Summary of the day: June 27, 2017

Tuesday was an interesting day with a lot of potential, although some weaknesses in the upper flow were evident.  We targeted the NE/CO/KS border.

Morning moisture was pretty good, with lower 60s (F) aiming for the area. Storms were suppressed for a while so we were able to get lunch in Sterling, where it was really hot (38 C) and the Verizon people were unable to help us with our jetpacks.

Cumuli started bubbling up in southeastern Wyoming, and eventually some storms morphed out of that.  We drove northeast into the Nebraska panhandle, watching as the storms became a sort of north-to-south broken line.  A lead cell went to our north and we jumped ahead of the line to be in place if that storm took over, but stayed far enough south so that if tail-end Charlie took over, we could target it, too.

The lead storm didn't change much, so we drifted back south to see what the one on the south end of the line would do.  It was a nice shelf with some curvy rain curtains coming out of it, but further storm organization looked unlikely.  So we moved east and then north, passing by an air force RADAR on the way to our hotel. The band of storms approached us as we were just south of the hotel, it got severe, producing wind gusts in excess of 100 mph to our north. It hit us at our gas stop with some pretty strong winds, although I don't think they were severe at that location.

We got pizza in the lobby and had a good evening by the fire.