Late Summer Storms Hit Southern Nebraska and Northern Kansas

When you get in to late August and early September the summer starts to give way to fall in many parts of the country.  Usually the ridge of high pressure starts to relieve and the heat gets displaced by colder air which arrives via a cold front.  This was the setup on the day before Labor Day in Nebraska.  Cold front chases are a little tougher because they tend to become linear fairly quickly and when that happens the tornado risk reduces greatly.  So, getting out early and being right on top of the storms from initiation is of utmost importance to capture not only a possible tornado but to get the most photogenic shots of the day.

I traveled up I-35 through Kansas and arrived in Nebraska shortly after 1pm, and after I looked at the forecast models I decided to move further west than I had initially planned.  I set up shop in Red Cloud, Nebraska and waited for storms to form.  I chose a pretty good spot that day because it wasn't long before storms started to fire up just to the south in Kansas and quickly they moved northeast into Nebraska. 

The storms stayed discrete for a short time as expected then moved to linear mode quickly.  There was a short time where I got a wall cloud with some rotation in it, and it appeared it might have a shot at producing a tornado, but quickly dissipated.  I landed a few structure shots and once I lost visibility to the individual cells I dropped south into Kansas to catch the southern part of the line of storms.  I battled intense rain and quick moving storms the rest of the way, eventually stopping in Salina, KS to let them pass and got a bite to eat. 

Here are a few of my catches from the day: