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Latest Blog Posts Index:
September and October of 2024 were very quiet in the Midwest for thunderstorms and severe weather. Celestial events made up for the dry spell, with several significant aurora outbursts and a rare comet appearance providing several days of night sky shooting.
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In January 2025, I'll pass the 15-year mark as a Midwesterner living in the small town of New Baden, Illinois on the east side of the St. Louis metro area. In this view, you can see the interstate leading to the Gateway Arch 29 miles in the distance - giving you an idea of all of the reasons I picked this as my new hometown in 2010.
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I went into downtown St. Louis five times for Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS from October 13-17, successfully capturing the comet on the second through fifth outings.
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August 2024 wsa mostly a quiet one in the Midwest, punctuated by a few systems providing photo opportunities. This recap chronicles events covered during the month.
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July 2024 was an incredible month for storms in the Midwest. Highlights include four tornadoes, a career drone tornado intercept and a Chicago upward lightning show.
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I observed a tornado producing power flashes behind the Chicago skyline during the derecho event in northern Illinois.
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I went out for the remnants of Beryl spinning through the Midwest and saw two significant tornadoes in southwestern Indiana from Mount Vernon to near Owensville (just west of Evansville).
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June was a much-less active stretch in the Midwest, with no major out-of-area trips specifically for storms.
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Season Epilogue: The 2024 spring tornado season was one for the ages. Not only did it rank among the most prolific in United States history, it was a personal record-breaker for me in many ways: some good, but many bad.
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As this season for the record books continues, the Great Plains hasn't slowed down in producing some great chase days despite the lack of blockbuster troughs moving through.
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This year's peak storm season month was another for the books, with 8 tornadoes (including two EF4s) and a likely once-in-a-generation opportunity to capture auroras over the Gateway Arch.
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An EF1 tornado passed over the west end of New Baden on Sunday, May 26, 2024 during a regional severe weather outbreak. The National Weather Service survey found a 10-mile path that generally parallelled I-64 and ended past Damiansville.
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I observed four tornadoes in southwestern Iowa on Tuesday, May 21, 2024.
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As often happens during active seasons, a solid tornado opportunity has emerged on a day I originally wasn't paying attention to. It's not an outbreak setup, but looks a like a classic isolated supercell event for central Kansas.
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Thanks to the active late April and early May we've seen so far, I've already logged a season's worth of mileage and trips (3) at this point with a near-record high of tornadoes observed already (15).
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I took a chance with the northern lights show tonight. Instead of going out into the country where dark skies would maximize aurora viewing and photography, I set up in downtown St. Louis.
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I witnessed a significant, violent and unfortunately deadly tornado in northeastern Oklahoma on Monday, May 6.
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As we move to within 3 days of the big potential outbreak event on Monday the 6th, not a whole lot has changed from my last post.
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The second Plains expedition of the season took place from April 24-28 across Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Missouri and Oklahoma. This was one of the best trips of my career in terms of video and photography captures, solidly in my top 5.
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April 2024 was a month for the ages, one of my most active in many years in terms of miles, captures and the significance of the events. This is a recap of all of the trips and adventures: from the eclipse to tornadoes to lightning and more!
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Confidence has increased significantly in Great Plains expedition #2 beginning tomorrow night and lasting potentially through the weekend. Models have become consistent and in agreement on multiple days of significant supercell and tornado potential on Thursday, Friday and Saturday in particular.
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April has been a very active month for severe weather in the Plains and Midwest, and it appears that may continue through the end of the month.
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The first Plains expedition of the season is on the books, and it was not a good trip for me. The first day failed to produce anything photogenic. On the second day, my target storms did not produce tornadoes - then I hit a wild turkey, destroying the windshield and ending my day early.
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There are still some issues with today's setup in the Great Plains, namely the likelihood of storms being entirely after dark. But moisture is turning out to be a little better than forecast, with the risk for significant tornadic supercells in Kansas after sunset.
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There was a reason I only went as high as 75% confidence on a Plains trip for Monday: the fact that sometimes models back off of the potential on a big event as it gets closer in time. And that's what is happening now. There are several significant problems with the upcoming system.
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I just arrived home from the trip to New Hampshire/Vermont for the eclipse, but it appears that Lord willing, I'll be back on the road soon. A significant tornado event on this coming Monday the 15th has been indicated by models for several days now.
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Virginia Beach chaser Bill Coyle, my brother and his family from Raleigh, my sister and her family from Boston and I traveled to Vermont and New Hampshire to observe the 2024 eclipse.
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Sunday and Monday continue to have supercell/tornado potential in the Great Plains, but we will also have arguably equal or even better chances of the same here in the Midwest.
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As covered in my last post, the current system making its way through the central US has great wind profiles for tornadoes, but was very lacking in enough moisture for the main Great Plains component of the event on Sunday. Once this trough exits to the east, another is shown following by most all medium-range models and model ensemble members.
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Meteorological spring 2024 has started out active, with four convective severe storms outings and two big supercell/tornado setups already logged for the year.
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It's that time of year again! We've made it through another meteorological winter to the season of green trees and grass, warm air, longer days and most importantly to storm chasers, storms!
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February this year was more like March: I observed lightning on five different days, captured lightning stills three times and saw the first tornado of the year - all within the state of Illinois.
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After the first of the year, I've been very busy with numerous winter weather events and trips, making a southern US/south Texas chase for the third winter in a row. Here's a summary of events covered since September of last year.
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From 400 feet in the air, the Gateway Arch and downtown St. Louis appears in the background over New Baden, Illinois from 30 miles away.
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Copyright infringement is a continuous assault on the livelihoods of today's content creators (photographers, filmmakers, musicians, writers, artists).
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In the United States, including in the Midwest and Great Plains regions, there is another weather phenomenon that kills and injures significantly more people annually than tornadoes.
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The purpose of this study is to investigate the hypothesis that atmospheric moisture content (represented by dewpoint temperature) plays a role in whether positive lightning leaders are slow (highly branched) versus fast (branchless) below cloud base.
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Nighttime storms produced at least 21 upward lightning events to Chicago's tallest buildings overnight Friday night, including strikes to 4, 5 and 7 of them at once.
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The Gateway Arch was struck by lightning during an incredible barrage of lightning in downtown St. Louis between 9PM and 10:15PM on Friday night.
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After it appeared that the Great Plains would not offer any spring setups worth traveling for, a respectable multi-day tornado risk quickly materialized in mid-June, well after my usual end-of-season time. This resulted in a four-day Plains trip from June 15 to June 18.
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I've seen enough of medium-range models that I'm confident in declaring that my annual Great Plains tornado season standby period has ended, and will do so without me having made any Plains chases.
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Here's a summary of events covered during the peak of an uncharacteristically inactive severe weather season in the Plains and Midwest.
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We're in the climatological peak of severe weather season in the Midwest and Plains, but you wouldn't know it from my daily schedule the past 2 weeks. It's been life-as-usual here, with very little of significance in the realm of storms to pursue either at home or in the Great Plains.
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Here's a summary of events covered as the 2023 severe weather season gets going in March and April.
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Work is finally under way on the much-anticipated extension of the St. Louis Metrolink light rail line from its current terminus at Scott AFB to MidAmerica Airport. Tree and brush clearing as well as utility/power line modifications along the right-of-way have been in progress for a few weeks. The plans for the extension have been publicly posted by St. Clair County, and they reveal some interesting details about the project.
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After this week's big system brings a temporary surge of cold air into the northern US (and a couple of frosts to the middle latitudes), all of the available long-range models and ensembles show what looks like a permanent retreat of major cold air into Canada afterward.
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