IT HAPPENED!!! On the third tornado of an EIGHT TORNADO DAY in Kansas, I documented my 500th career tornado!  It’s after midnight, I am exhausted coming in less than 36 hours after wrapping my East Coast Nor’Easter coverage and left this morning on a whim only to have my best tornado chase day of 2026 and it’s not even close!  Plenty more to talk about, but I absolutely HAD to mark the occasion, my number 1 goal of 2026, which I inched slowly and painfully to, finally happened!!!

Months ago, the wife and I planned our first trip to Boston to partake in a Pokemon Go event, the city Safari, Zone, which would’ve been our second after last winter’s fun trip to Miami.  Given the September weekend fell in the midst of tropical weather season, we had booked everything with the idea that if a tropical system timed out that weekend, I’d have to be on call for that and scrub the trip.  While I KNEW that was a distinct possibility, even in the lighter El Nino year, I didn’t have a tropical system, or in this case,…

Today marks the OFFICIAL start of Astronomical Fall!  And we’re beyond the start of Meteorological Fall!  So no matter which you accept as the formal start, summer is now over in both manners!  For me, the summer 2026 will go down as one of my best lightning photography seasons ever.  I cannot recall having the level of success I had this past summer with the opportunities I had to snag some awesome lightning photos!  I plan to do a “was this my best lightning year ever” at some point here soon as I have fantastic pictures dating all the way…

SURPRISE! I chased anyway… fortunately out of pity (more on that below), Ma-Nature threw me a bone in the form of a mediocre-for-CG, decent-for-crawlers lightning show and even some blanketing hail.  It was enough to add a couple shots to the summer lightning portfolio and get some more video into the Monday TV rotation, and best of all, it only required about two-digits worth of miles. Turns out, the HRRR-predicted supercell happened, and where it initiated the storm was well timed; problem was the storm formed about 5 hours early and much further west.  Turns out I could’ve picked this…

Given the success of yesterday and my desire to have a full day at home in front of my TV watching football (namely the afternoon Washington/Dallas game), I have decided to sit out today.  CAMs are hit and miss on initiation, mainly in the timing, with many not popping storm(s) til at/after 7pm.  While the potential for a VERY discrete supercell exists, it will likely be fairly late, leaving a short daytime window to see much of anything.  Add to that the fact that most are initiating near the KS border, meaning it’s a nearly 3-hour haul just to get…

A decent, two-minute tornado, a brief birdfart landspout, intense accumulating hail, and some fantastic lightning shots!  It was the Holy Chase Trifecta!  I have posted the placeholder for the log and I will get the write-up done, hopefully here in the next day or two.  But a incredibly over-performing day, despite the HRRR nailing the supercell, a lot of crazy things went down.  The hail in this storm was reported up to 3″, but I didn’t see anything bigger than just over an inch, but what fell came down hard and heavy, accumulating along I-70 and making a slog of…