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I chased on May 27 with Greg Stephens, Dayna Vettese and Brad Rousseau, Mark Robinson and his crewmate Jaclyn Whittal, Scott McPartland, Dave Lewison, Bill Hark and Robert Balogh.

We started our chase near Plainville, Kansas, choosing to ignore the messy rotating storm cluster to our north near the Nebraska border that eventually produced tornadoes. We split up during the chase, which was a fairly typical non-tornado chase – pretty storms but no major drama.

Still, it made for interesting video, especially the mesmerizing time-lapse of the retreating aforementioned rotating storms at sunset.

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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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I chased storms on May 20 with Dave Lewison, Scott McPartland, Dayna Vettese and Brad Rousseau, Greg Stephens, and Mark Robinson and his Weather Network crewmate Jaclyn Whittal. We started the day in Norman, Oklahoma, and chose southern Oklahoma as our target, not realizing that a devastating tornado would strike so near to our starting point later in the day.

We saw a tornado, too, but there was no joy in storm chasing this day when we heard the news about Moore being struck.

The May 20 Duncan, Oklahoma, tornado was small, and the condensation funnel didn’t extend all the way to the ground, but we had confirmation that the circulation did indeed contact the ground. After we saw it, we saw the radar from the Moore, Oklahoma, tornado and knew we had missed a large and devastating tornado. A lot of the storm chasers (and there are so many these days) were in our target area and missed it, too.

Note: Post updated with images transferred from the old Sky Diary site.

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I can’t believe I’ve only been in Tornado Alley for three days. I’m already seriously sleep-deprived, and I haven’t had time to edit any of the video I’ve shot. (Note/edit: Video has been added!)

But I did just post photos from yesterday’s epic chase with friends, from a storm near Ness City, Kansas, to the last two tornadoes from a storm west of Larned, Kansas, near Rozel – both on the ground at once!

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A shelf cloud in Nebraska. Photo by Chris Kridler, ChrisKridler.com

I chased today with Greg Stephens, Dayna Vettese and Brad Rousseau, eventually meeting up with Dave Lewison and Scott McPartland in Valentine, Nebraska, in the vicinity of our initial target.

Storms fired and were more pretty than violent, especially against the backdrop of north-central Nebraska’s rolling hills. A shelf cloud developed, and down the road from the group, I watched it march across the plains.

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On the second day of my Tornado Alley sojourn, meant to get me in position for subsequent chases, I managed to catch up with a cluster of pretty storms in northwest Kansas.

The storms were, at one time, severe, but when I photographed them in a gorgeous twilight, they were simply prolific lightning producers.

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I chased a severe storm the evening of April 29 in hopes of catching a little lightning. I got lucky with this shot over Port Canaveral, Florida, with a cruise ship in the foreground. 

My Tornado Alley chase is on hold (shades of 2012) while the pattern continues to be un-May-like in the Plains. So any storms I get to see in Florida are a bonus.

Meanwhile, please consider subscribing to my YouTube channel. I’ve adopted the new layout, which better organizes my videos, and you’ll be able to keep track of my storm chases when I post new ones as I travel.

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Chasing tornadoes at night is rarely wise, but the ability to get radar images almost instantly, almost anywhere, has made taking that risk a little bit more palatable.

I decided to chase a decent chance of severe storms in central Florida on April 14, with at least the hope of testing my storm-chasing gear. That still needs work – and the first part of the chase was frustrating. The second was fueled with adrenaline.

Earlier in the day, I gave the Midland USA XTC-300 wearable camera a tryout during the storm-chase in central Florida on Sunday, in preparation for using it in Tornado Alley. In this short video, time-lapsed in editing, it was attached to my car with a suction-cup mount and stood up to highway speeds and rain. Video by Chris Kridler; music licensed from FootageFirm; camera courtesy Midland USA.

 

Sunday night, when a tornado-warned storm approached my neighborhood – with lots of attendant lightning – I decided to take a chance and see what I could get. Mostly, I wanted lightning, but the persistent rain made it hard to get a clear shot. However, I found myself in the path of a tornado-warned storm headed for Rockledge, Florida, and according to the radar, I was really in the path. The “hook echo” was pronounced and on track to collide with me. So I watched and photographed the storm with nervous anticipation.

What I saw at the time and in my photos was, shall we say, suspicious. Again, chasing at night, it’s very difficult to see and identify significant features such as funnels and tornadoes, when so-call scud clouds can mimic them easily. Yet the persistent feature in this photo (in several photos, actually) sure looked like a funnel.

The National Weather Service says there were likely two tornadoes, including one in Cocoa produced by the storm that spawned what I think was a funnel in my photographs.

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The chill has lasted longer than usual this winter here in Florida, but at least we’re not experiencing snowstorm after snowstorm. What we did get was a blast of wind in a squall line Sunday, March 24. I drove out to meet it west of Cocoa.

 

It was moving so fast (warned with a motion of 55 mph), I couldn’t reach the area of rotation. I didn’t even have time to set up and get nice photos of the green gust front. But I did get video in my car as it blasted me.

Despite tornado warnings, the National Weather Service found only straight-line wind damage in its survey.

 

It’s not long now until the May chase! Want to see more stormy images? If you’re on Florida’s Space Coast, get a look at my storm photography on exhibit at Titusville’s Downtown Gallery, 335 S. Washington Ave. (321-268-0122), through April 16. There, you can also pick up copies of my Storm Seekers novels, Funnel Vision and Tornado Pinball – or get them online.

I’m also speaking about storm chasing and signing books at Cocoa Beach Library on April 6 at 2 p.m.  The program is free.

Late edit: Just added an event – a book signing the evening of April 6 at Coco’s during Cocoa Village’s gallery walk.

Note: Post updated with images from the old Sky Diary site.