Jenga

An Oldsmobile stacked atop a Chevy stacked atop a Yamaha. I shot this in Kearney, Nebraska, on May 29, 2008, a few hours after an EF-2 tornado went through town. (If you watch "Storm Chasers" on the Discovery Channel, this is the storm that was featured in the season finale.) My theory on this storm is that a large, weak tornado enveloped a large area of the town, while smaller and more powerful spinups inside the main rotation did all the significant damage, such as what is pictured above. A tornado inside a tornado, as it were.

Waiting

This was shot on May 23, 2008, south of the Cedar Bluff Reservoir in Kansas. It was the end of the day and we were losing sunlight; we'd already seen one tornado in Quinter and were now just hanging out, looking at the back-end of severe storms as they'd develop. My chase partner Darren is at left, patiently waiting for the sky to make it's move.

Horseshoe

The May 29, 2008 Kearney Nebraska supercell (that would later go on to form a tornado and strike Kearney) early in its life. This is looking north at the storm from Highway 23, just east of Elwood, Nebraska. I probably lingered here too long, as I later had to drive east through buckets of rain and small hail, then north to the interstate, and then (idiotically and unintentionally) through the developing tornado itself in order to get back in front of this thing.

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Windswept

April 24th, 2008 near Hoxie, Kansas. We shot this while sitting just north of a major intersection, hoping the storm, which was now a classic supercell, would do something before sunset. In the distance you can see a wall cloud that had been popping in and out for at least 30 minutes; to the left, you can see what is most likely a plume of dust being kicked up by a Rear Flank Downdraft. To the right is the rain darkness of the rain and hail of the Forward Flank Downdraft. After shooting a few snaps of this storm, we booked east to Hill City, running into the DOW crew along the way. Eventually we lost all daylight and camped out on a hill above Hill City, waiting to see if the city was going to be hit. The tornado, if it ever touched down, missed the city.

Rural Kansas is easily one of the most beautiful places to photograph the sky in North America -- the long, lonely roads and the flat horizons textured with wheat and dotted with windmills can't be found anywhere else in the country.

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Portal in the Sky

April 23rd, 2006 -- a high-based LP supercell in Kansas puts down a wall cloud at near-sunset. A clear slot can be seen behind the wall cloud -- looking a bit like a portal in the sky. Two chasers (Amos and Eric, I believe), stand in the foreground, watching the spectacle unfold.

This storm never put down a tornado, though it did eventually transition to a classic supercell and put down a good quantity of hail.

Mudblasted

Families come together to help clean up a farm near Gothenburg, Nebraska, after a tornado swept through on April 20, 2007. As beat up as this SUV looks, it actually fared pretty well considering it went through a tornado. Tornadoes have been known to pick trucks up and deposit them miles away, crumpled up into a twisted ball of steel.

There is no Dana

Sure, it looks like the apocalypse but, in reality, this is just the (harmless) turbulent outflow behind a severe thunderstorm that rolled over Lincoln, Nebraska on August 20, 2007. I shot this from atop a parking garage. Great vantage point for a metro area, but a bit of nerve-racking place to be with lightning around. Prints are available.

Down With the Topmast! Yare! Lower, Lower!

I took this photo by hanging my camera outside the passenger window of our speeding chase-car and hoping for the best; it turned out relatively well, considering. The clouds you see hanging down from above are known as "mammatus" clouds. Though the exact mechanism of their forming is still a bit of a mystery, they're often indicators that a very strong storm is nearby. That was definitely the case on this central Kansas chase day in May of 2006. In the distance, a stationary supercell is spinning away. As mean as this storm looks, it never put down a tornado. It spun in place for another 20 minutes before splitting in half and transitioning into a squall line.

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Moments Before Impact

This is a photograph of the May 29, 2008 Kearney Nebraska storm exactly two minutes before it rolled into town. An EF2 tornado is ongoing in this picture, though the funnel is invisible. The town's tornado sirens were blaring, and I literally jumped out of my car, shot this, jumped back in, and sped off. Everything about this storm had a distinct look of "run away!" -- and you don't argue with gut feelings like that. This was shot with a very wide angle lens -- the storm is actually much closer than it appears in this picture.

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The End of the World

May 26th, 2006 -- the lead edge of a squall line is just about to pass overhead. We'd driven through rain and hail for a good half hour to finally get ahead of it, but the sunlight was failing and we only had a sliver of time left to take pictures and shoot video. As chasers, we're usually on the lookout for supercells -- large, rotating storms that can produce tornadoes. But the truth is that some of the most visually impressive storms are squall lines, which are long (sometime hundreds of miles long) lines of storms that roll across the great plains. They rarely produce tornadoes, but they certainly can kick up a heavy wind -- over 80 miles per hour, in some cases. And they can look like the End of the World as they roll in.

Like a Top

Today's photo is of the May 29, 2008 tornadic supercell just east of Kearney, Nebraska -- this is the storm that was featured on the season finale of Storm Chasers last night on the Discovery Channel. Seven minutes before this photo was taken, the storm put an EF-2 tornado through Kearney, knocking over trees, flipping cars, ripping up planes (it hit the airport), and leveling several homes. This storm was especially terrifying for me, as my entire family lives in Kearney; watching a tornado barrel down on your hometown is a chaser's worst nightmare. Fortunately, though it took a few weeks before Kearney was back to normal, nobody was hurt or killed.

BTW, I had a couple people ask -- most of the photos on this blog are clickable if you're looking to license or acquire prints.

The Inside of a Chase Car

This is what it looks like inside a chase car -- nothing too fancy. A laptop connected to GPS and mobile internet displaying radar on a program called GRLevel3, a video camera, and a driver. This was my setup a couple years ago; today, the setup is much the same, minus the video camera.

Some chasers go all out and you will find laptop mounts, ham radios, weather instrumentation, satellite-feed radar, and multiple video cameras mounted inside and outside their vehicles. Mostly, I consider myself too poor for all that stuff, though even if I had the funds I doubt I'd get any of that. (I have to get a scanner by next season for a photojournalism project I'm planning to work on, but that's pretty much it.) You really don't need much stuff to chase storms.

A Moment of Zen

Sleep deprived, hungry, and worn to the bone from all the driving, all the planning, and all the waiting, the waiting, the waiting -- this is what we chase for: the moment we get to kick back and see a storm. This was shot on April 24th, 2008, near Hill City, Kansas.

Missile

One of the many reasons why an automobile is no place to ride out a tornado. This piece of lumber was driven right through the door of this Ford F-150 by an EF-2 tornado in Kearney, Nebraska, May 29th, 2008. (The season finale of "Storm Chasers", which airs this Sunday, will feature this storm.) Fortunately, the owner was in the basement of his home when the twister came through.

Flying Saucer

April 23rd, 2006 -- a high-based LP supercell transitioning into a classic supercell in northcentral Kansas. This was a day we'd nearly given up on after waiting and waiting. Ultimately, this storm never put down any tornadoes (which would have been incredible, given the high base), but it tried surprisingly hard; my chase partner, Darren, has an interesting time lapse video that shows two funnels spinning side by side, high above, one rotating cyclonically (counter-clockwise), and one rotating anti-cyclonically (clockwise). Spring magic in Kansas.

JPG Issue 19

I have a photo essay in one of my favorite mags this month -- JPG magazine. Pretty exciting -- a lot of great stuff gets put into JPG, and it definitely feels good to share the same pages with a whole host of excellent photographers.