Everybody get in line

It’s almost been a week and I’m sorry for the lack of updates, but I’ve been pouring my soul into Chris McBee’s new website. But last weekend, we chased!

Chris and his friend Damon met up with me on Saturday afternoon in Grand Island, NE at a super nice Fairfield Inn, which would be our “base” until Monday morning. With such a long weekend ahead of us, of course we’d get something good…right?

We chased straight north out of Grand Island and came upon a few promising storms, but they lost strength pretty quickly.

Hunters. Stalkers. Jugglers.
The first storm we were on looked great on radar but died quickly, seemingly of stage fright. Every chaser was on it. The D2 and Extreme Tornado Tours blew past us to the storm while we were waiting on it. And waiting. And there may be secret video of Chris juggling rocks.

On our way anywhere but that dying storm we passed the Tornado Hunt team. I would have been star struck if I could have seen through their tinted windows. And if I hadn’t already met Mike Bettes at 2011 Chasercon, and Dr. Greg Forbes at 2012 Chasercon.

We tried our luck at two storms fighting for dominance, but neither would win.

The D2 passed us again! How many dirt roads are in Nebraska that they would keep finding us? Moving on…

We gave up on storms that day but not on adventure. We were close enough to South Dakota that Chris decided to chalk another state off his list. I would recommend taking back roads like that only for the scenery, not for the indirect route or plethora of casinos.

Let’s try this again….
The next day started out perfectly because we were already in position. None of that epic driving for 8 hours and wooie, maybe we’ll see something!

We didn’t see tornadoes, but due to the complete opposite of what happened in the forecast, no one else did either. But we saw some pretty rainy/hail…ey? storms. We headed back to Grand Island before the squall line really took shape…and met it head-on.

I got some great shots of dark clouds in a green sky, which I’ll be posting a little later. Then the rain really kicked in and we said “forget it”. It was fail steak time.

It was still a great Memorial Day weekend chase, and the drive back didn’t seem anywhere near as awful as I had anticipated.

Now it’s time for the storms to visit me instead. This week is looking like they’ll be doing just that.