Broadcast media professional, storm chaser, railfan, vintage electronics/appliance/ceiling fan enthusiast, hobbyist photographer/videographer and lifelong 'Sconnie.
Me setting up for video of a supercell thunderstorm south-southwest of Kalona, IA at 150th St. & Larch Ave. around 4 PM last Thursday, 4/2/2026. Then a funnel/per other chasers who were closer/ brief tornado seen from south of West Liberty around 40 minutes later. Photos by my chase partner Luke.
I feel like today's Aretmis II launch might have been a great opportunity to inspire kids to enter STEM fields, if only the administration hadn't rescinded most of the grants people in those fields rely on to do their jobs.
...Depending on my mood I consider this my first "chase" tornado, although it cannot be confirmed from my footage alone due to ground contact obscured by the tree line (that and due to the darkness I was running my camcorder in its 4 FPS "night vision" mode).
...we were not really expecting a tornado by that time because our storm appeared to be about to be swallowed by a line. Between that and the darkness, it was a bit of a "brown pants" moment and we hightailed it out of there before we could get a better shot...
It's the 10th anniversary of a localized tornado outbreak in the Midwest on March 15, 2016. It produced three EF2s including this one which my chase partner and I glimpsed as it tracked just northwest of Hanna City, IL around 7:50 PM.
One of my favorite train chases of all time took place 10 years ago OTD, 3/11/2016, as I followed the Wisconsin and Southern's Prairie du Chien Subdivision local freight train from Madison to Spring Green.
Whiffed on the Kankakee etc tornado machine. Thought anything that far NE would get undercut by the lake breeze. Ended up on a storm just north of GBG and followed it toward Kewanee/Princeton. It got tornado-warned and briefly displayed an interesting RFD cut to the updraft base, but that was it.
Sorry I'm not more open-minded about LLMs, it's just some fucking maniacs shoveled out a bunch of useless bloatware featuring that technology, did not give me any chance to opt out, reorganized the entire economy around it, zeroed out gains made by green energy, and made it impossible to buy RAM
Chaser spidey sense activated. Yes, it's the GFS at nearly 200 hours but it has been quite consistent with this general look for the last several days, and the ECMWF is coming on board as well.
Decided to have a little fun with the music video for Van Halen's "Humans Being," some footage from the movie Twister, and my own chase footage from over the years ahead of the 30th anniversary of the film/song's release, and the 2026 storm chase season.