Chase: Tuesday, May 20, 2014

An update for the last 2 days…

Monday we left Whitewater and headed west towards Nebraska hoping for some storms to fire in the central part of the state. No storms ended up developing so we stayed the night in Kearney, Nebraska.

On Tuesday, we woke and held our daily weather briefing where it was decided to head further west towards Cheyenne, Wyoming. There were two areas of interest one in northeast Colorado and one in southeast Wyoming and Cheyenne would give us a good access to head to either location after an early afternoon update. During our lunch stop in Sidney, Nebraska we decided the northern area was the best choice for today’s chase. After leaving Sidney a thunderstorm started to develop north of Cheyenne near Wheatland, Wyoming.

While heading north out of Cheyenne another cell started to develop to the southwest of the original cell near Slater, Wyoming. We watched this storm continuously recycle itself and produce a large hail core. After driving in the area the storm had passed we drove through drifts of hail that were a few inches deep at some points. We tailed the storm towards Scottsbluff, Nebraska watching it produce a tremendous amount of hail; no reports we heard were of large hail just large quantities. We pull off the chase south of Scottsbluff once the cell began to weaken. We are now in Fort Collins, Colorado for the night and right in the area where storm initiation should begin Wednesday afternoon (May 21).

Students Melanie Sorman (l-r), Stephanie Stoltzmann, Brian Schanen, Jacob Strohm, and Jonathan Wleklinski enjoy a storm producing large amounts of hail moving across the Wyoming landscape. 

Hail covers most of the road way heading into Slater, Wyoming. All the white spots on the ground are drifts of hail.