Day 4 recap and update till now (day 6)

Storms kept going but we were north of the real warm front, so there was a lot of cloud and drizzle. It was horrible visibility, and we were barely staying ahead of the advancing cold pool storms, which were themselves invisible.

Then, as we got toward southeast Nebraska, in the vicinity of Lincoln, the last storm on the line (tail-end Charlie) started to get an inflow notch. We decided to go investigate, as we were close, and still we could see nothing except for darkness. Doppler showed pretty big rotation had begun on the storm, and the inflow notch was becoming more and more pronounced. The hail algorithm was showing big hail potential, so we got out of there just in time for a tornado warning to be issued.

This was the first time many had ever heard a tornado siren. It was kind of eerie.

We followed this storm for another hour, during which time it showed varying degrees of good RADAR presentation, but it never got its act together to rotate down low.

Just at sunset, the low cloud started to get out of the way and we were treated to a lot of good structure, with a nice shelf cloud and perhaps a wall. Cattle in the field just in front of us were eve stopping in front of us to have their pictures taken.

We got into the hotel in Beatrice, and wouldn't you know it, the tornado siren starts going. The front desk clerk was about to evacuate the hotel but I looked at the RADAR and told her that the storm was past our location. Good. We were checking in and I didn't want to wait too long for nothing. ;)

Not a bad day though.

Yesterday was a down day. We drove to Sidney, NE, via Skeeter Barnes in Kearney, NE.

Today looks like a potential day in northeast Colorado. It's fairly marginal, though, because the dewpoints are in the low double digits and there's a substantial cap. We'll hope for the mountain-plains circulation to do its thing.