March 19-21 Eastern NE Snowstorm

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Several days out from this event the models painted a very nasty picture for eastern NE. It was having a fun time projecting 20-30 inches of snow in the area. It did fairly well. The se corner of the state did not get the heaviest as it looked to for a while. Here along the NE/IA border the dry air in IA really hampered things. We still got about 8 inches or so.

Here's some heavy snow from the first part of the system on Sunday.

It is now the following day, Monday March 20. It was all or nothing, back and forth, over and over here on Monday. It'd either be snowing pretty good or it would be precip free. The bands coming through never lasted very long.

I went outside and got some more snow pictures on one of the best bands to come through. The birds were busy trying to fill themselves up with feed. I snapped some photos around in the snow and noticed the birds were hanging around in trees quite close to me. Around 50 were feeding before I came out and disturbed them. I wondered if I sat in the snow and didn't move if they'd come back. See I only have a 50mm and a 17-40mm so I can't get them from any distance. This was my only option to shoot the birds.

So I sit down in the snow and wait. I'm about 10-15 feet from that water bowl. The bird feeders are to my right. There's quite a bit of feed on the ground. It did not take long before a few came back. If I moved at all they'd fly away again.

I'm now laying on my back, leaning up, with my feet towards the water bowl. I'm pretty skinny so it didn't take long to start shaking from laying in the cold snow. It is now quite windy too. It would do this whenever a strong band of snow would move through.

More birds are coming in as others leave the bowl to start eating food. They were some quite close to me and many flying right by my head. It crossed my mind that one just might land on me.

Not one minute after I thought one could land on me this happens. It was snowing pretty good and the camera was already quite wet. I had the lens tucked in my jack keeping it somewhat dry when this bird lands on me. I was so in shock I almost started laughing. I knew it wouldn't stay there once it had a good look at what it landed on. By the way, the bird is standing on the tip of my boot. You can see my knee before the boot. So, the pressure was on to get this rare shot, lol. I very slowly pulled the cam out and turned and clicked as I turned. I am amazed the bird is in focus. I think what happened was I had set the focus for the close birds already(see the next shot....I had it focused closer for the little birds that would walk right by me). That is the only reason I got this bird in focus. I've been using the center point for metering/focusing so had it been on auto focus this would be a big mess. The bird was taking off fast as I got this. Less than a second later and it would not be in the shot.

Look at them all, lol. I could almost grab that one if I wanted. The depth of field is really shallow as I was on F/1.8 trying to keep the shutter very high. I sit there waiting for another bird to land on me and sure enough one lands on my other foot. It took off the second it landed and all I got was it airborn in the upper right corner of the frame.

Well I sat there until I was shaking uncontrollably. I didn't have any gloves on and my right fingers were really hurting. So, I'm now back indoors warming up. The cats are rather interested in the birds...the dogs less so.

Ok, I guess I'll include my funny story from indoors. Randy Chamberlain calls and I'm telling him about the bird thing. Well, my jeans and jacket were all wet from laying in the snow, so I had put them in my parent's dryer. I was the only one there so I'm standing in the living room with just my hooded sweatshirt and boxers on, talking on the phone. All the sudden something makes a noise on the sliding glass door. Both dogs jump up right then and start barking like someone was here. I thought someone was coming in the door, but it must have just been a bird flying into the glass(they did it again later). Anyway, it scared the crap out of me.

Dogs on their daily "walk". Jon, in front here, likes to lay down and eat snow instead of walking.

March 21, 2006 Trip to Greeley NE

There were some hefty snow reports coming in from the area north of Grand Island. Greeley was the winner, reporting 25 inches of snow. So on Tuesday I headed west in search of any good photo ops. My goal was to get to Greeley and check it out.

I opted to take 30 west instead of 91 because I thought 30 was a more travelled and populated highway. I thought this would lead to better snow removal. I was so so wrong. I left town sometime after 10 a.m. thinking since it was pretty wet snow and not all that windy that things would be pretty good. I was so so wrong. The heavier snowfall had more or less ended early the night before to the west of Fremont. Highways around Blair, with 8-9 inches here, were 99% free of any ice. 30 started going to hell the second I went west of Fremont on it.

This and the above image are from highway 30 west of Fremont. I'm now in this train of semis doing 15-20 mph. Yes that is right, 15-20 mph for a looooooong time. There are 3 cars trying to help the one truck get out. Why it took three of them I have no idea. It wasn't helping the traffic congestion(yeah yeah neither was I).

Futher along and you can see a big semi tow truck, parked with flashers on.

