney, NE Shelf Cloud & Lightning
by Benjamin Tillotson
Thursday, June 25, 2009, 9:15pm

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We noticed a severe storm heading for town so we got our camera and went a little ways north of town where we saw a nice shelf cloud. The storm was moving fast so with a few bad road decisions we managed to miss some good shots of the front of the shelf, but the underside of the shelf provided some nice contrast.

The setting sun gives us some good lighting and a rainbow.

Later that night we noticed lightning from the storms coming out of South Dakota.

Stapleton, NE Supercell

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 10:38:57 -0500

Stapleton, NE Supercell
by Benjamin Tillotson
Wednesday, June 24, 2009, 10:38am

Chased the tornado warned storm south of Thedford. We never saw a tornado but did see a lot of blowing dust.

The cell quickly goes tornado warned.

Hwy 83 north of Stapleton. A couple spotters said that there had been a tornado not long before we got here.

RFD quickly overtakes us with 60+ mph winds.

Looked like the storm was trying to develop a wall cloud. Things were begining to rotate quite well. I was really hoping that it would produce right here with the rainbow.

Looking up as we are being blasted by the RFD.

Lots of blowing dust.

We go east on hwy 92 to Arnold where we took hwy 40 south. As we are heading south the wierdest thing happened, we heard this loud "bang" and our back left window shattered. At first we thought it was hail or something but we were a long ways from any precip and a long ways from the storm for that matter. Right now we are thinking it was lightning but we are sill not sure.

A couple lightning shots before we head home.

We combined the lighting photos we took into a video to show the cloud movement.

More video will be added soon (if we can get our software to work right).

Grand Island, Aurora, NE Tornado - June 17, 2009

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 13:24:39 -0500

Grand Island, Aurora, NE Tornado - June 17, 2009
by Benjamin Tillotson
Thursday, June 18, 2009, 1:24pm

This day looked like a good chance of tornadoes over a large portion of Nebraska so we took off at noon with a target of Hebron, NE. The day didn't turn out exactly as expected as the only good storms looked to be back at Kearney. We head back toward Kearney and get on the storm at Wood River which quickly produced a couple brief tornadoes.

The first of the two brief tornadoes.

The storm had some good structure before it produces a second time.

Second tornado.

More structure shots as the storm moves closer.

We stopped and took a few lightning shots before the storm began to strengthen again.

The storm forms a new wall cloud as it nears Grand Island.

Some strong strait line winds as we enter Grand Island.

A nice RFD cut develops around the wall cloud.

We go east on Hwy 34 as the third and largest tornado forms.

Ground circulation begins about a quarter mile away.

Tornado moves south of the hwy. Michael is using the 10-22mm lens so the tornado was much closer than it appears.

At 10mm

Feeling the strong inflow winds as the tornado got closer was a little intimidating at times.

The tornado begins to move closer to the hwy and damages the buildings to the north of the hwy.

The tornado nears Aurora and we are a little concerned that it might do some damage to the town but it weakens as it enters town.

A last shot of lightning illuminating the updraft as we head back.

May 12, 2009 Storm Chase

Wed, 13 May 2009 13:54:20 -0500

May 12, 2009 Storm Chase
by Benjamin Tillotson
Wednesday, May 13, 2009, 1:54pm

Went chasing in western Nebraska yesterday where we saw one high based cell and followed it for about 30 minutes before it fell apart east of Ogallala. We could have caught the cell that produced near Mullen but we were having trouble connecting to the internet so we didn't know what was going on.

After the storm died we tried to get some lightning shots so at least we could have something to show for the trip. Some of these turned out really nice!

A couple pictures of me with the lightning.

Michael tried to get some lightning while we were driving. Handheld for 15 seconds using flash.

March 23 - Storm Chase

Tue, 24 Mar 2009 16:25:41 -0500

March 23 - Storm Chase
by Benjamin Tillotson
Tuesday, March 24, 2009, 4:25pm

We had our first chase of the season yesterday. We saw some severe storms in Kansas heading NE at about 1:30 pm so we headed east of Kearney to intercept them.

Small shelf cloud near Aurora.

