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 have just returned from Tornado Alley – you can see our chase updates on YouTube (with lots more photos and videos to come from the Alley and from Florida as we get into storm season). I’ve also posted photos and video 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!).
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Today was the second day in a row I got to enjoy a shelf cloud and strong storm (today’s was severe) as it swept through the Space Coast. Even better, we got a lot of rain. My parched plants, after several rainless, extremely hot days, seemed to breathe a sigh of relief – except for the palm tree that shed multiple fronds in the …
I haven’t done much in the way of storm chasing this summer, at least not yet. I’ve caught shelf clouds moving through our neighborhood. One even approached as I caught the bat flight out of our neighborhood bat box, which has become two boxes. The new one is supposed to lure the bats out of the old one, which is falling apart. After …
We knew May 31 was likely to be the last day of our 2026 storm chase in Tornado Alley. We also knew it was likely to be a late show in southeast Kansas, perhaps at sunset or later. So after doing our laundry in Kearney, Nebraska, we dropped south and stopped at the World’s Largest Ball of Twine. As one does. This beloved …
May 30 was another day of chasing scraps — and being in the vicinity of a tornado but not actually seeing it. Alethea and I chased with Jason, heading into Nebraska and following one storm after another. We got separated, and Alethea and I had the pleasure of being gassed by a farmer near Imperial who, without warning, sprayed us and some other chasers with …
On May 29, 2026, Alethea Kontis and I headed east out of Denver with Jason Persoff, hoping to catch landspouts and maybe lightning in Colorado. But the Colorado storms were lackluster, and the chase pulled us into Kansas. At the border, we paused in Kansas, looked west and watched a line of storms gusting out, complete with what looked like twin gustnadoes. And …
On May 27, we woke up at our cute vintage hotel in Santa Fe, enjoyed their lovely fresh breakfast and wrote some postcards, then headed north toward Colorado and Great Sand Dunes National Park. We made a stop in Taos for an oil change and a quick spin around the touristy downtown. As we headed north, I loved the gorgeous drive along the …
Minor weather, or no weather, forces storm chasers to be creative when we don’t have a quick commute home. But sometimes those quiet days yield magical moments. On May 24, Alethea and I followed a sun halo to Liberal, Kansas. Sun halos seem to follow us around – or perhaps we’re just extra sensitive to them. I’m always looking for these rings of …
