This was to be the first of a two day chase.
Tornadic Storms were forecasted up in the
Nebraska, South Dakota, Iowa, Minnesota
area. My son Ryan and I left early in the
morning and met up with Brian Stertz. After
grabbing lunch in Missouri Valley, Iowa on the way
up Highway 29, we then moved to our target
location in Norfolk, Nebraska. We eventually
adjusted a bit further north to Randolph,
Nebraska. It was here we waited and waited
hoping for some daylight development of tornadic
storms. Our friend Tom Stolze came by as we
waited. A storm developed 150 miles to our
southwest near Taylor, Nebraska, but due to the
distance, we held our ground hoping for
development the weather models and forecasters
were still anticipating closer to us.
As we
continued to wait, we saw what we found out
later was the Hurricane Hunter airplane flying
over doing research on the day's atmosphere.
Eventually,
it just became obvious that there would no storms
during the daylight hours, so just before darkness
set in, we gave up on the idea of daylight storm
development and traveled east to Sioux City, Iowa
where we spent the night. Severe storms did
eventually erupt out to the west in the vicinity
of where we had been waiting, but long after
nightfall.
So our first day out, we saw zero storms.
May 29,
2022 
