Today, we didn't see as many amazing sites as yesterday but we hit up Sioux City, IA for lunch after leaving our hotel in Waverly, IA. If you thought Indiana was horrible to drive in, try Iowa!! There is absolutely nothing to see but fields from miles aorund with a lot of random cattle behind some fences. We woke up to a rainy day and didn't really see much other weather the entire day.
We had our first thought of a chase with some small cells popping up in southern Nebraska that we decided to go after. It was actually a little funny because we were checking out the radar's and upper-level maps to figure out what was going on in southern Nebraska and right when we decided not to mess with it and everyone started talking. Dr. Call shockingly said, "There's been a tornado warning!" and everyone instantly yanked their heads back to the computer in surprise. There was no indications that these cells could produce any sort of reasonable tornado with the lack of wind shear, strong heating to create energy, and any strong convection within the storm. However, there did seem to pop up some SMALL amount of rotation right were the tornado dropped right when it did...thus non-predictable from our standpoint.
We didn't want to chase a warning but we did see some reason to try to hit up a few cells developing from that small batch of storms so we decided to head that way. Unfortunately, there was a large mass of clouds that hung over mid to northern Nebraska that caused for very little daytime heating at the surface, thus cutting off any source of energy to feed or even sustain any type of storm worth chasing. We realized that the cell we were going after was quickly fading heading into this much cooler and dry air, basically choking the storm, so we decided to hit up another cell that seemed promising near Hastings, NE. Hastings had much warmer temps with a temperature around 81 degrees compared to the 54 degree temps in our original point of interest. After realizing that we were chasing basically nothing, we decided to cut our losses and start heading back north in South Dakota to put ourselves into position for tomorrow.
We came into the Central Daylight Time zone last night and were in it for all of today and tomorrow we'll be traveling into the Mountain Daylight Time zone; we're actually only a few miles away from the crossover line.
One funny story from today was when we stopped at a Subway in Valentine, NE for a late dinner. A girl who, I think, was from Nebraska got really excited that so many college-age people were in the store at the same time. She told us that she and a few of the other guys eating there were in a band and were playing that night just a few blocks away and that we should come. She asked what we were up to and we told her we were storm chasers. Her friend looked at one of our guys' shirts and said, "Duh his shirt says Ball State Storm Chaser." Her response was priceless: "Oh, I thought that was just a metaphor!" That was pretty entertaining to hear!
Unfortunately, the weather pattern is still looking pretty horrible for chasing right now. That Hudson Low set up in eastern Canada that's really causing this ridge over the Great Plains to stay in place for awhile. Once the Hudson Low sets up, it'll be awhile before it packs up and heads off. The only chances of storms would be to find a few shortwave trough patterns set up that we can also possibly tap into the jet stream to get some uplift. Unfortuantely, any kind of wind shear we can manage to find to create the rotation needed is laughable at even considering it to produce as much as a dust devil. Hopefully we only have to waste just a few days before seeing the spectacular shows that this area has to offer! Even lightning would be GREATLY appreciated at this point. Hope for the best!
Goodnight!
The NOAA is forecasting a 2% chance of a tornado in your area. I think.
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