Alethea Kontis, left, and Chris Kridler chase a storm in 2023.
Welcome! Sky Diary’s home is now here on my official site, ChrisKridler.com (the main menu is above in case you’re looking for the Chris Kridler home page, author services, books and more). I started chasing storms in 1997 and soon after that developed a website, first on America Online and then on the web. After building Sky Diary for more than twenty years in HTML, it became a bit creaky. I’ve captured the best of SkyDiary.com and transferred it to this site for a more reader-friendly experience. See the latest chase reports here on the blog and in the new index of storm chasing reports.
Cow is our loyal companion on the road.
Alethea Kontis and I went storm chasing in Tornado Alley in the spring of 2025. In 2024, in spite of hitting a lull in a very active season, we not only photographed the Northern Lights but caught several spectacular storms. See video and images in the blog, which I update when I’m not working and writing books under my pen name. You can also view chase reports from years past listed by date and event. Read about our adventures here and on social media, including Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube (please subscribe!). Thanks for all the fantastic support of our gas fund!
It’s a good thing I have dogs to walk, because when I’m buried in work or hiding in my writing cave, it’s easy to forget that the skies can be beautiful, and looking at them can be really therapeutic. The dogs got me outside early this evening in time to see convective towers creating pileus clouds, a type of lenticular cloud. Pileus are short-lived …
It’s been a weird summer here on Florida’s Space Coast. We’ve had weeks with no rain at all during the height of the supposed storm season, though this past week, we finally had some relief in the form of two gully-washer days in a row. Tonight a couple of isolated storms popped up to our west, moving my way, and I realized I might …
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 …
Alethea Kontis and I started the 2025 storm chase in a place I’ve rarely chased: Illinois. We’d set out from Florida the day before, and it seemed silly to go all the way west to traditional Tornado Alley when it looked like the best storms might occur in the upper Midwest. En route, we spotted the town of Metropolis on a map. I …
While Alethea and I bide our time waiting for an optimum departure for the Plains for our Tornado Alley storm chase, Florida’s Space Coast has finally had some rain. It’s been ridiculously dry here, so any rain is welcome. It’s been kind of fun to have lightning to go along with it. This storm on May 9 wasn’t particularly powerful, and most of …
We desperately need rain here on Florida’s Space Coast, and our neighbors got some today. But the storms avoided our house and all our thirsty plants. I didn’t try to chase them until I saw an “electric brain” of a storm sparking offshore, so I headed out to try to snap a few photos. The thing about Florida storms is that they usually don’t …
A line of lightning storms moved through the Space Coast tonight ahead of the launch of a Falcon 9 rocket with four civilian astronauts aboard. I was surprised the weather wasn’t an issue, but the rocket went high and south in a hurry. Still, I caught some lightning in the line in my time-exposure shot of the launch. The streak went right through …
