Tony Laubach is a veteran storm chaser and degreed Meteorologist who has pursued severe weather across the United States since his first tornado in 1997. Over three decades on the road, he has documented hundreds of tornadoes, contributed to field research with projects such as TWISTEX, and shared extreme weather stories through broadcast, digital media, and national reporting. Today, Tony continues his work with AccuWeather, tracking, explaining, and experiencing the storms firsthand.
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Northeast Colorado
529 Miles | SPC Outlook: Slight

Another over-performing marginal day! More awesome structure followed by a lightning photo nightcap in extreme northeast Colorado.

TORNADOES: 0
MAX HAIL: .50"
FLOODING: Not Observed
LIGHTNING: Captured

Chase Log: July 31, 2026

East-Central Missouri (1,579 Miles)
TORNADOES: 0
MAX HAIL: None
FLOODING: Not Observed

Chase Log: July 30, 2026

Northern Nebraska (658 Miles)
TORNADOES: 1
MAX HAIL: None
FLOODING: Not Observed

Chase Log: July 28, 2026

Northeast Colorado (324 Miles)
TORNADOES: 0
MAX HAIL: None
FLOODING: Observed

Chase Log: July 21, 2026

Northern Colorado (7 Miles)
TORNADOES: 0
MAX HAIL: None
FLOODING: Not Observed

Chase Log: July 1, 2026

Northern Colorado (76 Miles)
TORNADOES: 0
MAX HAIL: 1.25"
FLOODING: Observed

Chase Log: June 25, 2026

Northwest Oklahoma (607 Miles)
TORNADOES: 2
MAX HAIL: None
FLOODING: Observed

Tony's Blogbach, Between the Isobars

Latest Blog Entries

Today’s Lower End Potential?

August 13, 2026 | Forecast Thoughts

On paper, today doesn’t have quite the spunk that yesterday did, but I am still going to venture out and see what I can scrap out of this.  Today’s setup seemed more focused around the I-70 corridor in eastern Colorado verses yesterday’s I–80/I-76 play.  I will probably depart here in a couple hours, heading down toward Bennett, and following things out east.  SPC keeps it at a marginal, although they’ve teased at the idea of a wind-driven slight.  Regardless, that doesn’t really change the overall setup, but worth noting the potential is there for something.  My guess, I will probably…

The Low-End Days Are The Best

August 13, 2026 | Post-Mortem

While I have done my fair share of whining about the overall feel of the 2026 chasing season, one of the brighter themes to this year has been the over-achieving of the lower-end, marginal days.  Yesterday was another tickmark in that tradition with another visually stunning storm that I was able to stay with for several hours.  This year is definitely gonna be the year of the shelf cloud, and yesterday’s structure didn’t disappoint.  I’ll be the first to say that once you’ve seen ten shelf clouds, you’ll see ten more, but they never fail to make for good pictures. …

New Chase Log Filters Added to the Site

August 11, 2026 | Gear and Gadgets

Finally finished a little feature on the site… for a while, I have organized my chase logs into three categories, NO REPORT, IN PROGERSS, and FULL WRITE-UP.  The working idea when I recreated the site was to mirror a similar log book that I had in earlier editions of the site where EVER log would be added to the annual page whether or not a write-up was intended.  That way I showed a complete log book each year with all relevant stats posted to the chase logs.  That also meant not having to create specific pages for logs that were…

Monsoony Week Ahead in Colorado

August 11, 2026 | Forecast Thoughts

    A lot going on locally, including some weather with chasing potential over the next few days… all this leading into the FIRST weekend in God-Knows-How-Long that will actually be NICE to be outside for… Chasing-wise, nothing significant on the level I would LIKE to see on an August setup, hail/wind threats along with potential for flash flooding (mainly on Thursday for flooding).  Tomorrow will probably require a bit of a northerly haul, perhaps into northwest Nebraska.  Models have been throwing darts at the region for where the best severe weather setup lies, but my hunch will be closer…

