This was my 18th year storm chasing in the great plains (previous writeups here), and it was a strange trip. I drove 6188 miles through 16 States and Ontario, over 15 nights out (all one night stays), but the weather decided to be very quiet during what is normally peak season. Normally, on a two-week trip, I can expect a few quiet days; this year instead, I had only a few chase days. But it was still good to get out.

May 16-17

On May 16 I left in the afternoon from Beacon and made it about 450 miles to Stow (near Akron) Ohio for the night. On May 17 I pushed through to Columbia, MO to try to make it to Kansas for the first chase day on May 18.

May 18

Storms ended up firing a bit earlier than I thought, but I got west and eventually ended up around Minneapolis, KS on the first tornado warned storm of the day. The amazing NWS Storm Prediction Center had said if storms initiated early, they would likely “line out” pretty rapidly, and that’s what happened. As a photographer, I’m always looking for photogenic, stand-alone supercells, but when storms fire close to each other, then interact and eventually form a linear mess, and that’s what happened here. After doing this for many years, it was pretty obvious that this storm was a mess. It could produce a little tornado, but the chaser convergence was so intense it wasn’t worth the risk, so I decided to bail south to another storm forming which I had noticed (visually) on the way up. Soon enough, that storm got a tornado warning, and the hordes descended. I started heading east on a muddy dirt road but had to turn back because of the road conditions and not wanting to get stuck behind some dumb kid in a two-wheel drive sedan with no ground clearance stuck in the mud. This was the pattern of the day, but I did manage to get a few quiet minutes with the camera on several tornado-warned storms, and that’s the photos you see here. As usual, my GPS track looks insane. In the end, I was on so many tornado-warned storms that I lost count, but eventually as the storm line moved east I leap frogged it back to Kansas City. When the storm line hit the hotel I went out and watched it; there was a 90+ mile gust reported just west of me near the airport.

I can’t complain about chaser traffic since I’m part of it, but I saw some of the stupidest, most oblivious and dangerous driving I’ve ever seen on this day, and I’ve been driving in NYC since the 1980s, so I’ve seen some crazy stuff. I think this is my last year chasing in May (peak season in the central plains); it’s just gotten out of hand and there will be a huge disaster at some point.

May 19

Somehow my oil change interval always seems to happen when I’m out chasing, and so I got my oil changed and tires rotated on this day; it was the third time I had been to that same dealer in Kansas City since I bought my RAV4 in 2021. They told me I had been in May 2022, 2024 and now 2026. I got some great KC BBQ for a late lunch, and then headed down through grey and drizzly southern KS and into OK. Finally near Bridgeport OK, the sun popped through under the cloud deck so I jumped off the highway and got the real camera out to shoot the sunset. Afterwards, I made it to Weatherford, OK for the night.

May 20

The storms on this day fired too far south in TX to get without burning myself out, and I've seen a big tornado before down at Ft. Stockton before, so I headed from Weatherford to Dalhart TX to get in position for a chase in eastern CO the next day. I went out with the real camera at sunset and shot this one.

May 21

My storm chasing goal is to see tornadoes in as many different states as possible (right now I’m at around 6 (with some repeats)). Iowa is the state that vexes many chasers, but I got lucky and saw a tornado there years ago. For me, the difficult state has been Colorado. Year after year, I have come close, and once again on this day there were a couple quick spin ups, but I didn’t see them. But it was still a great chase.

I started in Dalhart, TX and there were two target areas in eastern CO, one in the south and one up by I70 east of Denver. I was tired after 2500 miles of driving in 6 days, so I was hoping the southern target would materialize. I had lunch in Springfield, CO and then storms initiated coming off the mountains near Trinidad. I headed over that way, but then saw a new model run and I U turned and headed a couple hours north to Seibert. The storm initiated east of Denver, and I got on it south of Last Chance before it got a tornado warning. I headed a bit north and it was really trying to reach the ground, but it didn’t quite make it. After that, I tracked the storm east as it got repeatedly tornado warned. Every storm is unique; this one was unusual because it had very little lightning. Getting east, I did see a bunch of hail on the ground from a previous storm, and then I ran into a bunch of friends out chasing from NY and hung out with them for a while. The hail core of this storm started surging south, so I headed down to I70 and got out in front of it as the sun set. I gassed up and grabbed some quick food in Burlington CO; I thought about riding out the storm there, but it was late and I was tired and had another hour to go to the hotel in Colby, KS so I bailed. And I’m glad I did because the storm fizzled out.

Chaser traffic on this day was busy but much better than the other day in Kansas, and I only saw a couple stupid moves—one moron passed an entire line of cars up hill on a two lane dirt road, and a bunch of kids parked the wrong way in the travel lane on a dirt road. Some idiots are either all about themselves or too hyped up by seeing their first storms to think about other people.

