Storm Chasing
I’m headed to Denver tomorrow with Jon Christofersen to begin six days of storm chasing with Silver Lining Tours (SLT). With luck, the Great Plains will develop sculpted supercell storms and possibly tornadoes next week.
Where are we headed from Denver? Roger Hill, co-owner of SLT, is an accomplished meteorologist. He checks out what the Storm Prediction Center is discussing and then makes our travel plans. We could wind up anywhere from Texas to Saskatchewan.
There’s a lot of time spent driving to the forecast area and then waiting and fine tuning our final location. A typical travel day averages over five hundred miles with several hours of waiting. And that means two fast food meals (if we have time for lunch and dinner) per day because getting into position (or out of a bad position) is the priority. On a hectic chase day, even potty stops can be rare!
I opt for the photography tour option as opposed to the pure chaser tour offering. The photo van group tends to stay a little further away to capture more sweeping vistas. And we oftentimes pull over to enjoy photographically interesting foregrounds.
When you spend that much time together, you make new friends and have a lot of Type I fun! Here’s a group photo from my first tour back in 2016. Caryn Hill, Roger’s co-owner and wife, is on the right. I’m standing next to her, with Jon Christofersen third from the left in the yellow shirt.
The Shot
This abandoned farmhouse was one of those interesting foregrounds that hard-core chasers usually drive past without stopping. All six photographers in our photo tour van started clamoring to stop as soon as we eyed this old property.
We stopped, spread out, and looked for a pleasing composition. The storm clouds and the light seemed to frame the old home perfectly from this vantage point.
I’ll be on the road chasing next Friday, so the next Friday Photo will be June 2. If you don’t hear from me in June, I’ll be in the wind.
Thanks for looking,
Chuck Derus