Tornadoes
AFTER THE CHASE, INDELIBLE MEMORIES
Was it fun? people ask, knowing I’ve just returned from a tornado chase on the Great Plains. Sure it was fun. If your idea of fun is sitting in a van for 10 hours a day, reeling in the miles (3500 of them in seven days); or waiting and waiting and waiting for something to…
Read MoreHUNTING UNICORNS
Yesterday, Silver Lining Tours and I might as well have been hunting unicorns as tornadoes. Tornadoes? We didn’t even see a towering cumulus! For awhile, we thought we might have chance at a big storm far to our west just north of the Kansas border in Nebraska, but, like legislation in the U.S. Congress, it…
Read MoreHERE SNAKEY, SNAKEY, SNAKEY
After pushing northward yesterday from Wichita, Kansas, to Yankton, South Dakota, we got a shutout tossed at our tornado chase team. Thunderstorms did bubble up along a cold front sliding across the northern Plains, but for the most part—-at least where we were in far southeastern South Dakota—-they were run-of-the-mill. So we packed it in…
Read MoreBIRTH OF A HIGH PLAINS MONSTER
With other members of my chase group, I’m standing on the high plains of the Texas Panhandle, west of Lubbock. A stiff wind, inflow to a supercell aborning, slams into my back as I snap pictures of the strengthening storm. I struggle to stay upright; to hold the camera steady. Daggers of lightning lance into…
Read MoreYELLOW BRICK ROADKILL?
Friday I leave for Oklahoma City where my week-long quest for the wily, or sometimes not so wily, tornado will begin. My wife is absolutely convinced I’m a dead man walking; certain I’ll get swept up like Dorothy and end up as road kill on the Yellow Brick Freeway. More likely, if conditions ripe for…
Read MoreA QUICK AND DEADLY START
The tornado season is off to a quick and deadly start this year. Devastating storms hammered parts of mid-America over the past couple of days. And although there’s a bit of a lull today, already another significant threat looms for tomorrow. The Storm Prediction Center warns that numerous fast-moving supercell storms as well as a…
Read MoreWHAT DOES AN AUTHOR DO BETWEEN BOOKS?
So what does an author do between books? Well, to be blunt, there is no such thing as “between” books. “Among” books maybe, or “all done” with books perhaps, but no “between.” At the moment, I’m still dealing with Eyewall; plotting strategy for the release of ______ (yes, sad to report, there’s still no official…
Read MoreBipolar Meteorologists
To meteorologists, the Great Tornado Swarm of last week was something breathtaking to behold. It fascinated us, it stunned us, it frightened us. Nature on a rampage. Horrific science fiction come to reality. And yet, as always, we were torn between the dichotomy of being awestruck voyeurs of nature’s power and distressed witnesses to human…
Read MoreWhy?
I’m appalled at the loss of life–the death toll stands near 300 as I write this–in this week’s devastating tornado swarm. The meteorological killing fields extended from the Deep South into Virginia. The number of twisters and dead rivals those of the great Super Outbreak of April 1974. In fact, to find tornado fatality lists…
Read MoreThe Surfer Dude and Stormmaster G–Part IV
This is the fourth and final part of “The Surfer Dude and Stormmaster G,” an excerpt from Inside The Weather Channel. Next week I’ll begin a series taking you behind the scenes of “Your Weather Today,” the Weather Channel’s popular morning show, as it was in late 2008 with Marshall Seese and Heather Tesch. THE…
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