All cozied up here in my Ogallala hotel after following some storms up I-76 this afternoon. Today’s forecast didn’t pan out like we thought with storms having better wheels and actually going severe for a time. Initial thoughts on today were very slow moving Urban Corridor storms that would produce flash flood potential from Denver and points north. While there was a brief window for some minor street flooding in southeast Denver, the storms had more juice to them, thus propagated northeast much quicker, leaving the areal residence time too low for major impacts fortunately. That also meant the cluster moving northeast out of Denver packed some winds, and it did produce severe caliber gusts east of Denver up to south of Wiggins before the storm gusted out. I got to Fort Morgan ahead of the complex and watched it die, making a quick day of today and getting up here to Ogallala early enough for a real dinner and some chill time. The day prior, much more active, with significant street flooding in Longmont followed by a pretty hefty storm outside, you guessed it, Akron.
Ended up here in Ogallala due to inflated hotel costs in my usual North Platte. I didn’t figure the 45 minutes were going to kill me tomorrow, and honestly after an awful night’s sleep, I was fine with getting in early and making a chill evening. It’s approaching 10pm MDT now, and I am wrapping up my evening and hoping to settle into snooze shortly.
Tomorrow will be the most legit of the chase days this week… a wind-bag setup in central Nebraska. My initial target is Valentine, where the initial storms should develop near. I think there is a VERY brief, and I mean VERY brief window where a discrete storm COULD try to get interesting, but the overall threat and vibe on tomorrow is quick transition to linear, and a pretty hefty complex rolling southeast across central Nebraska. I should land in Valentine about 3pm CDT, which should fall within an hour or so of initiation, with the idea to let the complex chase me down to I-80. I have a weird excitement about tomorrow, not cause I think I will see tornadoes, but should be a good storm day. And depending on its lightning potential and how far southeast it chases me, perhaps I make a later evening of it for some lightning (which July has treated me well on).
Friday remains up in the air… a poor lapse rate, triple point play somewhere in northern Missouri. I am not 100% sold on that, but if I were to wake up in St. Joe, MO on Friday morning and the setup has some potential, I may pitch it and make a day of it, returning home over the weekend on a mini-extended trip to wrap up July. Aside from a couple backyard lightning stints and the July 1 lightning/hailer, there has virtually been ZERO chasing this month, and suddenly in the final few days, I am going to rack up some mileage.
In fact, after today’s haul, I have officially cracked the Top 10 for most miles chases in a year sitting at 9th place here in Ogallala… I will move into 8th place halfway to North Platte as I am only 23 miles away from that spot, and if Friday comes into play, suddenly I launch into 6th place, with a top 5 ranking not out of the question by this trip’s end. The miles don’t reflect the season I have had, but none-the-less, it shows the grind 2026 was, and depending on how the rest of the season shakes out, could be a Top 3 mileage season when all is said and done (33,394 in 2007 at 3rd).
My only-useful-to-me stats spelled out, I am going to go ahead and add what I hope is 8 hours of slumber to my career total. Currently I have given myself 4 to 1 odds that SPC does include a small 2% tornado risk in one of the first two Day 1 outlooks as there is currently none, and a 2 to 1 odds on them upgrading the wind to a 15%SIG1 level. I see enough in the evening models to think both upgrades are justified. So we’ll see if I got the jump on SPC with those or not. I would give 1 to 1 odds that I don’t wake up until after the 1300z outlook is put out, so that’s why I am betting on either of the first two outlooks. I can go back to the 6z one if I absolutely must haha
I’m a nerd… sue me…