Life imitates art... on the left, the summer Twisters promo poster, and on the right is a photo of me standing in front of the Carbon, Iowa tornado (while looking at the Greenfield tornado out of frame right!) on May 21st, 2024 snapped by my brother.
Apocalyptic scenes between Carbon and Greenfield, Iowa. Multiple wind turbines completely shredded, one on fire, power pole stumps left behind with entire poles gone. Strong strong tornado.
Vibrant shimmering,
#aurora
coming directly overhead now in Champaign County, Illinois. This is unreal, haven’t seen anything like it since the middle 2000s.
#aurora
#NorthernLights
iPhone photo:
My jaw was in the west Texas dirt for much of the evening while this spectacular supercell thunderstorm spun away on the horizon. We never moved from this spot.
Northwest of Lubbock, Texas on Sunday evening.
#txwx
This video shows people parking under a bridge, exiting their vehicles, and then being pelted by debris, all in the name of safety with a tornado that they could have easily driven away from.
WE HAVE TO STOP DOING THIS!!!!
LINK:
Trying to wrap my head around what just happened.
Observed a pair of tornadoes just outside the Champaign-Urbana,
#ilwx
city limits 8:40-9:00 AM on Monday morning, one from close range.
Video coming…
The words "oh my god" kept whispering out of my mouth as the
#aurora
surged across the northern horizon. Visible shimmering on the horizon with red pillars directly overhead in Champaign County, Illinois. Best I've seen since 2005!
📷Here's a quick superwide DLSR shot:
What a storm! This thing was sucking in 40-50 MPH easterly inflow! Bailed on the storm when the huge, wet RFD caught me in Clinton, IN and began shredding trees with hail and powerful winds.
This is the Parsons Manufacturing Plant in Roanoke, Illinois before and after it was struck by an F4 tornado on July 13th, 2004.
120-140 workers were inside when it took a direct hit.
How many workers were injured/killed?
ZERO.
Storm shelters and safety plans save lives.
Tuesday's potential severe weather setup features a moisture rich, expansive warm sector and may again favor multiple rounds of severe thunderstorms over a large geographic region.
A dangerous story is beginning to emerge as we draw within 84 hours...
We interrupt this pending severe weather outbreak to let you all know that Sophie's 18-month post-op MRI was stable showing no brain tumor regrowth this morning.
Bonus nugget of good news, she gets to stretch the frequency from every 3 months to every 4 months between scans.
Honestly this is one of the coolest tornado videos I have ever seen. Jaw dropping scene captured with incredible composure. Best part is roughly minutes 3-6.
Intense Close Range Intercept of Violent Wedge Tornado - Iowa High Risk ... via
@YouTube
Stunning, challenging tornadic supercell in western Illinois today.
Here is a full structure shot with the developing tornado near Industry, Illinois at 6:45 PM this evening.
#ilwx
Many farms have taken hits from tornadoes across Nebraska and Iowa today. Ammonia leak seen here near Defiance,
#iawx
after a damaging tornado swept through 20 minutes ago.
Brett Adair's car is floating away in storm surge from
#HurricaneMichael
. They abandoned the vehicle and "climbed a house to safety" about 15 minutes ago. No idea where or how they are doing:
I met another person who documented the June 2nd, 1990 tornado at Albion-Ellery, Illinois. The 82 year old recounted he was pulling a 4-H fair pig in his trailer when a crack of thunder drew his eyes to the developing tornado. 1/2
I'm not trying to overlook May, but as a resident storm lover in the Midwest it's hard not to be giddy about the prognosis for the coming summer pattern.
Strongest signal in years for an active June-August with northwest flow and routine thunderstorm activity Plains to Midwest.
A late-week storm system is already displaying high-end severe weather potential across a wide geographic region from the Midwest to the South on Friday, March 31st.
Long way to go and plenty of details to sort out, but this is a strong signal at day 5:
UPDATE: SHE DID IT. THEY DID IT.
Sophie came out of surgery at Noon.
Surgeon says he removed “more than expected”.
Her foot and toes were getting tired near the end, and that may get worse before it gets better as swelling sets in. Fully expected to be temporary.
Our Sophie was taken back with her surgical team at 7:30 this morning. I expect updates every few hours until they complete the procedure early this aftn. Thank you so much for all of your grounding advice as the anxiety for this date mounted. I’ll update you on the other side!
Folks, bad news about to enter the feed. There was some late concern around Sophie's last MRI, and we found ourselves at Northwestern Medical in Chicago this morning. Her tumor has grown back, ~2". They're recommending another brain surgery late summer. I love her so much. Damn.
