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This is my twentieth season chasing storms. Dude, that’s two decades. I’m pretty sure the older generation of chasers still considers me and my contemporaries post-“Twister” whipper snappers, but seriously. I’ve been around. I’ve seen more tornadoes that I’ve bothered to count (but have had prints made of the photogenic ones). I’ve had cars remodeled by hail and a deer (unrelated to storms, except it happened during one of those trips). I’ve learned stressful situations help forge great friendships. I’ve chased storms with friends and, often, by myself. I remember when you could have a storm all to yourself – a virtual impossibility today as storm-chasing culture, fueled by TV, has exploded (whipper snappers!). Perhaps this is all a way to say that I’m kind of old.

Nonetheless, I just started my twentieth chase trip to Tornado Alley. In between, I chase storms in Florida and take photos of weather (and other things) wherever I am, but every year, this is the time when I fuel my passion and try to capture the incredible storms of the Great Plains with my cameras. Some years have been better than others. This one started with a bang – just one day into my trip, I saw one of the best tornadoes of my career, near Wray, Colorado.

Lots of things have changed in storm chasing since I started, not least of which is the availability of Internet, and therefore radar data, in the car. (Making it SO easy for the whipper snappers.) One of the side effects of all this instant connectivity is that after you have an incredible experience filming a tornado and feel all warm and fuzzy about it (at least when they occur in the middle of nowhere), in a few moments, you see a better photo or angle on Twitter on Facebook and kick yourself for not getting the same thing. There were amazing photos of the big Wray tornado from the other side – better than mine – but it was still amazing to be there.

That’s the joy of life, isn’t it? We all have different experiences, at least when we actually get out and experience things, instead of having them spoon-fed to us on television and in other media. And one of the beautiful things about storm chasing is that every experience is not just unique to the individual, it’s unique to the moment. There will never again be a storm exactly like the one I saw Saturday that produced that dusty tornado. And the challenge will always remain to get the forecast right, to get into the best viewing position, and to avoid being swept away to Oz.

Though I wouldn’t mind seeing Dorothy’s tornado.

Given the epic amounts of driving I’ve done so far just to get into position and then chase on Saturday, I haven’t had time to update my 2016 chase reports yet. But stay tuned to SkyDiary.com, where I’ll have a full report on the Wray tornado soon (which I caught with Jason Persoff), along with photos of other chases. And you can also click through to track my location during active chases. See you under the meso!

While I have many projects in the works – producing videos, writing a novel, helping a client publish a book – I’ve been shooting tons of photos recently. The subjects have ranged from a pinup to a sugar artist to a newspaper preview of Epcot’s International Food and Wine Festival. But as always, I’m drawn to nature, especially weather. And when the weather doesn’t cooperate – I’m still waiting for a great nighttime lightning storm here – there are sea turtles!

I recently accompanied friends as they roamed the east central Florida beaches one evening looking for nesting sea turtles. Our target was the Floridana Beach area, north of Sebastian, a popular area for turtles. We saw perhaps ten that night, under the full moon – at least when it stopped raining. The shoot was incredibly challenging, as watchers are forbidden to use white light to see these protected creatures. A red light is OK, and one of my friends had one, but it was rarely used. So focusing was almost impossible. (Next time, I’ll bring a red light to assist with focus.)

Nonetheless, there was something magical and primal about these beautiful creatures emerging from the ocean to do what they’ve done for thousands of years, and I did my best to capture the experience. See more photos here.

Now that my Tornado Alley season is over, I long to photograph more Florida storms. I chased one on July 6 that produced a spectacular shelf cloud – a type of arcus cloud – with beautifully lit layers. See the photos here.

And send some lightning my way, won’t you?

It was a beautiful evening, with the full moon rising over the ocean and storms heading out to sea.  I set up the camera to shoot automatically while chatting with friends at one of their oceanfront condos (man, I’d love to have that perch for photography all the time!).  The bad thing about that is, when the rain started spitting again, I wasn’t there to wipe off the lens. So while I got a handful of cool shots with lightning, the ones with raindrops were pretty much unlovable. I did my best to repair them, but after a while, they start to look like Impressionist paintings. (Maybe that’s not all bad.)

All that said, the photo above was taken after I’d wiped off the lens. The contrast wasn’t high, as the bolt lit up the cloud/precipitation in the air, and the ocean was pretty dark, but I like the subtlety. Also, I wanted to post it here because the social media outlets, like Facebook and Twitter, always make photos with this kind of subtle light look like crap. I realize the services are compressing them, but it still makes me a bit frustrated.

Want to see more storm photos from this year, including tornadoes? Check out the 2015 storm gallery – as always, a work in progress.

Well, it’s been a heck of a storm-chasing trip, and it’s about to end. I finally have my car back after post-deer-strike repairs, and I may or may not chase one more day before hitting the road for Florida. It’s going to be a long haul from here in Nebraska.

