I confess:  I have never before chased storms and shivered. Normally storms fire in hot humid environments but the northeasterly winds that provided the upslope lift near the Rocky Mountains were decidedly chilly both yesterday and today. Jackets …

Heading west from North Platte this morning we wound up in eastern Wyoming watching as two supercells approached our vantage point. We found a hillside wildlife preserve a few miles south of Yoder WY and had it all to ourselves for 15 minutes before th…

Just finished up our morning planning meeting with the students, who are all fired up and ready to see some convective activity today. At the moment the target is the western NE panhandle / eastern WY, where conditions look favorable for some discrete …

These first two days have been marathon on-the-road sessions, trying to get far enough west to chase storms today. After overnighting in Columbia MO last night we pushed hard to reach North :Platte NE this evening in hopes of catching storms that looke…

Sunday May 18th the 2014 Hokie Stormchasers will roll out of Blacksburg. Officially this is the Virginia Tech Severe Weather Field Course so it is a formal class. The students – 13 of them – will be graded for their efforts. They will be forecasting wh…

I didn’t hold out high hopes for chasing conditions today given the amount of rain forecast (flood watches were posted well ahead of time) and the limited instability. Sure enough we wound up with an early squall line that was pretty much unbroken as i…

Given today’s setup with a bit of instability, no cap, and almost no shear I chose not to chase. Of course with no cap a number of storms fired early, one of which cut short my afternoon stroll around a local park. As the rain and thunder approached I …

I finally had the opportunity to view and edit the videos I took during yesterday’s “static core punch”. The southern end of a line segment passed over my position with gusty winds and heavy rain but no hail even tho’ the VIL indicated that it might ha…

This Saturday before Mother’s Day I wasn’t planning to chase but I took my gear with me anyway. After a family visit in northern sections of Virginia I headed south on Rte 15 with an eye on the radar. I noticed a robust discrete storm approaching Danvi…

I realized late last night that I hadn’t looked at the video I’d recorded at the Blue Ridge airport location during yesterday’s storm chase in Henry county VA. I was live streaming at the time and was paying more attention to that equipment plus watchi…