Photo Gallery
This perfect Wizard of Oz tornado was an EF4 that destroyed a house & farm. Campbell, MN, August 7, 2010. Approaching a supercell near Booker, TX, shortly before it produced a tornado on April 22, 2010.  This mothership supercell produced the world's largest hailstone--8 inchces in diameter, the size of a soccer ball!--shortly before this photo was taken.  Vivian, SD, July 23, 2010.  (Photo courtesy of Chad Cowan) The Boys Of Tempest:  some of the gentlemen I chase with every summer. From left to right:  Dr. Bob Conzemius; Bill Reid; Keith Brown; Kinney Adams; Brian Morganti. We got within 200 yards of this violent tornado near Hayfield, MN on August 13, 2010.
Jenna on the chase in Montana, 2006. Tempest guide Keith Brown films mammatus clouds, signifiers of severe weather. These mammatus, near Guymon, OK, were so big I called them “gluteus” instead. Tempest tourists photograph a developing funnel in OK. A typical Oklahoma Panhandle landscape… Stacy Williams bravely facing down “The Icemaker” near Limon, CO. We were pelted by large hail about a half-hour after this photo was taken.
You can see why chasers call certain Supercell thunderstorms "the mothership." At this point, in addition to filming the storm, we were feeding it gummybears and corn nuts, trying to entice that funnel to  touch down.  The infamous "green tornado" you can read about in the Storm Diary: 2007 Chase section of this website. This is just about my favorite photo ever—it looks like something I’d see in my dreams. Storm shelter on the OK Panhandle. All work and no play makes Jenna a dull girl.
The underside of a New Mexico Supercell—we got whomped by its rain and hail core about a ½ hour later. The extraordinary coloring means there’s plenty of hail. I heard a little girl say to her mother as they walked across a Wal-Mart parking lot, “Mommy, those clouds look funny.” I thought, Right on, kid! Her mother just said, “Uh huh.” And you thought there was a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Every morning with Tempest starts like this: a hotel room forecast and lesson in predicting the weather. Some friendly residents of rural CO.
Prime chase territory—and, to me, throat-achingly beautiful in its lonesomeness. A very unusual storm structure in rural Texas. See the striated structure on the side of this Brady, TX Supercell?  That "banding" in the clouds, also called "stacked plates,” means the storm is rotating, sculpting itself into these spectacular cloud bands. This photo speaks for itself, but I can't help throwing my two cents in about the color.  Yes, the storms really look like that! The author/ Jedi apprentice chaser learns a meteorology lesson from the master, Kinney “Obi Wan” Adams.
The first tornado, a “tusk,” produced by the Supercell near Hoxie, KS during the May 22, 2008 outbreak (see Stormchase Diary, Chase 2008). This storm was a veritable carousel of tornadoes. Cone tornado produced by the Hoxie Supercell, May 22, 2008. I have to admit I greeted this one by shouting, “Hello, dear friend!” The same Supercell produced this wedge tornado. We were so fortunate to be on this phenomenal storm—chasers widely agree that May 22nd was the best chase day of 2008. One of the most recurring and beloved symbols of the Plains for me:  the watertower.  Oh, and the Supercell. Thankfully, I see more and more of these beautiful and planet-saving wind farms on the Great Plains every summer.