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On May 21, Kathy Velasquez and I focused our chase target to Leoti, Kansas, along with legions of other chasers, and were treated to a stunning supercell with amazing structure.

We barely saw the first tornado and missed the others but chose to hang back and appreciate this rare beauty of a storm rather than tangle with the rain. This supercell ranks among my favorite storms of all time for its beauty.

 

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

May 14, 2016, was a down day for chasing storms, so a great day to attend the event in Wakita, Oklahoma, celebrating the 20th anniversary of the movie “Twister.”

In the film, the town is destroyed by a tornado. During this event, storm chasers drove through town in an impromptu parade, as you can see in the video.

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

Note: This post has been updated with a gallery and information moved from the old chase log at SkyDiary.com.

I’ve had three chase days and a day “off” (to work) this Tornado Alley trip, and two of the chase days found me in front of tornadoes I could not have imagined. In fact, the first tornado I saw on Monday was the most dramatic in my 20 seasons of chasing – or at least compares to the 12 May 2004 chase in Attica, Kansas, that saw a house destroyed.

Unfortunately, several houses were damaged or destroyed by the EF4 (upgraded from EF3) tornado I saw near Elmore City, Oklahoma, on Monday, and it killed one man. A hundred feelings rushed through me as I watched the tornado get close to my location on a hill in the difficult-to-chase, tree-filled terrain of southern Oklahoma. First, I considered my escape route, because the tornado was coming my way. And then I was filled with dread as I saw the tornado approach the structures near where I was parked – even though I had no idea so many more homes were in the path. Once it started hurling debris with incredible force and speed, I felt sick, even as I was filled with wonder. This was the most stunning tornado I have ever witnessed, partly because of my proximity to it, but also because of its unusual visibility, manifest power, long duration (it was on the ground for about 25 minutes), and sheer beauty as it shifted from a multi-vortex serpent to a swirling white stovepipe wreathed in dust to an ethereal white rope. I worried it might run me over (though I had an escape route planned), but it stayed just to my south, where I had a view of its violent motion and could actually hear the tornado’s roar.

It was also a thrill to see two scientific research vehicles speed past me to plant probes in the tornado’s path. For a second, it was like a scene from one of my novels.

I hate to see tornadoes destroy people’s lives, but I am humbled to be a witness.

 

My expectations were not high when I woke up in Wichita that morning, but it was clear there would be severe weather, with the most potential – given the upper-level flow and moisture – in southeastern Oklahoma. Known not-quite-affectionately to chasers as “the jungle,” this is a very difficult area to chase, with hills and trees hindering visibility and navigation. Nonetheless, I hit the road. Though I looked at a number of forecast parameters, I was intrigued to see one little cell go up right where the HRRR model said it would. I arrived in its vicinity, near Elmore City, Oklahoma, when it was just a shower. As it grew, I observed eerie “fingers” (shear funnels, presumably) dangle briefly from the storm. Then it began to strengthen, and I dashed a bit east and south near Katie, Oklahoma, and found the top of a hill to observe the areas of rotation. One of these produced a tornado that became the most dramatic I had ever seen.

I was then late to get to the wedge tornado near Sulphur and saw it only from a distance. But I did see a pretty white tornado form near Connerville out of a negligible storm. Overall, it was an amazing day.

These photos for the most part reflect early edits from the original report at my old Sky Diary site. Roll over each image to see the caption, or click on one to see a slide show with larger photos. Later, more refined edits can be seen in my galleries (prints available).

 

I headed out to the Plains on the early side in 2016, as I saw storm possibilities and didn’t want to wait a week. (Living in Florida, I have to ration my chasecations.) I was hoping for the much-vaunted Colorado magic to happen today – May 7, 2016 – and indeed it did. I targeted the area with the best moisture (it doesn’t take much at this altitude) and most backed winds, at least according to model forecasts.

Lots of convection fired early and often, but I still hoped for a quality storm to get going in that area, and it finally did. By that point in the chase, I’d met up with Jason Persoff, and at Wray, Colorado, we witnessed a beautiful, dusty tornado from funnel to stovepipe.

