Josh Groban’s “Brave” is a gorgeous song and quite different from a lot of the rockers on my novel playlist.

Every time I write a novel, I feel a compelling need to come up with a soundtrack for it. OK, officially, it’s a playlist of songs that inspire me and, in my mind, illustrate emotions and plot turns with addictive tunes. These are songs I bought so I could listen to them over and over as I write and revise. Right now, if I could wear a groove in my iPod, there would be one where the “Zap Bang” playlist is.

 
I wrote about my playlist for the last novel, “Tornado Pinball,” in a blog post: “A book soundtrack? Playful playlist enhances novel writing and reading.” Other writers get into scoring their books, too. Deborah Harkness, now at the top of the New York Times bestseller list with “The Book of Life,” shared a playlist on the eve of her release, going so far as to hold back the last few songs so they wouldn’t give away the ending. (As I’m looking forward to reading her book, I’m avoiding looking too closely at her song selection until I’ve done so.)

“Zap Bang” will be published in about a month, before the official end of summer. It will conclude the Storm Seekers trilogy with a new adventure starring storm chaser and scientist Jack Andreas and pilot Maribeth Lisbon, whom readers may recall from her appearance in “Tornado Pinball.” They are called to join a lightning study – Jack on the ground, where his expertise chasing tornadoes comes in handy, and Maribeth in the air, flying an A-10 Warthog converted for civilian lightning research. The National Science Foundation is currently converting an A-10 for similar purposes, though it will be focused on tornadoes and hurricanes, not lightning.

Fortunately, the realm of rock and roll is full of great songs that use lightning and thunder as a metaphor. I’ll selectively mention some that appear in the playlist, starting with Pearl Jam’s “Lightning Bolt.” It’s an absolutely fantastic rocker, and it’s how I see Maribeth – she really is a lightning bolt who’s about to shake up Jack’s life. Opposite in tone is Craig Carnelia’s beautiful song “Flight,” performed by Sutton Foster and Megan McGinnis. It speaks to what I think the younger Maribeth must have felt when she first learned to fly, before the hardships she faced later in life; that kind of yearning may be a feeling she needs to rediscover.

Speaking of rockers, how can you resist The Strypes’ “Perfect Storm”? Hunter Hayes’ “Storm Warning” gives the playlist a needed country inflection; after all, Tornado Alley is country music central. And “I Don’t Want To (Love You)” by TAT is a frenetic, humorous expression of a feeling many of us can identify with.

The list dips into classic jazz with Johnny Hartman’s “Stairway to the Stars,” which is mentioned in the text. Saxy tune. Pun intended.

Josh Groban’s “Brave” is a transcendent song (complete with a thunder reference) that I see as being about emotional bravery, whereas “No Fear” by The Rasmus has a great chorus that intones “destination darkness” – a place our characters must face. Now, don’t read those lyrics too closely, because if you do, you’ll probably conclude it’s about becoming a vampire. I swear, there are no vampires in my storm-chasing novels. But I dig the dark, urgent tone of the song. And Foo Fighters’ “Learn To Fly” puts me in Jack’s head at a certain point in the story. No spoilers …

I conclude the playlist with a couple of evocative Ryan Farish instrumentals, including the aptly named “Beautiful.” If the Storm Seekers novels, which I consider quite cinematic, were ever made into films, I’d love to see one of his transporting pieces on the soundtrack. Cue the closing credits . . .

And stay tuned. “Zap Bang” is coming very, very soon!

“Into the Storm” is in theaters, and one might call it the first real theatrical film about storm chasing since “Twister” in 1996. I wouldn’t, however, because the film’s “storm chasing” couldn’t be farther from the real thing. This is disaster porn, plain and simple.

In sensibility, Steven Quale’s film is closer to a TV movie, with a grim main plot (tornadoes terrorize a small town, especially its teenagers, while the incompetent “chasers” try to film and survive them) and one outlandish but funny subplot (YouTube-loving rednecks chase the tornadoes, slapstick-style).

What does “Into the Storm” have going for it? Incredible computer graphics. These are among the best stormy special effects I’ve ever seen. But they are supported by a story and characters that inspire more unintentional laughter than suspense and thrills. Cool tornado sequences do not equate to great drama or exciting action. There’s a lot of drudgery between the tornadoes, and even the deaths are highly predictable.

“Twister” was no masterpiece, but it did have a sense of humor, memorable characters and dialogue, and a compelling story arc. The script in “Into the Storm” lacks those, but it may be remembered (by storm chasers, at least) for its loopy inaccuracies. When the supposedly multi-degreed researcher (Sarah Ann Callies) says the “systems” are too chaotic to track, or when said researcher/forecaster is taken completely by surprise by hail and tornadoes and gets her warnings from television, or when the radar displayed on their wall of monitors doesn’t match the weather, or when the chase team keeps talking about seeing a “vortex,” or when the team just sits around waiting for storms that supposedly are already in progress, you have to wonder what kind of stupid chasers they are. It’s especially disheartening that Callies’ character, the one major female role in the film, is such a dolt. But nobody in this film can be called a genius. With a $50 million budget, could the filmmakers not have taken a storm chaser out to dinner and asked a few questions about how storms and chasing really work?

The chasers drive around in a tank reminiscent of Sean Casey’s Tornado Intercept Vehicle, helmed by a jerk named Pete (Matt Walsh). But like all of the characters, he is barely developed and kind of bland. I can’t blame the actors entirely. They didn’t have much to work with. Perhaps most sympathetic is Richard Armitage as the dad/school official who tries to get everyone to safety. He’s dour but believable.

Credibility in the film is further strained by its halfhearted documentary style. The story is supposedly told through various video camera footage — including excruciatingly long speeches by teens in peril – but not convincingly so.