A good friend of mine just messaged me with video/photos of a possible waterspout/funnel cloud north of Cleveland, OH. Video from the Lincoln Electric Welding School in Cleveland - 10:24 AM ET
@NWSCLE
What a sunrise!! Intense storms and a vibrant mammatus display to the west were lit up a glowing orange color in the early morning sunrise. Viewed from Champaign County,
#ilwx
Look, ya don't look cool lamenting a Hollywood flick and it's scientific shortcomings - just go buy some popcorn and be glad they're making another damn movie about tornadoes.
Finally, our question has been answered...
What would have happened had the dad in the opening scene of Twister just let the door of the shelter fly off without going out with it?
Scary video of the Lockett tornado literally ripping the doors OFF a storm cellar. One family told us that KAUZ weather coverage was the ONLY reason they knew to take shelter. I’m asking you all to keep that in mind next time you’re angry about not getting to watch your show.
So 3 years ago yesterday
@donkeydownburst
and I missed a tornado because we didn't turn around and look at it (we were under a mile away, right behind us) but we DID see this classic downburst from an early supercell near Springfield, IL.
Good news!!
Sophie had her post-op + stitches removed and we got a bonus.
The pathology results came back - the tumor was unchanged/did not upgrade. No follow-up treatment/chemo needed.
Here’s a photo of Sophie and I doing normal life, something we’ll get to do a lot more of.
Reed is a friend, and there are some storm chasers who put together a wonderful, informative streaming experience, but this take is not correct. Maybe true for major global news networks but nothing beats a local met who knows your backyard, giving distraction free updates.
For severe weather, a majority of news media is less of a source of life-saving real-time information and more of a place to just watch damage footage the next day. If you want real-time information from the front lines of severe weather, follow storm chasers on social media
Storm chasers be like”aw man Twister and Twisters are SO FAKE and get all the science WRONG” and then tweet and say some of the most scientifically inaccurate things you’ve ever heard while screaming at their chat to call a scud bomb into the National Weather Service.
Holy cow! A friend of mind pointed out that the updated Google Maps satellite layer photos were taken apparently just a day or two after the Homer, IL tornado of September 9th 2016. You can see the entire track cut through fields, and amazing detail when zoomed in!
Marcus is okay i just talked to him. hit his head a bit but he's okay. car has no windows.
this is the life of storm chasing but that was fucking terrifying.
Wide angle view of the Beardstown, IL tornado on Saturday, December 1st. This tornado was rated an EF-1 with winds of 105 mph and was on the ground for a total of 4.3 miles.
The last time I spoke to Tim Samaras wasn’t in a field under a storm, but at the premier of Sean Casey’s IMAX film in Chicago. I was going on about how his Driven By Passion DVDs got me thru the dead of every winter.
The idea that the wind took one of my hero’s messed me up.
Our Sophie was taken back with her surgical team at 7:30 this morning. I expect updates every few hours until they complete the procedure early this aftn. Thank you so much for all of your grounding advice as the anxiety for this date mounted. I’ll update you on the other side!
Here’s one for the “QLCS tornado does not equal small, weak spin-up tornado” chapter.
After the Minden-Harlan, Iowa significant tornado,
@donkeydownburst
and I stopped to catch our breath in Defiance as the trailing linear complex moved through. The storm had other ideas.
Went up to Chicago with Sophie, ate a bunch of Chinese hot pot, and then she went and got a squeaky clean MRI marking ~2 years since her 2021 craniotomy to remove a brain tumor with no regrowth. ❤️
I’m old enough to remember when the first storm chasers to make a blunder and be impacted by a strong tornado were so ashamed the video never saw the light of day. Now folks are so ashamed they’ve got to tweet their shamiest images every two hours to remind us today about THEM.
Canadian storm chasers during storm initiation: "Pretty little storm going up"
US storm chasers during storm initiation: "deranged psychotic updraft tower on new explosive nuclear cell pre-wedgegenesis"
The March 13, 1990 tornado outbreak is hard to comprehend.
Pretty much all highly visible, classic supercells and tornadoes too. The internet would break if this happened present day.
In one day, Illinois' weekend forecast went from winter storm, to severe thunderstorms, to a few scattered rain showers.
An exercise in how communicating the most extreme possible outcomes to your audience a week out may exhaust your audience.
Another memory from 2010
This will probably always be one of my favorite shelf clouds. June 18th, 2010, the second of a pair of severe bow echos to blast through northern Illinois that day. The storm itself wasn't even all that intense, but the drama was on outside Shabonna, IL.
As replies to this original tweet have noted - this is a mass casualty event in the making. Never, EVER seek shelter:
- in a wide, expansive space such as a gymnasium or cafeteria
- in a room lined with windows
- in a room with an open truss roof