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Platte County Nebraska October 9, 2001      October 9th, 2001 was an unusually warm day. The forecast called for possible thunderstorms in advance of a strong cold front. Temperatures on one side of the front were in the lower 70's while temperature's on the other side were in the 40's.      A little after 5:00PM, thunderstorms began to develop in Merrick, Polk and Platte Counties. By 6:00PM we were on the highway attempting to catch up with the storms from two counties away. As we made our trek west on Highway 30, reports began coming in about a particularly strong storm which was producing tornadoes as it moved across Merrick and Polk county.      The true definition of the storm became visible as we approached the city of Columbus in Platte County. As we drove into Columbus, news reports verified that a large tornado was moving east northeast through the town of Monroe.      We traveled a couple of miles outside of Columbus on Highway 81 moving northwest in an attempt to intercept the dangerous storm.      With daylight all but gone, after 7:00PM, we began to survey the horizon in the hopes that a lightning flash might reveal the base of the storm, or better yet, the tornado. A few moments later, a lightning flash caught my attention. Curious, I pulled off to the side of the road and we trained our cameras straight northwest. I no more than stopped when a handful of lightning flashes backlit the storm and revealed the large tornado.      We watched in awe as the tornado moved across the horizon. Realizing we couldn't move any farther west for our safety and for the sake of any photo opportunity, we traveled back into Columbus and headed north on Monastary Road.      The road proved to be a good choice. As we headed north, we could see that the tornado's life had ended; but, many funnels continued to dip in and out of the storm. We were then fortunate to find a hill which stood over much of the landscape some distance north of Columbus and with the storm providing excellent backlight from the frequent lightning, decided to begin filming there.      For about an hour, we watched as the storm slowly moved to the north of us with many funnels dipping in and out of it. Just when we thought the night was coming to an end, the storm seemed to give us a going away present. A tornado touched down briefly to our northeast. What a night!      After the spectacular finish, with the storm losing strength, we decided to head for home left to ponder what the storm would have looked like in daylight.