The day started so nice, waking up in Concordia we had dewpoints well into the 60s and a nice southeast wind blowing.  Things were setting up nicely for a good severe weather day.  We rolled north to I-80 near York and watched severe storms go up over the southwest corner of Nebraska/Northwest Kansas.  At first, the storms were going up in an area with dewpoints still in the 50s.  They were going to have to move several counties to the east before they got into some 68+ dewpoints near Kearney.  One supercell did take shape and started tracking toward Elwood and Lexington, I just hoped that it would maintain itself long enough to dip into the better moisture.

We had great radar data and I felt safe running west on highway 30 from Elm Creek through the core of the storm with the mesocyclone well south of us (even south of I-80).  We were trying to get Chris some more hail.  The mesocyclone was exposed enough that I felt even safer being able to see it, combined with the good radar data we were getting.  We only came up with quarter size hail between Elm Creek and Overton, and gradually worked eastward keeping the area of interest in sight to our southeast.

Just east of Odessa, we observed a cone tornado in poor contrast to our southeast.  We came across some strong RFD winds (60-70 mph), nothing too bad.  But It was strong enough to topple about 80 cars of an empty coal train that was sitting just south of us.  I was watching the tornado, but the guys in the car behind us said that they were able to watch the train fall like dominoes as we drove by.  They even caught a little of it on video.  The tornado wasn’t evident as we drove through Kearney, but there was a considerable amount of EF1 type damage as we went through the city.  It looked like the tornado rotated north of Kearney and we dropped south to go east on I-80.  We got some golfball size hail for a brief period of time south of Shelton, but otherwise things were uneventful as we shot east on the interstate.
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Things really started looking messy on radar (and visually) for the trip toward the Aurora exit. There was probably a couple areas of good rotation well north of the interstate, but besides that, just many – non visually interesting cores forming and moving quickly north toward the supercell system.  We decided to get gas, drink and food at the Aurora exit (Loves) and look at data further to see where our next play – if any – was going to be.

My last look at radar showed an increasing core to our southwest, but it looked cutoff by the RFD/outflow spreading east from our original storm.  From this point on, I saw virtually no radar data.  I went into the store while the guys fueled up the vehicles, got something to eat and drink, and generally thought our day might be over.  All in all, it took about 15 minutes.  When I returned, I saw that our storm to the SW had increased rapidly and was surging toward us.  I guess I should have taken the time to look at velocity data, but even on reflectivity images, it appeared that a mesocyclone was wrapping up to our north or northwest and we were getting ready to be hit with some fairly strong RFD.  Little did I know.  We quickly discussed our options, and driving away from it was out of the question since rain bands were already starting to hit the property.  I told our driver (Gareth) to just point the van to the east and we would ride it out.  Our initial gust with the RFD was over 80 mph.  Things went to zero visibility quickly. Within a minute or two, winds increased to at least 100 mph.  It was at this point, Chris started to open the side door.  Did I mention that we were pointed east!  Before I could get the words out, “DON’T OPEN THE DOOR!!!!” – it wrapped completely around and slammed my passenger side blowing out the side mirror.  Now we had 100 mph winds, rain and debris blowing throughout the van.  As I tried my best to cover up things like the inverter, laptop, cameras, phones and myself, the wind continued to increase.  The van started to move (and seemingly float) a lot as winds increased again, I’m guessing near 110 mph.  The back window blew out and threw a spray of glass throughout the van.  Amazingly, everyone pretty much came out alright.   Video from the other vehicle showed that the whole event lasted about six minutes.  When it was over, we had some RV’s, trucks and several power poles around us laying over.  The Loves canopies were shredded and numerous vehicles in the parking lot had missing glass.  After spending an hour sorting things out, drying out, picking glass out of our hair, ears and whatever else, we started east on I-80.  About a 1/2 mile north of us we could see a lot of emergency vehicles and buildings spread out.  Yes, our crazy tale could have ended up much worse had this thing decided to spin up a 1/2 or mile south.  National Weather Service survey showed that what we couldn’t see was a 1/2 mile wide tornado that moved toward us and decided to shift north before getting to us.  Once again, I was caught in a situation that I haven’t seen before.  I took my eye off an evolving storm and combined with the fact that it went through a RAPID evolution, almost cost us dearly.  For the first time in my chase career – I was SCARED – and not in control. As Hank Baker put it, “we crossed the line”.  We were at the mercy of whatever was going to happen to us.  I decided that we would just roll into Lincoln and find a place for the night, calling it good.  We were getting outflow from the storms to the south that were easily over 50 mph. Within sight of the motel, a construction sign blew into the road and smashed into the front of our lead vehicle, taking out part of the front quarter panel.  A nice end to the day I thought.

I felt bad for Chris because I knew that he felt bad about opening the door.  The cameraman in him took over and he wanted to get the outside shot.  He also lost two of his HD cameras in the interior monsoon, but not before having filmed all of this experience.