By the time the “eye of the tornado” appears, some audience giggling is inevitable. I hated to laugh at all of these earnest folks, especially when some of the movie seems inspired by (one might say exploits) the deadly Joplin tornado, but I fear it’s just too silly to take seriously. And it really wants you to take it seriously. If you added some sharks, it would be a different story.

Chris Kridler is a storm chaser who once wrote movie reviews for The Baltimore Sun and has penned her own storm-chasing adventures, the Storm Seekers Series.

Storms in Brevard County, Florida, on August 9 grew strong quickly, forming scalloped shelf clouds and dumping prodigious amounts of rain.

Rain forced me to cancel a portrait shoot, so I dashed across the Indian River Lagoon and shot the storm coming in over Cocoa, Florida, at 5:02 p.m.

I got ahead of the storms by rushing to Merritt Island and shooting back east at Cocoa, then continuing east to Cocoa Beach and ultimately Port Canaveral. 

Roll over a photo to see its caption, and click on any of the pictures to start a slide show of larger images.

One of the reasons I moved to Florida in 1999 was to enjoy the lightning storms. I was living in the mid-Atlantic and had gotten into chasing storms in Tornado Alley two years earlier. I looked into moving to Oklahoma, but career and geography conspired to bring me to Florida. The one thing I didn’t realize was that so few of the lightning storms in the Sunshine State are at night. Most happen during the day. And getting to a storm an hour away in Florida is not nearly as easy as getting to one in Tornado Alley. Why? It’s not just because of the traffic and road network. It’s because Florida storms tend to be short-lived; by the time you hit the road to catch that storm 45 miles away, it’s faded to a misty memory.

This past week was par for the course – and the one night a little lightning hung on after dark on the east coast, where I live, I didn’t get to it until it was nearly gone. But I’ve had a crazy smorgasbord of storms upon which to feast, yielding a nice photo or two almost every day. Florida has amazing striated shelf clouds, formed by cool air pushing out from thunderstorms. And boundary collisions tend to cause quick funnels and tornadoes; I was at a small get-together at a friend’s house when a funnel cloud (not a tornado, because it didn’t connect with the ground, at least that we saw) formed beyond their neighbors’ houses. My camera got soaking wet as I ran out in the rain in my bathing suit to try to shoot photos. What a week!

Meanwhile, I’ve been working late on revisions and editing of “Zap Bang,” the final novel in the Storm Seekers trilogy. I’m thrilled to be wrapping up the story and heartbroken to be leaving these characters. It’s coming very soon!

A note for e-mail subscribers: I am phasing out the Feedburner e-mail service, since Google no longer supports it and I can no longer access it. Please use the link to the right on my site to sign up for the new e-mail list; if you get two copies, please unsubscribe from the Feedburner e-mail. I’m sorry for the inconvenience, but I’m at the mercy of the vagaries of the mega-corporation.

A line of storms formed in east-central Florida on July 14, pushing out an outflow boundary that created a beautiful striated shelf cloud.

I shot photos of it over Cocoa Village, in downtown Cocoa, and then raced east to catch it again at the Cocoa Beach Pier.

Roll over a photo to see its caption, and click on any of the pictures to start a slide show of larger images.

Nature paralleled the unnatural on Wednesday, July 9, 2014, when a beautiful striated shelf cloud moved over Cocoa, Florida, the Indian River Lagoon and the bridge over the S.R. 520 Causeway. It originated from a barely-moving severe storm farther west that sent out an outflow boundary. The shelf cloud almost mirrored the curve of the bridge as it went overhead.  This was a “gentle(wo)man’s chase,” just a few miles from home, as I followed the slow-moving line of severe storms.

Roll over a photo to see its caption, and click on any of the pictures to start a slide show of larger images.

I had a chance to see Cocoa, Florida’s July 4th fireworks from a height on Friday and snapped several photos. They were taken looking toward the S.R. 520 bridge over the Indian River Lagoon. Here are a few of the more interesting explosions. Happy summer!

Off and on for a few years, I’ve been trying to perfect a time-lapse of a night-blooming cereus flowering, but it’s a challenge, because each bloom flowers for only one night. Each time I’ve used a different camera and different lighting. I’ve blown out the image with too much light, so this year I used a smaller light. But I had to use a wide-angle waterproof camera because it was raining in our part of central Florida, so sacrifices were made in terms of quality and zoom. You can see the flowers buffeted by the wind as a shower whisks through.

Still, it’s always fascinating to see these beautiful flowers unfold for their one-night-a-year show. Click the gear symbol in the lower left after you hit play and choose 720HD for best quality.

On June 5, 2014, I started my day in Scottsbluff, Nebraska, and decided to target southeast Colorado. This would be my last day of chasing in Tornado Alley for this season.

I made a stop in Limon, running into Charles Edwards of Cloud 9 Tours, and evaluated data before committing to the target. The first storm I chased was near the southernmost town in Colorado, Branson.

The severe storms led me into the dramatic topography of northeastern New Mexico and then the Texas Panhandle, when lightning lured me to pause during my all-night drive, as I was starting my trip home to the east coast.

I was especially delighted to get shots of a storm looming over the Route 66 landmark U Drop Inn in Shamrock, Texas. The beautiful wee-hours storms were a satisfying way to end a trip of meager setups and an insane amount of driving.

Roll over a photo to see its caption, and click on any of the pictures to start a slide show of larger images.

 
On June 1, 2014, I met up with fellow chasers Dave Lewison, Scott McPartland, Anemometer Steve Barabas, and The Weather Network’s Mark Robinson, Jaclyn Whittal and Michel Millaire.

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.