5/23/09: "Co-Field Coordinating" Near North Platte

Since Erik Rasmussen was gone today, I was “promoted” to co-field coordinator. Basically, today was expected to be a travel day, but there was some mind being paid toward a possibility of brief tornadoes along I-80 between Ogallala and North Platte, Nebraska. David Dowell – the remaining field coordinator – informed me that my job would be “monitoring the weather.” In other words, “Please don’t touch anything!”

We left Hot Springs late morning and ate lunch in Alliance (where we had spent quite a bit of time a few days earlier). The Subway – our restaurant of choice – was quite busy, so we settled on Arby’s. I ate in the FC vehicle and monitored the weather as we continued southward. After a quick nap, I woke up in time to note a fairly impressive storm just south of North Platte. Not too long after, we got a report from the V2 Operations Center (VOC) letting us know that the storm produced a tornado not 15 miles from our hotel! Such has been the season.

Anyway, we targeted another storm near Grant, Nebraska. We conducted operations on that for about 2 hours. For a while, it looked like it might have potential to produce a tornado, but after a while, it just looked too cold. The cloud base became quite laminar in appearance and scud clouds raced out ahead of the storm – indicative of an outflow dominated storm (these don’t produce tornadoes). We gave up on the storm around 7 p.m. and headed to our hotel in North Platte.

Weak thunderstorm east of Grant, Nebraska.