Hello from Lexington, Nebraska!

Today was a successful chase day as we saw one, likely two, tornadoes today. We started the morning off in Russell, KS then made our way to Oakley to meet up with the crew. After that we positioned north in McCook, NE where we grabbed some lunch and waiting for storms to initiate.

Storms began to fire back south near the Colby, KS area and started to move east. We repositioned ourselves back south and watched the storms organize. The storm began to take on a favourable shape and reflectivity on radar but the issue was roads... there weren't a whole lot of options. Proper east road options were few and far between and it made chasing very tricky today.  

We headed north on the 117/17 toward Culbertson then east to McCook where we proceeded north again. We took the 83 north to Maywood and had to play it very carefully because we had a rotating storm to the east of the road and to the west of the road with cores and large hail on both. We then progressed east on the 23 very carefully but ran into some sizable hail. As we just passed the town of Farnam, while getting hit with some sizable hail, we noticed a circulation to our south rapidly approaching the road in front of us. We pulled over while it crossed right in front of us. The rotating wall cloud was very close to the ground and we'll need to review our footage. That being said, as soon as it passed the road, we continued east to get a view but were blocked by power poles that had just been snapped! The circulation was just beside us to the north of the road pulling away. We couldn't continue east anymore because of the fallen poles so we had to route around.

By the time we got back into position, the storm had become very rain wrapped and we couldn't see the tornado in the rain. We followed the storm a bit more but it was rapidly moving away from us so we decided to call it a chase. Back in Lexington, a weak squall line was approaching from our west so we decided to do a bit of lightning photography.

Now, back at the hotel, a few dents on the trucks, one-likely-two tornadoes under our belts, and time to forecast for tomorrow! This was also mine and Brad's first tornado in Nebraska.

Tomorrow we head south to chase again! A successful first chase day to the trip...

[Unfortunately the internet here is very poor so I won't be able to upload any images or videos tonight. I'll try again tomorrow.]