June 15, 2009 Hastings Nebraska Tornadic Supercell

I don't really even remember the setup this day now. I didn't expect a whole lot, about all I remember. I remember it seeming like the cap was going to hold on the warm front in southern Nebraska. It went in the evening and I wound up on this supercell west of Hastings. It was lifting north first, then turned hard right and moved southeast. It became simply classic on radar. Early this lowering was fairly chaotic, but it was just a little pushed south/undercut.

It wasn't all that interesting for a while, then as it began to cross CR11 I noticed intense sinking behind the updraft in the rfd. It was pretty wild.

I started to take a gravel road east, but this storm had just moved north and turned back right, so I assumed this road would be questionable soon if I tried to use it get east. I'm on the gravel road to Assumption NE I believe. I just seemed to recall seeing a tiny town listed when I looked at the gps. Assumption is only 1 mile east of the paved road and is just one of those 10 people "town" type deals. As rfd driven rain hits, I say screw this road and get back on the paved stuff. I head south and then east to get back over to 281. That consisted of about 5 miles south and 10 miles east. I had a good view the whole drive and was ready to blast north if need be.

I'm going east, not to 281 yet and that wrapped up occluded deal had been bugging me, forming short-lived funnels, but really not looking to get much done as everything around there looked pretty cold. I try going north on gravel before I get to 281 and it's nothing but big hills west of that road blocking my view. Then the road I could take east to 281, well it was closed. I had to go another 2 miles north and that got me near the precip core on questionable roads. I don't know what I did but I went back south to something or I had a decent road east in there and flew east to 281.

And look at what is happening out west now! Large tornado. Guess where. Very close to Assumption....doh! This supercell actually sheds that occluded meso, leaving it way behind and it just turned into that big thing.

I tried to get a good road west but there were none. When I finally got to one it went up and up with no view west. By the time I get west far enough on it, the core from the storm blocks the view and rains on me. This as the main supercell tries to wrap up on me and 281. It is extremely annoying to know where that tornado happens and the fact 15 minutes prior I was RIGHT there. Could have easily been less than 1 mile from the thing had I just chilled there for a while. But of course, I was supposed to know it would literally shed part of itself and turn into that without really any eastward progression. I need a new car for gravel options as I could prevent some of this crap, taking that out of the equation. I mean really, here is the nws report on this and you can see CR11 and Assumption. I would have been 3/4 mile away had I sat there in those earlier images. Could have watched the whole evolution without moving for 20 minutes and been RIGHT there. http://www.crh.noaa.gov/gid/?n=june15_2009_assumption_tornado The radar images on there show it well, how detached this was. Like the storm thought, "Mike will love this little trick, watch this!" "Haha you were just over there sucker!" Tornadoes hate me I swear.

HP supercell now further east at sunset.