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Butler County Nebraska May 22, 2004

     This hot and muggy day began with the forecast calling for severe weather. I hoped that any severe weather that developed would do so nearby, as I had the on call pager for my job. Fortunately this wish was granted.
     I had spent most of the morning and early afternoon helping a friend move to a new house in town and came home to do some work outside. While outside I noticed that a few cumulus towers were beginning to form and thought it would be a good idea to assemble the team members I could and head out.
     We headed west on Highway 30 out of Fremont and took up position near the North Bend/Morse Bluff area. From here we watched a brief storm form then fall apart . As we were reassessing our situation in northern Saunders county, I was drawn toward a new formation to our west. While traveling that way, a friend from Columbus called to tell us that she believed there was a wall cloud forming to the SE of that area. We made our way to a hill on Highway 79 where my suspicion and her report were confirmed. A wall cloud was forming to our west. We ventured back to county road X and headed west.
     For many minutes, we darted in and out of many large hills and trees which would only give us peeks of the wall cloud. We finally came to the intersection of county roads X and 45 in Butler county where we watched a massive wall cloud wrap itself up with a well defined clear slot. We also witnessed many funnels and one possible tornado, too much rain wrap.
     It had all of the characteristics of putting down a good tornado when all of a sudden it died. We knew another storm had to have drawn the energy from it and it had to be to the east. Sure enough another tornadic storm formed and was hitting our home town! Go figure. We sped back toward our home town, but all we could see was a heavy rain curtain. On the other side of the rain curtain, Fremont was getting pelted with softball sized hail and based on damage afterward what appeared to be a weak tornado. We followed this storm until it weakened in Washington county.
     With storms developing in nearly every direction, including reports of a now infamous tornadic storm at Hallam, and a limited area of travel due to my pager, we decided to call it a day.