My target this day was northwest Kansas after a long drive up the entire Texas Panhandle overnight. I was hopeful for storms to fire up there, but they just couldn’t get going. Further into the Nebraska Panhandle though, things did take off so I kept hustling north trying to get at least something since my original target didn’t fire.
By the time I got near Mullen, Nebraska, a cell near Hyannis had exploded, was tornado warned, and was already producing an enormous wedge tornado in the Sand Hills. All I could do was keep hustling north to try and get lined up with it.
I finally got to a spot north of Mullen with a view of the approaching storm and a little reflective pond in a hollow. The tower was alive with lightning, but rather soft with distance and haze. It made for a fun time lapse though and at one point sported a conical funnel beneath the base before I needed to reposition.
I found a new vantage a couple miles further north that revealed a wedge profile that corresponds to an ongoing tornado surveyed by the National Weather Service.
Five miles further north, I took an unpaved side road to try to get another view. A new lowering had formed that corresponded to another tornado that was later surveyed. I tripoded one of my cameras to shoot video while I took stills with another. Inflow winds gusted and knocked the tripod over, landing the camera lens-first into the grass. A big, chunky grass stalk wedged in between the lens barrel and zoom ring. No broken glass, but zoom was now tight and compromised with embedded vegetation. That turned into an unfortunate repair bill later on.
Further north near Merry Land Park, the storm was getting ready to start crossing SR97. I stopped for a few shots, trying to capture some structure. But looking at it later, an apparent funnel and debris cloud was showing up beneath the base and corresponding to another tornado cycle that got surveyed.
One last push up toward Merritt Reservoir led to a look at some brief multivortex spinups beneath the base, followed by a tight, lightning-silhouetted, elephant trunk tornado descending into the hilltops just ahead. I think this was identified as a separate satellite tornado in the damage survey, although the time is off from either ongoing tornado report by about six minutes.
I followed the storm for a bit longer, just across the South Dakota border near Sicangu Village, before letting it go. I missed the main, daylight wedge on this one by a wide margin, but was very happy with how the nocturnal show turned out.
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