Later, I had some regrets when I saw how close people got to the gorgeous base of the tornado on the sunlit side, but we had a fantastic show and the dramatic photos to prove it.

The photos in the gallery below, transferred from my old Sky Diary website, reflect early, not final, edits. But the edit I did of this shot – enhancing the natural sepia-toned color and contrast of the day and evoking a vintage photograph – is one of my favorites.

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

 
On May 27, 2015, I chased with Brad and Dayna Rousseau, Matt Grinter, Dave Lewison, Scott McPartland and Stephen Barabas. We targeted the northeast Texas Panhandle. In my mind, the town of Canadian seemed like a good target.

Incredibly, the storms not only went up there, but one tornado-producing storm there barely moved all day. At one point we just set up and watched it spin out one funnel after another.

But the main show was the large tornado, which we all filmed from different angles. I watched it from the highway bridge over the river, filming the tornado as it churned beyond the wagon bridge that had always captivated my imagination in spite of its sometimes gloomy history. Unfortunately, the twister reportedly caused injuries.

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

I chased with Canadian friends May 13 in Texas, and we caught a beautiful tornado at Guthrie. It was a rarity these days – because we were the only storm chasers on it.

I chased with Mark Robinson, Jaclyn Whittal, Michel Millaire, Matt Grinter and Brad and Dayna Rousseau. We targeted the Lubbock area and ended up moving a little east to intercept a small line of storms. The southern one surprised us by producing a classic tornado despite a relatively weak storm that was nothing special on radar.

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

It’s been about a year since I chased tornado-warned storms in central Florida. This is one of the most popular videos on my YouTube channel. Of course, I didn’t see any tornadoes, but there was some awesome cloud structure on March 29, 2014, that sure looked like one for a minute.

It’s been mostly quiet in east-central Florida so far this year, with a little severe weather passing through last week. Even in Florida, we’re feeling the effect of a long, cold winter – only here it’s cool and beautiful!

My chaser friends are starting to buzz about the season to come. Will there be an early burst of activity in May? Will the more serious severe weather pattern kick in later? Now the suspense begins. I’ll be posting updates here and at SkyDiary.com, my storm-chasing site, as I chase storms in Florida and in Tornado Alley. Stay tuned.

 
This wasn’t the best chase year for me, if you define successful storm chasing by how many tornadoes you see.

May was a historically slow time for tornadoes, and I wasn’t in the Plains for the three-day tornado-mageddon event that produced the Pilger, Nebraska, tornado and others.

Still, I photographed a lot of beautiful storms and skies in Florida and Tornado Alley, and while I did so, I finished my research for “Zap Bang” and published it in September – the third novel in my Storm Seekers trilogy. And even if I didn’t see incredible tornadoes, my characters did!

Here’s a slide show that looks back at 2014’s dramatic skies through photography.

Off and on for a few years, I’ve been trying to perfect a time-lapse of a night-blooming cereus flowering, but it’s a challenge, because each bloom flowers for only one night. Each time I’ve used a different camera and different lighting. I’ve blown out the image with too much light, so this year I used a smaller light. But I had to use a wide-angle waterproof camera because it was raining in our part of central Florida, so sacrifices were made in terms of quality and zoom. You can see the flowers buffeted by the wind as a shower whisks through.

Still, it’s always fascinating to see these beautiful flowers unfold for their one-night-a-year show. Click the gear symbol in the lower left after you hit play and choose 720HD for best quality.

On May 26, 2014, Peggy Willenberg and I hopped east to Stanton, Texas, from our starting point in Midland to keep an eye on developing storms.

We ran into friends there, including Dave Lewison, Scott McPartland, Robert Balogh, John Mann, Anemometer Steve Barabas, and The Weather Network’s Mark Robinson, Jaclyn Whittal and Michel Millaire, whom we met on and off all day.

What a swoosh in this storm!

We targeted a storm to the northwest and chased it for a while, then switched to a storm developing behind it. It was a day of stunning structure and rotating features, some of them dusty, and while many of these spinups were reported as tornadoes, we didn’t see any tornado I’d hang on the wall of fame.

Roll over a photo to see its caption, and click on any of the pictures to start a slide show of larger images.