Tony's Blogbach, Between the Isobars

If you’ve followed me for a long period of time, you know I compare chase season to football season; with March being the pre-season chsaes, April through June the regular season, the summer into early fall the post-season, and the winter the off-season.  If you believe the long-range models, the regular season may have a formidable kickoff.  Still 7-10 days out, but the general consensus among the longer-range models indicates a pattern change that’ll bump us from this stagnate, hot pattern we’re currently in.  There’s a small area outlooked for this coming Thursday, but right now that’s got all the makings of a crashing cold front event, so I am not particularly interested in that.  Figure I can squeeze in whatever down time I can here at home before we get rolling in April, as that period looks like it could be a decent stint.  The Nikon exchange I wrote about last week, my camera body arrived today for the exchange, so I am hopeful that gets processed and a new, NON-glitchy body gets sent out in the next day or so.  Obviously I would LOVE to have that in hand and set up ahead of whatever next week has in store.

Also worth a note that I have finished the edits of my first upload on my new rebranded YouTube Channel!  I am super excited to post this video this upcoming Friday; it covers the story about my first ever storm chase and tornado back in 1997!  As part of my 30th Season Celebration, I have had a variety of projects I have been working on in my off time, and the rebranded YouTube was one of those.  I recently cleaned up the channel, taking down a lot of the old stuff, and am prepping the site for a more structured channel.  This video will kick off that structure, and not a better way to do it than with the first chase and the story behind how it all came to be.  I am SUPER proud of what this looks like; and other than a few small polishes here and there, she’s ready to go.  I may do a Facebook live stream during the premiere, which will happen at 6:30pm MDT, so I may stream for an hour to celebrate it.  I don’t have a massive following and it’s on a Friday, so I won’t be expecting a huge turn out, but I am doing this more for me to scratch a bunch of itches I have developed over the last couple years regarding how to archive my career.  Season 30 seemed like a solid place to kick all that off.

That all said, I am going to get back to work… I took a ‘lunch break’, and wanted to put some words to paper while they were sloshing around in my melon.  Now that I’ve done that, I need to point my melon back to it!  Peace!

Not exactly the news I wanted to start my week with, but alas, so it goes.  Nikon sent out this advisory earlier this week, and wouldn’t you know it, my month-old Nikon Z6 III was part of the advisory.  When I called Nikon to inquiry about turn-around time, not only did they NOT have that info (depends on how many repairs they get), they were not even beginning the return process until this coming Monday, basically a whole week before I could send it back.  Fortunately, as fortunate can be in this situation, I was within my return window at B&H where I bought the camera, and they are taking my return and will send me a new one.  HOPEFULLY it isn’t also affected by the issue, in which case I will solve the problem much faster, almost before Nikon would even get my camera to begin with.  And if it turns out the body I get swapped is also part of the advisory, then I may have to deal with whatever turn around Nikon has.  But rest assured, I will not be quiet about it haha

But, at least it’s well timed?  I mean, this would suck going into May.  I mean, if I am still stuck with a swap, I suppose I could ride out the camera as long as possible, then send it in for its repair AFTER the season… I dunno, one step at a time.  Hopefully, if everything goes well, I should be able to get the replacement body in hand by end of next week, which should be BEFORE the next system starts to come into the picture.  Right now, the rest of March looks pretty quiet, and HOT… like seriously, 90 degrees in Denver on Saturday (March 21).  This is typically the SNOWIEST month in Denver, and it will be nowhere close to that.  In fact, I see virtually NO chance for lower-elevation snow anywhere in the long-range, let alone March.  And it certainly ain’t gonna do it while we’re sitting in the 80s and pushing 90, which despite the cool front coming in late weekend, may try for AGAIN middle of next week.  WTH…

That’s really about it… weird to say DOWNTIME at this point in March, but that busy stretch there for a couple weeks felt more like a mid-April stint than March.  But regardless, looks like wheels down through next week.

So much to digest after yesterday’s chase… much more on this to come (including the full chase log), but despite seeing two tornadoes (Pontiac and Kankakee), I am going to remember this day for what likely may be the state record-setting hail.  I measured 5.25″, which MAY be the largest hail I have ever documented, but I need to cross check from the 2007 Wisconsin hail day (odd that my top two are Midwest hail events).

Tornado-wise, I documented the entire lifecycle of the Pontiac tornado (the first of the day), which never fully condensed despite looking like it was going to wedge out.  The ground circulation was cool to watch, and the cloud-based rotation was nothing short of insane, so that was quite the sight.  Kankakee, barely counts in the log as I caught some fleeting glimpses from the west as I was approaching on IL-115.  Fortunately for me, there was no direct way east on this route, which likely spared me from getting involved with the hail that was wrapping around this tornado (many chasers who had good views also paid heavily in hail cost).  But it also prevented me from ever getting back in front.  The highway turns north into the southwest part of town, and that’s where I came into the hail swath and stopped.  I recall a TWISTEX chase back in 2010 I think; Missouri had some monster hail on the ground and we were trying to get in front of that supercell as it was tornadic, and we never stopped to document the hail.  I had that in mind when I stopped, cause I knew getting through town was going to slow me up further and obviously the tornado damage to my south was also going to halt my progress, so it was a no-brainer to stop and document, as well as give the first immediate live report from town after the storm went through.

