Sky Diary: the blog

 
It’s always difficult adjusting to the routine of regular life when I get off the road. Storm chasing embodies freedom for me – the ability to go wherever I wish, according to nature’s whims, to follow the weather. I am totally immersed in my passion.

I love being at home, too, but my attentions are fragmented. I have to work to earn a living, acknowledge bills and deal with the drudgery that comes from basic life maintenance. (Though laundry follows me even on the road.) At least Florida offers storms in the summer, although the photo opportunities are more scant than you might think, especially for lightning.

The night of June 10, I headed out about 9 p.m. EDT in hopes of catching some lightning in a severe storm that was approaching the east-central Florida coast. Most of the bolts seemed buried in rain, and I was preparing myself for disappointment.

I decided to give it a few more minutes in case it went into anvil-crawler mode, and I was pleasantly surprised by a handful of spectacular crawlers, shot from Rockledge, Florida.

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As I update and migrate posts from the old Sky Diary site, I’m leaving out a few lackluster storm days. But I wanted to include this one because I visited one of my favorite places at sunset.

Some of my chaser friends started the drive home on June 3, 2012, while others considered their options.

I decided to target northwest Oklahoma, from Woodward to Alva. The storms that formed barely moved, but I was delighted to end the day – and my 2012 Tornado Alley chase – in the Shattuck windmill park that inspired the fictional one in my novel Funnel Vision.

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May 29 of this year was an example of a great storm chase that didn’t include catching a tornado. There was a brief tornado with this storm, but from my position, I didn’t see it. Nonetheless, at one point I was incredibly close to a rotating wall cloud – do I get points for proximity? No, I guess not.

 
But the real crown jewel of this chase was a few minutes of incredible structure on this supercell, which I followed with friends, then on my own, from Canton, Oklahoma, toward the Oklahoma City metro.

The night’s finale was lightning around the National Weather Service in Norman.

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I chased on my own on May 28, 2012, starting from Pratt, Kansas, and aiming for just over the Texas border in the Vernon area.

I ended up under towers as they went up. They rapidly became severe.

The first one was pretty, and I let it go to navigate to the storm behind it, which looked more meaty on radar. It was beautiful but gusted out spectacularly.

I sought shelter in Seymour, but the big hail missed me. It always seems to miss me when I have protection from it.

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The May 25, 2012, chase led me to a pretty backlit tornado in north-central Kansas.

I started the day with Dave Lewison, Scott McPartland, Dayna Vettese, Brad Rousseau, and Simon Eng, but by chase’s end, we were scattered to the winds.

We stopped in Great Bend, Kansas, targeting the triple point to the west where warm front and dryline met. We then drifted to Rush Center, where we met lots of chasers, and one tower went up in a hurry. This is the first storm we chased, along with a zillion other chasers, who drove like crazy people through a grid of dirt roads like a pack of rats let loose in a maze.

 
That storm didn’t produce the cheese, but at dark, storms in the line went crazy. Some chasers reported seeing as many as five tornadoes, some at or after dark; makes me feel like a slacker for just finding one.

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Sometimes you’re rewarded by playing the marginal setup when it comes to storm chasing. Our group opted out of the 10 percent tornado risk on Thursday, May 24, as issued by the Storm Prediction Center for Wisconsin and environs. We didn’t like the idea of chasing fast-moving storms in the trees up north.

Instead, chasing with Dave Lewison, Scott McPartland, Dayna Vettese, Brad Rousseau, and Simon Eng, we headed toward eastern Kansas.

After a lot of waiting and hanging out with cows in a sunny meadow in Garnett, Kansas, we were fortunate to catch a late-day storm that was beautifully sculpted and produced tremendous lightning, though it was never severe-warned.

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I’m posting galleries almost every day, but not tonight (i.e. early this morning), because I’m too tired and really didn’t see much today. Except the cows.

The best part of May 23 was dealing with cowboys and girls moving a big herd of cattle down a Nebraska road. Our caravan had to proceed past slowly, listening to the moos and watching the calves trot to keep up with their mothers.

Our hopes for storms today were not realized, as they didn’t quite get to our target area. I checked out a few of the tail-end storms before sunset, but they were unimpressive as they all formed on the cold front and screamed east. I’ve been driving … and driving … and driving …

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My target on May 22, 2012, was initially the South/North Dakota border. Though I knew the best backed winds were farther north, I didn’t think I could get to the Canadian border in time, and I liked the forecast dryline push, among other factors.

However, I thought the grunge would inhibit convection, so I dropped south.

In all, it was a smorgasbord of mostly weak storms, though friends and I saw a skinny shear funnel spinning out of the back of a dying storm.

Amid all this, an unlucky pheasant hurtled at my car and snapped off my CB antenna. (See Daniel Shaw’s video, above.)

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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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