Storm Chasing USA provides you with unbiased information, reviews and comments of storm chasing tours . You can easily compare prices, reviews and read experiences from other storm chasing tour guests. We keep you updated with the latest tours and provide you with lots of articles of things you may need to know before you book your storm chasing tour.
Storm chasing (also referred to as tornado chasing tours, tornado safaris or storm safaris) with organized tours is a rapidly growing tourism industry where experienced storm chasers guide adventurers and tourists to amazing severe weather. The hunt for tornadoes, super cells, hail, lightning etc goes all over the midwestern states of USA. The tours are usually between 5-10 days in order to maximize your chances of seeing Mother Nature in her worst mood.
Storm Chasing usually takes place in the spring, around May-June, but you can go chasing in April and July as well. The tour could take you from the Rocky Mountains in the West to the East coast and from the Mexican border in the South up to the Canadian border in the North. The nature of weather makes it impossible to know where you will be any given day.
StormChasingUSA.com will help you towards an experience of a lifetime, that will become truly addicting. StormChasingUSA.com is not a Tour company, we just provide the information about the tour companies and their tours.
If you are new to storm chasing you may want to read up a little bit about what storm chasing really means or why you should go storm chasing in the first place!
When you have gotten excited about storm chasing and want to look further into prices, booking etc. you may want to start by reading what to consider before you book your storm chasing tour and then start looking for storm chasing tours the coming season.
Our recommendation is to choose 1-3 tours or tour operators that you believe will be suitable for your needs and look them up further. Compare their prices and offerings and select one. When you have booked a tour make sure you check out our recommended pack list and advices before you book your flight.
You are kindly requested to contribute to the material on this site by writing reviews and comments that shed light on the experiences you have had on a tour. The reviews are an excellent way of telling other storm chasers if you have had a good, or bad, experience with a tour operator.
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My name is Christoffer Björkwall and storm chasing is my greatest passion in life. I am a Swedish storm chaser specialized in storm chasing tours.
Since 2009 I have chased with 10 different tour companies and thus have a knowledge about the storm chasing tour companies like no other in the world.
I have been featured in USA Today, national Swedish media such as Sveriges Radio P3 “Morgonpasset”, Expressen, Kvällsposten, Café Magazine and Nyheter24.se.
I live in Skanör in the southernmost tip of Sweden with my fiancée and two kids. We get very few thunderstorms here but I try to chase for water spouts in the summer.
What hail could do to a car
I found this video made by storm chaser Jim Edds. I think it show’s you very well why high winds are so dangerous. It’s not so much the winds that are dangerous but what they bring. The video is from a Category 4 hurricane (Charley).
After a slow March it seems like the atmosphere is starting to turn beneficial for severe storms. Today is a Moderate Risk-day for a large area in the Eastern plains with a 15% risk of tornadoes in Northern Arkansas / Southern Missouri. Although this might be really bad chase territory (hilly and lots of trees,…
In my last blog post I discussed learning the basics about storm analysis and the basics about storm chasing. I promised to continue with some basic forecasting understanding after I picked a thing or two about it. I am nowhere near done learning but I thought I’d share what I learned so far. These instructions…
This week I have done a LOT of studying to really make an effort of understanding “everything”. I have been studying storms and forecasting all throughout the web. As I mentioned earlier, I have gone through Mike Hollingshead’s excellent “Storm analysis 101” videos from which I learned a lot. Most of the online resources for…
As I just mentioned in my previous post, I just came back from Dubai this Monday. I asked my friend in Dubai if they ever have any thunderstorms there. He mentioned that there were some occasionally. Basically the weather is hot, very hot, extremely hot and hot. Since Dubai is in the desert (albeit by…
The storm chasing season feels really far away, especially here in Sweden. While visiting a friend in Dubai we took a road trip during which I read Tim Vasquez excellent “Storm Chasing Handbook” on my iPad (to be reviewed later). The heat and the humidity really gave me the same physical sensation as in my…
I am continuing my quest to try each storm chasing tour company on the market and this season I will be going with Extreme chase tours on their Tour #4 in last week of May. I am really looking forward to be able to chase this season again and to be chasing with Lanny Dean.…
I had the privilege of getting ahold of storm chasing legend Charles “Chuck” Doswell. He was one of the first scientific storm chasers and was chasing back in the 70’s when no man in the right sense would dare going after a tornado! As a respected meteorologist he has produced over 100 publications and is,…
I found this map on Wikipedia (Wikipedia Commons) showing the density of lightning strikes all over the world, i.e. where most lightning strikes occur throughout the world. Anyone up for some storm chasing in Congo?
I was out on a chase in 2009 and it was one of those days when the setup was just perfect for severe storms. But, just as it quite often is when the setup is perfect, the anticipation is through the roof and there are thousands of cars on the roads. There are also so…
It was not until my third storm chasing tour where I bought a tripod in order to be able to take some lightning shots. I bought it at WalMart for about $15 and it was among the cheapest ones but it did the trick. Using the BULB feature on my Canon I was able to…
Yesterday I brought up a fun way to play with your iPhone panorama functionality but the panorama functionality is really useful for your storm photos as well. I assume there is a similar functionality on Android as well but I don’t know (I only have an iPhone). I learned about panorama shooting from Mike Ricciardi…
Had some fun cloning myself using the iPhone panorama camera mode earlier this year, during a down day at White Sands, NM. Basically, what you do is take a photo yourself in the first shot, go behind the photographer and put yourself in position for the end portion of the panorama sweep. Panocloning!
This really cool video shows how the clouds form around the globe, seen from space, over a 10 year time lapse. Note specifically how the hurricanes shape and clash onto the US east coast.
This blog typically mentions cool things you may experience on a storm chasing trip. Even though may see lenticular clouds (at least on top of quickly developing storms) or maybe arcus clouds you will have to be very lucky to see something like this (Edit: link has been removed as target website is gone). Beautiful!
