Great Plains Tornado Tours: July 2014

          This chase will be a day that I am sure I will remember for the rest of my life and might end up being the best chase I ever will have! Before today, my career chase day was June 17th, 2010 in southern Minnesota. That day I saw my first tornadoes and ended up seeing somewhere around 6-8 tornadoes, including an EF-4.
          This day was another moderate risk in eastern Nebraska and into Iowa with a warm front draped across the area and a strong piece of energy moving across the area that provided an increase in the wind fields thus increasing the low level shear.
          The day started out with some morning severe storms that dropped large hail up to baseball sized as they moved northeast from southern Nebraska into western and northern Iowa. The storms cleared eastern Nebraska around noon and most of them weakened. Initially, the area that was focused on for more robust development in the afternoon was into Iowa. I watched the storms closely as they weakened and I headed out of my house and towards I-29 heading north around 12:30. There was one final storm that was moving towards Harlan that briefly looked like it could be a storm to follow but suddenly, it quickly weakened. I continued north watching more storms already up near Sioux Falls and into northwestern Iowa, but those were in a large cluster and didn't seem real conducive for tornadic development. I made it up to Onawa, Iowa and there were initial signs of development back to the west near Norfolk, Nebraska. I made a quick pit stop and decided that would be my target to go after. Skies had mostly cleared in that area and instability and wind shear were quickly increasing. Soon a mesoscale discussion was issued for northeast Nebraska and the 3pm update on the SPC upped their probabilities of tornadoes to a 15% hatched area for potentially strong to violent tornadoes!
          As I headed west, the skies cleared and soon I could see the large cumulonimbus cloud and anvil of the storm to my west. It was a very impressive storm visually from the moment I saw the storm 40-50 miles away. Fairly soon a PDS tornado watch was issued for northeast Nebraska. "PDS" is short for "Particularly Dangerous Situation" and these watches are only issued a handful of times each year when there is a potentially explosive environment in place for possibly deadly storms.
          I approached the storm on Hwy 275 heading west. The storm was now severe warned as it continued to grow southwest of Stanton, Nebraska. I took Hwy 57 south through Stanton and then west on Hwy 32 for a couple of miles. The back end and base of the storm came into view and I found a gravel road to pull off of to watch the storm. I had a great view and soon a wall cloud formed. It didn't take long for the wall cloud to start rotating and a funnel to form. It was cool to watch the tornado form as small individual circulations briefly appeared in the field below the funnel. Soon a fully condensed funnel formed and touched all the way to the ground. This first tornado only lasted a minute or two before it lifted but it was easy to see the storm wasn't done. Another tornado quickly formed and became a grayish-white stove pipe tornado on the ground.
          The storm was moving off to the north and east now and was beginning to get out of my view. I hopped into my car and drove back the way I came towards Stanton. Unfortunately, the views weren't great due to hills and trees as I tried to look off to my northwest, but it was beginning to look like there could be a large rain wrapped tornado on the ground. I made my way through Stanton still heading north. I was just going through the last turn in town when the power lines in front of me began throwing out sparks! The tornado was probably a good 3-5 miles away from me as I drove north out of town. I finally got a clear view of the storm and it almost took my breath away! It was a large rain wrapped tornado just like I thought. However, what was so amazing was it looked like the whole storm was rapidly rotating to the point I could easily see it. Not just the tornado and the rain curtains under the base of the storm was rapidly rotating, but it looked like the clouds above it all the way up to the top of the storm were rotating rapidly too. It was an amazing sight to see!
          I cautiously moved further north and found a good spot to stop and take pics and video. I got out of the car and could hear the tornado roar! I started taking pics and video and I looked to my east and another tornado was forming! I got back in the car and headed a couple more miles north to Hwy 275. As I came up to the highway, I began to come across damage. There was a bunch of debris in the power lines and also the road was pasted in mud and other debris. The wedge to my north looked less organized and now a skinny white rope had come out of the rain. The wedge was beautifully roping out! I headed east watching the new tornado forming ahead of me and quickly another new funnel was forming near this new tornado. Tornadoes were forming everywhere!
          I proceeded east on Hwy 275 watching as the second funnel forming soon became a large, mean looking tornado while the first one continued on the ground. Two, violent tornadoes were on the ground at the same time and within a mile of each other! It was an amazing sight to see and I could hardly control my excitement. It's not necessarily that uncommon to have 2 tornadoes on the ground at the same time, but usually this involves one large tornado and another smaller satellite tornado moving around it. But this was 2 individual violent tornadoes that were acting and moving independent of each other. I kept driving on to the east as the 2 tornadoes were moving northeast across the highway in front of me. I would drive a ways, stop and take pictures, and then continue on for a few minutes before stopping again. It was weird but I never thought about getting closer( I think I thought I was close enough), but after seeing some of the videos and pics come out, I sometimes wish I would have drove faster to get up closer to the tornadoes. I think in the back of my mind, I was playing it safe remembering the chasers that were killed last year on a violent tornadic storm.
