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Last Updated on Monday, 04 January 2010 18:10 Written by Roger Hill

2008

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April 24th was going to be a touch and go day. Strong shear, but sparse moisture would be forecast in Kansas, while much better moisture, but a strong cap would occur in Oklahoma. Hence the ages old question, where to chase. I finally decided that north would be best where a weaker cap would certainly result in initiation, even with meager dewpoints in the mid 50s. We arrived in Colby as two high based supercells developed. We would stay with these storms throughout the evening as one storm would become dominant. It even produced a nighttime tornado that shows up clearly at a high ISO. After we left it, it produced a 1/3 to 1/2 mile wide tornado near Beloit after midnight. We awoke the next morning in Kearney, Nebraska to snow. Click on the thumbnail for a larger image.

Looking west from near Colby as the western supercell forms.	Looking north from near Colby as the eastern supercell forms. This would become the dominant storm.
Eastern storm gets very well organized.	Nice structure with striations, wall cloud and wet RFD.
Photogenic storm with windmill.	A lowering forms in an occluded mesocyclone to the right of the windmill. There was weak rotation noted.
Strong rotation in the tornado warned storm. It came very close to producing a cone in this shot!	Wider shot as the rotating wall cloud gets undercut.
Hail to 3.5" in diameter encountered!	Crazy inflow bands in this high ISO shot.
A weak tornado to the east of the RF core.