Unfortunately that same supercell was responsible for multiple tornadoes, including a potentially violent tornado across the border in Indiana around Lake Village, which sadly took two souls with it last night.  It’s been a horrific and deadly week for tornadoes, not a great start to the season.  Fortunately, we’ll get a reprieve from Mother Nature for at least a week if not more, so everyone can exhale and recover a bit.

I am waking up this morning in Joliet, Illinois and have a two-day haul back home via I-80 ahead of me, so I’ll probably write up this log over the weekend.  But in short, one full tornado documentation, one fleeting glimpse of another (#ChaseTo500 tornadoes #475 and #476), record-setting hail, and arguably one of the best lightning video captures of my life.  And we’re not even halfway through March yet…

From a chase perspective, it was a rather lackluster couple days out this last stint; a lot of excitement going in yielded little for me.  Thursday’s setup in northwest Texas went down about exactly as it was forecast, mostly after dark, despite some afternoon storms attempting to go up a couple hours before sunset.  They never really took off til after dark.  I did get into some hail near Memphis, Texas on one of those cells, but with a setup looming the next day, I opted to turn tail and get some miles in, heading to the OKC area for the overnight.  Meanwhile, about an hour after I left, a second round of storms did produce a couple brief tornadoes between Memphis and Wellington, Texas.  The following day was a total bust for me, opting for northeast Kansas with good parameters along a warm front.  This was an easy choice for me as it saved me from the gross terrain that is northeast Oklahoma.  I arrived in plenty of time, even with a stop in Wichita to see some former co-workers and my previous station.  Things got a bit optimistic when SPC jumped on our warm front idea, tossing up a 10% tornado prob in their early afternoon outlook, but it didn’t pan out.  And I mean did NOT pan out at all.  Storms fired along and behind the cold front, which prevented anything from taking off, to the point that I spent about three hours following NON-severe storms.  I barely hit any rain, calling the chase outside Manhatten, Kansas before returning to Salina.  Hindsight showed I should’ve just sucked it up and played northeast Oklahoma, but alas, I had enough faith in the Kansas target to justify the idea.  Sometimes that works, this time it REALLY did NOT.  I drove home yesterday.

The big stories from those two days weren’t what I failed to chase… but the several big, and unfortunately fatal tornadoes; a couple of those instances happening in unexpected places.  None bigger than the incredible tornadoes in southwest Michigan on Friday.  These happening well outside any real significant tornado risk area.  While they were under a general 2% up there, it was going to take the perfect combo of things to even get storms of severity up there, not to mention significant tornado producing ones, and yet, one supercell managed to form, find and root on the warm front, and produce what will likely be an upper EF-3, possibly even EF-4 tornado.  The video out of these tornadoes up there is nothing short of jaw-dropping, particularly the shots taken as the tornado passed over a FROZEN lake, actually ripping the ice from the surface as it leveled homes along the water front.  While this has the headliner of the week, two tornadoes in Oklahoma also took lives.  The Thursday tornado in northern Oklahoma, while in an area outlooked for tornadoes, came as kind of a surprise for the intensity and cyclic nature of the storm; producing multiple tornadoes in Oklahoma up into southern Kansas.  That tornado unfortunately killed a mother and daughter in their car near Fairview.  Another deadly tornado occurred near Tulsa on Friday’s event.  Not a great start to the year in that regard.

I got home early yesterday evening, opting to make the drive back after landing close enough after Friday’s bust to justify not spending two days cooped up in a hotel somewhere ahead of the next system which should kick off a couple chase days starting on Tuesday.  A home reset is always welcome, and it means I am already 90% packed and ready to hit the road should I get the green light tomorrow.  That being said, that’s what I am waiting for, so already being preloaded means I can wait to see what the ultimate decision is and assuming it to be green, off I’ll go.  Preliminary target looks like northern Illinois on Tuesday, with a shift south, maybe into the northeast Arkansas area on Wednesday.  After that system clears out, the severe weather will take some time off, so we’ll get a breather to recover from all this.  A wild start already to 2026.

Arrived safely to Amarillo early yesterday evening where I awaken this morning to find myself no more than a couple hours from my potential targets for the day.  Hi-rez cams continue to indicated supercells initiating later this afternoon with a window of about an hour or two before dark where if a storm can get established and rotate, we could see a couple tornadoes out of it.  Big hail certainly a likelihood out of these storms as well, perhaps up to baseball size.  I have a couple chase-specific errands to run here in town, so I’ll pass an hour or two with that before venturing out to my target.  Initial gut tells me the Childress area, despite a couple CAM runs indicating initiation further to the west along I-27.  We’ll see where the dryline sets up and decide, but I’d lean to be a little south as opposed to north with cells expected to move east/northeast once they get going.  They should lead me toward central Oklahoma where I’ll likely aim to bunk down tonight.

Beyond that, just wrapped some work obligations here this morning, so I am going gather myself together and start to load up and get out of here.  It’s a milk the checkout day for sure, and I got an extended one til noon, so I have an hour before housekeeping starts beating down the door.  From there, we should have a solid handle on where ew need to go and by when we’ll need to be there.

See ya on the road!