Tony's Blogbach, Between the Isobars

September 30 turned the entire 2026 chase season around… topping the list, it gave me the top goal of this year, my 30th season, and that was to hit 500 tornadoes!  It was the goal I set right out of the gate; I was 26 away, and I knew that was a lofty number, only 8 of my prior seasons saw more than that, so almost two-thirds missed that mark.  But I knew it was reachable if the season performed well, and I wanted more than anything else this year to hit that tornado milestone on this milestone year.  And thanks to a rather long list of birdfarts and half-ass dust whirls, I accumulated the numbers, and even got a pair of September Colorado tornadoes to get me within three.  It wouldn’t take an outbreak day at that point, and I got one anyway.  I needed three, I got eight.  And the third was among the better looking tornadoes and allowed me the other part of that goal, to get a picture in front of it.  Was it the most photogenic, nope?  But I didn’t want that… I wanted one I could pose in front of and you could see it.  I got exactly what I asked for.  And, above ALL that; none of these tornadoes were impactful, most traveling harmlessly through open fields with a couple outbuildings hit.  That’s it… a tornado chasers biggest want, no impacts.

This chase also goes down as my best ever September chase.  September had been a rather dry month for me over the years, only having seen a couple tornadoes in the month, with my ‘best’ being a cigar shaped tube on a lunch break from my Marco’s pizza shift that I snuck out to grab.  I had two earlier in the month, one birdfart landspout, and one rather large tornado that spun up under merging storms, but wasn’t terribly photogenic, or visually obvious.  This chase, on the final day of September, goes into the books as a ‘Second Season’ fall chase, probably in the top 3 of all my autumn chases behind another Kansas fall chase and the famous Quakenado chase, and honestly, I would put this one ahead of Quakenado as my #2 all time second season chase.  And give it time, I may even make it my number 1.  Haha I like to sit on these big decisions for a while and let recentcy-bias sway me.  But it’s hard to argue… eight tornadoes, several photogenic ones, 500th… yeah, it could be the best fall chase.

Obviously the three photogenic tornadoes exceed anything I have quality-wise in September, so that’s an easy win there.  I finally have as tornado I would put on a calendar, probably three, for this month.  Going in, not really any.  It was a low bar, but it has been blown away.

This doesn’t throw 2026 into the top 10 best seasons ever.. on paper, 31 tornadoes on the year is my 6th best, but remember that less than 10 were of quality.  But there were a couple solid chases in there.  The epic summer of lightning also helped elevate this season from the bottom rankings a bit, but this firmly puts 2026 in the middle, a feat on its own barely worth a mention, but remember only a few months back when this season was a bottom 3 since 2002, so it’s a big mention that it’s moved up so fast thanks to what the back-end of the year has done for me.  A large chunk of that upward slide comes from accomplishing the season’s biggest goal coming in, and that was 500.  And I did it on arguable the best central plains tornado event of the season.

There is a universe where fresh-off-Nor’easter coverage Tony stays home and sits this out, letting the idea of no instability and maybe a meh birdfart or two too far from home talk him out of going.  That Tony would probably be in pretty bad shape right now.  But this Tony went out despite the tiredness, fought through a slowly-growing case of the cruds and a raw throat, and stuck to his target, and while yes, could’ve left 30 minutes earlier and perhaps caught the day’s first tornado, I imagine everything played out exactly how it was suppose to.  In the end, I walked out of this day with the best chase of 2026, a bar that was pretty low going in, but this day would’ve competed with quite a few lesser top days of some decent years.

2026, I take back all the rotten things I said about you… in the end, you came up big.  And if this was the final outing for the year, it ends with a wonderful win…

This is why we play the game…

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, a Nor’Eastern, actually aiming for Boston on this weekend.

Well, in true Tony fashion, that’s what ended up happening.  As the forecasts were honing in on this idea, we decided we’d cancel the trip; but I also figured that while canceling my trip to Boston, I would end up on a trip to Boston.  So in a bit of irony, I ended up here in the Boston area ANYWAY, to cover this system.

I was hoping to double-dip.  While we had canceled the trip, the event tickets were not refundable, so I thought I could at least half-ass the event, running the auto-catchers in the background while I worked the storm.  The event organizers hadn’t canceled the event prior to me getting out here, but I knew it was a possibility.  Then came the news yesterday afternoon they decided to postpone the event, disappointing since I was already here, but not surprising.  Fortunately, all our travel plans were easily refunded, so we weren’t out anything, and with the event being postponed (and what I will hopefully assume will be a global make up at some point down the line), should allow us to play the event.  If it turns out travel is required for a make-up, we will have the option to get a full refund of the event tickets.  In the end, no big loss.  While we enjoyed our weekend in Miami last December playing this event, it’s at the bottom of my favorite in-person event types, so I’m not going to cry about it either way.  Hopefully it’s a global make-up.

