Here is a more detailed breakdown of the spring chase season, in two parts.

From April 25 to May 29 (35 days), I was in chase mode on only 20 days, and two of these wound up busts (no storms observed).  On 15 of the 35 days there was no chase, due to no chance of storms, repositioning, and/or changing tours.  Of course, if there had been a really good chance of tornadic supercells on any of these 15 no-chase days, we would have done our darnedest to have been there.  Of these 20 chase days, 11 were in Texas, 4 were in Oklahoma, 2 were Nebraska and 2 were in Missouri.  The remaining one was in extreme southeast Montana.  And, of these 20 chase days, I would rate 14 as “decent or better” (including supercells, strong convection, etc.), while 6 fell into the “marginal/lame/pathetic” category (busts, high-based junk, little or no lightning or severe wx, etc.).  I saw one brief tornado from a distance during these 35 days — yes — May was lame.  We were, however, on a few storms which contained rain-wrapped tornadoes and/or “tornadoed” at night.  I only had to venture east of I-35 twice (on the two Missouri chases), which was nice.  Except for a couple of mediocre days in western Nebraska and one Missouri day when we ended up on junk in KS, I did no chasing in KS, NE, SD, ND, IA, MN, NM, CO or WY during these five weeks in the heart of spring!  That is amazing.  The best chases were generally in TX and OK, between I-35 on the east and U.S. 83 on the west.

Part two occurred from June 5 to July 4, a 30-day period.  I was in chase mode on 26 days, and only four were no-chase (repositioning or tour-changeover) days.  Of these 26 chase days, 7 were in Nebraska, 6 were in South Dakota, 5 were in Kansas and 5 were in Colorado, two were in Wyoming and one was in Montana.  So, geographically, there was (not surprisingly) a definite shift from the Southern Plains to the Central Plains from May to June.  Of these 26 chase days, 16 receive a “decent or better” rating.  The remaining 10 get the “bust-junky-weak” rating. ( I should add that many of the junky chase days on the central and northern Plains still offered some outstanding photography opportunities.)   I witnessed tornadoes on six of these chase days, and on three other chase days we were on tornadic storms but unable to see (or confirm) a tornado.  I did not chase at all this year in ND, MN, IA, and NM (though we were in ND on one evening after a Montana chase).

This page is designed to help you get a fairly quick look at what I caught (or didn’t catch) this season, and to showcase some of my photography from spring 2009.  By clicking on the thumbnails, you will be privy to an enlarged version of the image.  To check out all of the images posted for a particular day, please click on the highlighted date and title above the associated thumbnail image(s).

April 25/western OK/supercells This was the first day out after beginning the drive from L.A. the previous afternoon.  It was nice seeing some severe storms again!

April 26/High Risk/western OK quasi-bust I favored the area south of I-40 in SW OK and wound up on a brief supercell near Elmer. We missed the tornado near Roll, OK.  I did not chase on the 27th or 28th.

April 29/Motley County, TX/supercell

We were unable to make it to the Floyd County tornadoes following noon  orientation in Arlington, and wound up on impressive supercells east of the Caprock.

April 30/Custer County, OK/supercell This fun chase culminated with a lightning-illuminated  barrel-shaped updraft, just to our east.

May 1/Jones County, TX/supercell We saw the tornado near Knox City, and later photographed lightning north of Abilene.

May 5/Stephens County, TX/supercell After three slow days, we were on the big hailer that tried hard to “tornado” south of Breckenridge.

May 7/De Kalb County, MO/supercell A highly-sheared and tilted updraft was quite photogenic at sunset.

May 8/Brown County, TX/supercell A tornadic supercell blew through Brownwood, and we had an excellent look at its structure.

May 12/Hall County, TX/severe storms Fun, but somewhat disorganized and linear storms near Memphis and Childress.

May 13/Blaine County/supercell This south-moving supercell produced a damaging tornado during the late evening in Anadarko, OK.

May 15/Carroll County, MO/severe storm Convection fired early in the day and declined to go tornadic in KS and MO.

