Make like the pioneers and spread out.

Following the lead of the Pioneers, V2 has been travelling along the route of the old Oregon Trail. Yesterday we moved northwest from Ogallala to Alliance, Nebraska. In the afternoon the fleet massed in a small park in Hemmingford, NE awaiting the development of storms. Due to weak shear, we had little expectation of any supercells, much less tornadoes. After some initial development to the SW, we decided to get ahead of a developing cell by travelling an hour to the East. Our movement put us in the Sand hills of Nebraska, which have a poor road network and little visibility for our mobile radars. Since the storm was less than thrilling we decided to call of operations for the day as we headed back to our hotel in Alliance.

However, mother nature was not finished with us yet. On the way back to the hotel, the field cooridnator noticed a developing low precipitation supercell a few miles north of Alliance, so we decided to pursue given it was the most promising storm ofo the day. We managed to deploy our mesonets throughout the storm, noticing some relatively strong inflow. Some scud clouds developed travelling into the updraft base, eventually forming a transitory non-rotating wall cloud (a lowered portion of the cloud base, usually the location of a tornado). Rotation in the storm was fairly weak, so we had no anticipation of a tornado. However, a wall cloud is a good sign and would be the immediate precursor to a tornado if one had formed. The storm developed quite rapidly and did a few transects of what somewhat resembled a rear flank downdraft. In one of our transects we intersected some pea-sized hail. Eventually the storm progressed to the East but owing to no east-west road options we could not pursue and ended operations. The storm soon dissipated following our data collection. Travelling back to Alliance we were treated to a few rainbows and interesting cloud formations.

Scud getting drawn into the inflow eventually formed a transient non-rotating wall cloud.

Given the low expectations of the morning, the evening supercell was quite a surprise to most of us and left us in good spirits heading into today. However, this morning showed no signs of anything severe, so we decided on no operations for the day and just travel north to position for possible data collection tomorrow. With a destination in Hot Springs, South Dakota only 2 hours to the North of Alliance, we had time to enjoy some of local culture.

At times Storm chasing is very exciting, like last night, but at other down times it can border on painfully boring. It's a hurry up and wait game with lots of time to meet fellow chasers. In order to relieve some of today's boredom the mesonets decided that each of our probes needed more character. As a result, we made a stop to the Alliance Dollar General to each purchase a mascot for our probe. For probe 3, kevin and i selected a Mr. Potato head in a spider man costume that Ben affetionately dubbed "Spider Spud." Other mascots include Probe 4 (the party probe)'s dancing and singing stuffed lobster, Probe 7's armadillo, and Probe 5's toad. Spider Spud proudly sits on our dashboard as we drive giving us a thumbs up on overhead clearance. Harald, Kevin, and myself have taken to photographing Spider Spud at different locations along our journey (much like the Croslands and ET).

Later in the day on our way to Hot Springs, we took a stop at CarHenge as well as an interesting "rest area". We arrived in Hot Springs in the early afternoon. Hot Springs is a nice little tourist town in the Black Hills of SW South Dakota making for some nice hilly and forrested scenery compared to the flat plains we are used to. Because we were conducting no operations, many of the team decided to take a short trip North to see Mt. Rushmore. On the way we passed through several state and national parks and saw a load of native wildlife including prarie dogs, antelope, white tail deer, pheasants, and Buffalo. Mt. Rushmore itself was worth the trip and is very visually stunning, even from several miles away.

Spider Spud enjoying the sites at Mt. Rushmore (yeah, we were bored that day)

As we move through numerous tiny towns out here on the plains, I find that we are somewhat celebrities. Invariably, wherever we stop we are likely to interact with some curious locals. Most locals give us one of two reactions. The first being shear panic and the question of "is there something going on we should know about?" The other being "I've loved tornadoes all my life and can I come with you?" Yesterday in Hemmingford the entire nearby elementary school seemed to take a break to come out and look at our vehicles, while we were personally interviewed at brunch this morning by a curious diner cashier. While chasing yesterday afternoon, a cop stopped by the mesonet convoy asking if he needed to set off the tornado siren or if he would be pelted with hail on his motorcycle. Overall, people seem to be supportive of what we do and wish us luck, while others clearly seem to wish we would just get out of town. Though we may not be seeing storms, we're certainly helping out some local economies with bars running out of beer, and waitresses making extraordinary tips.

That's all for now, sorry about the lack of pictures, but the hotel's internet is too busy to upload them right now, so i'll add them as time permits. Tomorrow looks to be pretty quiet with a marginal chance for operations in eastern Wyoming or farther east along the Nebraska/South Dakota border. In the long term, it looks as if there's a chance we may be headed south again. Texas anyone?

The weather pattern isn't cooperating but morale remains high as we've adopted the motto: "He who has no expectations is never dissapointed"