May 22

When storm chasing, I'm always looking for stand alone supercells, but they are special beasts and sometimes--even in peak season--the atmosphere doesn't make them. In these conditions, you have to chase small scale "scraps" and that means a lot of running around. I started out today in Colby, KS and the stronger storms looked to be down around Lubbock, TX but after 3000+ miles since last Saturday I just didn't feel like pushing to get all the way down there. So I made it down to Amarillo, met up with another chaser friend from NY and had BBQ, expecting storms to fire close to sunset nearby. They did, and made a surprising bit of structure before passing north.

May 23

Setting up for storms the next day in KS/NE, I bailed out of TX and retraced (in reverse) the route I drove the day before, this time back to Colby KS. I saw prairie dogs at the hotel in Amarillo, then stopped to watch a little storm in a beautiful stretch of KS near Wallace, and a nice little rainbow appeared. A bit further up the road, I avoided a snake in the road, and turned around to check it out and it was a rattlesnake! I tried to scare it away from the road with my tripod, but it didn't seem too happy about that. (Shot with a telephoto lens!)

May 24

Storm chasing is such a weird pursuit. Some days can be intense, while other days—like this day—can just be a slog, chasing scraps and looking for more favorable conditions to develop before I have to go home. I headed up from Colby KS, to Nebraska. The SPC added a slight risk up on the NE/SD border, but I was really dragging after 4000 miles in a week driving by myself, and just didn’t have it in me to blast all the way up there. The models were showing some chance of storms down in the southern half of NE along I80, so I hoped they would verify. Eventually, a little sub severe rainstorm did develop, and had some pretty gusty winds that kicked up some dirt and I thought it might intensify as it entered the more favorable conditions. I leap frogged it a bit, and it weakened and so I stopped to watch the F1 race for a while. The storm got a bit of lightning in it (a sign often that it's intensifying) and I followed the storm west to watch it die out completely. I ended up in Lincoln, NE for the night. While they had better storms up north, it turns out I didn’t really miss anything,

May 25

Well there wasn’t much threat for severe storms on this day, but I love shooting lightning, and storms were forecast to develop and move across northeastern NE. So I headed up from Lincoln and from near Petersburg, NE I saw storms bubbling up off in the distance. Storms like this often develop on weather boundaries and then sit there for a while until they displace from the boundary and start heading off east. I watched a while from a “low maintenance” dirt road and then took my time and worked my way west out to O’Neill, and watched the storm slowly grow. I set up my new lightning trigger which I hadn’t really gotten to try out, and it was nice to just quietly watch a storm like this on a dirt road with no chaser convergence. The storm eventually started heading east, and I leap frogged it while it made a spectacular sunset. The storm did get a severe warning after sunset, and I worked my way to Sioux City, IA for the night. It was a nice to have a leisurely chase in such pretty country.

May 26-31

By this point, it was obvious that the weather was going to remain quiet for the rest of the time I had available, and this is unfortunate because a lot of the plains are in drought and need rain. My cat sitter was booked until the end of the month, but with nothing to chase I went into tourist mode killing time and slowly moving back east. I went back to the Corn Palace in SD (instagram post here). I had driven by the Porter Sculpture park east of Mitchell a bunch of time but finally stopped in and it was very cool; photos here. The sculptures are whimsical, beautiful and powerful. Mr. Porter was there and I had a nice chat with him, and told him I want to get some lightning shots over his amazing sculptures next year. I then drifted east to Minnesota, and had a very nice hangout with three different friends who I hadn’t seen in years (thanks Facebook!). I then headed east through Wisconsin and to the Dells where I went to Circus World (photos of that stretch here). I went to Moment Factory’s very cool Aquavia Lumina; photos here. I decided to take the ferry from WI to MI and then crossed into Canada. I went again to Niagara Falls and this time saw a very cool decommissioned power plant, and then headed back into NY. I checked out the beautiful Letchworth State Park and visited a glass bowl my family had donated to the Corning Museum of Glass and then headed home. ‍

Preparation

Ironically, I think I was better prepared for this year than any other. After many years (and problems) with RadarScope, I switched over this year to WeatherWise, and after a bit of a learning curve it worked great. I’m not a fan of Elon, but I got a Starlink this year for satellite internet, and it was amazing and really a game changer. Not only was it great to have access to radar everywhere, but it even made it easier to to book hotels and stuff like that from remote areas.

Conclusion

It’s a privilege to be able to do this, but I have to say it was a bit of a slog this year. This was an unusually quiet period, and of course right before I went out and right after I got back it got very active. But I feel like after a long time doing this, I finally more or less have a process that works for me, and (within reasonable driving range) I did successfully get on every tornado warned storm that was availablle.

But with the stupidity I saw on that day in Kansas (long my favorite place to chase and where I saw my first tornado 13 years ago), and the changes in the climate, I feel like this endeavor has hit some kind of turning point. ‍One of the changes that has been observed is that there are less tornado days over all but more tornadoes on fewer days, so my current thinking is for next year to go out late in the season and stay up north (which I much prefer anyway) and just plan for long stretches of no storms. We’ll see.

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Great Plains Storm Chase 2026