Almost two years ago I started working on StormWindow, a web application where you can explore and analyze storms, tornadoes and storm chaser activity in the last 24 hours. You can see photos, videos chasers have posted as well as zooming in on a specific time and location. See who was close to a tornado when it happened, how the radar image looked like. In addition to this I have added an extensive database on historical storms and tornadoes. I have personally been using this to check out how the outlooks and turnouts was on old chasecations I have been on, or to look at how the setup and for ..read more

Chasing with Extreme Tornado Tours (ETT) was a long awaited trip for me. I was originally scheduled to go with ETT in 2020 but could not go because of Covid. It was not until this year (2023) I could finally go – after the longest hiatus I have had in storm chasing since 2009-2013. For the first time since 2013 I also went in early May but unfortunately, just as in 2013, the weather did not play along very well. I arrived to a so called “Omega Block” which made the chances for severe weather weak. Fortunately, it was not the “Death Ridge” that chasers talked about, we would get some severe wea ..read more

I have been home for a week now since my storm chasing tour with Extreme Tornado Tours in the beginning of May. It turned out that the throat pain I had during the tour was tonsillitis, that was growing worse every day on the tour. I was taking aspirin and cough drops every day on the tour but could not really eat in the end, and had a hard time articulating words. The flight back home was a bit of a nightmare and when I came back to Sweden some 30 hours later (after some flight and air shuttle delays) I could hardly speak at all. I went directly from the airport to the doctor to get antibioti ..read more

Day 6 was our last day of chasing and although SPC had a 2% tornado risk for our area, the actual chance of seeing a tornado was very low, mainly due to a high dew point/temperature spread that would keep the cloud bases high. The risk for very large hail was higher than the day before so this was our main chase target. Today was however a day where we learned about the road network of North Central Texas – or, rather, the lack of it. We found a very promising storm which showed a prolific hook on radar (which could be a precursor to a tornado) we could not get anywhere close to the base. The ..read more

The last two days were not as promising as the Thursday and would offer chasing both days, with hail as the main risk and with very slim tornado chances. However, an option appeared to us at this moment. Northwestern Missouri had opened up to be a potential target for tornadoes on Day 6. We had to choose between two rather meager chase days in Texas or use Day 5 to go to Missouri in order to be able to chase there on Day 6, followed by a nightmarish drive back home in order to get back in time for our flights in the morning on Day 7. The decision was unanimous: Missouri. We went for a great BB ..read more

Day 4 was supposed to be our “Big Day”, it had been forecasted as such since Day 1, not only by our tour guides but by SPC and most in the storm chaser community. The night before SPC put a 5% tornado risk in southwestern Oklahoma and parts of Texas. Our tour guides did however leave a disclaimer: “Don’t get your hopes up too much, the setup is still conditional”. The first thing I did when I woke up was to read the SPC outlook and they had reduced the risk to 2% again, and there was a layer of a thick overcast blanket above us. One of the conditional issues was in fact that there was a risk o ..read more

Today was the first day with some potential of actually seeing a supercell. The models were showing some support for this in the OK panhandle so we moved north. The storms were coming in slooowly from New Mexico and we found some beautiful piece of completely flat land to watch the high based storms coming in. Just as yesterday’s late night thunderstorm, it was not a very spectacular storm in itself but it was more about the packaged deal of the landscape together with the thunderstorm that was the beauty of it. As the thunderstorm was collapsing we went on to watch the tri-state marker for Ok ..read more

Day 2 was supposedly a chase day, even though it was very marginal. There was riska area over parts of west Texas up to Amarillo and the tour guides chose to stay around for the northern target, which meant we would stay put in Amarillo. I had been feeling a bit sick so I took this as an opportunity to catch up with my rest. At lunch we went out to Cadillac Ranch, which is a typical tourist attraction to visit when in Amarillo. A farmer has buried about 10 Cadillacs front-end down into the earth. Now it is a tourist attraction mainly because you get to spray paint the old cars. I was here in 2 ..read more

I arrived to Oklahoma city at 8 pm, dead tired and crashed directly to bed. I had at that time checked out what people were saying about the upcoming week, and my heart sunk. There were mentions of Omega Blocks and Death Ridges, words you don’t want to hear about the single week you chose to go for storm chasing! To be honest, after I studied forecasting a whole lot (especially around 2015-2017), I have forgotten quiet a lot and rely much on others nowadays. During the morning meeting with the rest of the guests and tour guides it seemed like it wasn’t as bad, Day 1 was definitely going to be ..read more

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