I’ve done almost nothing but drive for the past two days – I’ve made it from Rockledge, Florida, to North Platte, Nebraska. That’s more than 1700 miles. And Tuesday, it looks like I’m headed into the Dakotas for a slight chance of severe storms … but I’m not sure if it’ll be North or South Dakota. It will depend on my sleep, my driving, and of course, my forecast in the morning.

I stopped for several minutes outside Jeanette, Arkansas, on May 20 and took some lightning photos on my way to chase storms in Tornado Alley.

On May 21, I was treated to a beautiful Kansas sunset as I drove to Nebraska. The clouds are actually blowoff from a distant storm over North Platte.

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I’m tired … it’s late … and I have to get my sleep schedule turned around before my epic drive to Tornado Alley in a couple of days. But I had to post images and video from Thursday’s chase of a beautiful severe storm in Brevard County, Florida.

 
I went after a severe storm that was heading southeast out of Titusville, Florida, the evening of May 17, 2012. It produced a beautiful shelf cloud and a lot of turbulent motion.

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Storms were vigorous and numerous on May 15, 2012, in central Florida, including Viera, Cocoa and Titusville. I saw some interesting features, including rotation on a small tower.

I also caught up to a tornado-warned storm near Titusville, but I didn’t see much except a lot of green color and vicious rain and lightning.

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You know, I really thought this would be one year when I wouldn’t have to cut my storm-chase trip to Tornado Alley short because of my schedule and miss some big event. I thought I’d be chasing by the first week of May and could even go a couple of weeks into June if the pattern remained stupendous. Only it’s stupendous in a totally different way. After really early season events that I couldn’t chase because of other commitments, the pattern has afforded very few storms this month, and I’m still in Florida, playing the waiting game. Chances are, the action could pick up again at the end of this month, or in June, but I have to be back in Florida mid-June for, yes, obligations. Because I just can’t block off two or three months for chasing storms at this point in my life.

What’s giving me the mopes? Long-range computer models. There’s an old saying in chasing: Live by the models, die by the models. You can’t rely on them too much. But they’re the next best thing to a crystal ball, so models, along with a feel for climate fluctuations and recurring patterns, and instinct are about all we have to go on. I’ve been obsessing over the GFS and the European models, which still haven’t figured out the end of the month but have been trending toward a ridge, or at least an extreme northern path for the business end of the jet stream in a possibly zonal pattern, with embedded short-wave troughs that may produce weather. Occasionally a GFS run will pull a trough (desirable for storms) out of its goodie bag, but it’s all fiction past a few days. No matter what I say now, this outlook may change in five minutes.

May 12 is what my chaser friends call “the anniversary.” For a small group of us, it marks the anniversary of two big events – the May 12, 2004, Attica, Kansas, tornadoes, one of which destroyed a house less than a half-mile away from us, and the May 12, 2005, tornado and hail barrage near South Plains, Texas. I’ve been pulling choice video from my archive and posting it to my YouTube channel. Today, I’m posting a 10-minute, raw-video cut of the Attica, Kansas, tornadoes. Dave Lewison was in my car, and Pete Ventre was driving Scott McPartland in Scott’s car. The video is amusing for its stressed-out dialogue as we try to avoid baseball-size hail, maintain position without getting too close, and narrowly miss two satellite tornadoes that briefly blocked our escape route. There’s also a sighting of the early TIV, Sean Casey’s Tornado Intercept Vehicle.

Meanwhile … it’s pretty quiet. I’ve done almost all the tinkering my chase gear requires. I’m working on the sequel to my novel “Funnel Vision,” which at least affords the excitement of fictional storm chasing. But it’s May. We should be experiencing the real thing.

Storms popped up all over east-central Florida on May 7, 2012, spawning lightning and downpours, but few retained any structure or isolation for long.

Yet one storm in West Melbourne had a nice, rain-free base for a while, along with impressive lightning. The video shows its evolution.

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I’m in the mood to play with photos, since I’m anticipating my upcoming storm-chasing safari. While I await a better weather pattern, I’m keeping occupied with photo opps at home in Florida, like this pretty sunset Sunday amid dying storms over the St. Johns River. We desperately need any rain we can get, and I’m hoping Monday will be more productive.

