A few of my favorite things! June 5, 2009, in Goshen county, Wyoming. After weeks of bad climatolgical luck, the scientists participating in Vortex 2 finally hit a home run in observing a tornado. Here, Tim Marshall and Lindsay Bennett set down a probe that is designed to take measurements of the inside of a tornado. The tornado missed this probe by roughly a hundred yards a few minutes after this photo was taken. The team set down multiple probes, but the tornado threaded the needle between them -- this kind of work is crazy hard to succeed at and not very safe at that. It makes me appreciate the kind of probe data that Tim Samaras managed to accumulate over the years.

A few of my favorite things! May 30, 2009, Grand Island, Nebraska. Not a storm photo, per say, but a photo I shot on my first day tagging along with Project Vortex 2. This is of storm chaser Sean Casey and his IMAX film movie camera. I like this photo for multiple reasons - for one, his camera (which any photographer would covet) looks like it's held together with gaffer's tape. You hear photographers being gearheads all the time, but almost every great photographer I've met has equipment that looks like it may have been through a war zone, and their setups tend to be held together with tape. I am reminded of a story the Geographic photographer Joel Sartore told at a talk once about schlepping through the Amazon with a fish tank that had shattered several times and was taped together as needed -- it leaked like crazy, but one of the shots he got in it looks as professional and amazing as anything in that magazine. I also like how Sean is basically contorting to set up this beast of a camera -- you can barely see him back there.

A few of my favorite things!  No, this photo isn't amazing on it's own -- but this is a few of *my* favorite things, and what this photo does is remind me of the story behind it.  This is from March 23, 2009 (a day where later on I ended up being a bit silly and getting closer to a tornado than I'd meant to get) somewhere in the rurals southwest of Alda, Nebraska.  This school bus typifies rural Nebraska life for me.  The driver was staying just ahead of the pea to nickel size hail shaft that is right behind it; he'd pull up to a kid's farmhouse, drop the kid off, watch the kid run full tilt into the house as the hail started to patter on the ground, then putter along the country mile to the next farm house where this would repeat.  The kids would have literally maybe 60 seconds to make the dash from the bus to the farmhouse before the hail started pouring down.  The storm was slow moving enough that the drive to each house would get the bus in front of the hail again.  It's just one of those little details about Nebraska that makes me smile -- I think it's the sort of thing that seems like just a part of normal life to Nebraskans, but that would probably result in a parental furor in most other parts of the country.

The storm that produced the tornado that went through Kearney on May 29, 2009 continued to cycle as a large, wet HP until it made its way to Aurora, Nebraska, where it dropped an EF2 tornado that destroyed a gas station and a farmhouse just north of the interstate. This photo (taken with permission) is the inside of a bedroom of that farmhouse. At the top of the photo, you can see some sheet metal -- this is not from the house, this is from the grain silo... that was formerly a good half mile away!  The entire family heard the sirens and were in the basement when the tornado struck; everyone was unhurt. But this is why basements and tornado shelters are a must in Nebraska.

One of the great things about Nebraska is just how quick people are to help out. When I was at the farm, there were probably a good 30 or 40 people all helping to clean up the extensive damage. People came with backloaders, trucks, and their bare hands.

Some of the crazy things tornadic winds can do.  This was in Kearney, the day after the May 29, 2008 tornado.  There are lots of examples out there of why vehicles are poor places to be in a tornado, and this is one of them -- these planks went through the truck door like a hot knife through butter, and would have given the driver one hell of a splinter.

Sorry for the dutch angle, there was a phase in my photography where I loved dutch angles.

A few of my favorite things!  Also from May 29, 2008, just east of Kearney, Nebraska.  If I had a nickel for every time I'm bumped into a TIV while chasing over the years, I'd have... a lot of nickels.  This was before they added a lot of their pneumatic upgrades.  The latest generation of the TIV is probably the only "tornado interceptor vehicle" that you could pay me money to ride a tornado out in.  It's not safe by any means, but it'd take a serious chunk of flying something hitting it to get it to move in a windstream.  On the other hand, that thing is a giant metal pointy death-box if it ever gets in a traditional automobile accident.  I still think it looks like something out of a post-apocalyptic zombie thriller.

The TIVs have always fascinated me, as it started out (before the fame race) as homegrown engineering to solve a non-trivial problem that nobody had ever thought of tackling before.  Sort of like the guy who wanted to build a bear-proof suit of armor.  Except that Sean was also a cinematographer, which is sort of like a photographer who spent some time in a chrysalis.  And an IMAX cinematographer at that. That kind of devoted nerdery brings a tear to my eye.  In the end I'm glad that I photographed them every time I saw them; when they needed photos for the promo of their IMAX film, Tornado Alley, I had a metric buttload.

A few of my favorite things!  May 29, 2008.  Shot from the Gibbon, Nebraska, interstate exit, I believe, looking back towards Kearney.  Those of you in Kearney who rode this storm out, this is what you were underneath!

A few of my favorite things!  May 29, 2008, near Kearney, NE.  This is a bit further down highway 23, looking to the north.  This is the storm that later produced the tornadoes that went through Kearney.  For some reason this photo is popular with advertorial clients -- I think it is the combination of an interesting sky that has dimension and the lack of any man made objects in the scene.  After this photo, I darted up to the interstate and hook-punched it from the west.  (This was dumb, but it worked).

A few of my favorite things!  May 29, 2008 -- a date that many people who live in Kearney will well remember.  That's the day that a very wet HP supercell with a couple tornadoes rolled right over Kearney, Nebraska.  The damage done was tragic for those it impacted, but it could have been much, much worse.  I caught this storm south of Lexington, Nebraska -- this is the photo of me catching it.  Here I am racing south as the leading edge of the storm, at right, is barelling east (to the left).  I'm trying to get to the intersection at Highway 23 before the storm does, I think I beat it by maybe two minutes.  (That was stupid chasing, given Highway 23 runs southeast and storm motion would right turn to east northeast, but hey, we all make mistakes).  I like this shot because it actually makes me long for chasing during these long, stormless Winter months.  Seeing this view out the front dash of my car makes me very happy.