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Today was the first real chase day for Alethea Kontis and me in 2019. We’d driven out from Florida a couple of days before. It was Alethea’s second year of storm chasing, and she hadn’t seen a tornado yet. This day would deliver a beautiful one near McCook, Nebraska, that we saw from just south of Culbertson. At times it had a “Wizard of Oz” appearance. We met up with more chaser friends, and later that night, we saw a gorgeous lightning show from Lexington, Nebraska.

We drove about 450 miles this day – some of which was a large and frustrating circle. Pretty much par for the course on a storm chase.

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A morning hailstorm on March 27, 2019, took Florida’s Space Coast by surprise. I saw it coming and got a few shots from U.S. 1 in Rockledge before it clobbered our neighborhood and went on to do even more damage on the beaches.

Two-inch hailstones fell in Indialantic, taking out car and house windows and damaging roofs and stucco. The biggest stones I saw at our house in Rockledge were one-inch-plus, right as the onslaught began. Unfortunately, we also had so much rain – especially since another hailstorm followed the first one – that a little water got into the house.

Once upon a time, I created book covers for my storm-chasing adventures, the Storm Seekers Series. I was striving to capture their cross-genre nature — they include adventure, romance, drama and humor — and I thought it might be cool to be a little different. I’ve learned a lot since then, and one thing that’s clear is that cross-genre covers are just confusing to readers. Another lesson is that “different” isn’t necessarily good. And the third, obvious lesson to anyone selling books these days is that books have to look great at thumbnail size, too, because the majority of sales of ebooks and print books happen online.

I’ve been designing covers for other authors and decided it was time to give some attention to my original trilogy. Using photos I took while chasing storms and a couple of smaller licensed elements, as well as the magic of Photoshop, I created illustrations for the covers that I hope will convey the excitement I still feel when I think about these stories.

I like romance in my adventures and interesting characters who grow (it takes Jack three books to complete the journey from cad to hero). I love action and, of course, the thrill of seeing a supercell come together and produce a tornado. Add elements of a science thriller and some kick-ass women as heroines, and you have the Storm Seekers Series. The first three books are also available in a virtual boxed set.  I say “the first three” because I am contemplating more. In the meantime, I’ve been writing romances under a pen name. More on those later.

The new covers are percolating through the online bookstores.

Want to chase some storms? Check out the books on Amazon or learn more and get links to other stores here.

Alethea Kontis and I targeted southwest Kansas near the Colorado border for our first Tornado Alley chase of the 2018 season. Despite a brief foray into Colorado, we ended up chasing pretty cells from Kansas into the Oklahoma panhandle. We saw multiple funnels but nothing close to a tornado. It was mostly a rainbow chase, but a pretty one. And we got to see Dorothy’s House, straight from Oz.

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March 20 brought severe storms to Florida, so my friend Alethea Kontis and I headed out for a shakedown cruise of my new storm-chasing data setup. Unfortunately, we were chasing in the Orlando area, so we saw a lot more red lights, strip malls and trees than we did storms – but we did get a nice view of a tornado-warned cell on the west side of Orlando. See photos from the chase here.

In the meantime, I’ve added a chase report to the 2017 files here. On May 22 of last year, I chased in New Mexico. The day ended with a gorgeous storm that is much better to describe in photos, not words.

Not long until May – and another chase in Tornado Alley!  Stay tuned.

On this storm chase, Alethea Kontis and I headed west from Brevard County, targeting storms coming ashore on Florida’s west coast. I anticipated catching a cell west or just northwest of Orlando. City chasing is horrible, but we still managed to catch a tornado-warned storm, briefly.

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On this storm chase on May 22, 2017, Kathy Velasquez and I targeted eastern New Mexico and were rewarded with pretty supercells. For the day’s finale, we ran into chaser Bill Hark and observed a spectacular sunset storm with mammatus and a rainbow.

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May 18, 2017, started with a “high risk” forecast issued by the Storm Prediction Center. I hate chasing high risks. I’ve had high-risk busts or missed fast-moving, violent wedges on high-risk days. I’ve never had a great high-risk chase.

At least today, Kathy Velasquez and I targeted northwest Oklahoma, broke the high-risk tornado curse and saw one near Waynoka. There were many pretty sights today, even if all of them were far too brief.

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This was almost the chase that didn’t happen. My car needed a crucial part after overheating, and it wasn’t available anywhere near where I was staying in Perryton, Texas, so I paid a courier to have it delivered – and the wrong part arrived, killing our chance to chase a day with solid tornado potential. Fortunately, saving the day for Kathy Velasquez and myself, our friends Matt Crowther, Betsy Abrams and Chuck Fallis saw our stranded status and picked us up. The chase was on, and we saw a smorgasbord of storms – a tornado, hail, supercells, and sadly, tornado damage.

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I’ve posted one more year-end video: Storms of 2016, consisting mostly of time-lapses of the incredible supercells and tornadoes I saw during my storm-chasing season in Tornado Alley. I doubt I’ll ever see another year like this one. The video is just over two minutes, accompanied by Very Dramatic Music. I hope you enjoy it.

In case you missed it, I previously posted a video slide show of my favorite storm photos from this year, too.