Just realized that my last venture, August 19, was my 1,000th career log! Of those, 577 were chase logs, the other 423 were work/spotter ventures.  A crazy number of logs.  That chase also put me at #5 highest annual mileage.  I will lay it all out in a later log, but wanted to acknowledge the milestone.  1,000 career logs over 30 seasons!

Yeah, that was a mistake… unfortunately I kinda wussed out as I wasn’t feeling 100%, and as the day drew on, I lost the energy and motivation, so by 3pm, when things started to fire in the Black Hills (despite the models saying otherwise), I was already too far gone.  That storm ended up being a long-track supercell that produced 3″ hail, awesome lightning, and yes, even a damn tornado near Potter, Nebraska near I-80, which I could’ve made even leaving later when it became apparent that storm was in it for the long haul.  That storm tracked due south…

An answer, that as one of my current favorite songs by Harem Scarem is titled, is ‘Slowly Slipping Away’.  Truthfully, what a great album they did there in the early 90s at the tail end of the hair band era (damn you, grunge)… anywoo, I digress… It was about 36 hours ago when today looked like a sure-fire chase day, but similar to just about every day this past week, things just unraveled, this day a bit slower than the earlier days this week.  Honestly, if I had it to do over again, I would’ve chased yesterday and sat out…

First blog entry using my phone, so forgive.. well, whatever happens that is odd with this entry haha I’m at Starbucks while my car is in the shop. With about 233 miles left on my 100K warranty, I drove straight in from last night’s hotel to the shop to address a few items to be covered before I turn over 100K. With some non-covered items to tend to, I’m gonna get about $3000 worth of work for ~$1100, so I’ll take it! Two quick notes… first, yesterday’s chase was pretty damn good. I saw what was easily the most dramatic…

Yesterday provided the goods, but I let impatience get the best of me as storms out west eventually did fire, some packing quite the punch, but the storm of the day blew up around sunset about 90 minutes and change north of Kearney, becoming an impressive supercell that did carry a tornado warning for the better part of an hour or so.  Unfortunately, it was far enough from me here in Kearney where I knew the likelihood of it maintaining itself as a supercell was unlikely, so I opted for the lightning consolation prize from about 40 miles or so…

As of today, 8/16, I sit at 30,991 miles, which currently sits at 8th highest all time.  With what likely will be a 1000-1500 mile round trip after Monday/Tuesday, I will likely break into my top 5 highest single-season miles.  And while unlikely I reach upper 30K, a Top 3 ending is definitely plausible.  Below are the season stats for the years that rank ahead of 2026.. #8 – 2026: 30,991 #7 – 2025: 31,018 (28 away) #6 – 2010: 31,676 (686 away) #5 – 2016: 31,835 (845 away) #4 – 2022: 33,387 (2,397 away) #3 – 2007: 33, 934…