OmahaSnowFan

Uh oh Texas. Going to be a long summer….

Meanwhile here in "boring" old Omaha, yesterday we broke another record high. The storms never held their strength as they made it here finally around 9p. In fact, only got lucky enough to have a small cell strengthen enough right over town to dump .15" of rain in about 10 minutes and had some small pea sized hail. I hit 95.4 yesterday IMBY. I saw a small town named Tekamah, NE just north of here hit 101 yesterday. Record Event Report National Weather Service Omaha/Valley NE 910 PM CDT Thu May 12 2022 ...RECORD HIGH SET IN OMAHA, NEBRASKA... At 259 PM the temperature in Omaha reached 97 degrees, establishing a new record high for May 12th. The previous record was 93 set in 1956.

I still just can’t get over how absolutely pitch black it got in late afternoon from the dust. 455p!!!

More extreme weather. 2nd highest number of significant wind reports in one day, only below the outbreak from last December. Top 4 all in last 2 years. Totally fine….

Spoke to my dad in Emery, SD a bit ago. That's about 45 minutes west of Sioux Falls. They are still without power and the entire town is blocked off. He said one of the grain elevators was completely blown over, lots of businesses in their downtown had windows blown out, dozens and dozens of trees down, and he lost most of his shingles on the south side of his roof. He heard a gust of 98 mph was measured in town. Also described how weird the storm was. The wall of dust moved in suddenly and made it pitch black like he's never seen before. Crazily the power went out with this first part of the storm. Then after about 10-15 minutes, the tornado sirens went off and that's when the real wind, rain, and hail hit.

Couple more from Sioux Falls

Might be our turn yet later tonight

Wow! PDS Severe tstorm watch with gusts up to 105 mph likely!

Storms going nuts out in central Nebraska. Upgrade to moderate risk coming. Meanwhile Omaha is out of the watch issued.

Record Event Report National Weather Service Omaha/Valley NE 135 AM CDT Thu May 12 2022 ...RECORD TEMPERATURES AT OMAHA NE ON WEDNESDAY MAY 11... It was a record setting day in Omaha on Wednesday May 11. The morning low was only 70 degrees, which broke the previous warm morning low record of 67 set in 1879. Records began in Omaha in 1871. And then a new maximum temperature record was set at 339 PM CDT when the temperature reached 96 degrees, breaking the previous record of 93 set in 2000.

Should set a record high for the second day in a row and I believe the 4th or 5th time already this year. Feel like storms will probably be weakening by the time they make it here this evening.

Smoke from fires down in New Mexico made it all the way up here this afternoon after the dry line moved through. Dropped visibility and made the air quality unhealthy.

Made it 94.1 IMBY today. This morning at one point it was 80/70, but thankfully a dry line moved through and dropped the dews down to the low 50s. You can really see the dew point tank earlier today.

Record high for the date is 96.

78.3 with a dew point of 70.7 IMBY. My favorite mornings of the entire year are mornings just like this. Warm, breezy, you can feel the dampness in the air, and smell the moisture. The birds are chirping and you can hear the mowers running. Of course, this usually proceeds hot and miserable later in the day, but I still love it.

Saw that Amarillo TX just had it’s earliest 100 degree high ever today.

We’ve only added .11” of rain with this current system but I had 1.31” with the early week rain. Cannot wait to see sunshine and feel the warmth returning starting this weekend

I’m thinking the severe weather threat for this weekend into next week is really starting to diminish. The ridge in the east has nearly stopped any advance of the west trough keeping all the good upper level flow well west of where the heat, humidity, and CAPE are forecast to be. Have to hope for some small scale shortwave trough to kick out of the big trough and be timed correctly otherwise no bueno for severe storms.

Uploaded a video from my chase on Monday 5/2/22. Another moderate risk that really underperformed given the 15% hatched tornado risk and even expectations of very large hail. Unfortunately for me, I was far enough away (6.5 hours) that the discrete cells which offered the best structure and had a couple of brief tornadoes, were pretty quickly taken over by the surging cold front. I almost called off the chase when I woke up Monday morning based on how the models were now showing that scenario. But when you were excited as I was to go the night before based on what the models were showing, it's hard to change your mind. I made it to this storm, mere minutes after it had a confirmed tornado, but it was only a brief tornado despite the obvious, very strong rotation with the storm. Shortly thereafter, it was overtaken by the cold front and became part of a line of storms with some wind and hail. So in the end, I drove 6.5 hours one way to basically chase/be near the storms for an hour, and then had to drive back to make it back home at 1am. These are the days where I am like, what the f*ck am I doing, and my wife thinks I'm crazy!

18Z HRRR even more crazier looking for tomorrow in Kansas 🌪🌪

I'll be chasing again tomorrow down in southern Kansas. Looks to be another nice warm front/dry line set up as long as morning storms clear out soon enough. Here's the 12Z HRRR helicity tracks for tomorrow afternoon and evening. I went through some of my dashcam footage from Friday's chase. I saw the tornado in southern Nebraska from a distance (unfortunately due to waiting for a pilot car in a one lane construction zone for 20 minutes), drove through some pretty crazy dust storms, and lastly ended up with some cool lightning. I'll put together an edited video sometime this week.

Tragedy last night for 3 chasers. My biggest worry chasing is all the driving, never the storms. I was nearly killed 4 years ago next Memorial Day driving home from a chase. A jackknifed semi was blocking all lanes on I80 in the dark and rain. I came up on it driving 75 mph and only saw it when my headlights shined on the overturned trailer. I slammed on the brakes, turned hard right and somehow managed to parallel the semi as I headed straight for the ditch. I missed a pedestrian from a pulled over car walking on the side of the road by maybe a foot and managed to keep the car under control as well. The shock to my body of having a near death experience kept my chest sore for 3 days. Rest in peace to the young students. https://okcfox.com/news/local/three-ou-meteorology-students-die-in-car-crash-near-kansas-border

Target acquired! 5 pm today is where you will find me

Moving at 5 mph and has 2” hail!