The day began simply enough; we awoke in Limon, Colorado. It was remarkably clear and crisp that morning, but we knew it wouldn’t be for long. We had things to do today.

The night before had been something out of a buddy comedy movie; our group consisted of myself, Marcus, Bart, Debs and Conor. We were exhausted, having spent all of the day before chasing with little reward. To top it off, the power steering in Marcus’s car had gone out, and after some deliberation about what to do about that we decided we’d just chase today and then get a rental.

We’d decided to stay the night in Limon. Bart suggested we go to a local Subway for dinner. It was a favorite location of his and we were all starving half to death by this point. “Yeah, let’s just go to that Subway. I know it’s there for sure.”

As luck would have it, we got to where the Subway definitely was, according to him- and it wasn’t. Not only was it closed, oh no- the entire building had been demolished. The rest of us got a good laugh out of that while Bart fumed. “I mean it was there last time I was here, okay?”

We settled on Pizza Hut. As it turns out, it’s a lot more expensive to eat in at Pizza Hut than to get it delivered. Despite our complaining about the pricing, we ate anyway and rebuffed Bart’s numerous attempts at stealing our food.

Following dinner, we chose an inexpensive motel not too far from where we were. Check in was an adventure; you ever been so tired that everything is hilarious and you find yourself wired? That was us. The poor little old lady behind the counter had a sense of humor about it, though, which was nice. She’d need it to deal with the likes of us.

Each of us departed to our respective rooms; Marcus came to mine for a little while and we bullshitted until he needed to head back. Not even five minutes after he left, he was back again. I opened the room door to see him standing there. He wasted no time.

“I need to tell you what I just did.”

Uh oh.

Apparently, once he’d returned to his room, the phone began ringing. He immediately assumed (for whatever reason, haha) that it must have been me calling to mess with him, so he wanted to beat me to the punch. He picked up the phone and answered, in a thick Swedish accent:

“BOOTY CASTLE, WHAT’S YOUR HASSLE?”

The “oh God” from the other line told him that it was not me but rather the poor lady from the front desk. After she finished laughing, she asked him if he was driving the red Subaru. Nope, Bart’s car. Well, he left the lights on, she said, so she’d just call his room.

Marcus hung up and immediately came back to report his shame to me. Meanwhile, the lady rang Bart’s room. Evidently, when he’d arrived he immediately faceplanted onto his bed and passed out. He answered the phone, barely coherent, and acknowledged the heads up about his lights being left on.

He then proceeded to hang up and go back to sleep. The lights were on all night.

As hilarious as all of this was, it meant that the following day presented us with a challenging morning. Marcus, Conor and I had to decide if we were going to get a rental car or keep going with his vehicle. Bart and Debs had no choice but to stay behind at the motel to fix his now burnt-out Subi. After we had sufficiently pointed and laughed at Bart’s inability to wake up to save his life even if it meant losing his car battery, we went on our way.

It didn’t take long to get into the swing of things; the SPC had already issued a slurry of watches and the Day 1 convective outlook looked promising.

Yet another moderate risk issued; yet another kickass day of shenanigans was in store.

For the time being, we decided to stick around Colorado and see where we ended up by playing the day casually. It looked to be pretty cut and dry; despite the moderate risk being placed over the panhandle and surrounding areas, we opted to stay northeast, closer to Nebraska. Besides, we were beginning the rest of our day at Denver International Airport, attempting (and failing) to secure a rental. Looks like we’d be wingin’ it.

A small cell fired up near the airport. Convenient enough. We began following it with no idea just how incredible a day was in store for us.

It was a persistent little thing, becoming organized relatively quickly and producing hail. Strangely, it was a ghost town out there- where was everyone else? Playing the moderate, maybe? Oh well. More room for us to play, then.

We followed this small cell to just outside of Bennett, CO. By this time, it had begun to produce audible hail roar, and we knew we were in for a treat. It continued to rapidly strengthen, and finally it produced a small funnel cloud.

The funnel hung around briefly, but didn’t stick around. The storm was certainly trying, and if it were to do it, we’d be right there waiting for it.

At 12:55 PM, the SPC issued a tornado watch for our area specifically. It’s always validating to see that when you decide to take a minor risk and target an area outside of the more obvious ones traced out by the SPC. Solely SPC chasing is a noob’s game, but it’s always super nice to at least have them to confirm your own forecast when they agree with you.

