A supercell near Graford, Texas, on May 22, 2025.
We’re back from Tornado Alley! This trip with my storm-chasing partner Alethea Kontis went all too quickly, even though it was two and a half weeks. I sometimes wish I had the freedom to chase for a couple of months at a time, as some chasers do, but I still have a day job (editing books) and a fun job (writing books) and a husband and dogs and a life at home. So I enjoy the trip, and then I look for lightning when I get back home to Florida.
We saw five or six tornadoes, but most of them were in the “murknadoes” category — far away or difficult to see. The best tornado photo I got was probably a shot of a skinny little thing in Missouri, where I’d never seen a tornado before. And why “or six”? The last one was so murky, it’s super hard to see in my video, even though I think it’s there. All of this is to illustrate why seeing tornadoes is not really the most important thing to me when I chase storms, though I’m still frustrated when I miss them. Especially because our chase crew missed a couple of really photogenic tornadic storms due to bad decisions or poor timing. That’s the way the weather works sometimes and the way chasing works as well. Regardless, we still found beautiful storms to photograph.
One of the best things about this season — my 29th — was getting together with good friends whom we’ve barely seen in the past few years. Chasing together was a huge amount of fun. We hit thirteen states and drove more than 9500 miles, so we packed in a lot of adventure.
Alethea and I did several video updates from the road. You can check them out in this YouTube playlist. I’ll be posting more pictures and videos as I go through everything. I certainly got a lot of photos, and I can’t wait to share them with you. Thanks again to everyone who gave so generously to our gas fund! Stay tuned for more reports as I process all the images.