Schoenstatt Squall -- August 16, 2020

On the afternoon of Sunday, August 16, 2020, I bolted north to David City to meet up with a southeastward moving cluster of supercells, which were gradually congealing into a forward-propagating MCS. For the second time in three days, I was treated to beautiful landscapes and storms (see southwest moving tornadic supercell from August 14), as I got to watch somewhat discrete updrafts briefly acquire rotation and then merge, with the Platte River valley in the foreground. Once storms became a linear cluster, they accelerated south, and I had trouble getting back ahead of the ribbon-like shelf cloud. I finally got well ahead of the southwest corner of the gust front near the Schoenstatt Shrine north of Crete, NE. The Catholic chapel in the background peeking above the woods, at the end of a winding gravel road, combined beautifully with the wavy lobe and cleft pattern in the shelf cloud along the gust front. 

This chase continued to the northwest as more supercells, and eventually a second storm cluster, moved south-southeast in the northwest flow regime. The sunset with mammatus trailing the second storm west-northwest of Lincoln was brilliantly colored, and will likely be featured in another post.

Wildflowers on a Nebraska Evening -- July 2018

On July 4, 2018, I embarked on a busted storm chase in the southeastern portion of the Nebraska Sandhills. On my way home, outflow from storms to the north crossed NE-92 between Central City and St. Paul near sunset, creating beautiful lighting and sweeping over wildflowers and tallgrasses. Next to an abandoned house on a desolate stretch of Nebraska state route 92, I snapped this picture looking eastbound. Compared to other 4th of July celebrations that I've had over the past decade, this was quite serene, as most of the day was spent in forgotten corners of central Nebraska. Unfortunately, I missed the Seward fireworks display an hour and a half later, as outflow from the northern storm complex led the organizers to (smartly) move the fireworks launch up by about a half hour.

Monroe, NE Supercell -- June 2017

For this week's photo of the week, I am going back through the archive of storm chases from the past several years. This photo was taken south of Monroe, NE, of a southeast moving supercell on June 16, 2017, a northwest flow severe weather event which included an EF-2 tornado in Bellevue, NE.  This was a pretty successful chase, with a few photogenic supercells (though I missed brief tornadoes early in the event farther north, as I wasn't able to leave Lincoln as early as I would have wanted). One of my favorite views of the second supercell I saw was this one, looking north at a sculpted updraft past an aquamarine colored bridge in the foreground.

Basilica of Saint Francis, Assisi, Italy -- March 2017

For this week's post, I am sharing a picture from beautiful Assisi, in the Umbria province of Italy. This was the courtyard outside of the the Basilica of St. Francis, where St. Francis of Assisi is buried, near sunset in March 2017.

The old part of Assisi, built into a hillside, is a beautiful town, filled with numerous Catholic churches, outdoor cafes, and houses and gardens and piazzas. I was there for three days as part of a Catholic pilgrimage to Italy. Sts. Francis and Clare, ora pro nobis!