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As the video title says, sometimes storm chasing isn’t pretty. Stuff happens. You lose cellular data. You get out of position. You get more out of position when the road turns into a one-way construction zone where a guy with a portable stop sign holds you hostage for twenty minutes while you wait for a pilot car. Add in murky skies, sight-blocking hills and trees, and few or bad roads, and the experience can be less than ideal.

That more or less sums up our chases on May 8 and 9, 2024, as Alethea and I wandered in central Texas. We got a few pretty photos anyway, but I was frustrated. Still, maybe the video will make you chuckle.

Roll over images to see captions, or click on any image to start a slide show.

 
How perfect to chase a supercell that looked like an alien invader in Roswell, New Mexico.

On May 28, Alethea Kontis and I hit the road in Childress, Texas, with Jason Persoff, Dave Lewison and Scott McPartland. Our first target was the Midland area, but it looked as if the target was shifting south into tough chase territory (rugged hills). And even if Midland had remained the most likely target, the frustrating construction nightmare had us changing direction and heading for eastern New Mexico.

This choice illustrates a typical chaser’s dilemma: Go for the more likely tornado, which may not be that easy to catch or see if it happens because of territory or congestion, or chase the more visible, accessible storms. These days, with so many chasers on the road, I really like secondary targets. And even though we didn’t see a tornado, I am thrilled with what we saw in New Mexico.

 

We were already behind the eight-ball by the time we neared Roswell, with ongoing rotating storms emerging from the higher elevations. Yet we were greeted by an eerie sight – blowing dust, gustnadoes from a dying storm to the north, strange green light and a beast of a supercell in front of us. It was like driving into a sci-fi movie.

 

The storm was full of hail, and Scott and Dave went ahead in their well-shielded car as we dropped south. Except a big hailstone bounced off their hail shield and took out a side mirror. The rest of us hung back but still got into some fun smaller hail and took photos of baseball-size hailstones we found by the side of the road. The trees in that area were shredded by the bombardment.

 

Finally, we saw multiple funnel clouds and were treated to an insanely orange sunset and a double rainbow. The chase concluded with beautiful lightning amid the mammatus at Artesia. And Alethea and I made one more stop on our way back to Roswell for the night, capturing spectacular stars above the retreating lightning storms.

Not bad for a roundabout 559-mile chase.

Roll over a photo below to see the caption, or click on any image to start a slide show of larger pictures.

 

May 20, 2021, Alethea Kontis and I targeted northeastern Colorado, hoping for supercells. Bill Hark joined us for much of the chase. Storms took a long time to get going, and when they did, the lack of roads made it difficult to be on the “right” side of them … but we had a beautiful view of hail and rainbows (or hailbows) from the west.

We also picked up some very large hail on the road, up to three inches in diameter — hail I was very grateful not to drive through.

Roll over a photo to see its caption, or click on one to start a slide show of larger images.

 
On May 22, happy to be back on the road, I chased with Brad and Dayna Rousseau, Matt Grinter, Dave Lewison, Scott McPartland and Stephen Barabas.

We targeted the upslope of eastern Colorado and were rewarded with photogenic storms. The double rainbow over the wheat field was particularly rapturous.

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

 
On May 9, I chased storms on and off with Mark Robinson, Jaclyn Whittal, Michel Millaire, Matt Grinter and Brad and Dayna Rousseau. We targeted southwest Kansas and ended up in the Oklahoma Panhandle, witnessing beautiful storms along the way.

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

I was on the East Coast Monday while beastly tornadoes hit Oklahoma. You may have seen the video of chaser Andy Gabrielson’s car rolling over while chasing one of them. He says the steering locked up, but whatever happened, it happened while he was driving backward at high speed. I’d prefer not to be so close that I have to drive backward to get away from anything! Andy, fortunately, was not badly hurt. Here’s the TornadoVideos.net (Reed Timmer’s crew) video of the incredible tornado, and Andy’s car flipping (at about 1:40).

What did I see yesterday? A pleasant little rainbow over the Atlantic Ocean.

 

I have extensive archives from my early storm chasing years and am consolidating them and moving them over to ChrisKridler.com from the old SkyDiary. In this instance, while there were some very nice Florida chases in 2007, I’m putting them into this one post with the highlights in a gallery.

Click on any photo to start a slide show of larger images with captions.

 

 

2003 was the chase that mostly didn’t happen.

The year 2003 was the most intense of my life. Ironically, none of that intensity came from storms, which have given me some of my most memorable experiences. I survived serious work stress, major foreign travel, a family crisis, and, on a pleasant note, my own wedding and an adventurous Costa Rica honeymoon.

With the destruction of space shuttle Columbia on Feb. 1, my work life became a kind of hell. I was a space reporter for Florida Today, one of three. I covered the mission from Kennedy Space Center while the shuttle was still in orbit and before. I had interviewed the astronauts multiple times. I cared about the astronauts before the accident – most reporters didn’t even know their names. What followed was not only a sense of trauma and personal loss but an intense work schedule that involved countless hours, a trip to Houston, and, later in the spring, a trip overseas.

I was in Kazakhstan to see the launch of the Soyuz carrying the Expedition 7 crew to the International Space Station, and I was in Moscow for the landing of the Expedition 6 crew (off-course, and quite a source of suspense for a couple of hours).

By the time I got back to the United States, most of the season’s huge tornado events had already occurred. I arrived in the Plains a day too late for the last one, and on the way out west, I heard that my mother had suffered a fall. It took a few days for the seriousness of that injury to become clear, and after a sad little chase, I made a beeline back to the East Coast to be with my family for a couple of weeks. My mother came near death, but she survived after many weeks in the hospital.

In the meantime, I was preparing for a wedding. There wasn’t a lot of lightning to chase in my part of Florida that summer, though I made a few attempts. We had a wedding picnic in a thunderstorm and a ceremony under a rainbow in September, a fitting touch, despite an almost stormless year.

I learned that as desperate as I was to see the storms, some things are more important, and sometimes life has other ideas. The important thing is to value the moments we have with the people we love. If fate is kind and persistence pays off, I’ll see storms again, and the chase will be as thrilling and fulfilling as ever.