Why We Chase

“I like wind” is how legendary storm chaser Tim Marshall answers when people ask him why he chases storms, and I always loved that answer. For me, after a hectic semester (especially this past spring, which with endless short staffing and austerity funding was the most burn-out semester I’ve had in more than 20 years), getting out on the road—with absolutely no agenda beyond following the wind—is relaxing. Much like my musician friends who travel thousands of miles for that experience of an hour on stage, chasers travel thousands of miles to experience a big storm, even if only for a few minutes; the difference is you are not able to plan anything, and there might not even be any storms. When you wake up in the morning, you have no idea where you’re going to end up that night; if you book a hotel room too early you end up missing the storm or driving hours in the middle of the night (and if you wait too long all the rooms are booked up). Storm chasers have to not only figure out what’s happening in the sky, but also navigate a place they have never been to before all while managing an escape route. It is thrilling, but I wouldn’t categorize most chasers I know as adrenaline junkies; it’s more about managing the risk to have an awesome, once-in-a-lifetime experience. Every storm and every chase is completely different, but when I’m on a storm, I’m in a “flow” state and my Fitbit tells me that my heart rate is up even though I’m mostly sitting in a car and jumping in and out to get that trophy—a photo. I’ve been chasing in the plains pretty much every year for the last 12, and this year I was really trying to focus on being totally engaged in and focused on the chase and minimizing distractions. And I was really realizing this year that no photo or video or writeup can truly capture the experience—you have to be there. That said, here’s a summary of this year’s trip.

Part 1

I filed my final grades for the semester on May 26, and hit the road the next day. I knew I had to get back to NYC for my school’s graduation, so the plan was to head out, chase for a few days, and then leave the car in Kansas City and fly back. This approach also helps mitigate the worst part of the trip—the long boring drive across PA/OH/IL/IN/MO to get to the plains. One advantage of being wired up for mobile is that I was able to watch the Formula 1 race while chatting with friends in Europe—from the car (my Toyota RAV4 pretty much drives itself on the highway, and of course I’m mostly listening to the race and watching the road).

May 29

Heading for a setup in Nebraska, I got to Des Moines Iowa in two days, and on the morning of May 29 was greeted with a nice thunderstorm right out my hotel window, and caught this slo mo lightning with my little camera:

While I was chasing alone for this part of the trip, most chasers are connected online, and I was able to catch up with my friends, including some of the few other chasers living in NYC—Nicholas Isabella and Mariya Abramenko Isabella. We hung out in the chaser convergence at Casey's in Neligh, Nebraska, and then, as sometimes happens, the storms didn’t fire until late, and we ended up on a dirt road watching the distant storm and the sunset talking to a local farmer about corn prices (which are way up because of the war in Ukraine). Nicholas and Mariya went on to get closer to the storm, which finally got a tornado-warning after dark as it finally dislodged from a boundary and pumped out 5-6" hail. I was tired from a long few days of driving and started heading out, but I did go back and watch the tornado-warned storm for a bit from near Orchard, Nebraska before heading to Sioux City, Iowa, arriving after midnight to get in position for the next day. (Click on any photo in this writeup for a larger version)

May 30

I started out briefly meeting Mark Venhuizen at a truck stop in Sioux Falls--I had never met him in person, but saw him nearly weekly during my COVID movie nights. And then I went to chase a chaotic storm system 400+ miles from Iowa, into South Dakota, across to Minnesota, then back to Iowa and then down to Omaha Nebraska late at night. The storms were ripping fast in a way I really couldn't capture in a photo, but you can see the movement in the video. I got next to a couple tornado-warned storms and near Pipestone, MN I found a maintenance shed in which to hide out from the hail. I also reported some damage to the local weather service.

May 31

It was a long day, but I headed south out of Omaha and got on the one tornado-warned storm near Arkansas City KS just in time for it to weaken.

On June 1, after 2733 miles, I left my car at the Kansas City airport and flew home for graduation the next day.

Part 2

June 6

I flew back to Kansas City, and from the plane was like, “hmm look at that thunderstorm”. Sure enough it went severe warned as I got to the parking lot. I quickly got the tripod out and shot the storm before heading to the hotel to repack everything.

June 7

I started out this day getting my oil changed—I had driven that far and had found a Toyota dealer right near the airport. After that, I picked up my chaser partner for this part of the trip: Pamela Berstler, who flew out from LA. We’ve known each other for years and she has chased with me a few times before. We hit the road for a setup in Nebraska. The forecast showed individual cells that would eventually merge into a line, and that's exactly what happened. After a few hours on the road we pulled into North Platte and while making a quick Casey's stop, a storm went severe-warned just to our north. We blasted up and got on it and then it outran us. So we surfed it for several hours as it ran right down the road to Grand Island. For people like me from the east, these hail storms are unimaginable, and we saw broken windows, downed trees and power lines, and a couple cars off the road. The hail in the pictures below had already melted quite a bit. The cells merged into a line right in front of us, and we ended up at the storm chaser hangout Applebee's (the only place open late in many of these towns) right at sunset and were greeted with a rainbow and several cheese-covered dishes. You can see a dash cam video time lapse with highlights below.

June 8

The weather was too far east for us to get to (there were crazy tornadoes in Ohio) so it was a down day. We went to the Sthur museum in Grand Island, NE and then wandered down through the “Geographic Center of the US” to Hays KS and had some BBQ. We stopped for a selfie in Red Cloud, Nebraska, fictional home of Kim Wexler for Better Call Saul fans.

