Storm Chasing/Chased

[Mobius]

The last week has been pretty interesting weather-wise around here.  On Saturday we had tornadoes touching down in literally every corner of almost every county in southern Wisconsin and huge amounts of rain in some places, enough just north of us to wash out a dam and drain an entire lake! (NEW STORY).  I was up to the north a bit, just south of some of the bigger storms when I noticed some rotation in the clouds that were coming right at me, so I headed straight south about as fast as I could, only to learn when I got home that a tornado had touched down where I had just been.

Now tonight, we've had one tornado just to the north of us, and two more to the south-east of use, but we've luckily managed to be missed by everything.  I took some pictures of the storm that spawned the tornado (I love that expression) to the north of us this afternoon, and got some pictures of the storm system that spawned the other tornadoes a little earlier this evening.  Storm chasing is easy when it's just outside your door.

At the airport, looking to the northwest at the first storm...




Taken over my shoulder while heading south, out of the first storm...




Farther south, looking back to the north-east at the south-west side of the storm...




Looking north-west, away from the second storm...




The back-side of the second storm...




The same thing as before, from a little farther down the road...




Any comments or suggestions are appreciated, and yes, I know, driving into a tornado producing storm is quite stupid.

[BigTruck]

Awesome man, I miss the midwest (raised in upper michigan, yeah I'm a yooper) and we used to get a few big ones every year too and I've always wanted to go chase a few, and now that I have the equipment to do it I can't seem to get stationed anywhere the big storms hit (currently living in Hawaii and moving to San Fransisco)    

[Triple_7]

Nice to get an idea of whats heading my direction  Had enough bad weather...don't need anymore

Nice shots...especially like 3 and 5 8-)

[beaky]

You wouldn't catch me going near a twister without one of these:

http://www.usatoday.com/weather/stormce ... crew_x.htm

[Mobius]

Thanks for the comments guys.

You wouldn't catch me going near a twister without one of these:

http://www.usatoday.com/weather/stormce ... crew_x.htm

Yeah, my truck probably wouldn't stand up to a tornado quite like the TIV would.  There was a pretty cool show on the Discovery channel where a camera crew followed the TIV and support vehicles around the country chasing tornados for a season.  Hopefully they bring it back.

[Craig.]

Mate, where are the shots of the tornado?
BAh storm chasing my backside

Nice shots really.  :)

[Brett_Henderson]

Photographing a tornado is on my life, "to-do" list.

If it aint happend by the time I'm 60; I'll spend summers in Kansas

[Willit Run]

Great shots!!

Those last two look really intense!!

[flyboy 28]

You wouldn't catch me going near a twister without one of these:

http://www.usatoday.com/weather/stormce ... crew_x.htm

Who needs one of them when you can just wind up like these guys?


http://www.breitbart.tv/?p=112073

[DaveSims]

Why do all that, all I had to do to see one last weekend was look out my front door.  Didn't even think to grab the camera though, was too busy listening to the reports coming in on my fire radio.