June 9, 2022

After a down day spent in the Denver area visiting Brindley's family, we were back on the chase and regrouping with the other teams, which were all scattered about the region. There was some back and forth about our target and where we should meet up with Hank in the McCook, NE area and Anton and Tracie in Goodland, KS. There was also discussion about playing off the Cheyenne Ridge near Sidney, NE while Kansas was starting to look a bit capped by early afternoon. We hedged and met up in Imperial, NE. We grabbed shady spots in the local cemetary and waited for the weather to unfold while snacking and prepping my motorized camera enclosure nicknamed The Toad.

Towers were going up to our west so we moved into northeast Colorado to keep them in play. The high based storms didn't do much, and then southwest Nebraska initiated. We scrambled northeast for the inercept, pileus clouds visible above the growing convection.

The storm looked quite promising initially, sporting a cycling wall cloud and some wrapping rain curtains. We were in and out of the forward flank as we maneuvered around the storm on the few paved roads in that section of southwest Nebraska.

The storm turned hard right moving south-southeast and we were able to conveniently and comfortably chase it using US 81 along with dozens of other chasers. We soon bumped into a bunch of folks we knew, including Tony Laubach, Brindley's original chase partner and long time friend.

The base cleared out and retreated a bit. A tornado didn't look imminent and we realized that this was transitioning into more of a structure chase.

What a structure show it was though: gorgeous striations, big bowing horseshoe base and billowing tower.

We stayed just south of the storm, moving a couple miles and then stopping to let it approach again.

"The Toad" was acting up. My video feed was dropping out due to a bad cable connection, but also my lens wasn't wide enough for the structure shot and I was having issues with vibrations. I wound up getting no usable video from the chase. Fortunately there wasn't a tornado shot for our research effort, and Brindley beautifully captured the structure show with her stills. This trip was the first real field test of this camera enclosure, and it would need several modifications and repairs before it would be usable in this application. We took it down for the remainder of the trip and reverted to chasing with dashcams and tripods.

We continued this pattern of stop and go, chasing the storm southbound all the way into McCook. It eventually turned left, probably as it became partially elevated in the cooling, separated boundary layer.

The twilight structure was exquisite. We held just north of McCook, letting the storm go as it drifted off to the east before we said goodnight to the group and headed into town for a pizza and a room.