Thanks to Ed for taking the wheel early this grey Saturday morning… we’ve wrapped up a busy three days of chasing and have just left Peoria, Illinois to begin our long haul back home to Colorado. It was a pretty packed slate of storms for us, although nothing terribly big, despite some high-ceiling setups. I’ll have those inked out in the coming days, so be sure to check out the chase logs for those. While we did see a couple birdfart tornadoes on Thursday in Iowa, I think Friday was actually my favorite of the three chase days as the storm we documented made for an early candidate for Storm Structure of the Year for me.
A couple notes on the Iowa tornadoes on Thursday. With the two seen, I have now seen at least one tornado in Iowa each of the last 6 years dating back to 2021. This was once a state I could never see a tornado in despite my best attempts. I had seen two even lesser tornadoes prior to 2021 in my entire career, and since 2021, it’s arguably one of my best states now. Neither tornado was ‘wall-worthy’, but they were among the best that day had to offer. Texas, Oklahoma, Nebraska have seen 7-year streaks in the mid 2010s, and Colorado sits at five years going into this year, so both Iowa and Colorado have been among my better chasing states since my return to Colorado in 2021. Kansas holds my all-time state streak with 10 years straight from 2007-2016. Kansas has been a tough cookie in recent years, certainly dropping out of the top state, while still sitting easily in first place overall with number of tornadoes seen (143; Colorado in distant second at 81).
The Riverside tornado in Iowa on Thursday I aired live on AccuWeather, meaning I have aired at least one tornado live each year I’ve been out with them since 2021, my entire stint with the company. My first live tornado was the Virgil, Illinois tornado in August of 2021, just a few months after I started. In total, I’ve aired 22 tornadoes live on the network since 2021, including some high-profile events such as Akron 2023, Yuma 2023, Defiance/Harlan 2024, among others.
I’ll be closing in on about 9,000 chasing miles when I pull into my driveway at home, likely tomorrow. It’ll get in the top earliest high-mileage seasons I’ve had, although I’ll have to dig a bit deeper to figure out exactly where that falls. Honestly, it may be middle-of-the-road; but first week in April to be approaching that mark is pretty good for me. This thanks to what I believe is now three round-trips to the Midwest since February. Certainly has been an active start. I should get a breather at least through mid-week, and we’ll see what the next system has to offer up.
I’d say the vehicle setup is about 90-95%… I need to make a few tweaks to the setup, but all-in-all, I am very happy with how things are setup. The tablet is such a nice change from the laptop and not only saves room, but extra gadgets. The trackball, which was always a pain, no longer needs to be velcro’d to whatever random surface. The tablet is a no-gadget screen that runs radar, navigation, and anything else I need. The new dash mount; awesome. Still need to make some tweaks, but I can set it up where it holds the camera in place, but at the same time is moveable to aim it wherever I need to. Both in-car action cams look great and work real well. This trip didn’t offer up anything particularly Vlog-worthy, but may offer some short form opportunities. Yesterday, despite having some excitement going into the day, I didn’t shoot much vlog stuff as I felt it, too, was going to fall short. But the testing is proving for really nice results, both for the physical setup and some of the apps I am working on. Will be eager to fine-tune a few things in the off time coming up. This was the first trip that required the two-person setup, which definitely needs some cleaning up, but the extra space in this Ascent verses my previous Forester DEFINITELY is so nice.
Speaking of my ride, I am getting a cargo LED light upgrade kit installed this week. I do a lot from the back of this vehicle, and the factory lights are damn near worthless. The LED will allow me to actually see what’s going on back there, especially at night when I may be doing some nighttime shooting, or even setting up live shots, and not having to fumble with a flashlight or phone light will be HUGE. I am very excited to get that in.
That’s about all I got for this entry… we’re about to roll into the Quad Cities, and will venture over to the World’s Largest Truck Stop there on I-80 in Walcott, Iowa. That’ll be our fuel stop. Illinois has a much higher rod tax on fuel which has the prices around $1 or more per gallon that what we find here in Iowa, so fortunately I only had to pour a quarter tank of Illinois-priced fuel in during yesterday’s chase, so yay for that. Ed has never been, so we’ll cross that off his bucketlist today as we aim for about 2/3 of the way home today, probably stopping somewhere between Grand Island and North Platte. Goal is for both of us to be home in time for Easter dinner tomorrow.
See ya soon!