Chase Photos
     Mammatus clouds
     Inflow jets
     Gustnadoes
     Shelf/Wall cloud
     Funnel/Tornado

     Tornado Gallery
     Home
Fremont Nebraska May 9, 2001

     The forecast for this day called for turbulent weather and it did not dissapoint. Upon leaving my place of employment, I noticed that towering cumulus clouds were beginning to develop to the northwest of Fremont heading to the east. After checking the radar, we gathered our equipment and set out for Washington county.
     We took up position about 2 miles north of Arlington and observed tremendous mammatus clouds which generally indicate trouble a-brewin'. It really means there is a great deal of cold air downdraft occuring. Realizing that the storm was gathering its strength, we headed northwest back into Dodge county stopping at the intersection of county roads twenty and O.
     The storm's outflow jet began kicking up several brief but impressive gustnadoes, akin to a stronger dust devil. Over the next half hour, while a wall cloud began to develop, the storm produced more phenomena like...
  1. Massive inflow jets - these are powerful gusts of air which are drawn in by a storm's updraft, usually near the backside. This is normally an indicator that a "powering up" is occuring.
  2. Increased frequency of lightning.
  3. A lot of mid to low level rotation beneath the wall cloud, which formed into funnel clouds.
  4. A phenomena I have only seen one other time, for which I don't know the correct term, so I will describe it. Within the front edge of the wall cloud appeared a circular opening which resembled an upsidedown drain hole.
     The storm's curving direction indicated that it had strong rotation and it began moving south-southeast. Due to this new development, we decided to take highway 77 southward through Fremont with the storm in pursuit, less than a mile away. During this time, we were met head on by a final massive inflow jet, estimated to be near 70 MPH by NWS, which nearly drove us off the road and resembled a giant vacuum sucking great ammounts of dirt into its heart.
     Approaching Fremont, we witnessed 3-4 more gustnadoes near and around the airport. These were mistaken by many as "true" tornadoes. At about the same time, we could hear the civil defense sirens sounding in town.
     After clearing the town of Fremont, we headed into Northern Saunders county and headed for a position south of Highway 109. It was here that the storm displayed a funnel which almost touched the ground. Shortly thereafter, debris began rising and rotating about 300-400 yards in front of us which finally revealed to us a tornado which lasted roughly 1-2 minutes.
     The wall cloud/storm continued to move slowly to the east-southeast until our daylight was lost and we decided to end our chase in East-Central Saunders county.
     In our 18 years of storm watching and chasing, we have never seen a storm which produced so many different phenomena in so great of a volume. This storm had the dynamics and characteristics to produce a deadly tornado, for which was the only thing that it didn't do. This is very fortunate for the residents of Fremont, where the wall cloud took up residence for nearly an hour.