Our initial target of Hebron, Nebraska, worked out rather nicely. Storms fired to our south, in Kansas, in some very hot and unstable air. Mid-level cloud had suppressed convection around our area, but the clouds moved away. A storm quickly developed just to our SW, and before it had even started precipitating it was rumbling away. We spole with Rocky R and Charles E from Cloud 9 tours.
We let this develop, and then once it started precipitating, we headed into it to briefly sample the core. There was some pea sized hail in there.
We then headed back to the east, and started seeing the Vortex 2 armada passing us. After a while, we got into a good spot, with the original storm to our west (having briefly shown some nice structure). The storms to our south were pushing a strong gust front up from the south, and this was beginning to cut into our storm's updraught. This looked very pretty, and for a brief time I wondered whether we might get a brief spin up during the cell merger, but this was not to be. The storms were pumping out CG lightning every 20 seconds or so, to our SW.
After 15 mins or so, the approaching rain/hail core forced us to head east, although it overtook us around the town of Fairbury. Some pea to marble size hail fell, with frequent lightning, and it was pretty dark.
We then headed north, and got out of the storms, before turning east. We paused for a quick break in Crete, before moving to the east and letting the core move over. This brought fairly strong winds and torrential rain, as well as some close CGs.
We then booked our motel rooms for the night, in North Platte, and are now heading west on I-80. There are still 191 miles to go! Then there's another 230 -ish miles to do tomorrow, to Denver. However, we don't have to be there until 5pm or so.
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