It took all the way until June before I effectively targeted outside of my resident state of Kansas. Between a historically SLOW severe weather season combined with that pandemic thing that had the world shut down, there just wasn’t a lot of opportunity (or desire) to venture too far from home. It helped immensely that Mother Nature also seemingly was under lockdown as there was hardly a season to speak of, which just made it easier to stay home anyway.
But, that didn’t mean that I wasn’t going to take the opportunity if one came, and a couple Nebraska chase days, both relatively lower end, offered up a chance during the couple days I had off to start the week. I decided to go ahead and take the shot, as my annual “seen a tornado” streak was on the line, and the piddle-fart little dust whirl landspout thingie I saw back on May 21 just wasn’t gonna suffice, IMO So Monday morning shortly after 9am, I left my house in Wichita and hauled north, crossing into Nebraska and coming to rest in the tiny town of Arnold.
Was a long wait, watching various towers and blips try and fail to go up. Finally at just after 4p, one of the first towers to breach the cap went up, and several of the other towers also showed signs of going. SPC would shortly throw up a severe thunderstorm watch for the area. Gametime was on.
The storm slowly continued to grow, basically coming right at me here in Arnold (great target town, huh). I navigated to the south side of Arnold on NE-92 and watched and waited as the storm progressed at me.
I bounced up to the north side of town for a bit, testing the core as the storm passed near Arnold. Warnings were up, and the storm was doing pretty good. I dipped back down into town with the idea of pursuing the storm east on NE-92. Shortly upon exiting the east side of town, NE-92 curves northeast for several miles before returning to a due east route over toward Merna.
Well of course, it would be during this point when a funnel would poke down out of the clouds. I was in a rather unfavorable area, my road running along side a hills and occasional trees. I did not have a vantage point to see the ground, so I was focused mostly on the funnel, wondering whether or not it would come down.
I’d estimate I had a view of the funnel for about 2, maybe 3 minutes just based on the amount of video I took of it, so it hung around for a little bit. I have about 50 seconds of handheld video, with me cutting the shot for about 15 seconds in between clips, and I don’t have video of the start or finish of the funnel. I wish I had gone wider with my shot, perhaps I would’ve snuck a view somehow, although I never found a place before the funnel dissipated to actually get an unobstructed view of the ground beneath this thing.
Unfortunately for me, this was about as exciting as it got. Obviously as you can see in my picture above, I was well blocked from ground-view by the terrain in this area known as Pleasant Hill, not so pleasant if you’re trying to confirm a tornado. Well, fortunately, someone else was in a better viewing position off to my northeast. Tornado Tim Baker had a view and graciously allowed me to show the angle he had on this particular storm, including confirmation of ground circulation.
So yes, that was after the fact, so to this point, I was still thinking I had a goose-egg after the funnel lifted. I took a series of wonky roads north and east, namely Euerka Valley Road that sent me on a path up toward Anselmo. I was running out of roads getting into the sandhills, and began to assess whether I could keep with this storm or blow it off for other storms developing further south.
A new storm was developing, virtually taking the exact same path as the one I had just followed. So I turned back, taking another dirt road south to Merna, before getting back on westbound NE-92, pointing at a storm that was approaching Arnold.
This storm got only better as it approached, just taking on incredible structure as it moved slowly to the northeast.
I literally again took the exact same route as I did with the previous storm, this storm just a hair east of the original path, meaning I was more in line to be in some of the storm’s nastiness. I got up north of NE-92 and got myself in a series of dust whirls, nothing I could identify as tornadic, but they were numerous and some rather close. Add to that the blowing dust in general and it definitely made for a bigger adventure than my first run up this route.
At this point, I was left with a choice. Having already been up in this area, I knew my road options were very limited. Add to that now that precip had fallen through here and the once easier dirt roads were now much harder slick mud roads. I watched and waited, wrapping myself neatly in front of the hook, hoping that if it were going to do it, it was going to do it now.
I road the hook up toward Anselmo, giving it a final wave from the east side of town before I let it go. Other storms tried going up down south, so I made a run for those, heading toward Broken Bow, but with daylight fading, thus did the heating, so those storms never fully were able to get going. Upon arriving in Broken Bow, I decided to call it a chase, fueling up there and hauling over to Grand Island where I set down for the night.
My main goal, and a lofty one usually when you’re relying on a storm to actually produce a tornado, was to maintain my annual “at least one tornado every year” streak, which had been running strong since 2003. The funnel I documented ultimately was a tornado, I just was not able to confirm the ground circulation from my vantage point. Fortunately someone else was, and we coordinated to ensure that we were indeed on the same storm. It proved to be enough. A wall hanger it ain’t, but it saved the season. I eventually credited myself with one tornado, a landspout, from the southwest Kansas chase on May 21 as the one landspout I saw with certainty south of Syracuse was logged as a landspout. I feel a little less guilty about it seeing as I at least have some reasonably compelling imagery from this chase to say that I saw a legit tornado in 2020, even if it, too, was a birdfart. At least this one I can say with 100% certainly WAS a tornado.
Easily one of my better chases of the Covid year, certainly the best storm I intercepted. 2020 did not offer an abundance of chase opportunities, so I was very grateful to get a couple days on the road despite the ongoing pandemic. It was a very unique period in my chasing career, but fortunately Mother Nature was very quiet, thus limiting our exposure to the road quite a bit.