Outside of Pokemon, work to do.  Today starts my coverage with a few hits, but it’ll be tomorrow when things get rowdy up this way.  The storm really started to organize last night, and most models have this thing hooking west into Jersey, so we’ll see lesser impacts here than the forecasts hinted at with other scenarios through the week, but still should be something to deal with.  Things will wind down Sunday, and I would anticipate returning home by Monday.

Midweek system has my eye for severe chances, although it’s fairly unimpressive given the dynamics and instability don’t overlap too well, so I’m not overly optimistic about anything with that.  I may be fine with that as these-cross country storm assignments take a day or two to get back right, so I may be more inclined to chillax for a couple days after this.

That all said, excited to sample my first Nor’Eastern… obviously this is not the SNOWY type, but I can cross it off my bucketlist.  Similar to how I was introduced to tropical storms with Fred back in 2021, I’ll get an easing into it.  I hunch it won’t be my last one this year.  We’ll see!

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 back to May, but to ring in the start of fall, I am doing my Top 5 favorite lightning photos of the ASTRONOMICAL summer 2026!

#5 FLAGLER, COLORADO – SEPTEMBER 19, 2026

This was my most recent snag on one of the best chases of the year.  After documenting intense hail and even snagging a couple tornadoes, I stopped on my way home to pick up some lightning photos out of some garden-variety storms that popped up in the wake of the earlier severe storms.  This was a two-shot composite of a few bolts I snagged and I love the result!

#4 JOHNSTOWN, COLORADO – JULY 21, 2026

One of the closest bolts I caught this season, and almost by accident!  I had my lightning trigger going and had repositioned my car to hide from the rain and point south where the next waves of bolts were hitting.  I had just parked, braced my camera on the window frame when this bolt trigger my lightning trigger and BAM!  One of my best, single bolt shots of the season!

#3 OVID, COLORADO – AUGUST 12, 2026

It was between this and another shot from this stint, and I went with this because of the craziness that was the cloud-to-cloud bolts.  I just love how they fan out!  This was one of many taken on this stint on my way home from a decent Nebraska chase as storms were firing off south of I-76.  This was very impromptu, and yielded some of my favorite shots of the year.

#2 WINDSOR, COLORADO – JULY 1, 2026

Without question, this would’ve been the night of the year for me, but something else came along later… but in terms of quantity AND quality, this night stole the show, easily one of my best lightning sessions in years!  This is a multi-image composite taken during my second round of shooting and before the insanity of the blizzard hailer kept me out til 2am.  The lightning strikes out of this were insane, and I captured dozens of frames between Eaton and Windsor, and this shot shows off many of those frames in one image.

#1 JOHNSTOWN, COLORADO – SEPTEMBER 6, 2026

Not only is this my favorite lightning shot of 2026, but it may be my favorite lightning shot of all time.  This was a VERY impromptu shoot, just a few miles north of my house as a storm rode along the foothills, with just enough eastern movement to push it closer to me.  I set up on one of my goto spots, pointed west, and waited.  My early shots weren’t terribly spectacular, but then came the window where some of the most vivid strikes I have ever captured were hitting within just a few miles.  Even at my widest zoom, many were cut off at the top, but then I captured my Holy Grail shot of the year.  In addition to the spectacular front strikes, a random couple bolts came out on the backside of the storm, something I do not recall happening outside this shot.  This all occurring in the single 10-second exposure.  When the front bolts hit, I knew I had just hit the jackpot, but in my brief second of celebration, I somehow MISSED seeing the two back bolts, so when I previewed this on the camera and saw this shot, I lost my ever-loving mind!  It easily takes first prize from 2026, and possible of all-time for me.

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 up in Limon and followed it southeast all evening, starting as early as 2p.  The storm was severe, producing large hail, for quite some time, fizzling as it hit the KS border down west of Tribune, but all it was, a hailer.  No tornadoes despite the 2% (at least none I have seen), so I most certainly picked the better of the two days.  No question I would still be out shooting lightning as storms are peppered all along my route home, even had I stayed in say Lamar or Limon, I would’ve had a decent evening.  Still, I chose wisely.

Football-wise… not so much.  The final play of a very competitive first half against Dallas ended tragically when Jayden Daniels (again) dislocated his elbow on a 4th and Goal in the final three seconds.  Hindsight, should’ve kicked and taken the three points.  It ultimately cost us our franchise QB for, maybe weeks if not months.  We lost handedly as well.  I jokingly said I would have rather chased, and yes, I would’ve.  But given the distance and the host of obligations I do have tomorrow, it was the ‘adult’ choice.  And out of pity, maybe out of reward for my resisting temptation, I got tonight’s storm.

This week offers little in terms of severe, but a potential storm system in the northeast MAY get me called out later in the week?  Tomorrow will shed more light on that, so we’ll see what the heads are thinking for that.  Otherwise, expect a quiet first few days at least.  And no 90s; I think we’ve finally turned the corner into fall!