VORTEX II: Day 28
The armada drove a long way last night to reach their hotels in Kearney, NE because they believed the best target for supercells and / or tornadoes today would be in southeast Nebraska and southwest Iowa. However, during the morning briefing, the talk transitioned to heading back west and playing possible storms in western Nebraska. The thought was that while the better tornado potential might exhist in Iowa, the road network and terrain made deployments difficult and the better chances of catching a workable storm were out west.
Without going into too many details, the armada intercepted a tornado warned thunderstorm that briefly appeared like it might produce a tornado, but never did. This makes today a first for VORTEX II…consecutive days with a tornado warned thunderstorm! This storm was moving quickly so the armada only got one chance at a deployment on it. When it moved past, they targeted a new storm to the southwest of the old storm. They armada hustled into place south of North Platte and got in position to watch the storm completely collapse.
There weren’t really any other targetable storms, and the armada was closing in on nightfall, so operations were ended around 8:21 PM CDT.
Tomorrow looks like a potentially tornadic day across places in the plains. Hopefully, if a tornado does occur, the VORTEX II armada is on it.
