Every year since 2007, Weather Holidays, part of Netweather, have taken tour groups to the USA during May and early June - the main storm season in Tornado Alley. Guests on the tours have seen countless severe storms, supercells and tornadoes over the years. I was lucky enough to be on the first ever chase we did, the following year, the legendary BBC weather presenter -Michael Fish OBE – joined us for a 10-day tour. The following tour, ITV cameraman Chris Terrill tagged along with our group for a few days to get footage for his ITV’s Nature’s Fury episode on tornadoes.
The 10 day tours normally start and end in Denver, where guests arrive from not just the UK but other parts of Europe and even Australia to join the tours. We then take you wherever there are severe storms across the Great Plains of the USA, perhaps taking in several different states.
Currently tour 2 is travelling the Plains and 5 days in to the 10-day tour and they had already seen several tornadoes, lots of lightning, stunning structure and also some cultural sites too.
After a quiet couple of days to start Tour 2, the last few days have seen some high-octane storm chasing, including 4 tornadoes, some close, in Iowa on Tuesday.
Sometimes a tour may hit the ground running, straight into a severe storm risk within range of the airport of arrival. But tour 2 this year had a leisurely first few days, which gave them the opportunity to visit the cultural delights of Cowboys OKC, a popular bar in Oklahoma City, which features live bull riding, a mechanical bull and a large dance floor. Also, they visited Twister the Movie Museum in the small town of Wakita in Oklahoma. It has information and video on the making of "Twister" in Wakita. Visitors can also see the original "Dorothy 1" from the movie, plus behind-the-scenes videos taken during the filming of the 1996 movie. Poignantly, a new movie called ‘Twisters’, a sequel to the 1996 movie, is due for release on July 19th in the UK.
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Tour 2 outside the Twister the Movie Museum
But tour 2 didn’t have to wait long to get stuck in to some severe storm action, with day 3 of the tour on Sunday offering a Moderate Risk of severe weather across Kansas and an Enhanced Risk into NW Oklahoma. The team targeted NW Oklahoma and managed to see a few tornadoes, plus some stunning supercell structure, as below:
Day 3 of Tour 2 saw some stunning supercell structure, like above, in Oklahoma.
Then on Monday, day 4, the team travelled north and west into northeastern Colorado, with a target of Akron. Several supercell storms developed, but they didn’t drop any tornadoes for the team. One of the storms did later that day drop massive amounts of hail to large depths in the small town of Yuma, in NE Colorado, some the size of baseballs, causing extensive damage in the town.
Day 4 of Tour 2 saw the team chasing supercell storms in NE Colorado
The same storms produce copious hail, some of the hail the size of baseballs
Day 5, Tuesday, was set to be a bigger more high-octane chase day, and the moderate risk with 15% probability of strong tornadoes and PDS (Particularly Dangerous Situation) warnings over Iowa were certainly warranted. Here’s an account of the day from Paul Botten, the tour leader:
Tour 2 Chase Day 5 - Iowa
Started today in McCook after an underperforming Colorado day. My chase Target today was pretty straight forward east of a surface low that was lifting north from Concordia. So we set our sights on just east of the Missouri River into extreme SW Iowa. A Supercell formed right on the Low near Beatrice and raced towards us, it soon gained a Tornado warning and raced towards us at 55mph. This Supercell never produced but as we headed further east we caught our first Tornado of the day near Red Oak. This was only the start of the next 2 hours of madness with every Supercell along the E-W boundary seemingly producing Tornadoes at ease. Near Corning we headed east for an intercept at 200 yards behind us with 100mph RFD slamming our vehicle, onwards and another imminent touchdown was about to happen, this one upon cresting a hill we stopped and let the Tornado touch down behind us at 100 yards, ripping trees out of the ground and then drilling the ground to our north. Tornado number 4 near Prescott hit a house around 500 yards in front of us and ripped parts of the roof off and threw it over the road (Grahams Go Pro Grab Pic here caught this but not before parts of trees flew into the vehicle. The last Tornado was the start of the violent Greenfield Tornado and the shot I have is not even zoomed in to see the power of this Tornado as it raced North. All-in-all a very challenging chase day and I am thankful to my skilled drivers once again for seriously good skills.
Absolutely devastated at the loss of lives today and the destruction to Property. Thinking once again of the people of Iowa.
A selection of photos of the tornadoes that tour 2 saw on Tuesday in Iowa (Credit: Paul Botten)
After a ‘down day’ yesterday, with no severe storms in range without getting too far from today’s severe risk, tour 2 will target the central Plains where there is an enhanced risk of severe weather has been issued by the US Storm Prediction Center and 5% probability of tornadoes from NW Texas up through western Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska. Friday, Saturday and Sunday are also offering to bring severe risks across the Plains. So looking very active for rest of Tour 2.
Plenty of severe storm action over the Plains for the next 3 days for tour 2
If you’d like to join Weather Holidays for the trip of a lifetime chasing storms in the legendary tornado alley, please visit the Weather Holidays website for availability in 2025
