We tracked this highly photogenic tornado for around 8 miles. The tornado was headed straight for Aurora, NE which prompted a rare Tornado Emergency issued by the NWS. Fortunately it lifted just before it got to town.

Prior to initiation we had time to check out the view (and struggling convection along a boundary) from the bluffs in western Iowa:

We'll be live streaming this chase later this afternoon so stay tuned!

There's a risk of all forms of severe weather later today across the plains. In particular there's a risk of very large hail and the SPC has outlined a 10% tornado risk in central Kansas:

We aren't able to chase today but it looks like there will be a couple of chase opportunities this week so stay tuned!

There were a few intense moments along the way like almost going to the wrong town (with the same name), detouring around a car show, sliding around on a very muddy road, asking curious townsfolk for directions to an abandoned schoolhouse, and leapfrogging past a tractor ride. The navigating and intensity level is similar to what we experience when storm chasing which is why we wanted to participate.

We placed 14th but came in only 18 minutes behind the winner in a 5 hour rally so we're pretty happy about that. We didn't drive very aggressively because we were (overly) concerned about coming in before the "secret minimum time". We were passed repeatedly by a few of the same cars so we must have been driving a good route. Next year's rally will no doubt be bigger than ever and we'll be there!

We tested our new dual-camera picture-in-picture setup for the first time when we streamed this event and it worked great. A bit CPU heavy though so it's time for a hardware upgrade. We had 140 views to our streaming video...not bad!

We're going to be competing in the Cornball Run TOMORROW (Saturday). The first rally team to all 10 checkpoints and back wins the cash. The rules meeting begins at 10:30am and the race begins afterward. We'll be streaming on our Live page when the race begins! You don't want to miss this!

Cornball Run Official Website

Cornball Run Cityview front page feature

Cornball Run Facebook event page