Conditions are finally becoming a bit more favorable across the High Plains for severe weather. However, the past few weeks have been extremely limited due to lack of flow, lack of moisture and you guessed it – lack of quality storms. We had been reduced to being extremely happy with rainbows lately – it’s not what we’re here for, but they still make a great photo!

So what do storm chasers do when the weather is horrible (that is sunny with a light breeze)? They drive around and take artsy photos of anything that they can pass the time with. I snapped a few shots of a wind turbine in NE Kansas last week and made this composite image from them.

We started the day off in the southern portion of the Texas Panhandle and drove all day without much stopping to get back into Oklahoma. We witnessed convective initiation on the southern end of the boundary, just north of Watonga and stayed with this cell all evening long.

You know how you can tell when your tour customers are happy? They smile! And, these guys should be smiling after witnessing awe-inspiring storm structure in none other than the roadless Nebraska Sandhills on May 20th (Tour 4). Not too mention we just drove through that dark precip area in the background a few minutes before this was taken.

Tour 4 was a rough week for storms, we only had a single chase day – Wednesday May 20th. We intercepted a supercell near Hyannis, NE that is otherwise known as the “Mullin Storm”.

Just a few photos of some storms during the first half of May 2009.

It seems that storm chasers and musicians pretty much live the same road life…

If there is a tornado, I sure hope someone has it covered! There were hundreds of storm chasers covering a severe thunderstorm on May 5th near Breckenridge, Texas. After all, it was the only storm in the entire state so there wasn’t a lot to choose from.

UPDATE: The Map Widget has been restored to full status.
It seems that something …

Today’s severe outbreak is setting up. However tomorrow could be the bigger severe event in Oklahoma. It’s going to depend on what happens this evening and if there are outflow boundaries leftover from today’s storms.

We thought it might be a good idea to create a special page on StormChase.com with a link to all the Spotter Network widget’s running around out there. So send us the link to the page where you’ve installed your widget and sometime in the near future, we’ll get that put together and update it once a month (or so).

Things are getting a bit punchy in Oklahoma at this hour. SPC issued a Mesoscale Discussion just a short time ago – Tornado Watch will likely follow shortly.

Over the past decade a lot of technological innovations has changed the way we chase storms. While I still consider ham radio communications to be an extremely important part of my chase rig for emergency communications, I no longer depend on my ICOM dual-band radio as much as I did just five storm seasons ago.

Oklahoma University and the National Weather Center cut the ceremonial ribbon on the first NWS quality Dual-Polarization radar this week.

The map widget is an overwhelming success. In the past month it has averaged 4 new users per day. That may not sound like a huge number, but considering the number of chasers/spotters out there and those who are using SN – we’re thrilled with those results. We obviously don’t want to create projects that people don’t like and a lot of people have written in with their appreciation for the widget as well as their recommendations for improvement.