Catch up on all the chases on my 2014 storm reports page on SkyDiary.com. More updates are in the works. You can see where I am during active storm chases on the map on the tracking page. And please follow me on Twitter for the latest!
On May 21, 2014, Peggy Willenberg and I moved southwest from our starting point in Sterling, Colorado, to get into position in front of a cell coming out of the Denver area, where a brief tornado was reported near the airport. (There were many tornadoes reported today, but this is the only one that’s yielded convincing video that I’ve seen so far.)
We got in front of the storm north of Bennett and watched it make a serious effort at organizing as it spun.
We followed it east, watching the rotation and staying ahead of the hail. It was a beautiful storm, especially with the green light that suggested how much hail it held.
Roll over a photo to see its caption, and click on any of the pictures to start a slide show of larger images.
On May 20, 2014, Peggy Willenberg and I shot south from the Nebraska panhandle into central Colorado, driving hard to get into position in front of a cell coming out of the Denver area.
We got in front of the storm around Last Chance and were rewarded with a spinning storm that made frequent wall clouds but could never quite produce a tornado, though it was tornado-warned as it passed over Burlington. Instead, we saw some hot lightning from the town.
Roll over a photo to see its caption, and click on any of the pictures to start a slide show of larger images.
On May 19, 2014, Peggy Willenberg and I finally got into the range of chaseable storms after driving for two days from South Carolina to begin our storm chase.
When we reached the Nebraska panhandle, prospects didn’t look great for severe storms, and near Scottsbluff, we watched several small cells pop up and die as they moved northeast out of Wyoming. But patience was rewarded as we finally got a gorgeous UFO-like supercell, complete with hail, blowing tumbleweeds, lightning and a mothership structure.
Roll over a photo to see its caption, and click on any of the pictures to start a slide show of larger images.
I’m waiting for the right time to go storm chasing – perhaps as soon as the coming week – and working on “Zap Bang,” the third novel in the Storm Seekers trilogy. Here’s a teaser for you – a book trailer. If this were a movie, this would be the action trailer, which would be accompanied by a softer trailer that shows the humor and relationships between the characters. Unfortunately, the latter would require actors and a big-time Hollywood production. So until there’s a movie, ahem, here you go – the dark, dramatic side of “Zap Bang.”
Want to know more? Here’s the working summary of the novel, which is the sequel to “Funnel Vision” and “Tornado Pinball”:
The Storm Seekers trilogy concludes with a new storm-chasing adventure, “Zap Bang.” Expert storm chaser Jack Andreas is called to join a lightning study that will put him in the path of the tornado – and into the secretive world of pilot Maribeth Lisbon, tasked with flying a converted warplane into the zap zone. They intersect with Jack’s undeservedly famous nemesis Brad Treat and down-on-his-luck adventurer Aurelius Zane as the two men host a show that’s trying to get a young couple married in front of a twister. The antics of the TV chasers, the lightning experiment’s eccentric benefactor and a food-truck-driving mystic lead to dangerous complications, as Jack and Maribeth find their most arduous challenge may lie within.
By the way, I think “the zap zone” is to “Zap Bang” what “the suck zone” was to “Twister.” R.I.P. Dusty.Stay tuned for details on the novel. Look on the upper right of the page to subscribe to blog posts by e-mail to get all the latest storm-chasing reports and book news.
I thought I had plenty of time to catch a dawdling line of storms parked over central Florida, but as it strengthened, it accelerated, and I was overtaken by the beautiful shelf cloud I was so desperately trying to catch.
I had to settle for a weaker tail-end shot after a lot of frustrating driving in the severe storm – nature’s car wash – and a video malfunction that was likely human error. Sigh. But the view from the beach was pretty.
Roll over a photo to see its caption, and click on any of the pictures to start a slide show of larger images.
Late last March, I got to chase a great squall line event, too. These kinds of Florida storms are good warm-ups for my Tornado Alley trip, when I get to learn all over again how to juggle cameras, radar, navigation and driving while trying to capture the storms of the Great Plains. I expect to head out in May and will be posting regular updates. I’m happy to note that I’m again among several storm chasers with whom Midland is partnering to show off the capabilities of its cameras. New this year is the XTC-400 HD Wearable Video Camera. I’m looking forward to trying it out, hopefully on a mothership supercell! Wide-angle lenses do amazing things to mothership supercells.
I always want to be better, and I am never satisfied that I’m where I should be in anything, especially in my passions – photography and writing. Storm photography, especially, always leaves room for improvement.
If the photo in itself is great, it might have been shot from a better angle, at a different time, or on a different storm. Because in storm chasing, the first rule is location, location, location. The second is timing. You can be a technically great photographer (I’m still working on that, too) and never be a great storm photographer if you can’t get into the right place at the right time.
In 2013, I saw a lot of extreme weather, most of it packed into less than three weeks during my annual whirlwind tour of Tornado Alley. Yet I still curse myself for not being in better position on some of the storms I saw and for missing others. Such is always the way of the perfectionist; that drive is a blessing and a curse, since perfection is never possible, except, perhaps, in the sweeping curves of a supercell at sunset. I’ll leave perfection to nature and post my imperfections right here.
I’ve put some of my favorite weather photos of 2013 into a video slide show. Watch it here, or if you like, see the photos themselves.
I’ve been neglecting my blog. I’ve been consumed with several projects, including editing two books – it’s so exciting to work with other writers as an editor. That’s how I started my career in journalism, as a copy editor. It always seemed like something I could do while I wrote other things, and I did, though I eventually became a reporter (and videographer and photographer). I’m also working on the third Storm Seekers novel, Zap Bang.
But in the meantime, I’m scheduling events for 2014. Come see me at the Brevard Museum of History and Natural Science on Jan. 12 at 2 p.m. I’ll be sharing stories, videos and photographs from my 17 years of chasing storms in Tornado Alley and Florida.
Happy holidays, everyone. (Oh, yeah, and if you need a gift or a good read for that new Kindle or tablet, won’t you consider Funnel Vision and Tornado Pinball?)