Tony's Blogbach, Between the Isobars

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!

The green lit has been given for the first multi-day outing of the season!  Spending a few hours this afternoon readying the gear as this will be my first run with ALL the new gear and setup.  My Illinois chase included the tablet run, but since then, new cameras, a new windshield mount, new tripods, the works.  So taking a little extra time, more so than usual, just to get squared away, particularly with the new windshield mount which has been a long time coming.  Very excited to see how smooth that makes running the dash camera.  The new tripods will also get their first real work in, so I hope the new system I am rolling with is seamless and smooth.  We’ll see.  Unfortunately these early season chases don’t often yield tripod-able moments as the storms are typically hauling, so my hopes for Thursday extend to a slower moving setup and perhaps the opportunity to shoot some lightning, which will be a good break-in for the new tripods.  Cleaned and wiped down the interior, and am getting her ready for an early season extended trip.

This all starting with Thursday, then going into the weekend with Friday remaining the big day of note to this series.  Perhaps we extend into Saturday down across northern Texas, but I’m not overly wild about that at this point.  We’ll get Sunday down before the next system rolls in early next week, which may offer up more potential then.  But we’ll gloss over that for now as the focus lies with what’s directly ahead.  And that’s Thursday and Friday.

The SPC Day 3 (for Thursday), will kick things off for us as we’ll depart tomorrow to get into position, probably targeting our overnight stop somewhere in the Texas Panhandle and we’ll get up to look things over to decide where we’ll target for Thursday.  I like this day for chasing IF we can get a couple storms up before dark.  I think the tornado potential will go up after sunset, but any daytime storms oughta yield some solid views and probably some solid hail as well.  We’ll track these storms north and east as we work our way to Friday’s target…

Which remains up in the air.  The potential for this day has gone back and forth, but seems to be getting two steps more potential for one step less, so I’d say it’s ticking up a bit.  SPC plopped a 30% in for the Day 4, and I would agree with that sentiment.  Friday has a high ceiling, but could be messy; these early March setups don’t like to play like the May setups do as the cold fronts tend to crash in more unless the system slows up a bit.  Regardless, depending on where we bunk down after Thursday, we should be pretty solid to cover anything we want within the risk area, so we’ll keep tabs on everything heading into Friday morning before we make any calls on what and where.  Thursday plays very well into positioning for Friday, so that’s always nice when that happens.

So yeah, the excitement builds as I get ready to hit the road.  Season 30 got underway a couple weeks ago, but this feels like truly the start to the season for me.  And despite the ‘well timed’ spike in gas prices, I’m eager to get wheels up tomorrow!

It’s been a minute since we’ve seen a multi-day stretch of outlooks from SPC.  If you ignore the calendar, you could pretend this is May, but nope, welcome to the first week of March!

I’m prepping here at home today to head out for that multi-day stint.  It should all get started with me on Wednesday, with four days back-to-back, basically in the same area.  Friday, right now as of this posting, looks like the biggest of the four days, which had been Wednesday as it looked a few days ago, but I’d definitely say there’s no question that Friday is the biggest day to watch.  Wednesday, which is concentrated from Dallas up into northwest Arkansas, I am not ruling out a play further north along the warm front toward Missouri/Illinois.  This has that feel of a sleeper day in the secondary target with the warm front and low in play across southeast Missouri into the southern half of Illinois.  We’ll see how that shakes out; but despite those thoughts, I am meh enough about Wednesday where I probably WON’T haul east for that given better setups (albeit conditionally better) exist further west starting Thursday.

Thursday, and particularly Friday, are the two days of my biggest note right now, and probably stand to be the two days I would venture out on if the forecast holds.  Thursday, again rather conditional, could be an interesting day if things come together in a timely manner.  Friday, which is progged as the biggest day, certainly does NOT have outbreak written on it as the difference key ingredients are a bit out of phase from each other, it certainly looks to be the higher end setup of the bunch.  But as the midweek system clears out, we’ll have to see what’s left in its wake and whether things rebound quickly enough to put Thursday in play.  Fortunately, as long Wednesday remains off the table for me, we can ride out a few sets of model runs before pulling the chase trigger, which would likely see us departing midday on Wednesday.

Til then, we watch and wait… an early kickoff to the season, but after this series of systems (which may extend into early next week), things look like they’ll simmer down.  So all eyes set on the first series of severe weather days of 2026.