Storm over the foothills flickered for a while before putting on the show of the year, me capturing multiple INCREDIBLY detailed shots! Including what I would easily consider my lightning shot of the year!
Tony's Blogbach, Between the Isobars
Back Home, Where 2026 Sits As Of Now
Not much to speak of from this recent two-day chase trip… enough so where neither day will get a written log out of the deal, but alas, that’s how it goes sometimes. I have rolled back home safely and have updated the books and I continue to move 2026 further and further up the ranking list… as of the end of this most recent trip, here are where my numbers sit in the annual rankings starting back in 2002, and what it would take to move into the top 3 and the first place overall. 2026 Storm-Chasing Statistical Targets Statistic…
Squeaking Out Today
Sleeper may be giving too much credit to day’s setup, but 24 hours ago, this was going to be a one-and-done trip… then today started sneaking in to some of the hi-rez model runs, and I went to bed last night thinking we could eek out one more day today. This morning’s runs continued to show the northwest Missouri potential, so given the less-than-three-hour haul down I-29 from here in Omaha, we’ve elected to go ahead and make it so. SPC maintains a marginal risk from the extent of the front today, and I guess it’s not out of the…
But, It’s a Really Big But
Waking up this morning in Grand Island after yesterday’s football-filled drive (Washington lost to the Eagles by 2 in a more competitive game than I figured, but a loss is a loss), about 2-3 hours from my early afternoon target. As usual, I will land in that target by 3pm, which probably oughta be more than enough time to settle and wait for the afternoon show. I probably should post a current grab of the radar, but that’s more effort than this Monday morning is going to get out of me. Trust me when I say there is a LOT…
Monday is the Target
Monday is the target day, the start of the ‘Second Season’ of chasing… while unlikely the last chase of the season, this will mark the home stretch of this season minus whatever El Nino has to serve up, particularly across the south/southeast through the winter. It’s an all-hazards setup, but with multiple caveats. In fact, this has been highlighted in the SPC 15% since the Day 5, and we awakened this morning to the 15% dropped to an all-marginal, only for the SLIGHT to come back in the afternoon Day 3. I don’t know why they opted to drop the…
Polished Up Front Page, All Log Types Live
Been a busy stretch behind-the-scenes as I continued to bring the website up to spec. I spent several hours yesterday evening polishing up the front page after adding the remaining post types to the site. I’m about 90% of the way to finally making it so all that’s left to do is content generation, getting decades of weather logs up and running. I have a lot of placeholders up to help me as I tweak site layouts, but soon I will begin to finally get all the archive content polished up and posted! It’s super exciting! After building out all…
My Watermarking Journey
I am SOOO EXCITED to finally have a pet-project completed! Earlier this year, I created a watermarking app that I’ve been using on my phone so I could quick turn phone pictures for social, applying my watermark to those photos in a simple app. After some small changes, I was using this with great success and ease through the season. But one issue remained for me, and that was having this for my computers. My PC workflow all consisted of one-by-one exports in Premiere, where I had a motion graphics locator and a separate PNG file placed in a timeline…
DURING THIS WEEK IN LAUBACH HISTORY
May 29, 2004 - Southern Kansas - 15 Tornadoes For nearly 20 years, this was my number 1 chase! Over a dozen tornadoes across southern Kansas, including the Conway Springs sequence which included my first ever nationally televised tornado video!
June 21, 2023 - Northeast Colorado - 19 Tornadoes The tornado chase of my lifetime, hands-down the all-time number 1! One of the most beautiful tornadoes ever photographed, one of nearly THREE dozen to touch down on this historic Colorado day.
May 24, 2016 - Southwest Kansas - 12 Tornadoes An incredible, Top 5 all-time tornado intercept chase that included dozens of tornadoes around the Dodge City area in southwest Kansas. Also included my 300th career tornado.
The Move-In Day Tornado
HAIL CHASES
FLOOD CHASES
LIGHTNING CHASES
The first chase, the first tornado, the May 14, 1997 Ohio-chase that started it all.
The number of Washington Redskins great, Art Monk, becomes a storm chasing icon.
In 22 years, 2 months, and 2 days, I drove half-a-million mile chasing storms across the country.
