Terrifying Tornado Encounter: Storm Chaser's Close Call

May 11, 2014: While chasing storms in Nebraska on Mother's Day, I encountered multiple tornadoes, including a large wedge tornado near Beaver Crossing. I became focused on capturing footage of the wedge tornado and ended up in a close call when the storm's path shifted towards my position. With winds intensifying rapidly, I made the decision to pull into a ditch to avoid the potential of being rolled over.
www.spc.noaa.g...
www.weather.go...
Event Summary:
The first round of active Mother's Day weather started up already during the very early morning hours of Sunday, May 11, 2014, as a line of strong to severe thunderstorms quickly developed near the Nebraska/Kansas state line around 3 a.m. This line gradually shifted north during the remainder of the overnight hours, dropping some large hail and bringing portions of the area their first round of heavy rainfall. Hail ranging from quarter to ping pong ball size was reported in portions of the area, and it's likely other locations saw hail as well, but the time of night was not favorable to get many reports.
This first round of severe weather tapered off to an end around sunrise, and the rest of the morning into early afternoon was relatively quiet. A cold front started working its way into the area from the west, while a warm front was pushing north out of Kansas. The position of these fronts resulted in a large temperature gradient across the NWS Hastings coverage area, with afternoon temperatures ranging from around 50 degrees in the northwest to near 90 in the southeast. When the mid afternoon hours arrived, thunderstorms began to develop in the Hastings area. Instability had been building all afternoon and deep layer shear was sufficient for thunderstorms to quickly become severe. While other thunderstorms did develop, the initial one that popped up southeast of Hastings started to work its way east, becoming anchored along the eastward extending warm front. As it moved into the Clay, northern Fillmore and southeastern York County areas, a number of tornado reports were received. Other thunderstorms were also responsible for large hail up to the size of hen eggs, damaging wind gusts and heavy rain. Though shower and thunderstorm activity continued well into the overnight hours, the brunt of the activity had shifted into eastern Nebraska by late evening.
Some much-needed rainfall was also observed across the area, with several locations seeing rainfall amounts in excess of 1 inch. Locations across portions of Adams county, Clay county, Hamilton county and York county in south central Nebraska saw some of the heaviest rainfall on Sunday afternoon...with rain amounts of two to three inches common through many locations. The combination of rain that fell early Sunday morning along with that which fell Sunday afternoon into Sunday night totaled as high as 5-7", primarily in parts of York County. This resulted in minor flooding of several creeks and streams in the area.