June 10th, 2010

I headed out the night before on June 9th to get a headstart on the drive. When I left that night it looked like the setup would be along the South Dakota/Nebraska border, but on the way out to the target it became obvious that I would end up much farther south than originally planned. I ended up sitting along I-80 in the southwest Nebraska panhandle. Saw storms go up to my south and could tell that things were struggling to get going in Nebraska so I made the decision to head in to Colorado. There was a storm that blew up down towards Denver, and another up closer to the Nebraska/Colorado border. This is the one I decided to play since the VIL spiked after it went up and it looked like it would stay healthy. Unfortunately the road network in this area was less than ideal Watched the storm from about 15 miles away for a while trying to decide if it was worth going on the dirt roads for. After a while, made the decision to go for it and got a couple miles in from the paved roads. There was a decent size wall cloud on the storm, but it never really did anything. Some good lightning too, but there was only weak, cold inflow in to the storm and the storm never looked or felt like it would do anything special. Some reports of golf ball size hail came in from this storm so it did some kick to it, but other than that it didnt really do anything. Followed it back east to the main road only to watch it completely fall apart. The one thing I still regret, and probably always will, is not taking the extra hour to head south to what would turn out to be a very photogenic tornado producing storm. Instead, knowing I had a long drive back home, chose to start on the drive. But, after a 13+ hour drive, to only be an hour away from a storm like that and not go for it, is a kick in the teeth. Anyways, this wasn't the most exciting chase I've been on but at least I got to add Colorado to my list of states chased in.