I was never really high on the risk for tornadoes, however I thought we could at least get maybe a tube or two, which was very much not the case. Started the day plenty early departing Lincoln to a very near primary target of Wilber. There we (myself and Katie McMullen) overlooked data along side Brian Stertz, Rich and Ryan. While in Wilber we noted how much farther East the better parameters seemed to be shoved, we also noted the veering of low level winds (which was somewhat expected) but we also noted that the upperlevel support was not quite as significant as forecasted. From Wilber we took a drive through the area ravaged by the Hallam tornado, one can still see much debris left from the storm even now near 3 years later, still leaves one in awe. From there we moved South to Beatrice were we meet up with Jeff. There we continued to monitor data while storms began to form to our North. It was quite apparent that the area South of I-80 remained capped. So we drove back North to check out the storms up there knowing that we could get back South when new development occurred. After watching the linear storms up there we opted to drive back South in hope that the most southern storm could take on a decent inflow and get interesting, it did try for a while but as dark quickly approached the whole cold front blew and quickly became a line of storms. At this point it was now dark so we shot some lightning somewhere around Syracuse. Then we proceed home which would require core punching the storms, just as we were about to the storms XM made apparent that the portion of the storm we were entering contained some decent hail, while we didn’t run into anything real huge we had a few Nickels falling and evidence of some stones that were maybe close to Golf Ball sized although that is an estimation as they were still nickels sized after 20 mintues of melting time.

Somewhere Just outside of Lincoln on I-80 looking at the weak unorganized updraft base.

Storm did show some weak rotation on radar but it quickly took on a very linear structure.

Still on I-80 decent looking core with XM indicating hail as large as 3"

Let the crap along I-80 go and went south, here can vaguely see the midlevel inflow

Now dark as storms started to form a squall line. I took the oppurtunity to TRY and shoot lightning with my SLR for the first time.

I learned a lot about shooting lightning just as it was getting to far away I was picking it up. Hopefully I'll be better next time.

Some hail piles, this was at least 20 minutes after the hail feel.