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The 2021 storm season hasn’t yielded a ton of photogenic tornadoes, unless you were around for that April event … and I wasn’t. I go out to the Plains and chase for two or three weeks in the spring, usually in the second half of May. The disadvantage to not living in Tornado Alley is that access to the big storms isn’t easy. But the advantage to a “chasecation” is that all you have to do is chase storms, so you can chase everything, which means you sometimes catch wonderful surprises.

All of this is to say that May 24 actually had one of the most photogenic tornadoes of the season in Kansas, but we missed it. And I didn’t mind all that much, because we saw a spectacular supercell with incredible structure like nothing I’d seen before.

Truth is, that’s one of the appeals of storm chasing: Every storm is like nothing you’ve seen before, only some are more unusual than others. This one qualified.

 
We started the day by retrieving my sunroof hail shield west of Burlington, Colorado, where it had blown off the car in a screaming inflow wind the day before. With it newly secured with several big-ass zip ties, supplementing its heavy-duty magnets, we were ready to chase.

Alethea Kontis and I joined Jason Persoff and Bill Hark, though as usual, we ended up on different parts of the storms for much of the day. Our initial target was what looked like a promising area south of the front in southwest Kansas, where there was some clearing, allowing the sun to heat up the atmosphere and provide fuel for the storms. (The impressive tornado at Selden occurred farther north.) We had to drive through murky fog to get to our target but, in the clear air, were treated to bubbling cumulus and storms in progress.

Our first storm was north of Leoti (where I saw a gorgeous layer-cake supercell in 2016), and it was spinning. It even looked like it might try to put down a tornado, but it couldn’t get its act together. As it went into an area of questionable roads, we went south, east, north and west again to catch up with it. For a moment, northwest of Scott City, it started sucking in inflow and had a big area of serious rotation. I really thought it might drop a tornado – and then the outflow took over, killing the storm’s chances. The bright side: It was gorgeous!

Then it was decision time, and our decision was to go after new storms developing to the southwest. So after more repositioning, we got in front of the storm near Holcomb.

 
This was our storm of the day, thanks to its extraordinary structure – including a highly laminar inflow feature that resembled a shelf cloud (but wasn’t). Sometimes I get too far in front of storms – I’m hail-avoidant, and I love structure. In this case, we almost weren’t far enough from this one. But we got great pictures, stayed ahead of the hail and eventually got south of Garden City to watch it continue its march east. It was tornado-warned, but we didn’t see the reported tornado (this has been the theme of 2021, where you have to be under the meso to lay eyes on quick spinups, even if you’re filming the damn thing the entire time). But it really didn’t matter. This supercell was gorgeous, and a stormy sunset concluded the day.

Roll over a photo to see a caption, or click on one to start a slide show of larger images.

I really don’t love chasing storms traveling at highway speeds, especially when they’re packed with hail. I’m hail-avoidant on a good day, thanks to previous experiences with being pummeled by hail, and with a new car? Well, perhaps I’m even more cautious.

So when Alethea Kontis and I traveled south of Limon, Colorado, on May 23, 2021, to meet a rotating storm hurtling north, we had to make a decision. And personally, I didn’t want to try to keep up while playing dodgeball with what was quickly becoming a line of hail-filled storms. Some folks saw tornadoes who pursued it. Some didn’t. And some took a hail bath while they were chasing it.

We opted to try to catch storms forecast to form farther east, but those storms were never that vigorous or organized in spite of screaming-fast surface winds. Still, we saw a funnel at the end of the original line, and I wondered if there was any circulation on the ground.

The day was redeemed by a fantastic lightning show at Burlington, Colorado. The timelapse in the video is really nifty.

Roll over a photo to see its caption, or click on an image to start a slide show of larger pictures.

May 21 is what you’d probably call a storm-chasing bust, or as I jokingly call it, a “wet bust,” as we did see storms — just nothing spectacular.

We started and ended the day in Sidney, Nebraska, and any storms that formed were screaming north at highway speeds. It was almost impossible to keep up with them. Perhaps the only highlight was seeing some of the pretty rock formations of western Nebraska silhouetted against the storm-tempered light.

I do have a few photos from the day. Roll over one to see its caption, or click on one to see a slide show of larger images.

 

May 20, 2021, Alethea Kontis and I targeted northeastern Colorado, hoping for supercells. Bill Hark joined us for much of the chase. Storms took a long time to get going, and when they did, the lack of roads made it difficult to be on the “right” side of them … but we had a beautiful view of hail and rainbows (or hailbows) from the west.

We also picked up some very large hail on the road, up to three inches in diameter — hail I was very grateful not to drive through.

Roll over a photo to see its caption, or click on one to start a slide show of larger images.

 

After a hearty diner breakfast with friends in Lubbock, Texas, near the Buddy Holly Center, where we checked out a few of the outdoor exhibits, Alethea Kontis and I decided to check out the chance of a storm southwest of us. And there was a storm, which we caught up with near the town of Loop.

This was a slow-burning cell, kicking up dust and roiling underneath. It slowly began to spin and became severe-warned, and it was clear from the radar it was producing a lot of hail, which we had to stay ahead of. We saw gustnadoes and later funnel clouds about the time a brief tornado was reported, though we didn’t see the dust whirl.

By the end of the day, the storm attained a beautiful, laminar appearance at sunset. We photographed it while hanging out with the cows and later drove through the lightning on the way to our hotel. For a marginal day, it was a fun chase.

Roll over a photo to see the caption, or click on one to start a slide show of larger images.

