AFTER THE CHASE, INDELIBLE MEMORIES

Was it fun? people ask, knowing I’ve just returned from a tornado chase on the Great Plains. Sure it was fun. If your idea of fun is sitting in a van for 10 hours a day, reeling in the miles (3500 of them in seven days); or waiting and waiting and waiting for something to happen (thank God for Walmarts, great places to hang out); or falling in a ditch in the dark (next time I’ll bring a flashlight); or clogging your arteries with fast food (I had to double my statin drug dosage). Oh, don’t take me seriously. It wasn’t fun in the sense of an Alaskan cruise or Caribbean vacation, but it was a memorable adventure. One I wouldn’t have missed for the world. I...

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HUNTING UNICORNS

Yesterday, Silver Lining Tours and I might as well have been hunting unicorns as tornadoes. Tornadoes? We didn’t even see a towering cumulus! For awhile, we thought we might have chance at a big storm far to our west just north of the Kansas border in Nebraska, but, like legislation in the U.S. Congress, it went nowhere. So, we ran up the white flag and boogied for Salina, Kansas, where we caught up on our sleep. We saw a lot of these yesterday… But none of these… We might have had a shot at some action in Missouri yesterday, but the SLT guys don’t like chasing there: too many trees and too many hills, and it would have put us way out of...

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THE MOTHERSHIP

Yesterday was a weird day for storm chasers. We spent a lot of time camped out on dirt roads next to fallow fields and curious cattle in southeast Nebraska waiting for something to happen (photo below). Nothing did. Several storms rumbled and grumbled for a couple of hours, but just couldn’t get their acts together. Meanwhile, over our shoulders, we watch a massive supercell blow up all by itself about 40 or 50 miles south, down near the Kansas border (photo below). Finally, we throw in the towel on the nearby storms and decide to make a dash for the southern one. On our way, however, one the northern boomers decides to tease us with newfound energy. So we...

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THE GLAMOUR OF STORM CHASING

I’m writing this as our chase team presses through an electric night bound for Wichita, Kansas, from the Texas Panhandle. We won’t arrive in Wichita until the wee hours of Tuesday. Then, after a few hours of sleep, we’ll push even farther north, hoping to capitalize on what should be a turbulent day along and ahead of a cold front. Today (Monday), quite frankly, was a bit of a disappointment. We tracked a couple of high-based supercells across the Panhandle, but never met with the awesome, in-your-face display of meteorology we did Sunday when we were in nature’s delivery room to witness the birth of a supercell on steroids. Photo: Monday—-high-based...

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