May 19/Carter County, MT/virga bomb In the midst of a poor pattern with less-than-adequate moisture, we observed high-based “convection” in southeast Montana. Yawn.

May 20/northwest Nebraska/severe storms A plethora of storms from Harrison to Hay Springs to Ashby kept us busy.

May 24/Nebraska Panhandle/outflowing high-based junk The extended period of lousy chase weather continues.

May 25/northern TX panhandle/severe storms Still short on moisture, but Panhandle Magic did what it could.

May 26/Parker County, TX/supercell This hailstorm was high-based, in late May near Fort Worth. Gulf moisture was still less than robust.

May 27/Val Verde County, TX/lightning We drove to the end of the Earth for some electric fireworks.

May 28/Sutton County, TX/storms We are still struggling through the dreadful May weather pattern, as shear and moisture are much less than ideal. These storms were entertaining, nonetheless.

June 5/Banner County, NE/tornadic supercell We didn’t quite reach Wyoming, but we were able to view the LaGrange, WY, tornado from Nebraska!

June 10/Stevens County, KS/supercell The atmosphere has its act together! Today’s supercell was a bit HP-ish, but I wasn’t complaining.

June 11/Arkansas River, CO/supercell Two fabulous supercells duked it out in southeast Colorado.

June 12/Cheyenne County, CO/high-based supercell A big Colorado hailer chased us through the empty plains of east-central Colorado.

June 13/Morgan County, CO/tornadic supercell A storm near Fort Morgan spit out a couple of small tornadoes, for our viewing pleasure.

June 14/Lincoln County, CO/supercells Eastern Colorado is once again the place for fantastic supercells!

June 15/Adams County, NE/tornadic supercell After a long drive from Lamar, CO, we reached the Hastings area in time for a great show!

June 16/Hutchinson County, SD/tornadic supercell A beast of an HP supercell chased us in southeastern SD.

June 17/Aurora, NE/tornadic supercell A long-lived tornado was photographed between Grand Island and Aurora.

June 17/York County, NE/Lightning in CB After the tornado show near Aurora, the cumulonimbus tower looked nice in the fading light.

June 18/Cheyenne County, NE/nighttime lightning A high-based High Plains electrical storm salvaged an otherwise dud chase day.

June 21/Ziebach County, SD/supercell The beautiful prairies of South Dakota in June make storm photography a blast!

June 22/Corson County, SD/high-based supercells We found ourselves on the wrong side of the Missouri River with the highway heading the wrong way.

June 23/Logan County, NE/tornadic supercell Another fabulous supercell with a shy tornado, wrapped in rain, emerges from the Sand Hills

June 24/Davison County, SD/tornadic supercell A late forecast switch led to a late-in-the-day tornado!

June 25/Jackson County, SD/high-based hailer Late afternoon storms fizzling on the Badlands are better than a sharp stick in the eye.

June 26/Deuel County, NE/supercell Supercell structure on the High Plains in June — what a show!

June 29/Box Butte County, NE/high-based supercell Another mix of pretty storms above great landscapes, without any tornado threat.

June 30/Wibaux County, MT/tornadic supercell My first Montana tornado put an exclamation point on a great month of June chases!

July 1/Carter County, MT/high-based junk Junky hailstorms and junk in an abandoned building in Capitol…why can’t it still be June?

July 2/Niobrara County, WY/supercell Local Wyoming landscape and storm structure combined to make some happy photographers.

July 3/Ottawa County, KS/briefly tornadic supercell A long drive across Nebraska paid off with a good-looking supercell at dusk in Kansas.

July 5/Sherman County, TX/severe storms I wasn’t really in chase mode, but I made sure that I didn’t miss anything important.

