Most of the day was spent waiting
around in the parking lot of a hotel in Kearney. There was a lot
of potential for tornadoes but a strong thermal inversion kept
a lid on all thunderstorm development...That was until we figured
that the day was a write off and decided to book our hotel rooms
and get some food. Just before we were all supposed to gather
for dinner, the first tornado warning was issued for an area just
south of us. We scrambled to gather everyone up and head out.
The storm was tiny on radar but there was already a report of
a tornado on the ground. As we approached the base of the storm,
we saw numerous "landspout" tornadoes. These tornadoes were very weak and did not have any condensation
funnel but they were churning up the farmer's fields, kicking
up a lot of dirt. Because these were obviously weak, we decided
to get very close to one of them and as one of these landspouts crossed the road near a farm house, we drove
right into it as it was dying out. There was still a fair amount
of dirt and leaves swirling around as it passed over us and the
local farmer who was outside mowing his lawn. We followed the
storm system northeast to well past the town of Grand Island where
we encountered very strong winds and some golf ball sized hail.
