Close But No Cigar

Yesterday added a tenth new state to the list for me: Wyoming!  We hung around Sterling, CO for most of the morning and then in early afternoon, finally decided on a northern target and took off for the Wyoming/Nebraska panhandle border.  While en route, we were alerted to a violent tornado near Chugwater, WY but unfortunately we were just too far away to  make any sort of play on it.  There was a brief point where we thought we could make it out off in the distance, but we can't be completely sure because there were a lot of hills and a pretty intense precipitation curtain.  This tornado ended up destroying five homes, derailing a train and injuring one.  Crazy.

We did make it to a beautiful supercell that looked promising for quite a long time.  It had an incredible structure and lowering wall cloud.  We saw a huge funnel and according to the DOW radar data, it briefly touched down on the road behind us; however there wasn't a condensation funnel visible all the way down.  It was by far our most organized chase yet so we all felt a little victorious last night.  We stayed in Ogallala, NE (try saying that five times fast) and this morning, we are racing north to near Rapid City, SD where the models are looking really, really good!

I think pictures are probably the best way to describe the chase yesterday...

Chugwater, WY storm off in the distance

Our chase near Albin, WY