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On some chases, you get the bear. And on other chases, the bear gets you.

You could say Alethea Kontis and I got the bear on May 30 as we chased in New Mexico with Dave Lewison and Scott McPartland. We were northeast of Clayton, and the guys got ahead of us as I spotted a critter climbing on a power pole. It appeared to be a young bear, and despite its blond hair, a young black bear. For safety, we stayed in the car as we stopped and filmed the bear for a few minutes. And because we were in the car, I tried to use my phone to film it, so my pictures kind of stink. (Theme of the day.)

By the time we decided to move on, we damn near missed the tornado. So in this sense, the bear kind of got us.

Scott and Dave had stayed with the storm, watching it develop. We pulled up on a dirt road next to them just as they were about to move closer to the developing tornado. We quickly turned around and resumed heading north. We spotted the fleeting tornado, and I got only a glimpse on my wide-angle GoPro dash cam, resulting in – yes – another crappy image when I cropped it later. And unfortunately, we missed better tornadoes that occurred to our east that we were simply unreachable once we got into this area of almost no roads.

We got almost under the rotation, amid ground-scraping clouds and under the threat of hail, which we escaped by heading east. After that, the day was pretty much a car wash. But it was interesting. I’d never seen a bear while chasing storms before!

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There’s nothing like waking up in Roswell, New Mexico, and not having time to enjoy all the UFO-related tourist traps. At least Alethea Kontis and I had done so before … but this morning of May 29, we had to get on the road and get up to southeast Colorado to reach our chase target. We were in good company, as a flotilla of other storm chasers also thronged the roads once we got there.

We caravanned with Scott McPartland and Dave Lewison, in Scott’s Xterra, which sports shields to keep out hail, as well as Jason Persoff, whose car has a number of honorable hail dents. Jason was one of the lucky chasers on the Campo, Colorado, tornado in 2010, and our target was in the same area in what he recognized as similar conditions.

 
We ended up north and west of Campo, southwest of Pritchett, keeping an eye on storms that showed little organization. But the models called for better dewpoints to accompany moisture-transporting winds from the south, and when they arrived – bingo! The storm we were watching evolved quickly into a rotating supercell.

 

A wall cloud followed, then a big cone tornado as rain wrapped around the mesocyclone. Yes, it was another “maybenado” of 2021, except enhanced images and other chasers’ reports confirm that we did indeed see a tornado. Hey, even if it was in the murk, I’ll take it.

As we tried to keep up with the storm, we bounced on a dusty gravel road through Colorado canyons, headed south across the Oklahoma border. This is a hilly area, and Alethea and I found a couple of high spots to watch inflow streaming into the storm, which produced one apparent wall cloud after another. In spite of radar showing rotation in just the right spot, and suggestive, ground-scraping cloud features, we saw no other tornadoes.

We all met up on the road again as darkness fell. We stopped on the north side of Boise City, Oklahoma, at the Cimarron Heritage Center, which has a fantastic big dinosaur sculpture that was the perfect foreground for lightning. After fun photography (and a very cool timelapse – check out the video), we ran into other chasers in town, compared notes, and wrapped up what was a really fun chase.

In spite of maybe-nadoes.

 

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How perfect to chase a supercell that looked like an alien invader in Roswell, New Mexico.

On May 28, Alethea Kontis and I hit the road in Childress, Texas, with Jason Persoff, Dave Lewison and Scott McPartland. Our first target was the Midland area, but it looked as if the target was shifting south into tough chase territory (rugged hills). And even if Midland had remained the most likely target, the frustrating construction nightmare had us changing direction and heading for eastern New Mexico.

This choice illustrates a typical chaser’s dilemma: Go for the more likely tornado, which may not be that easy to catch or see if it happens because of territory or congestion, or chase the more visible, accessible storms. These days, with so many chasers on the road, I really like secondary targets. And even though we didn’t see a tornado, I am thrilled with what we saw in New Mexico.

 

We were already behind the eight-ball by the time we neared Roswell, with ongoing rotating storms emerging from the higher elevations. Yet we were greeted by an eerie sight – blowing dust, gustnadoes from a dying storm to the north, strange green light and a beast of a supercell in front of us. It was like driving into a sci-fi movie.