          The tornadoes moved north of Hwy 275 and one of them lifted for a while before forming again. Again there were 2 large tornadoes on the ground! I soon came across the damage path where the tornadoes crossed the highway. I was so focused on the tornadoes to my left(north), that I only noticed the damage to a large cattle farm on the north side of the highway. I didn't notice the town Pilger that had been hit 1 mile south of the highway. The tornadoes were moving off to the north and I would have liked to have been able to turn north with them, but was worried about the roads so I continued east on Hwy 275 for a bit longer and then jumped east on Hwy 51 north of Wisner. A ways down the highway I found a great spot to view the storm to my north. At this point, both tornadoes had lifted, but there was still a large wall cloud. Shortly thereafter, a large wedge tornado started to form and another skinnier tornado formed next to this one. 2 tornadoes on the ground again! This time the second tornado was a satellite tornado and I watched as the smaller one circled around the larger and dissipated. Again though the storm was heading off to the north and I had to find a way to catch back up with it. I took Hwy 9 north through Pender and towards Emerson. There were reports of a tornado still on the ground and this would be the EF-4 Wakefield tornado. I believe this tornado was rain wrapped most of the time as I did get close enough to the storm but wasn't able to see any tornado. I took Hwy 35 northeast towards Sioux City and the last report of a tornado was near Jackson, Nebraska. I did visually see this tornado as it was a weaker tornado that didn't last long before it lifted. The storm was rapidly weakening now luckily as it moved towards Sioux City. In fact I was pretty amazed at how quickly it died. I called off the chase at that point in Sioux City at about 6:00 and started to head home.
          As I was heading home down I-29, I decided to take a look at things elsewhere to see if any other tornadic storms or severe weather was going on in the area. Way back to the west in central Nebraska, a monster storm had formed and soon a tornado warning and confirmed tornado was on the ground. It was in an environment and moving towards an area where the storm would be able to likely maintain it's strength and possibly keep a tornado on the ground. I decided with the long daylight of June and plenty of time still left in the day, I would head west towards the storm for a while to see what happens and if the storm weakened I could still turn back to the south and head home. I actually ended up taking the same exit at Onawa and was soon traveling down the same roads I had been on earlier in the day.
          The tornadic storm in central Nebraska still had a tornado on the ground as it moved slowly northeast at about 20 mph quite a ways southwest of Norfolk. I continued onto the west and it looked like I might make it to the storm around 9pm. Soon however, I approached the area where the twin tornadoes had crossed Hwy 275. This time I was going to make sure to look to the south side of the highway to see what I could of the damage in Pilger. I believe at that time I had already heard of the 2 fatalities in the area from the tornadoes. I came up to the highway that leads to Pilger one mile south of Hwy 275. The traffic was stopped and there were lots of highway patrol and media and other emergency vehicles at the intersection and on the road into Pilger. I had time to look to the south and could see tons of damage even though I was one mile away. I could tell the damage was severe. I continued onto the west and came up on the second damage path from the rain wrapped wedge tornado that first formed west of Stanton. Here there was a lot of debris in the trees and some power lines. There was also a section of the highway where a rather large section of power lines were across the road. A highway patrolmen was there directing traffic carefully through the damage. As I slowly crept along the highway, I looked to the north side of the road and noticed a severely damaged vehicle lying in the ditch. This car was actually almost unrecognizable. The only thing that was left was the front two tires, the bottom frame of the vehicle and part of the cab frame. The engine, rear wheels, and all the metal and stuff in between the frame was gone! I drove for a while longer towards Norfolk, but was no longer in the mood to see another potentially large and dangerous tornado, so I headed home.
          All told there were 4 EF-4 tornadoes produced by this single storm. Estimated winds with these tornadoes were up to 200 mph. 2 people died, 1 young child in Pilger, and another gentleman who was driving when his car was hit also near Pilger. There was an initial storm survey that came out several days after the tornadoes, but as of this writing I haven't seen the normal more detailed report that comes out from the NWS. I might send them an email asking them about it. Here is the report that has been released.
          Of course, there were many chasers out there and tons of amazing video and pics that have come out. Here are a couple of my favorite videos: This guy looks like he is going to drive right into the tornado. Another video shows the tornado going through town with the grain bins flying through the air and even what looks like an entire house flying around the base of the tornado! Of course any search online will result in numerous videos to watch. Unfortunately, right now I don't have a way of uploading my video onto my computer to show what I captured from this day. Hopefully soon, I will be able to transfer over my video from my video camera.
          Now onto my pics and images!