2019 was the last time I went chasing storms and, man, have I been missing it – but now I am finally coming back! The reason for not going in 2020 and 2021 is obvious but this year the timing just wasn’t good. For 11 years, I worked full-time with my own business and had no family. Now, I have pivoted my career into data engineering and machine learning and got employed since January. Suddenly, there are a few new bosses in my life: my work boss and the three bosses at home Jokes aside, it gets trickier to leave for 8 days – that’s for sure! The season of 2023 I will be chasing with Extreme T ..read more

I am happy to finally be able to launch a web application I started making last summer but haven’t come around to finish until now: StormWindow. StormWindow is a web application where you can get an overview of what is going on in terms of storms at the moment, as well as the last 24 hour time window: See who is/was chasing what – and the paths they are taking See photos and tweets from ongoing and recent storms. See reports on tornadoes etc You can, for example, zoom in on a time window of 3 pm to 7 pm in Kansas to see all the images, tweets and spotter movements that occurred in that time ..read more

Note: The image is NOT a scene from any of the movies mentioned but rather just some photo editing. Although tornadoes are frequent in movies they are often pictured more as a backdrop to enhance a disaster movie or the likes of it. The storm chasing community has not been spoiled with great movies – or even movies – related to storm chasing with The one exception: Twister (1996). The last storm chasing related movie to hit the theatres was “Into the Storm” (2014), which was unbearable to watch in between the tornado scenes – but those tornado scenes were really cool to be honest. It seems now ..read more

As you may be very well aware of, the storm chasing tours have been severely impacted by the Covid-19 outbreak and the subsequent travel bans. Many tour companies cancelled their tours in 2020 completely and those who didn’t only held very few and highly restricted tours. For most, 2020 was a terrible year for chasing storms anyway so you may not have missed out on much. Many tour companies, however, seem to plan for a regular chase season in 2022. Expect full tours due to backlogs As most companies had their tours for 2020 (fully) booked with no possibility to actually run the tours, they had ..read more

There is no clickbait and no surprise here. Covid-19 is putting its ugly wet blanket over this season for me and (almost) all fellow storm chasing europeans and most other non-americans. The borders are still closed and even if they would open up I would assume it would only be for vaccinated people. In Sweden, the vaccinations for my age group won’t likely be until the end of the summer so the chances of me chasing this season are about the chances of a Pilger twin EF-4 in L.A.. I kind of thought and I hoped I would have a decent chance to chase late in the summer of 2020 but then the 2nd wav ..read more

During my 9 seasons I have collected a lot of amazing storm footage. Photos I have collected and show both here on StormChasingUSA.com as well as on my Instagram account. Although I am happy about all the amazing photos I have taken I am, like many other chasers, never really satisfied with my collection or the fine details in quality of certain photos. I guess I am a bit over-critical in terms of how I framed a certain photo, the blur in another and the camera settings I used on another (which is my most common regret). Up until now I still consider this photo, from my last season in 2019, to ..read more

I have made a sendout to all storm chasing tour companies to ask for an update on whether they run tours in 2020 or not. In general, the ones who do run tours did not run their early tours (April, early May) and had some of their tour guests from those tours being moved to tours later in the season (and many are also moving tour guests to the 2021 season). Some tour companies have extended their season further into July because of this. Many tour companies are running their tours with their vans half full due to cancellations. All of the tour companies running tours at this moment are taking s ..read more

In the advert of the Covid-19 outbreak I was still expecting to chase (albeit with some difficulties) but ever since the US closed the borders for travelers from Europe in March, I have known that the chances for me chasing this year has been slim. The borders were, at first, closed for 30 days but the travel ban was prolonged in mid April and by that time I had no real hopes left. Last week, my flight was cancelled, putting the final nail in the coffin of this season and I canceled my seat with Extreme Tornado Tours. My 2020 Chasecation was officially off. Cancelled flights and closed borders ..read more

Who is Gregg Potter? I was born in Cleveland, OH and moved to Castle Rock, CO when I was 6 years old. With storms blowing up along the front range of the Rockies, I got my love for the weather and storms at a young age. I knew I’d be a Meteorologist by the time I was 12 years old. I had my Mom driving me to storms by 15 and have been chasing them myself since I had a drivers License. I went to the University of Kansas and graduated with a degree in Atmospheric Science. After graduation, I started a private weather company and have been running it for 25 years. At the same time ..read more