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Maybe it was a longing to chase in more “traditional” parts of Tornado Alley after so much time in New Mexico, or just to spend a little time in Kansas, but we drove on up through Kansas from Liberal to southern Nebraska to chase a pretty little low-precipitation storm on May 29, 2023.

 

It wasn’t much. But the scenery was beautiful, and the cows were amusing. And we’re hard-core, I guess!

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This is turning into the roadside America storm-chasing tour. After dodging the town goose in Oshkosh, Nebraska (see pic), we had a chance to visit Carhenge in Alliance today.

Well, we really made that chance by going out of our way to be here, but I love this spot, and Alethea had never seen it before. And we wanted to see something cool before driving all the way across the state to get into position for the next chase.

Jim Reinders, an English native, and his family built this quirky replica of Stonehenge as a memorial to his father in 1987. The site is now known as a “car art reserve” with additional sculptures along the same theme.

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We’re making the most of the storms, such as they are. On our first real chase day of 2022, we visited the World’s Largest Ball of Sisal Twine in Cawker City, Kansas. The delightful Linda Clover, caretaker of the twine, happened to be in the pavilion in the center of town helping a pair of newlyweds add twine to this roadside landmark. So I squealed in delight because we had a chance to add twine, too!

I’ve added twine to the ball before, many years ago. So it was a thrill to do it again – even “setting the record” for a brief time. And Alethea, on her first visit, got to add twine, too. This seemed like a good omen! There’s also a delightful restored vintage gas station across the street now where you can book a night’s stay.

From there, we headed up into western Nebraska, making a stop in Sutherland. There’s a huge pedestrian walkway structure built over the many train tracks that go through here, so we climbed up and watched the clouds and hoped for a train. And we got one! I waved, and the conductor tooted the whistle, as you can see in the video.

Then we traveled on to Lake McConaughy for a pretty view of storms as they rolled over the lake. Beauty and zen and lightning – it’s all in the video. We ended the day in Ogallala, Nebraska, where the awesome UFO water tower would be a great foreground for lightning, if only the lightning had hung together. Oh, well. It was a really fun day.

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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.

Today was the first real chase day for Alethea Kontis and me in 2019. We’d driven out from Florida a couple of days before. It was Alethea’s second year of storm chasing, and she hadn’t seen a tornado yet. This day would deliver a beautiful one near McCook, Nebraska, that we saw from just south of Culbertson. At times it had a “Wizard of Oz” appearance. We met up with more chaser friends, and later that night, we saw a gorgeous lightning show from Lexington, Nebraska.

We drove about 450 miles this day – some of which was a large and frustrating circle. Pretty much par for the course on a storm chase.

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After a difficult couple of days dealing with car issues after hitting a deer, I got a rental and did a mini-chase in Nebraska between McCook and Holbrook on May 16. I waited for middling storms to make their way to me, and they formed a beautiful if short-lived layered shelf cloud.

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On May 15, I chased with Mark Robinson, Jaclyn Whittal, Michel Millaire, Matt Grinter, Brad and Dayna Rousseau, Dave Lewison, Scott McPartland and Stephen Barabas. We began the chase on storms in southwest Nebraska, just north of the Colorado line.

While I got some beautiful lightning and enjoyed the chase, the trip “home” to the hotel ended in disaster when I hit a deer in the Middle of Nowhere, Nebraska. It’s a long story, but after the nightmare of dealing with AAA (who eventually lost my car – yeah, I found it again), the police and the crazy scene, I got to a hotel in the wee hours with the help of friends (special thanks to Dan Shaw and Greg Ansel), and my car went into a shop the next day in North Platte. After we found it. Seriously, it’s a long story.

To top things off, I had a horrible cold and spent the weekend worried my car would be totaled. It wasn’t, but it had to be held hostage for repairs. A rental car got me back on the road.

That said, the pictures are nice. Roll over each image to see the caption, or click on one to see a slide show with larger photos.

 

On May 19, 2014, Peggy Willenberg and I finally got into the range of chaseable storms after driving for two days from South Carolina to begin our storm chase.

When we reached the Nebraska panhandle, prospects didn’t look great for severe storms, and near Scottsbluff, we watched several small cells pop up and die as they moved northeast out of Wyoming. But patience was rewarded as we finally got a gorgeous UFO-like supercell, complete with hail, blowing tumbleweeds, lightning and a mothership structure.

The lightning was accompanied by sparkling stars. You can see the railroad tracks in the foreground.

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One of the most impressive storms of my 2013 Tornado Alley chase didn’t produce a tornado, though it was tornado-warned. That’s because it was spinning like a top. The May 26, 2013, supercell near Arcadia, Nebraska, was LP, or low-precipitation – not much rain, but amazing structure. It also had one of the best lightning shows I’ve ever seen.

I chased this day with Greg Stephens, Dayna Vettese and Brad Rousseau, Bill Hark, and Robert Balogh. We started the day in North Platte, Nebraska, dropped south to McCook and then headed back up to North Platte, hoping storms would fire along the dryline push. There was a high risk of a blue-sky bust, but just when we were about to give up, a couple of storms exploded.

The storm I chose became an incredibly beautiful low-precipitation, sculpted supercell, with a fantastic lightning show after dark. I got more lightning shots from this one storm than I have taken in entire years.

Note: Post updated with images and details transferred from my old Sky Diary site.

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Normally I don’t go around quoting myself, but I couldn’t help but think of a line from my novel Tornado Pinball when I saw the rotating updraft spinning above our heads during a storm chase May 24: “The rotation above the road drew him in, a swirling gateway to infinity, all the circles of nature, a tunnel to the past.”

I chased today with Greg Stephens, Dayna Vettese and Brad Rousseau. We started the day in Liberal, Kansas, and targeted northeast Colorado and the dryline as a trigger for storms. It took a while for them to get going, but we saw some extraordinary motion and lightning.

This storm, which we chased from northeast Colorado into Nebraska, was filled with high-based rotation, shear funnels and lightning and eventually was severe- and tornado-warned. But the “cinnamon bun” swirl above our heads was its most beautiful and entrancing moment. The video includes time-lapses of it. 

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