Chase Summary
May 17, 2000
Jerry Randall

We (Bob Delahunt, Ramsey Bowen and myself) left Dallas at 9am CDT for Kansas. We arrived in central Kansas just as the Tornado Watch was being issued around 4pm, so we decided to head west on Hwy 70. We found some attempting Cu turkeys between Russell and Hays, but we knew the action was happening to the north so we reversed a bit and headed up Hwy 281 going north from Russell. As we zigzagged east and north through Waldo and Luray up to Osborne and then into Nebraska, we noticed that our little Cu turkey buddies we sticking with us and becoming more congested, but still not enough oomph!

We stopped at some point and looked west/southwest back at those building towers which had now become darkened below the base. I couldn't tell if this was precip. or dust kicked up from behind them. (Interesting stop, though. There was a gold miniature statue of liberty.)

As we entered Hastings, a Severe Thunderstorm Warning was issued for our travel companions from Kansas just to our south. We opted to head east on Hwy 6 from Hastings just a bit and turn back and watch it pass. The storm never really got organized and soon dissipated, after dropping some golfball hail (we had heard reported).

By this time, it was getting dark and our one storm had vanished, so we decided to get in position for Thursday.

We headed east on on Highway 80 towards Lincoln, NE. When we were about 30 minutes out we heard that Severe Thunderstorm warnings had been issued for Lancaster and a couple other counties around Lincoln, NE.

I wasn't driving so I had been watching some building Cu to my south (right) that were getting ripped by shear just as the moon was starting to peak out from behind the anvil of the storms in front of us. These storms didn't have much lightening and as our previous storm to the west had crapped out pretty quick, I assumed these would too, and they apparently did, but...

As we're going along and I'm gazing at these eerie moonlit towers, all of the sudden there's this long dark slim detached vertical cloud between me and those towers. It was approx. 9:35 pm CDT and the contrast was very poor and my first thought was, "That looks odd. I know that can't be a funnel back here. That would just be wishful thinking since we busted today." I looked at it for a minute more and noticed that it was holding its shape. I asked Bob and Ramsey to take a quick look. Bob was driving so he could only get quick glances and Ramsey had just taken his contacts out, so he couldn't see worth a flip. Bob agreed it looked like a funnel.

The contrast was extremely poor and there was no lightening around so we didn't even attempt to photograph it. Thus, my artists rendering, below (figure 1).

Figure 1

The location didn't make any sense to me as the cells in front of us seemed distant and with little lightening. I continued to watch it as the cloud ascended keeping its vertical stove pipe appearance. It then became visibly attached with V shape and finally vanished (figure 2). The whole event lasted less than ten minutes. We headed on to Lincoln, for a late dinner and sleep, but I still wasn't sure about what we'd seen.

Figure 2

This was definitely something. I reasoned, "Well maybe this was an Anvil Funnel?" The bottom never seemed anywhere near the ground and the slight shearing from right to left at the bottom as depicted in figure 1 made me think that the funnel was possibly from a high based cloud where the bottom was just getting in to the same shear tearing off the tops of the Cu in the background.

Once back home, I finally got a look at the reflectivity from Omaha @ 02:39z 05/18 and to my surprise, it looks as though we were at the top of a bow echo (figure 3).

Figure 3 (Click for small animation)

From the animated loop, you can see the two red cells rotating (see NDIS OMAHA REFLECTIVITY LOOP ) as well as possibly a third which is primarily yellow and just south and west of the other two. I'm unsure exactly where we were along Hwy 80, so I can only speculate that one of these pendants on the reflectivity image could be the hook for what we saw (figure 4).

Figure 4

We never got into any rain of significance as we drove into Lincoln, therefore I doubt we were very close to the big cells.

In any event, I feel fairly certain that what we saw was a funnel of some measure.

I hope to get a look a velocity image from the same timeframe for some possible verification.

Jerry Randall
WD5ERP