April 15, 2024

I teamed up esteemed scientist Anton Seimon and world renowned National Geographic photographer Carsten Peter for a two day chase run to the Plains and Midwest. Anton and Carsten are long time friends with decades of storm chasing experience, and the chance to chase with this duo was as much if not more motivation to make this run than the storms themselves.

I packed for the chase and prepped the van, setting up gear and configuring it for chase mode. Just for fun, I dressed the van up to look as it did when it made a few background appearances in the film Twisters. The movie had yet to be released, and I wanted to post a few teaser shots. I took the dome and mast down for the actual chase as I wouldn't be using them.

I left the evening before the chase, enjoyed a pretty sunset, and stopped in Springfield, MO for the night. The plan was to meet up with Anton and Carsten in OKC by 11am the next morning, and then boogie to our southwest Kansas chase target.

I met Anton and Carsten at the OKC airport. We convinced Carsten to ditch his rental so that we could all pile into my van and be together for the two day chase run, rather than operating an unwieldy caravan. On the way out of town, we made time to visit the Twistex Memorial, just southeast of El Reno. The site has a monument to Tim Samaras, Paul Samaras, and Carl Young who were killed at the location by the May 31, 2013 El Reno, Oklahoma tornado. Anton and Carsten were both chase partners of Tim Samaras, and this was Carsten's first visit to the memorial, making the moment really impactful.

We continued on to Shattuck, Oklahoma holding to watch the weather and setup our cameras for chase mode. Anton performed his famous observational check: tossing a handful of grass up into the air, noting how it interacted with the winds. The cows looked on.

We continued on toward our original of Dodge City, KS target. However, we were looking at a daytime cap bust. Storms finally started to go up as the boundary layer cooled, and we paralleled them from the south a ways, noting some lightning out of the lower topped convection. We didn't stop to shoot, but continued to our hotel in Great Bend. The next day's setup looked considerably more robust and required another big drive out to eastern Iowa, so we didn't want to stay out all night. The drive was enjoyable though, listening to Carsten recant stories of chasing the legendary Manchester tornado with Tim.