It didn’t take long for the fun to really begin. Outside of Strasbourg (Strasburg? I don’t fuckin’ know) we encountered a small, uncondensed tornado swirling away in a dirt field. If it hadn’t been for the raggedy but notable funnel cloud above it, we likely would have missed it completely.

the important thing is that it tried

It was short lived, but it counted. A tornado warning was finally issued for the area, but only after the little tube had already lifted. The storm was fierce, though, churning angrily overhead, seemingly preparing for round two.

It never produced again, but the day was far from over.

We hop-scotched to another developing cell nearby, this one with a remarkably brilliant blue core. It was rough around the edges and raggedy, but the unpolished look to it just lent it more drama. In the distance, sirens blared, and we watched the blue beauty organize and collapse repeatedly over open land.

iPhone photo did NOT do the color justice; this was one of the most intensely blue cores I’ve ever seen.

As this storm moved into Iliff, CO, it began lowering considerably. Marcus and I watched the meso continue to organize just over a hill. We were sitting in awe and silence until Marcus had an idea.

“Let’s drive into that thing,” he said, casually, as if he weren’t literally suggesting we drive through a ground-scraping meso.

“Sounds stupid,” I replied. “I’m in.”

Slowly we crept up the dirt hill, honking at the endless supply of chasers and tour guests standing quite literally in the center of the road with gear and all (writer’s note: DON’T FUCKING DO THAT). As they took their precious time clearing the way for us (to, you know, like, drive, ‘cuz it was a road, not a sidewalk) we kept our eyes trained forward on the far edge of the meso scraping along the other side of the hill.

This thing was the definition of a ground scraper; as we reached the apex of the hill, our ears popped, and looking ahead of ourselves we saw the bottom opposite edge of the clouds briskly moving over the road.

The entire sky was alive, breathing, and it was doing so directly over us. We were IN the meso, or, rather, directly beneath it. It seemed to have a concave bottom to it allowing just enough space to drive under; behind us, the other bottom edge of the thing was kissing the ground, pulling dirt and loose grass along with it as it moved. The chasers who had been previously standing in the road appeared to have wised up and moved on. Now it was just Marcus, myself, Conor and the power-steeringless Ford, getting ready to punch through the other side. I managed to start a Facebook live feed, though the movement of the car rendered the intense movement of the clouds nearly undetectable on the screen.

why yes, i do kiss my mother with this mouth.

Just as quickly as our adventure with this particular meso began, it ended, as we popped out safely on the other side with little to show for it besides a cool memory and somewhat questionable quality video. I wish we’d have been able to stop so I could have captured that motion much more accurately; unfortunately, considering it was a meso we were tangoing with, we didn’t have the time nor any safe spot to stop. I do not suggest stopping when you’re driving through a rapidly rotating mesocyclone. (Writer’s note: Marcus insists this was actually a tornado and that we joined the zero meter club with this one. I’m not so sure. Either way, don’t try this at home, kids)

The next hour was somewhat uneventful; following a dying storm took us up into Nebraska. I was excited; I’d never chased Nebraska before and it had been a long running joke that I never would, since it hadn’t happened already. Well, today it was happening.

And was it EVER.

Very quickly after we arrived past the Nebraska state line, we trained our eyes on a young-ish storm brewing between our position and over on the Colorado side. We decided immediately that this was our next play, and the first order of business would be to core punch it and get to the other side.

This was a terrible idea.

It wasn’t long before we were assaulted by a barrage of hail- very, very large hail, which kept increasing in size with every foot forward that we drove. Marcus slowed down to a crawl and, spotting an overpass ahead of us already clogged with motorists blocking the highway, we had no choice but to stop.

Marcus backed carefully into the group of parked cars, taking care not to get too close to anyone. We were just about beneath the overpass, though the windshield and hood of the car were sticking out. Oh well. This would have to do; these people weren’t going to budge, and that aside, this hail-

CRACK.

An incredibly loud sound rang out, echoing in the car and sounding eerily similar to a shotgun blast. Before we realized what was going on, there was another. And another.

The windshield cracked all the way across in response this time: it was more large hail. Absolutely, incredibly, ridiculously large hail. We’re talking baseballs, and then softballs, and then goddamn GRAPEFRUIT sized stones. Marcus instinctively layed his arm across my chest and raised a hand protectively, trying to shield my eyes in the event that the windshield caved in.

“Careful,” he said, concern in his voice. “If this windshield goes, your eyes could go with it.” I told him I was alright and didn’t need the extra arm; instead I put my hand over my eyes with the fingers slightly spread so I could keep looking as the hail became louder and even more intense. Next year, remind me to bring some goggles.

