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Another long day. At the morning discussion, we were excited to see a high risk out by SPC. We didn't catch any tornadoes, but we did see some really nice supercells and some awesome structure throughout the day, and it was exciting just to be out there on a High Risk day. I did eventually find out though, that we were driving through a storm that had a tornado down at one point, and we didn't know it. It was raining so hard we never would have known! Scary, huh? I'm glad I found that out after the fact! We did 694 miles starting in Columbus, NE and ending in Independence, MO (Oregon Trail, anyone??) It was a pretty hectic day, so I didn't have much time to keep track of where we saw different storms. We spent the day bouncing back and forth between Iowa and Missouri trying to catch supercells on the edge of a strong cold front. SPC's morning convective outlook:  Tornado probability:  For SPC's morning text forecast discussion, click here. We got on the road around 7:30am CDT. Around 11am CDT we made a stop at the gas station with the best name I've ever seen, Kum & Go. About an hour later we were on a supercell with a nice wall cloud. A really cute cop stopped to get some information, so that was a pleasant surprise ;) The storm put out a couple good funnel clouds, but nothing ever touched down. We did get to see some sweet structure though... Nice shot of the storm VERY low wall cloud (taken at a municipal airport) We got on another storm about an hour later, and I accidentally got a sweet shot of a lightning bolt coming out of a wall cloud! I'm pretty proud of it :) We went after a couple more storms, and a few hours later caught another nice supercell. There was some wicked inflow, and a great wall cloud. It looked like it was going to drop a tornado in the field right in front of us, but alas, nothing came down. Sweet inflow bands (this was right over our heads) Inflow band The wall cloud The brighter white streak is the hail shaft! Another wall cloud After chasing for nearly 12 hours, we threw in the towel around 9pm CDT and headed for a hotel. We arrived at the Comfort Inn Suites in Independnce, MO around 11:15pm CDT. |
