The Gulf of Mexico finally opened up, breaking the longstanding deadlock on moisture fetch and juicing up a deepening low pressure system. The result: my first 2010 excursion to the Plains in search of tornadoes. My buddies and I busted, but it felt good just to see some panhandle supercells and a few funnels.

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The storm chase of a lifetime! Upwards of 5,000 CAPE broke through the cap east of the Missouri River in South Dakota and produced a single, monster supercell that spun down every kind of tornado imaginable.

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Even northwest Ohio's superb road grid couldn't help us keep pace with storms ripping along at 70 mph. No tornadoes, but a fun chase.

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Veered surface winds couldn't prevent the storm of the day from producing a string of highly photogenic tornadoes. Kurt Hulst and I chased this supercell from its initiation in eastern Iowa across Illinois through Peoria all the way to Kankakee.

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A line of supercells moved from Wisconsin across Lake Michigan along a warm front that was draped south of Grand Rapids, Michigan. I intercepted the first and most robust of the cells, which went tornado warned as it made landfall.

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North of Wichita, Kansas.

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Tornadic supercell north of Edina, MO.

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Northwest Missouri softball hailer.

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Central IL to western IN supercell. Southwesterly surface winds snuffed the low-level helicity.

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Low-topped supercell in northern Illinois, and dramatic arcus cloud in Michigan along the lakeshore.

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A nice backyard chase took Kurt Hulst and me east toward Lansing and north toward Saint Johns. Nothing major, just some genteel summer storms to provide a nice diversion with a bit of lightning and thunder.

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A severe squall line swept across Lake Michigan on September 27, 2009. Kurt Hulst and I tripoded our cameras north of Holland, Michigan, to capture the lightning. Unfortunately, my focus was fuzzy, but one shot turned out fairly well.

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A dramatic shelf cloud sweeps shoreward across Lake Michigan in summer, 2008.

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I was fortunate to spot this shear funnel through my sliding glass door, spinning in the air just half a mile from my apartment.

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