But since it was beautiful for most of Sunday, we went to a local car show with friends. Vintage Kulture’s event in Cocoa Village was a feast for the eyes and imagination. I love shooting the retro-futuristic lines of these cars and giving them even more vintage flavor in processing.

I’ve chased storms every year, to some degree, since 1997. By chasing storms, I mean I’ve headed to Tornado Alley to chase the big storms, the grand, rotating supercells that draw me out there year after year. But I’ve always come from the East Coast, and that’s where the challenge lies when scheduling a storm chase.

A few people have the freedom and money to fly out to chase whenever a system looks really good. Or they already live in Tornado Alley; several years ago, I looked into moving to Oklahoma from Maryland, but I never really found the perfect job and ended up moving to Florida’s Lightning Alley instead. At least we have some picturesque storms here, and some spectacular lightning, albeit not as frequent as a photographer would like.

So I’m still having to plan my chasecations, as we outlanders call them. At least I don’t have a strict job-regimented schedule now, but I am working as a freelancer, so I still have to schedule work and think about the long-term costs of a chase trip. And that meant I couldn’t go to the Plains for the April 14 outbreak. What all these dreary details boil down to is that I set May aside for my chasecation, but now, the pattern stinks for storms.

Oh, yes, there will be storms. There might even be a few astounding ones, and a few tornadoes, in these first couple of weeks of May. But the outlook for the next couple of weeks doesn’t promise a great deal of severe weather, especially not in the Southern Plains, which is ideal chasing territory. So I’ve put off my chasecation until the pattern improves, in hopes that the jet stream will dip down to where it’s supposed to be in spring.

Waiting is actually a horrible gamble, because some years, the pattern shuts off storms completely. You get the summer “death ridge” or equivalent, and you might as well just stay home. So I’m hoping my gamble pays off as I sit at home, watching storms develop here and there, and watching the computer models evolve. I’m ready for the chase, but the atmosphere isn’t ready for me.

“Chasing Reality” visited Muskogee, Oklahoma, without me last weekend, during the Bare Bones International Film & Music Festival. Last fall it won best documentary at the Melbourne Independent Filmmakers Festival here on Florida’s Space Coast. Now that it’s traveled a bit, I’ve posted it on YouTube (below).

I made this film in one day, or over several years, depending on your perspective. I used some of my archival footage of storms and tornadoes, but I also interviewed a group of friends and chasers during a typical marginal chase day that took us from Kansas into southern Nebraska. I wanted to show how much driving, bad food and waiting around were involved in getting those few seconds of amazing footage – and that not every chase is awesome or extreme. But I still think every chase is awe-inspiring, in its way, because I love the freedom of following the weather and exploring the beautiful Great Plains.

Here’s the movie. It’s just over 14 minutes. Don’t forget to check the quality setting – the gear symbol in the lower right of the movie window – and choose 720p HD if your connection allows it.

I’m getting ready to go storm chasing in May … and will be going a bit mad over the next few days during an expected outbreak of severe weather in Tornado Alley. (Do you have your weather radio yet?) So as therapy – and as part of a flurry of updates of my storm-chasing-focused sister site SkyDiary.com – I’ve put together a little video from an interesting chase on May 18, 2010, in the Texas Panhandle. Near Dumas, I saw one tornado. I also saw a huge, rotating wall cloud that was dragging its butt on the ground, but from my perspective, I couldn’t confirm a tornado. This storm was a perfect example of one that can inspire all kinds of specious tornado reports, thanks to all the dangling scud clouds, yet definitely warranted tornado warnings.

May is a month away – and for me, that means my annual Tornado Alley trip is about that far away, too. I’ll likely head out with the first good system, but it will be after May 1, when I am speaking to the Camera Club of Brevard about photographing storms and storm chasing.

Saturday was a good warmup. That’s when Jim Leonard played host to a storm chaser gathering in Boynton Beach, Florida. There was good food, lots of good storm video, and lots of tale-telling, of course. Enhancing the experience were some pretty little storms that rolled through.