Each behemoth ice boulder produced an incredibly loud sound upon impact. The windshield cracked further. Were we going to lose it today, finally, after so many close calls?

We didn’t exactly have time to think about that, though, as very suddenly two headlights pierced through the zero-visibility tempest – and they were coming straight for us.

It was a large, black Dodge Ram, and it was coming up the wrong way. It continued toward us at the same speed with no effort to slow down. All three of us braced for impact. This wasn’t going to be good.

I remember saying something like “Oh God damn-” and closing my eyes just as I was expecting the hit. But, none came. I opened one eye and then the other, carefully, to see that the truck had somehow seen us as the very last moment and stopped, its grill nearly kissing Marcus’s front bumper. We hadn’t seen its headlights until it was nearly too late; we assume that he hadn’t seen us at all up until the last moment as well.

Once we were able to catch our breath and stop the endless stream of profanity we were unleashing in the moments after realizing we’d been spared, we noticed that the hail was easing up, so we decided to move forward and try to get in front of this storm just to check out what we were looking at here.

This was the best decision we could have possibly made.

This entry is already lengthy, so I won’t get too crazy into the play by play; as we inched further and further out in front of the cell, every glance backward proved to be even more incredible than the last. The cell had taken on the mothership shape that is the stuff of chaser legend; it was becoming striated and becoming more and more organized with every moment.

Finally, Marcus stopped the car. We all piled out and, upon looking up to check out the structure of the storm we totally just almost got killed in, I was washed away.

I was washed away not in the literal sense, but figuratively. According to Marcus, the expression on my face as I stared at the goliath beauty before us was something he’d wished he’d taken a photo of. Undeniably in awe, he said.

He wasn’t wrong.

You guys. You GUYS. This was insane. Like a stack of pancakes sculpted by the hands of Michelangelo himself , this particular cell took on absolutely incredible striations; the colors in the sky from the setting sun created a tranquil atmosphere of blues, greens, and even some purples. The Nebraska landscape was dwarfed in comparison to this monster.

It was the single most incredible, awesome, humbling thing I’ve ever witnessed in my life.

The fact that this was even a possible thing on this planet blew me away. I had only ever seen storm structure like this in photos and maybe in dreams, but here it was- right in front of me- presenting itself to me at its first opportunity.

A new acquaintance, whom I’d been sharing some light conversation and good jokes with via Snapchat for a few weeks prior- a chaser by the name of Brett Wright- was there with the tour group he was accompanying our mutual friend Mike Olbinksi in running. He and I were both busy geeking alllllllllll the way out, but as this was literally the first time we’d ever met in person we at least did do one of those jumping/flying high fives before going on our respective ways to stay ahead of this beast.

are you fuckin serious i can’t what even

To capture the moment forever, I needed to get a photo with it. I snapped this on my phone, somewhat carelessly; all I wanted was to remember that I had been there for the Imperial, Nebraska structurefest of 2019. I took a quick selfie, which quickly was shared among my friends on Facebook and beyond.

This is what pure freedom feels like.

I’ll cherish that photo forever, I think. Hell, the whole day was crazy and the stuff that we as chasers hope for every time we go out.

We watched this beast over Imperial, Nebraska, for what felt like entirely too little time. Eventually, it became outflow dominant and began its dying process. That was alright; it had been a hell of a day, and now it was time to get some rest.

We chose the motel we’d be crashing at later that night; it was about an hour away, so we had some time to really absorb the day’s events. As we were driving, we noticed a thunderstorm off in the distance with nearly constant lightning lighting up the night sky like a natural strobe. We decided to watch it for a while, turning off the highway onto a remote dirt road and following it for a mile or two before stopping to take it all in.

You ever have one of those moments in life, totally unplanned, that feels like part of a movie? That’s what this was.

The three of us sat in silence on that dirt road, watching this storm light up the night. Above us, thousands of stars glimmered and a light breeze kicked up. The radio began to play “Fade Into You”, by Mazzy Star, and in those moments everything was exactly as it should be. It had been a hell of a day, and I had spent it with some of the best people I could have ever asked to spend it with. Life was perfect, at least for a little while.

It’s times like that out in the great plains that I live for. It’s not just about the storms; it’s about the company, the times when everything falls perfectly into place. It’s about the camaraderie and the silliness, the memories that we’ll all keep forever.

Unbeknownst to me at the time, Marcus took a photo of me sitting in peaceful silence, watching the storm in the distance. I will cherish this image for the rest of my life; it’s these little unplanned, unscripted moments that mean the most to me. I’m glad I have a copy of this one.

Until next time!