For day 24, we knew we would be foregoing the usual morning briefing due to the fact that conditions were favorable for storms to develop further north...perhaps as far north as South Dakota. So, after a hurried check of the instruments to make sure everything was talking to each other, we quickly got on the road, and traveled north on route 61 out of North Platte. Although the initial target area was Chadron (very northern Nebraska), the target was quickly changed to Sutherland, NE, which is situated off I-80, so we had to travel east to get there. Although we had a lot of CAPE and wind shear going in our favor, unlike the previous day, the flow aloft was very strong today, and so we all knew any storms which may have developed would be moving along at a very fast pace (50-60 mph) and therefore would pose a significant challenge for interception. Storms began firing in the mid afternoon, and we wound up driving back and forth (and back and forth, and back and forth) along a crazy stretch of I-80 stretching anywhere from Ogallala to Brady, NE. As soon as we got off I-80, we looked to see if the precipitation and hail core had passed far enough eastward for us to begin our way back east. Our goal this time was to tail it instead of driving through it because the storm motion was so fast! So, that`s what we did, going back to Sutherland, then heading north out of town, to intercept another storm coming down the pike. The final storm of the day was intercepted by the Probes (all reunited!) at the intersection of highways 30 and 419 in Nebraska...The long and the short of it, in terms of data, is that we collected a lot of mesonet data on several non-tornado-producing.

  Vortex2 Highlights