Chris Kridler
Chris Kridler is a writer, photographer and storm chaser and author of the Storm Seekers Series of storm-chasing adventures.
Chris Kridler is a writer, photographer and storm chaser and author of the Storm Seekers Series of storm-chasing adventures.
We faced a bunch of ongoing convection, including a morning storm over Sidney, Nebraska, where we’d spent the night, and knew the forecast would be messy. We chased storms in northwest Kansas, but they had trouble remaining isolated and maintaining their strength.
Still, the skies were sometimes spectacular, and I got a few photos that made me happy.
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 26, 2014, Peggy Willenberg and I hopped east to Stanton, Texas, from our starting point in Midland to keep an eye on developing storms.
We ran into friends there, including Dave Lewison, Scott McPartland, Robert Balogh, John Mann, Anemometer Steve Barabas, and The Weather Network’s Mark Robinson, Jaclyn Whittal and Michel Millaire, whom we met on and off all day.
We targeted a storm to the northwest and chased it for a while, then switched to a storm developing behind it. It was a day of stunning structure and rotating features, some of them dusty, and while many of these spinups were reported as tornadoes, we didn’t see any tornado I’d hang on the wall of fame.
Roll over a photo to see its caption, and click on any of the pictures to start a slide show of larger images.
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!
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.
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.
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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.
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There’s a swans’ nest in nearby Viera, Florida, that has had spectators gawking for weeks. Its enormous size and spectacular and doting parents were plenty of attraction, until the baby swans were hatched on Friday.
Swans mate for life, barring disaster, and these parents seemed at least as devoted as all the fans crowding around the bank of the retention pond with their cameras and cell phones. Of course, one idiot drove by today screaming “F*** swans,” but there’s no accounting for poor taste. The swans were tolerant of their fan club, though one informed participant warned us that they have teeth in those elegant beaks, and a bite can be quite painful.
As you might guess, the three-day-old cygnets are adorable. Still, their neighbor, a great blue heron, was not impressed.