A ROAD GRINDER...

Well, I'm just back from a long day of chasing that took me from Dubuque to Spencer, Iowa and back again. That's a round trip of 566 miles and 9 hours of driving. Why did I do it, because I can. For the majority of my TV career (46 years), whenever there were storms, I was working them at the station. Often, I never even saw the storms because I was on the air for 3 or 4 consecutive hours issuing warnings. For that matter, I didn't see my first tornado until I was 55 years old. That by the way was with the acclaimed Tom Skilling of WGN-TV. It was his first tornado as well, and for the same reason.

In the picture below we are in Watonga, Oklahoma where we ate at a sonic after a day of chasing. While there, Reed Timmer, a well known tornado connoisseur, pulled in with the dominator, his chase vehicle. We had a great chat and were able to look around inside the vehicle. Let me tell you, there was nothing luxurious about that iron chariot. I can't image driving around the country in that thing, let alone driving it into a tornado, which is what he does.

Earlier, we came across this nasty multiple vortex twister near Wakita, Oklahoma. It literally was chasing us down the road. I took the picture out the window with debris falling out of the sky. Tom is in the vehicle behind me and the million dollar satellite truck right behind them.

While one of the most thrilling and mesmerizing experiences ever, chasing is far more than a joyride. It's about seeing places you would never have visited. Spending hours of time bonding with your companions, working to achieve the goal of witnessing the perfect storm and not getting in a pickle. It's not for everybody, but it's an event like no other. Here's the money shot from my chase yesterday near Bancroft. Iowa. Fear and fascination!

So now I'm home, it's late, and I'm ready to call it a day. And when I close my eyes, I'll have visions of tornadoes and supercells dancing in my head. Back to traditional forecasting and blogging tomorrow. Roll weather, TS...

P.S.

One last thing, If you watched the video Nick and I produced before the storm threat Monday, we highly stressed that severe weather for my area was conditional and that many of our models were not showing much for storms in my area. I remember saying, Monday may not turn out to be the day many were expecting. We both believed there was a real potential for this to bust locally, and that was the case. It wasn't that we didn't have many of the parameters, but we were concerned about one big one, a CAP that looked like it could keep a lid on storm development. To everyone's benefit, the CAP was formidable and held, and we ended up with the best possible scenario. Here's to that.