July 6/Bruiser in NM One last look at Plains convection before heading to perpetually stable coastal Southern California…

It had been perhaps a dozen years since I had visited the Eureka Valley in eastern California.  I have been here a few times in my life, and I can’t imagine ever NOT wanting to return!  Like its adjoining basins—Owens Valley, Saline Valley, Deep Springs Valley—the Eureka Valley is rimmed by spectacular mountains and is stark, desolate, dry, and wonderfully empty.  The valley contains the absolute best sand dune field in the state, if not the nation, in my opinion.  The Eureka Dunes are a photographer’s dreamland.  Yes, they are remote, but the dunes can be reached fairly easily by conventional automobiles.  My SUV had no trouble on the unpaved road into Eureka Valley and on the ten-miles from Death Valley Road to the dunes, but in places the road was a nasty washboard.

What makes the dune field so spectacular?  The dunes rise rather abruptly about 700 feet above the surrounding terrain, making them the tallest in California.  And, they are nestled close to the beautifully striated Last Chance Mountains.  There is a complete absence of anything man-made in the area, save for the road, a few small signs, and a port-a-potty.  People are also in short-supply.  I would be surprised if there are any full-time residents in the Eureka Valley.  I saw about four folks during my five-hour visit — two in a car leaving the dunes, and two walking on the dunes.

Entering Eureka Valley

I entered the basin on its west side via Death Valley Road.  It was about 3 p.m., so I couldn’t dawdle too much, as I wanted to give myself at least an hour or so at the dunes prior to sunset.  The first three images below are from the west side of Eureka Valley, looking northeast towards the Sylvania Mountains, and then southeast towards the sand dune field, about 20 miles distant.  The final three are from the junction of Death Valley Road and the side road that heads to the dune field:  northeast to Horse Thief Canyon and the Sylvania Range, and southeast down the road towards the Last Chance Range.

Approaching The Dunes

The road to the dunes is pretty bad—ten miles of bad washboard and not-so-bad washboard.  It seems that with every mile I am compelled to stop and take pictures.

On The Dunes
There was a couple of folks traipsing up the nearest sand dune when I parked and headed for the highest dune.  Fortunately, they stayed out of my way!  I made it to the top of a dune with a beautiful view of the entire basin.  There was a slightly higher dune to the south, but the sun was about to set and I needed to take pictures.

Apparently the last seven images below are not opening up in the proper fashion.  You, the web surfer, are going to have to  make the necessary adjustments.  Good luck.

I left the dunes a bit after sunset and headed out of the Eureka Valley and up into the Inyos.  The temp was in the 40s in the Eureka Valley (elevation about 3000 feet), but it fell to near freezing fairly quickly as I entered snow-covered terrain above 6000 feet.  I decided to stop along a straight and flat stretch of Death Valley Road.  I later learned that this was near 7000 feet elevation, not too far east of the road into Saline Valley.  Several inches of snow covered the road shoulders.  I didn’t want to be walking in snow and freezing my feet faster than necessary, so I parked halfway in the road.  I had seen only two other vehicles since early afternoon.  As it turned out, no one passed by while I was at this location.  The dark and star-filled sky above was fairly spectacular, but there did appear to be some high cirrus around.  Oh well, the high clouds weren’t too bad, so I tripodded the 5D and started taking some wide-angle shots of one to two-minutes in length.  With wide angle lenses such as 16 mm, you can get away with exposures of about a minute.  Exposures of 90 seconds or more start to show the annoying star trails.  During the exposures, I set up the C8 telescope and plugged it in to the X-terra’s DC outlet.  I was going to try some piggy-back photography while the scope (and its motorized equatorial mount) tracked the sky.

The three images below were tripodded (not tracking).  The first one (0919/25mm, 47 sec, f2.8, ISO 800) is looking ENE, towards Auriga and Taurus.  The brightest star near the center is Capella.  The middle frame (0922/16mm, 76 sec, f3.5, ISO 1000) is looking WNW to NW, towards the “Summer Triangle” stars of Deneb, Altair, and Vega.  The Milky Way is nice and bright through Cygnus.  Distant high clouds and sky are illuminated, perhaps, by Big Pine and Bishop, and maybe even Mammoth Lakes.  The third image (0924/16mm, 68 sec, f3.2, ISO 1000) is looking down the road to the southwest, right at Jupiter.  I’m not sure if the light near the horizon on this image (and the previous one) is due to town lights or the last light of dusk.  Time of day was about 7:10 p.m. PST.

