People keep asking me why I chase storms. Days like yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that….are the answer. The sky is alive with raw power. Nothing else matters but the energy. In my profession, there are conference workshops dedicated to learning how to “be in the moment” and “mindfulness.” Storms are elemental, a part of the soul of humankind that requires no learning. Being in the moment is essential to stormchasing if one wishes to truly understand this elemental part of nature, stay safe, and experience the energy of these beasts. Standing in wind that threatens to whip my shirt off my body, driving through rain that falls harder and harder and faster and faster, hearing the first dings of hail and knowing that bigger and dangerous hail is just behind, knowing that there are tornadoes wrapped in rain that no one can see until they destroy, or seeing columns of twisting air rotating from a cloud to the ground with dirt and debris coloring it to make it visible…this is the power of energy that mother nature produces and that I experience while chasing. It is real and these beasts speak to me in a way that other things don’t. That’s why I chase.

We were sitting on top of a hill watching beautiful storm structure when we turned on the radio and learned about what happened to Joplin. Speechless, with tears in our eyes, we could only say our prayers and look in awe at the power of mother nature. We talked about whether we could help in any way but none of us is a qualified first responder and we knew that the chasers in our community who are would respond generously, as they did.

We carried on the chase with mixed emotions, knowing that we couldn’t change what mother nature brings to us. Many ask why did this happen and why are there more deaths this year? It’s an active year – La Nina is one reason. And, for all of the unpopulated and sparsely populated land in tornado alley (and what they have now coined dixie alley), storms and tornadoes don’t determine their paths by whether structures and people are in front of them. It’s probability. The vast majority of the time, tornadoes hit noting but fields and many go unreported unless someone happens to see it. Sometimes, it hits a town. Like in Alabama, Joplin was under a tornado warning for quite some time. In this end of the world, there is a bit of a “it won’t happen here” mentality, which we hear all the time.

Yesterday, while watching storms develop on a dirt road and looking at some holes in the ground (armadillo dens?), an elderly man stopped to check that we were ok. I told him that we were watching the storms and he said, “You know what I do when those bad storms come? I go to bed and say my prayers.”

Many people don’t have tornado shelters. A tornado as strong as the one that hit Joplin requires a basement or a reinforced storm shelter to be really safe. Most important – it requires that someone actually be in one of these. A few years back, we met a woman who showed us her storm shelter. It was filled with junk. She was using it as either as extra storage or a junk bin. We were watching a storm that could produce a tornado right where she was. I hope that she decided to clean out here shelter.

We went on to see a beautiful tornado just on the other side of a lake in Bernice, OK and a beautiful sunset.

While walking around Yellowstone, I discovered the USGS’s new Volcano Mitigation Strategy. Actually, Ian, being a contractor, immediately called it this after I said to him, “Hey, they figured out a way to fix the volcano.” I guess it’s time I re-take contractor speak 101 since I’ve lost my touch.
Duct tape has many uses!

More incredible colors of nature, not photoshopped! I swear this is real! We remain in awe of what mother nature produces every single day.

blue pool

beauty amidst desolation

lower falls

desolate pool

steamy

yellow mats

The Rest Stop between Pocatello and Idaho Falls is also a must see.  The Hell’s Half Acre Lava Field walk is one of those unexpected diversions from normal rest stop activities and for geology buffs, well worth the stop even if you don’t need a bio break.

Did you guess it? Philo T. Farnsworth invented the television! And Rigby Idaho has a museum dedicated to him. We gave this one a miss.

On to Yellowstone.  The call of the wolf greeted us in late afternoon as we stopped by a stream to talk to an old geezer whose days seemed to consist of gazing upon grazing deer, bison, and snow covered mountains.  The only unfortunate part of this encounter is that Ian is now referring to geysers as geezers.

Amazing geothermal features with bubbling mudpots, geysers, and other wonders greeted us as we made our way to the Old Faithful Inn.  More to come.

boiling mud

Bublling Mud Pot

bison dung in boiling water

blue pool

howl of the wolf

The magic began with the drive over the causeway to Antelope Island in the Great Salt Lake. Smoke? Tornado Plants? Vortices above certain plants were black and….OMG, they were swarms of BRINE FLIES!

Brine Fly Swarm

Onward to the ranch and an encounter with a helpful volunteer who took one look at my cameras and after a timely warning to watch out for the bison poop, took us to a restricted area to see….

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great horned owl baby

Pocatello,ID Super8 for the night. Who knows what tomorrow will bring?

Thames Barrier 2

Thames Barrier

Olympic Park and Pub

What a zoo!  Before Christmas is generally crazy.  This time qualifies as an unmitigated nightmare of crazed humanity wreaking havoc in the stores creating unspeakable lengths of queues (50 minute wait in line to get to the bank teller to cash a check!), stripping the grocery store shelves bare of food, attempting to kill anything that moves on the sidewalk or the roads, and generally creating chaos in the most crowded borough of Newham, town of Stratford, East London.

Yes, my friends, it’s enough to drive one to drink.  Fortunately, there are more pubs than one can count within easy walking distance of Ian’s London house and we have visited one every day in order to recover from the shear exhaution of not knowing whether the sun exists anymore, the masses of humanity pressing in upon us, and the looming olympic village and sports complex just two blocks from the house, which we can sometimes see when the fog and mist clear. 

Yes, the 2012 summer Olympics will be two blocks from the house in which Ian grew up and now owns.  We plan to attend and have been watching the destructing and construction over the years with a great deal of interest.  The shear number of cranes in use is fascinating.  The velodrome looks almost like a bicycle helmet from certain angles.  The  piles of dirt still exist but where some used to be now exist buildings or almost buildings.

Old and New - view from the bedroom

olympic park view from the bedroom

First set of tornadoes – later verified as three on the ground:

And more tornadoes….

And the most amazing tornado….inflow band I have ever seen.  At one point it was a tornado, then it was a rotating inflow band on the ground (?), then…. well, you’ll see for yourself.  We have lots of video of this and it’s just incredible.  Never seen anything like it before and we were up close and personal.