06-20-11 Storm Chase Tornado Success

Waking up and going to work this day was pretty rough since I had been out the night before and only had about 2 hours of sleep. I had a short job to do in the morning and looking at the predictions for the day for storms in NE I was happy to be able to get off work early for the day and head out around 11am down I-80 west to see some action today. There was already a cell in KS that was coming into NE that was already producing tornado's. The whole interstate from Lincoln to Kearney was littered with storm chasers.I made it out to the Kearney NE turn off and headed south to try to hit a southwestern hwy to try to intercept one of the storms. Needless to say my internet wasn't working to week that day and once I got down by Minden NE I relized that the storm was pretty much past me to the north and the storm was not where it was showing on my laptop. It was about 20-30 miles to the north of me so I hi tailed it north to chase it down as it was only going about 30mph. I made it back to the interstate and headed over towards Kearney and headed north and hearing reports that a tornado had done some damage in Elm Creek I think it was. Long story short. I was able to see a tornado by Pleasanton NE and it was a beautiful site. It lasted a few minutes from my perspective but think it was on the ground longer. I was just lucky enough to turn my head the right direction and see it. I know there were a few more tornados that touched down back to the east of my location but I was unable to get any radar data from internet on my phone so I slowly edged back to Lincoln. It was a nice day to be out chasing storms.