StormChasingUSA.com blog

I listened sporadically to an old episode of “Tornado Talk” last month while cleaning my son’s room to help soothe the anticipation for the upcoming storm season (only 2 months left for me now!). In the episode they talked with Kim Cross about her book “What stands in a storm”. I didn’t pay that much attention to it but […]

Peter Wharton is something as unusual as a non-american running a tour group in the States: StormGroup Chasers. His tours are unusual in many ways as well as he doesn’t run them as a company, they are completely non-profit but more of a gathering of friends chasing storms together. You live in New Zealand. What […]

Yesterday, I calculated the “Tornado Capital of USA” to be Diggins, MO, based on the average latitude and longitude of all tornadoes between 1950 to 2017. This got some attention on Twitter and one comment I got was if I could make the same calculation but grouped by year instead so here you go! The […]

I have been a web developer for 10 years but recently started looking into Machine Learning and Data Mining and as such I wanted to dig into some data that would be fun to investigate – so off course I chose the tornado data from SPC to see what I could find. In that 6 Mb+ […]

I often underestimate the distances you have to travel to get in position for a storm or, more commonly, to get to “that other storm on radar”. It is easy to look at a radar map or US map and see that storms will develop two states away and think: “Hey, we should driver over […]

Photo: Tempest Tours (with permission) Next off in the line of interviews with members of storm chasing tour companies is Bill Reid, tour guide of Tempest Tours. Bill is one of the most experienced storm chasers you will find out on the Plains – and is a very popular tour guide. Where do you live when […]

March is the season where many storm chasing tour companies either are starting to get cancellations and/or are getting eager to sell out the last seats on tours. Thus, there are numerous new openings on tours as well as a lot of great discounts on storm chasing tours. I have made a list of all […]

I have run StormChasingUSA.com for many years now but I have never really introduced myself. So, here we go. My name is Christoffer Björkwall and I am a Swedish storm chaser living in Skanör in the southernmost tip of Sweden. I am 39 year old and I live with my beloved Charlotte and our 1 […]

When you chase storms with a storm chasing tour company the tour guide, and his or her skill and personality, will be a major part of your experience. For this reason I will start a series of interviews with tour guides from different tour companies in order for you to get to know them a […]

I often encourage people to try out storm chasing, both my friends and family as well as people I talk with over social media. Especially when I post promotions and try to encourage my followers to take the step and book a tour I often get replies like “I really would like to go storm […]

I have been blessed with being able to chase storms since 2009. As I live in Sweden where this is almost unheard of and as I have been very eager to share my photos and stories through channels such as StormChasingUSA I have been contacted numerous times by different types of media to talk about […]

Last year, in November, my life changed forever when I got my son Timo. He is currently 10 months old and, actually, loves to watch storms with me. He was with me during the “tornado outbreak” in Sweden in August when a shelf cloud (with a shear vortex) came in over our summer house. Despite […]

Sweden (where I live) is not very prone to have tornadoes. At all. We never ever have big ones and most tornadoes, if they appear, are usually water spouts coming ashore. In mid August we had a bit of a “tornado outbreak” here in the south of Sweden. Now, this is a tornado outbreak in […]

Earlier this year I started a thread on StormTrack about how to count tornadoes seen. I have a spreadsheet on my computer where I list the tornadoes I have seen, for my own personal sake and nothing else. I usually don’t post or brag about how many tornadoes I have seen but I do find […]

As I often go with storm chasing tours I am often left with trying to determine the skill of a certain tour guide. That goes as well when I read reviews visitors write on this website. How do you know if a certain storm chaser, like your future tour guide, is skilled or not? I assume […]