End of July Placeholders Added

August 4, 2026 | Forecast Thoughts, Post-Mortem

Just doing some quick website maintenance, adding the four chases from last week that wrapped up an otherwise pretty lowkey July.  While I got some pretty images, none of the days really performed all that great.  Aside from the Longmont flooding on the 28th and an encounter with a brief little QLCS birdfart in northern Nebraska on the 30th, this was a series of otherwise unremarkable chasing.  Still, was nice to get a little July romp in, as July typically is my slowest month for chasing during the warm season. Not much looking forward in the nearterm; I had some…

A Legit Chase Day Thursday

All cozied up here in my Ogallala hotel after following some storms up I-76 this afternoon.  Today’s forecast didn’t pan out like we thought with storms having better wheels and actually going severe for a time.  Initial thoughts on today were very slow moving Urban Corridor storms that would produce flash flood potential from Denver and points north.  While there was a brief window for some minor street flooding in southeast Denver, the storms had more juice to them, thus propagated northeast much quicker, leaving the areal residence time too low for major impacts fortunately.  That also meant the cluster…

Tony's 10-Day Chase Outlook

TODAY AUG 13
Chase Day
ACTIVE
Eastern Colorado
TOMORROW AUG 14
Watching
40%
Eastern Colorado
SATURDAY AUG 15
No Chase Planned
<5%
SUNDAY AUG 16
No Chase Planned
<5%
MONDAY AUG 17
No Chase Planned
<5%
TUESDAY AUG 18
No Chase Planned
<5%
WEDNESDAY AUG 19
No Chase Planned
<5%
THURSDAY AUG 20
No Chase Planned
<5%
FRIDAY AUG 21
No Chase Planned
<5%
SATURDAY AUG 22
No Chase Planned
<5%

Career Stats

Stat Keeping Started in 2002
Career Miles: 567,513
Career Chases: 577
Career Tornadoes: 494
Career Tornado Days: 209
Career Tornado Average: 0.362
Career Work Logs: 417
Career Total Logs: 994
Career 1K Mile Chases: 148
Tactical Weather-Instrumented Sampling in/near Tornadoes Experiment
Chase Log: May 23, 2007
Texas Panhandle
Tornadoes: 2
Chase Log: May 29, 2008
Southern NE/Northern KS
Tornadoes: 16
Chase Log: June 17, 2009
Central Nebraska
Tornadoes: 9
Chase Log: April 23, 2007
Southern Kansas
Tornadoes: 1
Chase Log: May 22, 2007
Northern Kansas
Tornadoes: 1
Chase Log: May 22, 2010
Northeast South Dakota
Tornadoes: 7

HAIL CHASES

Chase Log: April 3, 2008
Northwest Texas
Max Hail: 2.00"
Chase Log: August 9, 2011
Southwest Nebraska
Max Hail: 2.25"
Chase Log: June 13, 2021
Northern Colorado
Max Hail: 1.75"
Chase Log: May 24, 2020
Southern Kansas
Max Hail: 2.75"

FLOOD CHASES

Chase Log: July 8, 2011
Northeast Colorado
Flooding: Urban Flooding
Chase Log: April 15, 2016
TX/OK Panhandles
Flooding: Urban Flooding
Chase Log: June 26, 2004
Northeast Colorado
Flooding: Urban Flooding
Chase Log: June 27, 2004
Northeast Colorado
Flooding: Flash Flooding

LIGHTNING CHASES

Chase Log: May 6, 2016
Northeast Colorado
Lightning: Captured
Chase Log: September 9, 2025
Eastern CO/Western KS
Lightning: Captured
Chase Log: May 14, 2020
Southeast Kansas
Lightning: Captured
Chase Log: August 11, 2011
Northeast CO/Southwest NE
Lightning: Captured

MY CHASING HISTORY

Where It All Began

The first chase, the first tornado, the May 14, 1997 Ohio-chase that started it all.

The Story of #81

The number of Washington Redskins great, Art Monk, becomes a storm chasing icon.

The Road to Half-a-Million

In 22 years, 2 months, and 2 days, I drove half-a-million mile chasing storms across…