Ok, now it gets even more fun. I'm filming this truck in the ditch as tall pieces of snow slide forward from the top of the van.

ARRRRGHHHH. 6 inch piles of snow training down my windshield while I'm in traffic on crappy roads. This is only a couple frames of video after the image above. You can see the truck on the far right side of this video grab. No big deal, just wipe them off with the wipers right?

Wrong. Now the wipers are stuck. I turn them on and off, over and over and they won't budge. This was turning half comical. They had been coming down from there for a while now and I was hoping the train was out on top. One more piece and I will have to stick my head out the window. I couldn't exactly stop on the higway as I'd have to back up everyone behind me as I did so.

It only gets better from here, right? Wrong. I pull over at the Schuyler exit to fix the windshield. While closing the door behind me I worry it could be locked with the van running. I try to stop it before it closes and wind up shutting the door on my thumb in the process. I didn't know it was bleeding till I saw blood in the snow on the hood.

Wanting no part of highway 30 anymore I try going north at Schuyler. I'm driving a van, not a 4x4. The road gets worse as I go north. There was less traffic and more areas of pavement, but ummm, this road was not good. I got to see just how hard some of this snow was to remove for the plows. This drift forces the plow around it.

It got around the first one and there was another area sticking out a bit ahead.

These were so numerous by now it really wasn't funny.

Oh yeah, it is getting scarier by the mile now. At least I'm still behind the plows, lol.

Errrr, not anymore. They stop to work on one area and wave me around. I was like, oh god no. I'm now on the crappiest part yet and ahead of the plows. I'm still heading north to get up to highway 91. I'm in the left lane trying to not get stuck or run into any oncoming traffic(what little there was of it). At least I wasn't stuck doing 15-20 in traffic on highway 30 anymore.

Well I get to 91 and head west. Highway 91 was sooooo much better than anything I had been on. There weren't really any places to pull over, but at least the lanes were nice.

This picture here is east of Albion NE. Guess what that is supposed to be. There is a road there! I've never seen something drifted over that bad. I didn't crawl back there to try and measure it, but I'd guess it was over 10 feet deep.

Looking west here. Notice the road sign for this burried road.

Highway 91 and Snow Ave.

That's just awesome.

I get to Albion and the streets there were horrible...to say the least. This was after 2 p.m. When I went to turn into the Casey's parking lot I found myself in ruts over 1 foot deep. I punched it and floated on into the parking lot. It got very interesting as I headed west out of town. Right off the bat I hit the worst road conditions of the day. It boggles my mind they actually did not have that closed. It puts all the other spots to shame. It was barely one lane with 2 feet of snow next to your door. It got bad as I went down the hills heading out of town. I wanted back out of there sooooo bad but there was no way on Earth to turn a vehicle around...none. It stayed like this for probably a mile or more. I had to stop with my right side up into the snow to let other trucks get by. They HAD to drive with one side up in the snow. It was literally 1 and 1/4 lane wide and open to traffic both ways. What scared me the most was that even if I could find a place to turn around I honestly did not think I could get the van back up those hills in that. At the same time I was all for trying becuase I was thinking this whole highway was not plowed at all. I'll record stuff under almost any conditions. It was bad enough I didn't dream of picking up the cam. A couple miles from there and all was good again.

Ok, I'm now heading south to Greeley. 81 for the most part was not bad.

I had my doubts Greeley actually got 25 inches. I now think it is quite possible that they did have 25 inches. It is close to 4 p.m. now and the roads around town are a complete mess...understandbly. There were many large boulders of snow scattered about.

I won't try this little idea again without using a 4x4, or waiting an extra day.

Still in Greeley.

Here's some office building with one hell of an overhang of snow.

I didn't hang out in Greeley all that long while I was there. I figured I was just in the way so I headed back. I'm now back on 91 heading east to Albion, hoping they have their road outside of town fixed by when I get there.

I love the sandhills. You can't really see how it is here, but some views show all those hills that seem to go on forever. They make me feel like I'm on another planet whenever I stop and look at them.

I'm back in Albion now. I don't think Greeley had all that much more snow than Albion.

Check out this side street in town around 5 p.m. I would quickly get stuck if I tried to drive on that.

Well, I'm glad I went west. It was an interesting adventure.

I almost forgot about my little visitor I had when I got back. My sister, niece, nephew and uncle thought this would be funny. At least it was still light out when I got home, otherwise I wouldn't have seen it till I opened the blinds in the morning.

