Friday 17th May 2019 - Nebraska (Enhanced Risk)

After a long drive from Dallas to Colby for the start of Tour 2 we were in a nice position for a Triple Point play with a Dryline and Warm front set up somewhere near the I-80 Corridoor today. We departed Colby around 11am with a lunch time target of Mccook (NE) After grabbing a subway lunch we watched on radar the first storms starting to form down near Goodland which quickly went severe. These were rolling along at 45mph to the North East so we went west to Cullberson to watch them approach. As soon as the storms action area came into view i noted to the group that this looked like a Classic Cyclic Supercell which had 2 mesocyclones on it.The storm started to form a hook on radar and brief touchdowns were occuring in the field opposite us, the rotating wall cloud went right over the top of the car flinging everything it could pick up at us giving us our first Tornado of the day.The storm was quickly ramping up at this point heading for Mccook so our option now was to blast north through the hail core and then east to slice through the hook again, we took sporadic golf ball hail to the vehicles. Once we rolled east through a thick layer of Hail Fog we got a glimpse of a stunning Tornado to our North, this was kicking up dust like the Wray Tornado from 2016. We stopped and with sirens blaring took some pictures. Tornado number 2 in the bag for the day.This was also my 200th Tornado so to mark it in this way was something special. We ploughed on with this cyclic machine east of Mccook towards Cambridge and then north towards Stockville on winding gravel roads. Just east of Stockville Tornado number 3 dropped which was a quick dust swirl with rope above.Once again we took some fantastic dirt roads north to keep up with the storm and now it was about to get really special. Tornado number 4 dropped literally in front of us and this one was probably the best of the lot today and we were sat right next to it watching it churn away in an open field.The Tornado moved quickly north and roped out but a new circulation was forming just south of the town of Farnam and this was going to be the strongest of the lot, we stopped short and watched a rain wrapped wedge tornado cross in front of us which was smashing trees down and snapping power poles at the base, this Tornado also severely damaged a house. We picked our way through downed trees driving over what would have been the top of the tree which was across the road.When we turned east at Farnam it soon became apparant that our chase was over with the Police and Emergency services closing our only road which had damage across it with live power lines, we then went back west through a nasty hail core and got some nice large hail to end the day.We headed south to celebrate with a Steak dinner in Mccook before heading back to Colby to end the day. A top 10 chase today and 5 Tornadoes to kick off Tour 2.