The seven images below were taken with the camera “piggybacked” on the telescope, so that the night sky would be tracked during the long exposures.  I did a really quick and dirty polar alignment, so the tracking is far from perfect, but generally adequate for these wide images.  Here are the stats:

0926/16mm, 107 sec, f3.2, ISO 1000

0927/33mm, 101 sec, f2.8, ISO 1000

0930/33mm, 208 sec, f2.8, ISO 800

0931/33mm, 211 sec, f2.8, ISO 800

0932/70mm, 58 sec, f2.8, ISO 800

0933/70mm, 92 sec, f2.8, ISO 1250

0929/33mm, 95 sec, f3.2, ISO 800

0926 is rotated about 45 degrees from level, since the camera is mounted on the scope. This wide angle shot shows much of the telescope tube, since the camera mount is near the back of the tube. In this very wide-angle shot to the east, Orion is about halfway up on the horizon, and the Pleiades star cluster is near the center.

0927 is looking towards Cygnus and its bright star Deneb. Faint nebulosity is visible in the Milky Way, even the North American Nebula, near Deneb and the middle of the image.

0930 is centered near the Pleiades. The purplish California Nebula is visible in the image above the Pleiades. Capella is the bright star in the upper left.

0931 is another view of Orion and vicinity to the east.

0932 is a somewhat tighter view compared to the previous shots, towards the Andromeda/Perseus/Cassiopeia region. This was nearly overhead at the time. The Andromeda Galaxy (M31) is prominent at the bottom.

0933 is a cropped look at part of Orion. The red giant Betelguese shines bright!

0929 is looking nearly overhead again, and you should be able to recognize the “W” outline in Cassiopeia (just above and to the left of center). On the left side of the image is the Double Cluster in Perseus, and M31 appears again near the bottom.

After about 90 minutes of focusing, changing lenses, pushing buttons, wrenching my neck and picture-taking with numb fingers, my extremities had had enough. I packed up the gear and headed back home via Big Pine and the Owens Valley. The thermometer read 22F as I left my lonely location with the heater on high blast. It will be fun to revisit this dark region with the same equipment on a warmer night, without cirrus! I am very impressed with the capabilities of the Canon 5D Mark II beneath starry skies. Of course, Photoshop helped a lot with these images. Exposures were jacked up in each case to bring out more stars.  Here are two other versions of image 0933, courtesy of Morganti Magic, Inc.:

Of the eight images below, numbers one, three, and eight take a look at the Inyo Mountains.  This range rises on the east side of Owens Valley.  (Actually, Owens Valley is not a valley, but is a “basin”, as its waters drain ultimately into Owens Lake, a sink which is actually not a lake but a “playa” or a “dry lake,” because Owens River waters are diverted from their course towards Owens Lake and into the Los Angeles Aqueduct, except that recently more Owens River water is permitted to flow into Owens Lake in order to reduce the dust that blows off of the lake, leaving the youngsters of Los Angeles without drinking water.  Got it?)  Other images show some cool standing lenticular clouds in the wake of the Sierra Nevada.   These clouds are fairly common in winter, as fast westerly winds aloft ride up and over the range (forming a “mountain wave”).  Pics 6 and 7 are telephotos of an ACSL (altocumulus standing lenticular) well to the north.  On the left side are the Sierra Nevada and the Alabama Hills, near Lone Pine.

As skies darkened, I motored to the east side of Owens Lake and up Cerro Gordo Mine Road.  This is a lonely dirt road which ascends from near Keeler, at about 3600 feet elevation, to Cerro Gordo, at about 8000 feet.  I drove up about 2/3 of the way to Cerro Gordo, and stopped to shoot the stars and the view across Owens Valley to the Sierra.  Pic 1 below shows Keeler, along Owens Lake, looking west-southwest.  The seventh image shows an obnoxious bright area, courtesy of a flood light at a mining area in the Inyos east of Dolomite.  A meteor was kind enough to burn up within my frame and during the exposure for pic five below…or was it something else?  Richard Dickson informs me that the bright streak near the top of the image is an “Iridium Flare”. He checked my time and location and determined that I had stopped very close to the “center-line of brightness” of one of these brief reflections off of a satellite.  Mine had a magnitude of negative 8!  I was lucky to have the shutter open and the camera pointing in the right direction at the time!

