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       map of Fremont/Arlington Nebraska May 24, 1998154kb
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Fremont/Arlington Nebraska May 24, 1998

     This particular storm caught us by surprise. It originated in northern Dodge county. My chase partner and myself were outside working on a car when we noticed some odd changes in the temperature and sky to the north of Fremont. To be safe we checked the local radar and found a pretty powerful storm south of Hooper. We grabbed our gear and hit the road heading north and then east out of Fremont.
     As we started out, a tornado warning was issued by NWS for Dodge county, no sirens ever sounded in Fremont. The wall cloud was first visible about 3 miles north of Fremont heading east southeast. We eventually decided to head to 1/2 mile north of Arlington where we were greeted by the wall cloud. At aproximately 6:47 PM a faint funnel had appeared about 300 yards from our location, detectable only by some mid-level cloud rotation. Shortly after, we observed small amounts of dirt being lifted up into the funnel. At this point we moved south of Arlington which is where the photos on the following page were taken. The tornado lasted about five minutes before raising back into the clouds. Over the next hour and a half the storm would produce many funnels dipping in and out of the wall cloud, with none apparently touching the ground. We ended our chase in Iowa at which time it became to dark to observe anything.