Untitled Document

James, Matt (UNL students) and I drove to Clay Center, NE from Lincoln. We looked at data in the library and decided to go south one county. Big towers went up fast to the south. We had choices to make in the town of Superior (NE): east, west, or south? We went east a few miles before realizing we would have to punch a nasty looking precip core (we later heard on the radio that baseball hail fell where we parked) We backtracked west a few miles back into Superior and then south into Kansas. Our goal was to get to U.S. 36 and quickly head east to get on the south side of the massive beast northwest of Concordia. We went south getting ready to intercept the massive circular bomb but had to duck west as we were getting slammed with hail. The road west took us out of the way a couple miles but there was no use busting up a good car in the hail. This hail avoidance likely caused us to miss the opportunity to see the tornadoes. The cell moved north into NE so my crew went back north on 14 and then east on 136 to intercept. Hind-sight tells me we should have stayed on U.S. 36. Very heavy rain and tornado warnings all the way to Beatrice. We did see the wall cloud but could never avoid the precipitation core. We stopped at Pizza Hut in Beatrice and then the sirens go off after the deep dish meat lovers lands on the table. I go back to the car and grab the wx radio. It was the same slow moving cell with another tornado warning 14 miles south of the city. By this time, darkness fell and we decided to go north to Lincoln and be done. Three SPC "high risks" in a row with no tornado to photograph. It would seem I have my best luck chasing storms on SPC "slight risk" days. Strange but true... the "high risk" curse continues. These storms had beautiful towers nonetheless.