Date: 5 June 2009

Location: Nebraska Panhandle near Harrisburg and Oshkosh

Chase Partner: Griffin McLaughlin

Summary:  Set up in Brush, CO for most of the day waiting for development to occur.   Tornado watch went up in the afternoon for most of Northeast CO, NE Panhandle and Eastern WY.   Storms went up early in WY and we waited perhaps a little too long in hopes that storms would fire in Northeast CO as the environment was a little better for supercell storms.   We headed north on Hwy 71 and near Stoneham the Tornado Warning for the Goshin County WY storm went up.   We continued up thru Kimball, NE and managed to see the tornado rope out near the town of Harrisburg, NE.   We waited in vain for more tornados to form as this was Tail End Charlie and it had all of the elements it needed to cycle back around.   Near Harrisburg it nearly did as a well defined funnel reached 3/4 of the way to the ground, but I cannot confirm circulation on the ground.   It lasted a few minutes and then dissipated.   We then started to make for home and stopped to watch the storms head off to the east.    As we watched them the updrafts on Tail End Charlie began to improve and the base of the storm began to get more surface based.   We turned back around and headed back north to re-intercept.   Near the town of Gurley there was a well defined rotating wall cloud that was nearly on the ground.   We were in a perfect position and out of the blue the storm went outflow dominant and all of the organization died.   It continued to be TOR warned for a long time, but the show was over.   All in all considering how the 2009 season has been, I am glad to have finally gotten in a decent chase.  

The La Grange, WY tornado roping out from our vantage point near Harrisburg, NE.

New meso and funnel cloud near Harrisburg, NE.  

Gurley wall cloud displayed really great rotation for several minutes.  Looked like this one was going to put down a monster tornado, but couldn't quite get fully organized.