I have plenty of images of Mount Whitney in the Bill Reid photo archives, but all of them are slides.  It was high time to get some digital pixels of California’s highest peak.  I set the alarm in my Lone Pine motel room to some horrible early hour, like 6 a.m., so I could catch the early warm light as it bathed the rugged granite escarpment west of town.  The alarm went off as scheduled, so I turned it off and got my money’s worth at the motel by sleeping in until 10 a.m.   These images were shot around noon, along Whitney Portal Road.  There is a series of closely-spaced and prominent “spires” in pics one and two below.  The Day Needle and the Keeler Needle are on the right, and Mount Whitney (to the right of these features) is obscured by terrain in the foreground.  Wotans Throne dominates the left side of the first image (0936).   The wide-angle shots (3 and 4) show the needles and Mount Whitney in the distance, looking up Lone Pine Canyon.  Mount Whitney is front and almost center in image 5 (0952).     Pics 10, 11 and 12 were taken from near Independence (north of Lone Pine), and the final two are the same image, one in black and white, on the way east through the Inyo Mountains from Big Pine on Death Valley Road.  This is looking west towards the Sierra, visible in the distance.

The final six images on this page were taken along Death Valley Road.  The road is paved as it winds through the Inyo Mountains, but is unpaved as it reaches the flat sections of the Eureka Valley.  Near “pass level” is Saline Valley Road, also known as Waucoba Road here, at an elevation of about 7300 feet.  This lonely road heads south into beautiful and desolate Saline Valley, which bottoms out at just over 1000 feet elevation.  The weather-battered sign reads:

Marble Canyon–8, Lower Warm Springs Road–35, Hunter Mountain Road–67, State Highway 190–84.

I have driven the full length of Saline Valley Road just once, and it takes you into one of the most remote areas of the country!  If you break down here, it’s going to be a while before help arrives.  If you are in a hurry, you can make the drive from this spot to Route 190 in about four hours.  And, like the sign says, there are no places in the Saline Valley to buy a soda or restrooms to hide in when nature calls.   There are no telephone poles or electricity service, either.  Anyway, the Saline Valley images and account will come later.  The other images show some lower elevation areas on the descent into Eureka Valley, including a pretty area with many Joshua Trees.

Amboy, California, is a tiny town buried in the middle of the eastern Mojave Desert.  It is on old U.S. 66, but when Interstate 40 was built in the 1970s, it missed the town by about 10 miles.  There is now little reason to pass through Amboy, except for nostalgia’s sake, or to enjoy the blistering heat of summer by yourself, or to photograph the world-famous “Roy’s” sign.

As I approached Amboy at dusk on this clear and crisp evening, I was thinking that I might be able to get some cool shots of the moonrise behind the Roy’s sign.  Moonrise was spectacular the day before, as the moon was full or just past full.  While waiting for moonrise, I spent time shooting some wide-angle shots of the sign and the adjacent motel and cafe/convenience store.  The sign did not have lights of its own, but was illuminated by a bright flood light near the gas pumps.  With the camera on the tripod, my 10, 20, and 30 second exposures were picking up more and more stars.  Soon, the Milky Way was in nearly full display!  I cranked up the ISO to 800 to 1600, opened the aperture to 2.8 to 3.5, and shot 20 to 30-second exposures until the glow of the moon behind the nearby mountains became a nuisance.  Those 20 or 30 minutes of very dark skies beneath the Roy’s sign were very cool!  My moonrise shots wound up to be a little anti-climactic.  That final image that looks like an annular eclipse of the moon is due to some fun and games in Photoshop.