June 13, 2001 - Seward, NE - F4 Tornado


 
Chase Account by: Brian Thalken
 
Knowing that Wednesday evening looked very promising for a productive chase, I still had a date scheduled for early evening. After getting home from work around 5:30 p.m., Jim Kaiser and I discussed the scenario setting up that night. As of then, there was a tornado watch to our North (including all of Eastern South Dakota) and a tornado watch to our South (including all of Eastern Kansas). No MD's issued yet for Nebraska. Later on they did issue a tornado watch for Eastern Nebraska. Jim made the decision to go North towards Dodge, NE. John Garner had already been in contact with Jim and was already to our North in his own target zone. Jim left around 6 p.m. towards Dodge, NE. After convincing myself that all of my friends would come back with some tornadoes, I decided that today's list didn't have my name on it. So decided to get ready for my date.

Sitting on the steps outside of the UNL dairystore, gave a great view of the massive towers exploding to the West / Southwest of Lincoln. I couldn't believe how strong the East wind was blowing!!! At 7:30 p.m. the date was over. (note: not influenced by the weather situation). I quickly ran inside to grab my gear and was ready to head out by myself. I was greeted with "LET'S GO!!!, LET'S GO!!!", being shouted by my roommate Jason Ehmke. He had been watching the supercell, to our Southwest, rapidly intensifying on radar and satellite. Still no tornado warning issued. We ran to Brian's new Expedition and loaded everything up and took off on the Expedition's 1st chase.

Our house was located in the heart of Lincoln, so we had to deal with the traffic of Lincoln getting out of town. On the viaduct on 27th St. between Holdrege and Cornhusker Hwy., looking West we could see the base of the sup. It had already begun to form a wall cloud with a few distinct lowerings. We headed out of town on Hwy 34, still trying to decide which was the best route we should take. We decided to go North on Hwy. 79 because it was moving towards the Northeast. We followed Hwy. 79 North until we turned West onto Bluff Rd. Making our way down Bluff Rd., what a nice gravel road it is, we could see large bands of inflow feeding into the sup. Unfortunately there were too many hills for us to get a clear shot of the wall cloud and the lowerings, so we kept on heading West.

I was driving and Jason was video taping (his first time using my video camera). Almost simultaneously, we saw a large dark cone under the wall cloud and then the NOAA weather alert came on with the tornado warning. It was about 8:00 p.m. and we were around 7 miles away at that point. The hills and road were playing games with us, just teasing us, we couldn't get a clear view of the tornado. Finally, we found a hill with a descent view. There was already a truck pulled off to the side of the road with some people standing around. We pulled over and hopped out and started filming. I gave Jason my APS camera and told him to take as many pictures as he could. We set up the video camera on the tripod and let it record as we watched a "minimal F4" tornado for the next 20+ minutes.

The tornado was somewhat rain-wrapped and was difficult to see at times after we pulled over. Soon it became more visible with the back lighting from the setting sun, still looking West. We decided to stay put because we didn't know how much longer it would be on the ground and wanted to get as much of the tornado as we could. We watched it and filmed it for 20+ minutes. We were still about 5-6 miles away from the tornado but I was still ecstatic about seeing this beautiful tornado. It became a "stovepipe" several times. We noticed some rotation just to the Northeast of the tornado. It tried but couldn't develop enough to produce, it would have been even more incredible to see two tornadoes at once. It finally roped out as you can tell by the pictures. It was very impressive to see it rope out and have it on film. Having the digital video camera and a tripod makes a great time lapse video.

After it is was all said and done, we saw a historical F4 tornado with some awesome features, caught 20+ minutes of video, and experienced mother natures phenomenal power.