MAIN PAGE	IMAGES BY YEAR	CHASE VIDEOS
PHOTOGRAPHY SALES	IMAGE LICENSING	STORM GLOSSARY/ INFO
CHASING LINKS	WALLPAPER IMAGES	ABOUT
FAQ/INFO		CONTACT

Several days out from this event the models painted a very nasty picture for eastern NE. It was having a fun time projecting 20-30 inches of snow in the area. It did fairly well. The se corner of the state did not get the heaviest as it looked to for a while. Here along the NE/IA border the dry air in IA really hampered things. We still got about 8 inches or so. Here's some heavy snow from the first part of the system on Sunday.
It is now the following day, Monday March 20. It was all or nothing, back and forth, over and over here on Monday. It'd either be snowing pretty good or it would be precip free. The bands coming through never lasted very long.
I went outside and got some more snow pictures on one of the best bands to come through. The birds were busy trying to fill themselves up with feed. I snapped some photos around in the snow and noticed the birds were hanging around in trees quite close to me. Around 50 were feeding before I came out and disturbed them. I wondered if I sat in the snow and didn't move if they'd come back. See I only have a 50mm and a 17-40mm so I can't get them from any distance. This was my only option to shoot the birds.
So I sit down in the snow and wait. I'm about 10-15 feet from that water bowl. The bird feeders are to my right. There's quite a bit of feed on the ground. It did not take long before a few came back. If I moved at all they'd fly away again.
I'm now laying on my back, leaning up, with my feet towards the water bowl. I'm pretty skinny so it didn't take long to start shaking from laying in the cold snow. It is now quite windy too. It would do this whenever a strong band of snow would move through.
More birds are coming in as others leave the bowl to start eating food. They were some quite close to me and many flying right by my head. It crossed my mind that one just might land on me.
Not one minute after I thought one could land on me this happens. It was snowing pretty good and the camera was already quite wet. I had the lens tucked in my jack keeping it somewhat dry when this bird lands on me. I was so in shock I almost started laughing. I knew it wouldn't stay there once it had a good look at what it landed on. By the way, the bird is standing on the tip of my boot. You can see my knee before the boot. So, the pressure was on to get this rare shot, lol. I very slowly pulled the cam out and turned and clicked as I turned. I am amazed the bird is in focus. I think what happened was I had set the focus for the close birds already(see the next shot....I had it focused closer for the little birds that would walk right by me). That is the only reason I got this bird in focus. I've been using the center point for metering/focusing so had it been on auto focus this would be a big mess. The bird was taking off fast as I got this. Less than a second later and it would not be in the shot.
Look at them all, lol. I could almost grab that one if I wanted. The depth of field is really shallow as I was on F/1.8 trying to keep the shutter very high. I sit there waiting for another bird to land on me and sure enough one lands on my other foot. It took off the second it landed and all I got was it airborn in the upper right corner of the frame.
Well I sat there until I was shaking uncontrollably. I didn't have any gloves on and my right fingers were really hurting. So, I'm now back indoors warming up. The cats are rather interested in the birds...the dogs less so. Ok, I guess I'll include my funny story from indoors. Randy Chamberlain calls and I'm telling him about the bird thing. Well, my jeans and jacket were all wet from laying in the snow, so I had put them in my parent's dryer. I was the only one there so I'm standing in the living room with just my hooded sweatshirt and boxers on, talking on the phone. All the sudden something makes a noise on the sliding glass door. Both dogs jump up right then and start barking like someone was here. I thought someone was coming in the door, but it must have just been a bird flying into the glass(they did it again later). Anyway, it scared the crap out of me.
Dogs on their daily "walk". Jon, in front here, likes to lay down and eat snow instead of walking.