 
What an extraordinary day of seeing nature’s magic in action! Alethea Kontis and I started our storm chase on May 17, 2021, in Seminole, Texas, where we watched clouds bubbling on the dryline. Aggressively growing turkey towers (as seen in the video) suggested that storms were in the offing.

Jason Persoff found us by the side of the road. He was chasing with his son Kai, and we all headed north of town to watch the developing storms.

 

The first ones seemed to deflate quickly, but soon a small LP (low-precipitation) storm began to dominate the area around Brownfield. While a nice cone tornado occurred in the line of storms farther south, this one produced what was essentially a dust whirl under a nub of a funnel. Even though we were filming it, we didn’t see the whirling dust – probably because there was so much other dust in the way.

There’s a lot of timelapse in my video, and this spinning storm sometimes resembled a UFO descending upon the Earth.

 

Brownfield literally has a lot of brown fields, and interestingly, their color was reflected in the bases of the storms. So while I always enhance photographs to a point — I’m leaning more toward artistic photos these days rather than the flat, documentary style — those brown and rust colors are pretty much true to life.

 

The storm moved into the south side of Lubbock and produced a long, white funnel that was just shy of stirring up circulation on the ground — i.e., no tornado.

We watched the storm as it became disorganized but still produced a glorious display of convection, lightning and mammatus clouds at sunset. All in all, it was an exhilarating chase day with lots of photo opportunities.

Roll over a photo to see a caption or click on one to start a slide show of larger images.

 
May 16, 2021, didn’t start as the most promising of storm chases. Alethea Kontis and I targeted an area southwest of Amarillo and played with pretty storms, photographing falling hail and mammatus. We didn’t see much structure, though, and in search of a break, we stopped at a gas station in Hereford. I thought I saw what looked like a wall cloud on a storm to the south and figured we’d take a look after we finished our rest stop. When we got back in the car, I saw the storm had multiple tornado reports on it – all for one, pretty little tornado.

 
Needless to say, we rushed headlong down to Earth, Texas, to check out the storm. Even on the way, the view was spectacular. The sky filled with bubbly mammatus clouds over a perfect LP (low-precipitation) supercell, spinning madly in the late afternoon light. We found the perfect farm road and photographed and timelapsed the storm until after dark. It was hard to narrow down the photos. And the video is totally mesmerizing.

The storm didn’t produce another tornado, but it was uniquely beautiful, especially with the mammatus, which slid away as dusk fell.

One thing that stays true about storm chasing, even in my twenty-fifth season (yes, you read that right), is that it’s really hard to get enough sleep on the road, let alone enough time to publish all the photos and videos I shoot. We drive constantly, and there’s not a lot of time to sit at a computer for hours processing photos and video. To be brutally honest, I still have some chases for which I’ve never posted the photos in previous years. And this year, though I am doing my best to stay current, I’ve already fallen behind. So although I’m writing this on May 20, I’m dating this post May 16, 2021, which is the day the event occurred.

 

May 15, Alethea Kontis and I started the day in Shamrock, Texas, with a visit to the Route 66 landmark U Drop Inn, which we’d photographed the night before. And I learned that Elvis ate there once!

We headed north and west from there, aiming for the western Oklahoma panhandle, with the idea that we could go north into Colorado or catch a storm right there … even though there are precious few roads.

After we hung around Boise City, Oklahoma, in the panhandle for much of the afternoon, storms started to form on the high ground from New Mexico up to Colorado. We could see moisture advecting into our area and storms began to form here, too, in loose clusters. We popped north of the border into Colorado as the lightning began to heat up, photographing hail and rain shafts and the occasional bolt.

Soon enough, we dropped back south into Oklahoma and stayed ahead of the barely moving storms, capturing the structure and lightning. Especially appealing for photography are all the derelict structures in this area, evoking the hard times of the Dust Bowl. They’re so appealing, storm chasers were parked in front of most of them, but we got a few atmospheric photos anyway.

Roll over the images to see a caption, or click on one to start a slide show of larger photos.

Storm chasing 2021 has begun! This is my 25th season chasing storms, though last spring was the first I spent no time in Tornado Alley, thanks to the pandemic. While the world is far from normal, my friend Alethea Kontis and I are vaccinated, taking precautions and on the road.

Today, May 14, was the first taste of a chase for us this season after driving out from Florida. We paused to take photos of golden wheat and a wind farm at Oklaunion, Texas, and kept an eye on storms in the Texas Panhandle.

We caught a little lightning in Shamrock, Texas, home of the beautifully restored Route 66 landmark U Drop Inn. While I’m still hoping to get a truly great lightning photo here someday, this fun little timelapse video and the photos were atmospheric, at least.

I’m already sleep deprived. More later! Meanwhile, you can roll over each image below to see a caption, or click on one to start a slide show of larger images.

I chased lightning storms tonight as they made their way into Brevard County, Florida. Farther west, the storms had earned severe warnings and even a tornado warning.

I headed to the St. Johns River first, seeing a beautiful lightning-illuminated shelf cloud on the way. The shelf had eased over my position by the time I stopped and got a few photos of the lightning as the wind rushed through the tall grasses and palms. It started to rain before better photo opportunities presented themselves, so I headed east and parked in a few locations in Viera to snap the rest of the photos here.

The culmination of the evening was a gorgeous lightning crawler that filled the sky. And let’s not even talk about the bolts I missed!  (There are always bolts I miss.) All in all, it was fun to nab some good lightning. It’s been way too long.

Click on the thumbnails to see a slide show of the larger versions.