I saw the wedge tornado at Bennington, Kansas, on May 28, but I wasn’t close enough. I would have moved closer had I known it would be on the ground for so long. This was a hard day and a harder lesson.

I chased today with Greg Stephens, Dayna Vettese and Brad Rousseau, Mark Robinson and his crewmate Jaclyn Whittal, Scott McPartland, Dave Lewison, Bill Hark and Robert Balogh. Our target was central Kansas, in the Salina area, in a day of many iffy targets for storms.

This target seemed the best of the lot (and the most reachable from our morning position in western Kansas), and conditions seemed more and more favorable as the day went on and we approached the target area near Salina. Storms fired in various targets this day, but this was the whopper, producing a 40-minute wedge tornado that barely moved.

Of course, we didn’t know it would barely move, so some of us had a more distant view than others as we got into position to intercept it. I’m one of those. But since it was my first wedge tornado in 17 years of storm chasing, I still count it as a pretty productive day, especially since no towns were struck.

Note: This post has been updated with information and images from my old Sky Diary site.

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I chased on May 27 with Greg Stephens, Dayna Vettese and Brad Rousseau, Mark Robinson and his crewmate Jaclyn Whittal, Scott McPartland, Dave Lewison, Bill Hark and Robert Balogh.

We started our chase near Plainville, Kansas, choosing to ignore the messy rotating storm cluster to our north near the Nebraska border that eventually produced tornadoes. We split up during the chase, which was a fairly typical non-tornado chase – pretty storms but no major drama.

Still, it made for interesting video, especially the mesmerizing time-lapse of the retreating aforementioned rotating storms at sunset.

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One of the most impressive storms of my 2013 Tornado Alley chase didn’t produce a tornado, though it was tornado-warned. That’s because it was spinning like a top. The May 26, 2013, supercell near Arcadia, Nebraska, was LP, or low-precipitation – not much rain, but amazing structure. It also had one of the best lightning shows I’ve ever seen.

I chased this day with Greg Stephens, Dayna Vettese and Brad Rousseau, Bill Hark, and Robert Balogh. We started the day in North Platte, Nebraska, dropped south to McCook and then headed back up to North Platte, hoping storms would fire along the dryline push. There was a high risk of a blue-sky bust, but just when we were about to give up, a couple of storms exploded.

The storm I chose became an incredibly beautiful low-precipitation, sculpted supercell, with a fantastic lightning show after dark. I got more lightning shots from this one storm than I have taken in entire years.

Note: Post updated with images and details transferred from my old Sky Diary site.

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Normally I don’t go around quoting myself, but I couldn’t help but think of a line from my novel Tornado Pinball when I saw the rotating updraft spinning above our heads during a storm chase May 24: “The rotation above the road drew him in, a swirling gateway to infinity, all the circles of nature, a tunnel to the past.”

I chased today with Greg Stephens, Dayna Vettese and Brad Rousseau. We started the day in Liberal, Kansas, and targeted northeast Colorado and the dryline as a trigger for storms. It took a while for them to get going, but we saw some extraordinary motion and lightning.

This storm, which we chased from northeast Colorado into Nebraska, was filled with high-based rotation, shear funnels and lightning and eventually was severe- and tornado-warned. But the “cinnamon bun” swirl above our heads was its most beautiful and entrancing moment. The video includes time-lapses of it. 

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I chased storms on May 20 with Dave Lewison, Scott McPartland, Dayna Vettese and Brad Rousseau, Greg Stephens, and Mark Robinson and his Weather Network crewmate Jaclyn Whittal. We started the day in Norman, Oklahoma, and chose southern Oklahoma as our target, not realizing that a devastating tornado would strike so near to our starting point later in the day.

We saw a tornado, too, but there was no joy in storm chasing this day when we heard the news about Moore being struck.

The May 20 Duncan, Oklahoma, tornado was small, and the condensation funnel didn’t extend all the way to the ground, but we had confirmation that the circulation did indeed contact the ground. After we saw it, we saw the radar from the Moore, Oklahoma, tornado and knew we had missed a large and devastating tornado. A lot of the storm chasers (and there are so many these days) were in our target area and missed it, too.

Note: Post updated with images transferred from the old Sky Diary site.

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I can’t believe I’ve only been in Tornado Alley for three days. I’m already seriously sleep-deprived, and I haven’t had time to edit any of the video I’ve shot. (Note/edit: Video has been added!)

But I did just post photos from yesterday’s epic chase with friends, from a storm near Ness City, Kansas, to the last two tornadoes from a storm west of Larned, Kansas, near Rozel – both on the ground at once!

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A shelf cloud in Nebraska. Photo by Chris Kridler, ChrisKridler.com

I chased today with Greg Stephens, Dayna Vettese and Brad Rousseau, eventually meeting up with Dave Lewison and Scott McPartland in Valentine, Nebraska, in the vicinity of our initial target.

Storms fired and were more pretty than violent, especially against the backdrop of north-central Nebraska’s rolling hills. A shelf cloud developed, and down the road from the group, I watched it march across the plains.

On the second day of my Tornado Alley sojourn, meant to get me in position for subsequent chases, I managed to catch up with a cluster of pretty storms in northwest Kansas.

The storms were, at one time, severe, but when I photographed them in a gorgeous twilight, they were simply prolific lightning producers.

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Sometimes social obligations make it hard to chase storms, but a nasty severe storm came to me on Sunday, May 11, 2013, in Rockledge, Florida. This was a wicked line that approached Brevard County, on Florida’s east coast, from the west.

I was at a party and went outside to shoot photos of the approaching storm. The lightning became very intense as it neared, so I retreated from the home’s driveway to the alcove at the front door. Note: This is not a safe shelter from lightning, but I felt less exposed there.

I shot a little video, then switched to stills, just before a lightning bolt hit a tree just on the other side of the home’s garage. The flash and bang were instantaneous – what storm chasers call a “flang” – and it scared me thoroughly. I was lucky it didn’t hit any closer.

Afterward, I got photos of the palm tree that was damaged. There was a hole blasted in its trunk.

The storm became severe-warned and caused a lot of minor wind damage.

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You can tell it’s been a dull storm-chasing season for Tornado Alley, at least so far. Storm chasers on social media are posting a lot of “from the vault” and computer-model-related posts and not much in the way of recent storms.

In the last year – May 2012 to April 2013 – there have been just seven reported tornado-related deaths in the United States, Harold Brooks reports on NOAA’s U.S. Severe Weather Blog. That’s the lowest 12-month number since 1899.

What’s good for the public in terms of gentle weather is pretty dull for weather fanatics – who would prefer to see tornadoes in unpopulated areas – but Italy is picking up the slack. Several tornadoes struck in the Emilia-Romagna region in northern Italy on May 3, a date that shall go down in infamy in the States as the anniversary of the deadly 1999 outbreak, including the F5 that devastated Moore, Oklahoma.

I’ll be heading out to Tornado Alley soon, I hope. There will likely be interesting storms there this week, but I’m still waiting for a more active period … or I will take my chance on what comes, perhaps as soon as next week.