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My 2000 chase season was cut short by the job opportunity I took in Salt Lake City, UT this summer. I did manage to get some chasing done in April and May. I think the season is really over now (November 26) so I think it is safe to say I can certify the results for the 2000 season. In total I saw six tornadoes for sure, and another possible tornado in Texas. I don't even have all the pictures developed as of yet, let alone have then scanned and on the net. I will hopefully be taking care of that over the Christmas break. Anyway here they are:  (click on images to get close up)

In early may, severe thunderstorms developed over the western high plains of Nebraska. Below are some pictures of the day.

     Rear flank downdraft (RFD) comes around the backside of the suppercell.      

    The same storm soon after the RFD developed produced this nice looking wall cloud. 

Soon a small funnel appeared near the backside of the wall cloud. Although the funnel did not last long, and never became a tornado, it was the closet thing on this day.

April 30th was a moderate risk day in the Northwest Texas area. I took off from Lincoln, NE at 7am and some how, after driving real hard, ended up in Northwest Texas by 3pm in the afternoon. It was likely the best driving day I have ever had, and it was rewarded with three really good suppercells. Although I am not counting any tornadoes on this day, there may be been a brief one just at the end of the chase near dark. Otherwise it was the story of just be 15 mins late on the other tornadoes of this day, like the Onley, TX half mile wide wedge. Here some images of this day.

  This is the first storm that intercepted. You can see the banding around the updraft of the suppercell, as well as a small funnel cloud just left of the low scud. This storm was in the process of becoming outflow dominant and we soon left this storm for the Onley storm. 

After leaving the storm above we intercepted the Onley, TX storm. This storm was a HUGE HP suppercell, and it just produced a half mile wide tornado, but as I stated above we were just 15 min to late. You can see here the side of the updraft. 

 May 16 and 17 were supposed to be big days with a very strong upper level system pulling out of the western United States. SPC issued moderate risks on May 16 and had "possible outbreak" in their day 2 wording. We headed for eastern Wyoming on the 16th as storms were expected to develop over the higher terrain and move east. Tornadoes were possible as did happen!

The beautiful eastern Wyoming countryside provided good contrast for this tornado. The tornado was on the ground for nearly 10 min and is seen here from nearly 10 miles away. The next two pictures are of the same tornado, just later in time before we tried to move closer.

Next was May 17. SPC put out a couple of PDS boxes across the central plains with a hatched area for significant tornadoes. This was a beyond a frustrating day with numerous tornadoes over eastern Colorado and western Nebraska. We were playing the dryline and going with the SPC outlooked area. We were wrong, along with a number of other chasers. We did see some nice storms though as you can see below.

  Here you can see the extreme shear in the atmosphere by the twisting nature of the updraft on the front side of the suppercell.

   Here you can see a wall cloud. This storm, we let go, and would go on to produce the Brady, NE F-3 tornado. Ya win some and you lose some.

Unfortunately, as these tracks illustrate, most of the roads taken on this day led to know where!!!!

On May 17th we continued to go with the upper level energy with a moderate risk in Illinois. I only have one picture from this storm as we were driving most of the time just trying to keep up with the storms.

  This picture shows a line of tornadic suppercells in central Illinioes late in the afternoon. This was the last storm that we chased this day. The first storm was in west central Iowa (Cass county), and we ended up near the Indiana border. We needless to say very tired.

On May 24th I moved to Salt Lake City, UT for the summer. I, of course, thought my storm chasing days were over for this year, but the first week I was there we had two days of severe weather. The first day, Wednesday we had .75 inch hail, and on the second day we had this F-0 tornado that did damage to an Albertson and a few homes.

Here you can see the cone of the torando just above the scud cloud. I was unsure if it was a tornado (although it had good rotation) until I got home and saw the coverage on TV.

Here is a little closer look at the tornado. You can see the condensation funnel just above the middle pine tree. It only lasted a few minutes.

Although I was able to chase 4 tornadoes on October 28, 2000 in central Nebraska I was not able to get any stills of this event. I might at later time be able to put some of the video stills out here as my chase partner of the day, Scott, took extensive video of the event. Othwise that is it for 2000!!!!