Nebraska

I was driving from Kansas City, Missouri to Colorado for a severe weather outbreak and stopped in Kearney, Nebraska to see the Platte River. This was a lake right next to the Platte River. The sky was cloudless most of the day. Fortunately before sunset a few cirrus clouds appeared so the sky wasn’t dull in a few of my pictures from that day. But I did love how the very calm water reflected the sky

I followed this storm for about two hours and it produced one of the most beautiful lightning shows I had ever seen. On the other side of the lightning bolt was a huge destructive EF-3 tornado that ended up flipping train cars and causing considerable damage near Alliance, Nebraska.

On this day the clouds and wind were almost nonexistent allowing a beautiful reflection of these trees on the water.

In the Nebraska Panhandle this spring day, the storms erupted in the evening. As the National Weather Service put it, “One of the most significant outbreaks of severe weather to impact southeast Wyoming and the western Nebraska Panhandle in the past 30 years occurred on the afternoon and evening”. As the first storm passed over me and cleared the sky I was able to get this shot. There was a nice EF-2 tornado on the right side of this behind those huge dark clouds. I thought this picture came out nice, but it wasn’t until a few weeks later when I was initially going through the shots for the first time that I noticed there was a stray lightning bolt in this shot.