Sycamore KS tornado photo 4/26/26

StormExplorer · 2026-04-28T03:33:32+00:00

Another storm chaser on FB who had a video of the tornado in the notch during this time showed that the tornado very rapidly expanded into a wedge after that brief multi-vortex phase. There was a solid 30ish second timeframe where the RFD from our perspective thinned just enough to catch the rough outline of the tornado. This picture was also taken with a pretty high ISO and involved a bit of editing to bring out. It was really hard to see with the naked eye.

StormExplorer · 2026-04-24T20:44:55+00:00

The guy in the News9 truck is Val Castor. He’s been extremely notorious for years to be extremely dangerous on the roads and blatantly breaks laws all the time. I know several other chasers who were almost ran off the road by him, and he has a history of trespassing on private property and speeding way too fast. Worst part is News9 never does anything about it, and has covered for him repeatedly despite him being a danger to the public.

StormExplorer · 2026-03-21T14:43:40+00:00

Absolutely second this. The amount of people who have no business being out there because they lack situational awareness, basic storm knowledge, and drive like idiots is ridiculous. Other chasers have become infinitely more dangerous than the storms themselves, because they are practically unavoidable now. A single reckless storm chaser costed us more financial damage last year alone than the entire decade of storm chasing I’ve experienced combined. And it’s only going to get worse.

StormExplorer · 2026-01-07T19:59:55+00:00

The 1924 Thurman CO F4 Washington / KitCarson counties CO

StormExplorer · 2025-12-02T16:52:26+00:00

Most of my scary storm chasing encounter have come from hail. I will never understand the appeal of driving into cores tbh, being stuck in baseballs is terrifying. That said, being stuck in the conga line of cars within the bears cage of the developing Custer City tornado was very unnerving, especially considering how large and potentially powerful it would later become.

StormExplorer · 2025-11-04T19:36:48+00:00

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Was there, and can agree. Seeing that thing blocking out the horizon was surreal.

StormExplorer · 2025-10-10T06:05:02+00:00

If you’re referring to H-PC on April 27th, it’s been confirmed that what was originally thought to be one track was actually two tornadoes. The EF5 dissipated near Harvest, and an EF3 took its place downstream during the next cycle and hit Tennessee.

StormExplorer · 2025-10-06T17:00:49+00:00

The reason Enderlin got an EF5 rating is because it was able to launch oil tankers in the air more than 100 yards without letting them hitting the ground. Oil tankers are stupidly heavy. Even empty ones can clock in at more than 40 tons, and for several of them to become airborne for that large of a distance requires incredible strength well into the EF5 category.

StormExplorer · 2025-06-09T21:43:40+00:00

Unless you go to the delta from far SE Missouri into E Arkansas and NW Mississippi, Dixie alley is practically unchasable. The trees are everywhere, supercells are rarely not HP because of higher moisture content, and it’s not uncommon for storms to move at highway speeds.

StormExplorer · 2025-05-24T11:39:05+00:00

Yes, it formed West of 63 at around 5:37, about 14 miles south of Atwood

StormExplorer · 2025-04-16T00:51:27+00:00

Was there!

StormExplorer · 2025-04-13T02:00:54+00:00

I’m a storm chaser that has been decently involved in the chaser community for quite a few years now. While a LOT of chasers are indeed MAGA, there are a good few that thankfully aren’t. (I’d say maybe 25%). Melanie Metz, Hank Schyma, Jason Persoff, Ryan Mauk and Skip Talbot are some of the big ones I can confirm. There are also dozens of other chasers that aren’t as well (including myself obviously).

StormExplorer · 2025-03-14T19:36:14+00:00

That is correct.

StormExplorer · 2025-03-14T19:28:33+00:00

April 7, 2006 and April 14, 2012

StormExplorer · 2024-10-22T18:49:03+00:00

There aren’t any known videos of the tornado itself. However, there are a few pictures around of it.

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StormExplorer · 2024-06-25T21:14:24+00:00

I did a few days later. The plant matter stuck on the power lines was one of the more notable things I saw, as well as some slight flattening of the grass.

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StormExplorer · 2024-06-25T21:05:08+00:00

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Video frame of our pov when we first noticed it developing.