I’ve seen a wealth of dramatic storms this trip. I’ve now posted the full gallery of photos from the May 27 tornadoes at Canadian, Texas. Though if you want to check out the video, it’s included in this post, too. The biggest tornado barely moved, and I shot it over Canadian’s railroad bridge, a foreground I’ve always wanted in front of a storm. I never dreamed it would be a tornado like the one on May 27. Unfortunately, it seriously injured three people at a gas plant outside of town.

For other reports – I’m still adding photos and video – see the 2015 storm chasing gallery.

This has been a tough storm chase so far. My first chase day was May 8, and I’ve just posted photos from that day and May 9 on the 2015 storm chase gallery page. A tough storm chase usually means difficult-to-get storms – though I saw a classic tornado with friends on May 13 in Guthrie, Texas (video above). It can also mean so much driving that I don’t have time to keep up with the blog and gallery, also the case this year. But the worst thing was that I struck a deer while traveling a few days ago, and my car is now in a garage in Nebraska for extensive repairs.

I’ve reunited with friends and continue to tour the Plains. Look for more updates soon.

 

I’m busy trying to meet several work deadlines before heading out west to Tornado Alley, but the east coast of Florida has provided some welcome distractions for a storm chaser this month. We’ve had shelf clouds and lightning, though the lightning was a bit sparse. Let’s just say I spent several hours clicking the shutter for the little bit I got.

Still, there’s nothing more therapeutic than standing by the ocean, listening to the waves and thunder, while trying to capture a lightning bolt with my camera. Check out all the April storm photos here.

Stay tuned – the Tornado Alley chase is coming soon!

It’s been about a year since I chased tornado-warned storms in central Florida. This is one of the most popular videos on my YouTube channel. Of course, I didn’t see any tornadoes, but there was some awesome cloud structure on March 29, 2014, that sure looked like one for a minute.

It’s been mostly quiet in east-central Florida so far this year, with a little severe weather passing through last week. Even in Florida, we’re feeling the effect of a long, cold winter – only here it’s cool and beautiful!

My chaser friends are starting to buzz about the season to come. Will there be an early burst of activity in May? Will the more serious severe weather pattern kick in later? Now the suspense begins. I’ll be posting updates here and at SkyDiary.com, my storm-chasing site, as I chase storms in Florida and in Tornado Alley. Stay tuned.

This wasn’t the best chase year for me, if you define successful storm chasing by how many tornadoes you see. May was a historically slow time for tornadoes, and I wasn’t in the Plains for the three-day tornado-mageddon event that produced the Pilger, Nebraska, tornado and others. Still, I photographed a lot of beautiful storms and skies in Florida and Tornado Alley, and while I did so, I finished my research for “Zap Bang” and published it in September – the third novel in my Storm Seekers trilogy. And even if I didn’t see incredible tornadoes, my characters did!

Here’s a slide show that looks back at this year’s dramatic skies through photography.

It’s launch day for Zap Bang!  That means the third novel in the Storm Seekers trilogy is officially for sale, and I hope you’ll check it out!  Here’s what you need to know:

Giveaway: The Storm Seekers Prize Pack Giveaway is under way through Sept. 22. Enter here or on Facebook. The goodies include signed paperbacks, a very cool captured lightning sculpture, a storm T-shirt and more. Via the giveaway, you can Tweet every day to stack up your entries, too.

Funnel Vision sale: If you haven’t read the books, now’s a good time to grab the Kindle or Nook editions of Book 1 – Funnel Vision – on sale for 99 cents for a limited time.

Goodreads giveaway: Go to this page on Goodreads to register to win an autographed paperback copy of Zap Bang. The entry period ends Sept. 30.

All about Zap Bang: The sequel to Funnel Vision and Tornado Pinball, Zap Bang concludes the Storm Seekers trilogy with action, drama, humor and romance. Here’s the setup:

For tornado chaser Jack Andreas, an invitation to a lightning study means double the danger. As he sees it, what’s not to love? He’s intrigued by the job and fascinated by pilot Maribeth Lisbon, who must fly a research plane into the zap zone. Maribeth suspects he’s trouble, especially when his charms set off all her alarms. In their way are scheming TV chaser Brad Treat and down-on-his-luck adventurer Aurelius Zane, intent on filming a wedding in front of a twister. The eccentric billionaire who funds the study has a secret agenda. And a mystic with a food truck tests them all. As fearsome storms put them in mortal peril, Jack and Maribeth find their toughest challenge may lie within.

Catch some of the adrenaline in the book trailer:

You might also like to read about the playlist I created as inspiration while I was writing the book. For more details about the books and free sample chapters, visit the books page.

To make it easy, here are links where you can buy Zap Bang:
Amazon: Paperback | Kindle
Barnes & Noble: Paperback | Nook
Also at: iBooks/iTunes | Kobo

So there you go. Zap Bang is in the wild, and a wild, lightning-laced adventure it is. I’ll dearly miss writing about these characters, but I hope you’ll enjoy living in their world as much as I have. Happy chasing!

“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 trilogy.