This is the first time we used GRlevel3 radar for chasing and it was very nice. The GPS hookup with it is very nice. I don't think we could have chased some of these storms without it.

This storm near Seward had a tornado warning but I don't know if it ever produced one. It looked kind of hopeful as it got closer to Seward but once it got north of town we couldn't keep up since the storm was moving at an insane 75mph and the only option was gravel roads.

We decided to head for a new tornado warning south of Lincoln. This supercell reportedly produced several tornado's and was the most damaging storm in the area. We never saw any tornado's but the storm had some cool structure.

North of Lincoln

There were a lot of close lightning bolts at this point and we wanted to get the tripod out and take some long exposures but it was moving fast so we didn't really have time.

March 30 update: Photo taken just after the storm produced 1/2 mile wedge. March 23 Tornado Summary here.

We got back on I-80 and noticed our empty gas tank so we find a place south of Omaha to fill up.

We stop south of Omaha and let the storm get closer. The clouds were kind of crazy in this inflow area.

We chase it north of Omaha a little ways but it was looking more linear so we decide to head back.

2007 Storm chases

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 15:12:20 -0500

2007 Storm chases
by Benjamin Tillotson
Monday, July 7, 2008, 3:12pm

2007 was our first year to storm chase. We didn't chase any great storms, but it was a good learning experience. We only had an 85mm prime lens back then and we learned very quickly that we needed a much wider lens. Even with our lack of proper lenses we got several good lightning shots.

These were the first lightning shots we ever got. We had been chasing a storm just north of kearney and somehow ended up behind the storm (probably my lack of experience). That storm never produced anything but we heard of a tornado warning near Holdrege.

This shot is from a later chase, we had seen some storms near minden and decided to go shoot some lightning. I think we are north of minden just off hwy 10.

These are from an early oct. storm. we quickly became trigger happy shooting this picturesque storm. It's amazing how fast you can fill a 4gb card.

Gibbon, NE - Dying Storm

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 13:45:06 -0500

Gibbon, NE - Dying Storm
by Michael Tillotson
Friday, June 20, 2008, 1:45pm

Benjamin and I chased a couple storms last Wednesday. For the first one we headed south of Funk, NE, but ran out of time since the storm turn south and we had an appointment. Later that evening a severe storm passed north of Kearney so we headed east to Gibbon to watch it develope. Well, actually we didn't watch it develope, we watched it dissipate. At least it made for some nice photos with the sunset behind it. Here's a timelapse after the storm broke up.

Timelapse of dissipating storm

The next day we took video of storms building north of Kearney. I just set up the camera on our roof and let it roll for 3 hours.

Storm clouds building north of Kearney

Benjamin took the photos of Wednesday's storm:

Another storm cell glows orange on the horizon

Look at the wavy underside of this cloud

Tornados hit Kearney, Nebraska - May 29, 2008

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 22:10:28 -0500

Tornados hit Kearney, Nebraska - May 29, 2008
by Michael Tillotson
Tuesday, June 10, 2008, 10:10pm

The storm builds in the west.

Benjamin, Kristin, & Kyle watch the storm from the car. Benjamin is videotaping with the mic hanging out the window to improve audio quality. I am standing outside taking pictures and getting hit by small hail. Ouch.

A cropped image of a tornado a few miles southwest of Kearney

Traffic continues on Highway 30 as the storm moves in

Some amazing cloud formations hang over our heads

It's getting pretty dark...

Benjamin & our friend Kyle Wagner get video of the incoming storm

Benjamin gets ready to put away the tripod as the storm approaches

The storm has passed over Kearney and heads east

The sunset after the storm was incredible.

The tornado did a fair amount of damage near Aurora.

South of Aurora, NE

Emergency vehicles are stopped where a semi was blown off the interstate. Several miles of the interstate are closed.

A beautiful stormy sunset

Back in Kearney the next morning...

This is one block south of our house

The roof was taken off our friend's garage one block south of us

A lot of large trees were taken down

Buffalo County Fairgrounds

The Kearney Airport

At least 70 cars were blown off the tracks west of Kearney. By this time a railroad crew had moved them out of the way to let other trains through.

The power company is repairing the power lines in our backyard. Praise the Lord, we had no damage to our property.