Nebraskan Wild Goose Chase

So we drove 700 miles today and saw absolutely nothing (other than a few cirrus clouds), and yet we’re in Norfolk, Nebraska tonight, only an hour and a half from where we started the day. We also discovered that most of northern Nebraska has absolutely no cell phone coverage (absolutely nothing west of Ainsworth, anyway), which made our pursuit of the chase group a blind one. Awful construction just west of O’Neill slowed us down quite a bit, so we were flying across US 20 from Valentine towards Chadron, the last place we’d heard they were maybe heading, when all of a sudden 40 miles outside Chadron we saw the TIV (Tornado Intercept Vehicle, it’s basically a tank-like armoured car; the owners are trying to drive it into a tornado, for real) going the other way. Then we saw a whole series of vehicles with antennas (after seeing only one car every 5 minutes all day, if that), so we turned around and followed them, knowing they were the chase group even though we couldn’t see the DOW (Doppler On Wheels). We were quite puzzled for some time why they were heading east, away from any possible convection (especially since we’d heard they were considering trying to get to eastern Montana, or at least Wyoming … if you’re chasing that far west you’re more than desperate), only to find out in Valentine when we all stopped for gas that they’d basically given up for the day. So we hung around Valentine for a little while in case anything initiated (which it didn’t, the cap was just too strong), and then drove back with the group to Norfolk.
We got to see way too much of US 20 today, though the Sandhills region of north-central and northwestern Nebraska is really pretty. I’d never been in Nebraska before today, and so was somewhat surprised by the very different regions of the state, with it being rather hilly near the Missouri River, then a lot of flat ag land in the middle, then with a lot of sandhills and pastureland in the northwest. And if any of you have an atlas, take a look at Cherry County in north-central Nebraska. It’s bigger than Massachusetts, but only has about three or four roads in it, making it a poor choice for chasing storms. But we got to cross it twice today. Woot.
Tomorrow’s looking hopeful for good storms in eastern Nebraska (near where we are currently) and western Iowa. We should see something tomorrow, which would make the ROTATE and Discovery Channel people happy since they’ve been chasing for over four weeks now and really haven’t seen a thing. Hopefully the atmosphere doesn’t screw something up overnight.