The #ChaseTo500 continues with two more tick marks after yesterday’s pretty solid Colorado chase.  That puts the count to TEN tornadoes so far in 2026, leaving me 16 away from the 500 mark.  But of those ten, the only tornado to really speak of was the Minnesota tornadoes back on April 13.  Everything else I have seen have barely counted as tornadoes.  The two I saw yesterday in Colorado, neither were slamdunk touchdowns; the first, a rather pretty funnel, was confirmed by others that were positioned a bit better as I had just enough of a terrain rise between me…

Despite a pretty meh synoptic pattern, a halfway decent, albeit somewhat moisture-deprived setup exists tomorrow across eastern Colorado.  SPC has ticked up their outlook for the region since a general risk last night, opened with a marginal, now we’re sitting at a slight.  But us high plains nerds were all over this before sunset yesterday.  Questions becomes how big a crowd does tomorrow draw?  After the insanity that was the last couple days, one can’t help but be concerned about the crowds that could amass in eastern Colorado where we lack a solid gridded road network.  So lots of people…

The grind that is 2026 continues… brief tastes of success, but so much left on the table.  The story continued this past weekend.  Seems every year I hit a slump, and it grinds the season to a halt, and I wait for something to finally push me forward.  In 2024, that grind largely held all season.  But most years, I get a break.  This weekend was another grind, another tornado closer to 500, but plenty left on the table.  Monday was the headliner day, and of course, I did everything possible to avoid tornadoes.  I won’t end up writing up…

Yesterday went about exactly as I thought it would; bottom line was a lot of messy, HP, and outflow dominated storms with a couple tornado reports sprinkled in.  I knew yesterday wasn’t a tornado day, and that was very much the case as the few that were spotted/reported were all very brief and largely lacking any real visual pizazz.  The storm I was on did produce a briefy to my southeast, but I was dilly-dallying in the 2″+ hail and navigating a ‘minimum maintenance’ road after the soaking hail core rolled through.  I spent the backhalf of the active chase…

Target continues to shift further east today; a nice break given I start here in Kansas City.  Morning surface analysis shows absolute trash dewpoints this morning across northeast Colorado, southwest Nebraska, and northwest Kansas.  And you can see on the surface map above, there aren’t favorable wind directions to bring up those juicier numbers.  You’ll likely see SOME rise out there, but not enough, even by high plains standards, to make a viable target out there.  I have NO IDEA why SPC maintained their 5% tornado probs out there, but I would be shocked if they were not removed in…

Tomorrow is likely NOT a tornado day… I will just get that out of the way right now… yes, there probably will be a couple that sneak their way into the reports, but overall, I think tomorrow is likely gonna be a damaging wind and hail day.  Today, I wussed out; nothing about today was highly anticipated, and most of the better parameters shifted well north and east, and anything I was going to get on early evening was taking me the opposite direction I needed to go, so I threw a couple chips on some convection that tried to…