Huge tornado tears through Nebraska Sandhills

AccuWeather

Extreme storm chaser Aaron Jayjack recounts the massive tornado he pursued at the Sandhills near Wallace, Nebraska, on June 16. He explains what made this particular tornado significant.

Transcript

00:00That tornado was out in the open Nebraska sand hills. A beautiful tornado formed near Wallace,

00:10Nebraska, Wallfleet, Nebraska, which is just to the south of North Platte, Nebraska. And I arrived

00:15right up on the west side of that storm, right as it went tornado-worn, and that little needle

00:20came down. And you know, I thought we were going to see a pretty nice tornado. What I didn't expect

00:24is that we were going to see a nearly stationary tornado. I was on the ground for over an hour.

00:29About 77 minutes is when I look back at my footage of how long that tornado was on the ground for.

00:35I went through various stages of just a little skinny tornado. You know, more of a stovepipe,

00:40a stronger tornado at the very end of its life cycle before it finally roped out. But very fortunately,

00:46you know, this is a very barren area. Not a lot of population here. So out in the sand hills there,

00:52not much for it to hit. It twisted up sand, it hit a few trees, knocked a couple of power poles down

00:57and went across the road, debarked some trees. But other than that, I do not believe there was

01:02any damage to property or homes. I do not believe there were any injuries as well. So very, a perfect

01:07tornado in my, you know, from my opinion, it was a beautiful tornado out in the open. What makes this

01:13storm even more rare, it was actually moving to the west, into the southwest. So it chased me down the

01:18road to the west for about a half a mile before it finally turned south. It looked like it was going to

01:23rope out and then it re-intensified again. So it was one tornado, but it had two different life

01:29cycles. It was his first life cycle was a little skinny, almost like a land spout tornado. All

01:34tried to rope out and then re-intensify it again before it became that strong stovepipe moving to

01:39the southwest, following a boundary that was there at the storms that fired on and it moved to the

01:43southwest. So very rare. Most storms are going to move to the east, either southeast, due east,

01:48northeast, sometimes due south, but very rarely do you get a southwest moving supercell and tornado.

01:54On top of it, a nearly stationary tornado. So incredible experience to be out there yesterday

01:59chasing mother nature.

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