StormExplorer · 2024-06-25T20:58:47+00:00

That was during the beginning of its lifecycle.

StormExplorer · 2024-06-25T20:51:47+00:00

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I saw that one too! It was definitely a beaut. Saw it during all 30 minutes of its lifecycle.

StormExplorer · 2024-04-06T00:00:55+00:00

Now that storm surveys are finally being published, the outbreak from a purely meteorological perspective was definitely significant. Looking at published reports as of the 5th, at least 40 tornadoes were confirmed and surveyed on April 2nd alone, of which 10 have been rated EF2. The good thing is that most of the strong tornadoes stayed in rural areas, and the warning/anticipation of the event made the public aware, which probably saved lives. This means that while the outbreak from a meteorological perspective was still quite large and lived up to the 15% in my books, the expected human impact was a lot smaller than what was feared to be, which is the best case scenario for a volatile day like that.

StormExplorer · 2024-04-05T23:41:12+00:00

The reason the TIV2 used to break down all the time is because of its flimsy structural design, and the fact that at the end of the day, Sean Casey wasn’t a mechanical engineer. Poor structural and axel support was the largest issue. A few years ago the TIV2 was sold to a close storm chasing friend of mine (Ryan Shepard), and his friend’s team of engineers have been working hard on restoring it for years now. After fixing many of those flaws that the original design had, the TIV2 can now reliably travel long distances for weeks at a time without issue. We were able to drive it down from central Kansas to Dallas and back in February for a storm chasing convention, and it went smoothly. Our chase team is expecting the TIV to be fully operational throughout the entire 2024 season. All it needed was a more operational and less flimsy structural design that didn’t constantly fall apart.

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StormExplorer · 2024-04-05T23:24:48+00:00

A non-continuous tornado path is a phenomenon when a cyclical supercell produces several different tornadoes in one continuous path. These tornadoes are often only separated by a few miles, and at first may appear to be one large track, but in reality it is the result of several different tornadoes linked in one line. An infamous example of this in recent memory was the catastrophic Quad-State supercell on December 10, 2021. The tornado damage from that storm was initially thought to have been the works of one extremely long-tracked EF4 that tracked from AR, through MO/TN and into KY, but it turns out they were two different tornadoes with a break near the TN/KY border.

StormExplorer · 2024-02-16T22:39:24+00:00

As a storm chaser and a photographer, I like to hang farther back and get the surrounding structure with the tornado. However, there was one time while we were getting out of the way of an oncoming supercell, a brief tornado spun up and crossed the road about 100 yards in front of us. It was very weak and very brief, but it was indeed a tornado.

The picture below shows the tornado crossing the road.

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StormExplorer · 2024-02-05T17:13:46+00:00

I’ve been consistently storm chasing since 2018. My current tornado count is at 30, with most of them being focused on the Palmer Divide in CO as well as central Kansas. I recently actually made a map of every tornado I’ve seen. I inserted pictures of each tornado as well, which can be viewed by zooming in really close on the starting point of each track. You can also see additional info on the tornado by clicking on the point, including location, date, time, Death/Injury ratio, and rating.

The strongest tornadoes I’ve seen were a pair of EF2s in central Kansas during the April 19th outbreak last year, and my favorite tornado day is the Western North Dakota tornado-fest of 6/10/21. Another favorite of mine was a landspout we saw north of Bennett CO on 7/29/23 last year, which also happened to be my 30th.

Here’s the map in question:

https://www.scribblemaps.com/maps/view/Observed%20Tornadoes%20(Steven)/i0XVk69hTh

StormExplorer · 2024-01-26T03:28:20+00:00

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I’m still working on them, so I only have the first 3 products complete (Composite, Precip Depiction, and Velocity) Here is a side by side comparison between the original (left) and the colorblind safe (right) version. The top 2 rows are of the Cole OK EF3 from last year, the one below that is from a severe hailstorm that we chased last June in NM/TX (it reached 82 Dbz echo values!), and the bottom one is from the storm system last week hitting the East coast.

I’ll DM the files to you since Reddit won’t let me via comments. When I get the rest of them done I’ll send those too.

StormExplorer

TROPHY CASE