There were some hefty snow reports coming in from the area north of Grand Island. Greeley was the winner, reporting 25 inches of snow. So on Tuesday I headed west in search of any good photo ops. My goal was to get to Greeley and check it out. I opted to take 30 west instead of 91 because I thought 30 was a more travelled and populated highway. I thought this would lead to better snow removal. I was so so wrong. I left town sometime after 10 a.m. thinking since it was pretty wet snow and not all that windy that things would be pretty good. I was so so wrong. The heavier snowfall had more or less ended early the night before to the west of Fremont. Highways around Blair, with 8-9 inches here, were 99% free of any ice. 30 started going to hell the second I went west of Fremont on it.
This and the above image are from highway 30 west of Fremont. I'm now in this train of semis doing 15-20 mph. Yes that is right, 15-20 mph for a looooooong time. There are 3 cars trying to help the one truck get out. Why it took three of them I have no idea. It wasn't helping the traffic congestion(yeah yeah neither was I).
Futher along and you can see a big semi tow truck, parked with flashers on.
Ok, now it gets even more fun. I'm filming this truck in the ditch as tall pieces of snow slide forward from the top of the van.
ARRRRGHHHH. 6 inch piles of snow training down my windshield while I'm in traffic on crappy roads. This is only a couple frames of video after the image above. You can see the truck on the far right side of this video grab. No big deal, just wipe them off with the wipers right?
Wrong. Now the wipers are stuck. I turn them on and off, over and over and they won't budge. This was turning half comical. They had been coming down from there for a while now and I was hoping the train was out on top. One more piece and I will have to stick my head out the window. I couldn't exactly stop on the higway as I'd have to back up everyone behind me as I did so.
It only gets better from here, right? Wrong. I pull over at the Schuyler exit to fix the windshield. While closing the door behind me I worry it could be locked with the van running. I try to stop it before it closes and wind up shutting the door on my thumb in the process. I didn't know it was bleeding till I saw blood in the snow on the hood.
Wanting no part of highway 30 anymore I try going north at Schuyler. I'm driving a van, not a 4x4. The road gets worse as I go north. There was less traffic and more areas of pavement, but ummm, this road was not good. I got to see just how hard some of this snow was to remove for the plows. This drift forces the plow around it.
It got around the first one and there was another area sticking out a bit ahead.
These were so numerous by now it really wasn't funny.
Oh yeah, it is getting scarier by the mile now. At least I'm still behind the plows, lol.
Errrr, not anymore. They stop to work on one area and wave me around. I was like, oh god no. I'm now on the crappiest part yet and ahead of the plows. I'm still heading north to get up to highway 91. I'm in the left lane trying to not get stuck or run into any oncoming traffic(what little there was of it). At least I wasn't stuck doing 15-20 in traffic on highway 30 anymore.
Well I get to 91 and head west. Highway 91 was sooooo much better than anything I had been on. There weren't really any places to pull over, but at least the lanes were nice. This picture here is east of Albion NE. Guess what that is supposed to be. There is a road there! I've never seen something drifted over that bad. I didn't crawl back there to try and measure it, but I'd guess it was over 10 feet deep.
Looking west here. Notice the road sign for this burried road.
Highway 91 and Snow Ave.
That's just awesome.
I get to Albion and the streets there were horrible...to say the least. This was after 2 p.m. When I went to turn into the Casey's parking lot I found myself in ruts over 1 foot deep. I punched it and floated on into the parking lot. It got very interesting as I headed west out of town. Right off the bat I hit the worst road conditions of the day. It boggles my mind they actually did not have that closed. It puts all the other spots to shame. It was barely one lane with 2 feet of snow next to your door. It got bad as I went down the hills heading out of town. I wanted back out of there sooooo bad but there was no way on Earth to turn a vehicle around...none. It stayed like this for probably a mile or more. I had to stop with my right side up into the snow to let other trucks get by. They HAD to drive with one side up in the snow. It was literally 1 and 1/4 lane wide and open to traffic both ways. What scared me the most was that even if I could find a place to turn around I honestly did not think I could get the van back up those hills in that. At the same time I was all for trying becuase I was thinking this whole highway was not plowed at all. I'll record stuff under almost any conditions. It was bad enough I didn't dream of picking up the cam. A couple miles from there and all was good again. Ok, I'm now heading south to Greeley. 81 for the most part was not bad.
I had my doubts Greeley actually got 25 inches. I now think it is quite possible that they did have 25 inches. It is close to 4 p.m. now and the roads around town are a complete mess...understandbly. There were many large boulders of snow scattered about.

I won't try this little idea again without using a 4x4, or waiting an extra day.
Still in Greeley.
Here's some office building with one hell of an overhang of snow.
I didn't hang out in Greeley all that long while I was there. I figured I was just in the way so I headed back. I'm now back on 91 heading east to Albion, hoping they have their road outside of town fixed by when I get there.
I love the sandhills. You can't really see how it is here, but some views show all those hills that seem to go on forever. They make me feel like I'm on another planet whenever I stop and look at them.


I'm back in Albion now. I don't think Greeley had all that much more snow than Albion.
Check out this side street in town around 5 p.m. I would quickly get stuck if I tried to drive on that.

Well, I'm glad I went west. It was an interesting adventure.
I almost forgot about my little visitor I had when I got back. My sister, niece, nephew and uncle thought this would be funny. At least it was still light out when I got home, otherwise I wouldn't have seen it till I opened the blinds in the morning.