Alethea Kontis, left, and Chris Kridler chase a storm in 2023.
Welcome! Sky Diary’s home is now here on my official site, ChrisKridler.com (the main menu is above in case you’re looking for the Chris Kridler home page, author services, books and more). I started chasing storms in 1997 and soon after that developed a website, first on America Online and then on the web. After building Sky Diary for more than twenty years in HTML, it became a bit creaky. I’ve captured the best of SkyDiary.com and transferred it to this site for a more reader-friendly experience. See the latest chase reports here on the blog and in the new index of storm chasing reports.
Cow is our loyal companion on the road.
Alethea Kontis and I are planning our storm chasing trip to Tornado Alley this spring. I’m still posting my photos from 2025. See video and images in the blog, which I update when I’m not working and writing books under my pen name. You can also view chase reports from years past listed by date and event. Read about our adventures here and on social media, including Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube (please subscribe!).
Thanks for your support! Would you like to pitch in for our 2026 storm chasing gas fund? That link takes you to Alethea’s blog, where she has all the options and details on how to get a signed postcard print and stickers from us as a thank-you. Or you can use my Buy Me a Coffee link.
A sunny, windy day on Cocoa Beach provided a beautiful backdrop for the second day of the Air Dot Show on Sunday, April 12. That is, an air show, headlined by the U.S. Navy’s Blue Angels. Huge crowds showed up on the barrier island, concentrated in the main show area in Cocoa Beach. I was at the house of some friends a bit south …
I’ve just come back from a dream bucket-list trip to Iceland. Of course, the problem with any “bucket list” item is that you’re supposed to check it off. It’s done. It’s over. But I would love to go back to the dreamy skies and dramatic landscapes, which my husband and I experienced in all of their winter beauty, from snow-frosted black lava rocks to …
It’s a good thing I have dogs to walk, because when I’m buried in work or hiding in my writing cave, it’s easy to forget that the skies can be beautiful, and looking at them can be really therapeutic. The dogs got me outside early this evening in time to see convective towers creating pileus clouds, a type of lenticular cloud. Pileus are short-lived …
It’s been a weird summer here on Florida’s Space Coast. We’ve had weeks with no rain at all during the height of the supposed storm season, though this past week, we finally had some relief in the form of two gully-washer days in a row. Tonight a couple of isolated storms popped up to our west, moving my way, and I realized I might …
We’re back from Tornado Alley! This trip with my storm-chasing partner Alethea Kontis went all too quickly, even though it was two and a half weeks. I sometimes wish I had the freedom to chase for a couple of months at a time, as some chasers do, but I still have a day job (editing books) and a fun job (writing books) and …
Alethea and I had a target of eastern Missouri in mind May 16. We met up with friends in Chester, Illinois: Dave Lewison, George Kourounis and Scott McPartland. We crossed the river to intercept a line of storms coming toward us. Soon, the tail-end Charlie looked quite promising on radar. And along the way, we saw spectacular mammatus above us. The land is pretty …
Alethea Kontis and I started the 2025 storm chase in a place I’ve rarely chased: Illinois. We’d set out from Florida the day before, and it seemed silly to go all the way west to traditional Tornado Alley when it looked like the best storms might occur in the upper Midwest. En route, we spotted the town of Metropolis on a map. I …