 

The storm was full of hail, and Scott and Dave went ahead in their well-shielded car as we dropped south. Except a big hailstone bounced off their hail shield and took out a side mirror. The rest of us hung back but still got into some fun smaller hail and took photos of baseball-size hailstones we found by the side of the road. The trees in that area were shredded by the bombardment.

 

Finally, we saw multiple funnel clouds and were treated to an insanely orange sunset and a double rainbow. The chase concluded with beautiful lightning amid the mammatus at Artesia. And Alethea and I made one more stop on our way back to Roswell for the night, capturing spectacular stars above the retreating lightning storms.

Not bad for a roundabout 559-mile chase.

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After a very late night chasing storms in the northern Texas Panhandle and traveling north to the I-70, Alethea Kontis and I were happy to wake up in the target area on May 26. But when we looked out the window of our hotel in Colby, Kansas, we realized we weren’t going to have a leisurely start. A supercell to our west was already producing beautiful mammatus (so much mammatus this year!), and it was spinning. It was hard to see behind the retail buildings, but we knew we had to chase it.

 

And oh, what a chase it was! This mothership supercell was not only spinning but absolutely beautiful. (The timelapse video says it all.)

This kind of structure is rare — and almost unheard of at 11 a.m.! I was enraptured, and we followed it north of Colby for a while until we had to make a choice and reposition for potentially tornadic storms later in the day.

Those started early, too – one too far southeast of us to catch, and more up in Nebraska. We met up with Bill Hark and Jason Persoff in Oakley and debated which way to go. And ended up not seeing any of the tornadoes. That said, we finished off the day with beautiful skies anyway: bubbling convection, a glorious sunset, and staccato lightning as the moon rose over the storms.

 

It’s hard to be disappointed in a day that offers such a visual feast.

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Storm chasing can be grueling. Sure, it sounds like a vacation. And it’s definitely a break from the routine of regular life, as the whims of nature guide you to your next destination on the open road. But the constant driving means there’s very little rest. Chasing late into the night precludes regular meals. And laundry is a necessity.

So on May 25, Alethea Kontis and I both needed a break – even as we agreed to keep an eye on the atmosphere for the possibility of storms later in the day. We didn’t want to drive too far to get them. Fortunately, waking up in Liberal, Kansas, offered a perfect opportunity for rest, relaxation — and chasing.

We had a real breakfast, for once, at the Pancake House, a fantastic spot in Liberal, with fellow chaser Bill Hark, who joined us later for some tourism at Dorothy’s House and the Coronado Museum. The museum had a lot of interesting artifacts, and Dorothy’s House offered a snapshot of what an early 20th century prairie house might have been like. (What? Dorothy didn’t have indoor plumbing?) And that big warehouse behind Dorothy’s House with the “Land of Oz” sign that always puzzled me — we found out what it was! It’s where the young woman playing Dorothy gave a one-woman show very much in the wild and weird spirit of The Wizard of Oz, leading us through vignettes inspired by the movie.

After a delicious food-truck hamburger, we had to make a decision. We had reservations in Colby, Kansas, that night, which was at least a couple of hours’ drive north, in hopes of chasing quality storms the next day. Bill decided it wasn’t worth chasing marginal storms to our south and headed out. We opted to take a look at the bubbling CU (cumulus clouds), which I found irresistible.

 
Liberal is just north of the Oklahoma state line, so we dropped into the Oklahoma Panhandle and stopped at Balko to shoot the beautiful, white storms as they blossomed south of us in the Texas Panhandle. We couldn’t resist getting closer.

 
Just north of Perryton, Texas, we captured a gorgeous, colorful sunset and then fantastic lightning, which was almost constant — mostly crawlers and in-cloud bolts but a few cloud-to-ground strikes as well. The GoPro nightlapse in the video is super cool.

 

We finally left the storm to drive north, knowing we’d pay for our chase with sleep deprivation. Still, at Alethea’s urging, we paused in Kansas to see if we might capture sprites. Only it was clear we wouldn’t, because a full moon lit up the prairie with an eerie glow that would have washed out sprites in any photos. Plus, we’re still trying to figure out how to shoot sprites! Still, I captured a meteor in one of my photos. Nothing like a shooting star to end a magical day.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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