June 9

This was probably the most photogenic chase of the trip. We started down in Hays, KS, and got to Enders in western Nebraska and watched storms initiate (puffy clouds in the pictures). Due to lack of road options, we ended up south and lost the storm for a while but we got back on the base north of McCook, NE and watched it evolve in front of a spectacular sunset along with many other chasers. You can see the details in the dash cam time lapse below. The storm kept going south and we let it go and watched lightning on several other storms along the way to Hastings for the night.

June 10

There wasn’t any big weather nearby, so so we moseyed from Hastings Nebraska over to Omaha and encountered a dramatic but weak thunderstorm along the way. Went to a local art festival, had barbecue and walked over the Kerry bridge.

June 11

We started in Omaha, right in the middle of the greatest tornado threat zone. We wandered over to Iowa and spent a few hours in Tabor, IA, hanging out in a park and wandering around the town. And then things started to fire off to the west so we headed back over the river to Omaha, and then ended up chasing a big storm from there all the way almost down to the Kansas border. It started out as a big hailer and then tried several times to make a tornado right next to us and had a very defined hook even though it wasn't tornado warned (guess there wasn't enough rotation on the radar). Eventually it kept cycling up and down and morphing and moving south right over Eagle Raceway. It weakened and we ended up with miles of dirt roads in front of us and we were thinking about abandoning it, and I'm glad we didn't because it did get a tornado warning right next to us although it never produced. We surfed along it and it was pretty intense; you can see the motion from the crappy videos below. These south-moving storms are challenging to chase and we were hampered by very limited crossings of the Missouri river between Iowa and Nebraska. Eventually the storm weakened and we had waited too long to book a hotel so ended up getting into Sioux Falls, SD around midnight.

June 12

My first real plains storm chase in 2009 was in western South Dakota and into Wyoming, and since then I've had a number of good chases in the state, usually of massive hail storms with incredible shelf clouds. Yesterday we were back in the same region where it all started for me, with a massive hail storm that started in Wyoming northwest of Rapid City and then got tornado warned and ran late into the night, eventually blowing tractor trailers off the interstate and inflicting massive hail damage along the way. We had a long haul from Sioux Falls, and got to the SD border while the storm was still severe warned in Wyoming, and stopped to look for a while because the storm was so big and powerful that I couldn't figure out what we were seeing. Watching it for a while and looking at the satellite I realized that the clouds we were under were not actually the anvil of the storm but moisture feeding into the monster storm. It got tornado warned and was also coming right at us, and the town of Belle Fourche. With limited road options I didn’t want to get stuck in a traffic jam in the town and 2-3" hail, so we got the hell out of there; looking at videos of the hail in that town later confirmed that we made the right decision. The storm then chased us, surging back down to Sturgis. We did the usual leap frog: race ahead, stop and watch and shoot photos, then race ahead. The storm got one of the most beautiful hail blue/green colors I've ever seen, and a couple times surged forward where we had to race to get away. Eventually though we ran out of road options and tired from days of long drives, decided to call it a chase early, booked rooms in rapidly filling up Rapid City, and actually had a sit down dinner.

June 13

We left the great plains behind, leaving Rapid City SD and visiting the most underwhelming of all the national monuments: Mount Rushmore. We then headed down to see Carhenge in Alliance Nebraska, and then had a beautiful drive across the Nebraska Sandhills. A few little storms were popping up here and there and while we were gassing up in Broken Bow I looked up at the sky and was like, "Hmm, that one looks like it’s getting strong" and then like a minute later it got a severe warning. We watched it a bit while eating dinner and then continued the long drive to Omaha, stopping for a beautiful sunset and then a quick camera phone shot of the moon.

June 14

It was great to have chase partner Pamela along for this part of the trip and share all these amazing experiences, but she had to get back and the weather was winding down so I dropped her off at the Omaha airport for her flight back to LA. I spent the rest of the day catching up day, starting with laundry, cleaning out the car (the excitement of storm chasing!) setting up for solo chasing, and then driving up through Iowa up to Fairmont, Minnesota to be in position for the next day’s chase.

June 15

I left Minnesota early in the day and started out trying to catch up with a storm that was pumping out hail in northeastern Iowa, and finally got in front of it when it crossed into LaCrosse, Wisconsin and had lost its severe warning but still had some crazy winds. While the bigger storms were forecast up north, the terrain around LaCrosse is pretty crazy and I didn't want to get pushed by the storms to the UP of Michigan, so I rode down the Mississippi river to Prarie du Chien, and then chased in circles around the crazy hills down there. I ended up with no road options and had a hairy drive right next to and under a developing circulation, then had a nice chat with a local deputy Sherriff who I had seen several times as he was out spotting. I then got pretty close to the back of a tornado-warned storm and then dropped south for the next one, which gusted out. I then kept on for a long drive through Chicago at night to avoid the traffic and made it to Michigan City, Indiana for the night.

June 16

On June 16 I drove 650 miles from Michigan City, Indiana to Vestal NY. There was a tornado watch in upstate NY, but the threat didn't materialize, but I did drive under some mammatus clouds for a long time. Rather than push it, I stayed overnight in Vestal to head home in the morning.

June 17

On June 17 I made it home (just in time for the Mermaid Parade on the 18th). It was 7436 miles, 15 states, two flights and while there weren’t any photogenic tornadoes in chase range of me, it was a great trip. And special thanks to Ann Marie Selzer and Keivonna Rosas-Tucker for taking care of my cat Popsicle while I was gone! I’ll be chasing locally this summer and already planning to get back out again chasing the wind next year.

Many more weather related posts here.

Great Plains Storm Chase 2022