Swirling buzzsaws of dark clouds dozens of miles wide move silently across an emerald sea of grain while, hundreds of miles away, along the same storm front, a bubbling behemoth crackling with lightning spawns and rapidly begins to curl into itself as it menaces a small Midwestern town.
Somewhere on a dirt road nearby, Chris Kridler’s shutter captures the drama.
Every spring, Kridler packs up her Honda CR-V for her annual three-week trek from her home in Florida to her storm chasing destination in Tornado Alley, an eight-state swath of the Central Plains stretching from South Dakota to Texas where tornadoes are most frequent.
There, she must not only predict where a supercell storm may materialize but also figure out how to reach and capture it, sometimes driving for hours across hundreds of miles and rapidly changing weather conditions for a chance to witness one fleeting, dramatic moment in the sky.
“The atmospheric ingredients have to be perfectly aligned,” said Kridler, who has been chasing storms since 1997. “Sometimes they’re so perfectly aligned, the resulting tornado’s strength and size strains belief. I’m often surprised, sometimes caught out of position and enticed to try again in spite of my failures.”
Her day job for years was journalism, including reporting on space and technology for Florida Today and stints at The Charlotte Observer and The Sun in Baltimore. But her most enduring passion involves forecasting, chasing and memorializing extreme weather events through photography, video, and narrative storytelling.
The resulting prints are featured in her latest series, “The Spinning Sky,” in which Kridler crafts bold, awe-inspiring images that urge viewers to reach beyond what they see.
“I have a strong need to document things, but I don’t want my photos to be purely documentary,” she explained. “I want my photos to capture not just an ephemeral moment but the feeling one gets when immersed in that moment.”
Doing so requires both planning and flexibility. Beyond the gear one would expect — loads of camera equipment, chargers, and cables — Kridler’s packing list also includes a trove of other specialized gadgets, such as a mounted iPad for data, radar, and navigation; a hail shield for the sunroof; and a ham radio for car-to-car communication.
“Storm chasing is a nomadic life. You spend almost all of your time in the car,” Kridler said. Last year, she and her chase partner drove nearly 12,000 miles in just three weeks.
“It sounds hard, and it is, but it’s also liberating. I love the freedom of going wherever the weather takes me. In an hour, a field of rippling wheat can transform from a blank canvas to a stage for dramatic atmospheric monsters spinning across the sky. The sky is full of potential, a portal to a transcendent experience.”
Chris's chase partner Alethea Kontis views a supercell on May 6, 2024, in Oklahoma.
The prolific and multi-hyphenate creator’s fascination with extreme weather started as a child growing up in Pennsylvania, when a rare tornado came close to her home.
“I remember my mom rushing us to the basement. The experience thrilled me,” she recalled. “And The Wizard of Oz tornado completely captivated me. I read all the articles I could find and watched every storm documentary that came along. I dreamt often of tornadoes, each one different, each one beautiful.”
As she mastered her photography skills over the years — starting in childhood with “a lot of bad cat pictures” shot on 110 film before evolving to 35mm, slides and later digital — she began to approach these fleeting moments with a different sensibility, resulting in bold, colorful visuals that simultaneously evoke a sense of wonder and disbelief.
“I bring out the emotional side in editing, whether it’s a sense of isolation, a statement expressed through symbolism, an engaging story, or wonder at the vivid artistry of nature. While I like my photos to capture the essence of the storm, I’m more free than I used to be.”
These real-life scenes also inspired Kridler to film several documentaries and write her Storm Seekers series, a trilogy of novels — Funnel Vision, Tornado Pinball and Zap Bang — that infuse storm chasing adventures with action, drama, humor and romance.
“I was into photography long before I shot photos to accompany my newspaper stories, just as I wrote fiction and poetry outside of my journalism career,” she said. “I love using my imagination, and I love expressing it in different ways. Call it a short attention span, or a hunger to learn every medium that exists, but I want to create all the time.”
Lucky for her, the public’s fascination with severe weather — despite its disastrous consequences — has only increased its appetite for art and storytelling inspired by it.
“The number of chasers has exploded over the past decade,” Kridler said. “There are traffic jams around every storm, so one of the greatest dangers is other drivers.”
Storm chasers watch a supercell in eastern Colorado on May 20, 2024.
But it’s this same nomadic community of amateur meteorologists, artists and thrill-seekers that keeps Kridler connected year after year.
“The whole culture is a little like a traveling circus,” she said. “There are impromptu reunions in desolate intersections in the middle of nowhere as chasers await storm initiation. Sometimes we’ll caravan during a chase or meet up at the end of a long day at a restaurant, if we can find one open late at night.”
These days, her childhood fascination has evolved into “healthy respect” for how tornadoes form and a greater understanding of the impact these terrifying storms can have on people’s lives.
As she’s “moved from observer to hunter,” her dreams of tornadoes have changed, too. “Now I usually dream that I can’t find my camera or the battery’s dead,” she said. “My anxiety is more about my gear than it is about the storm.
“I hope that images of these storms will help people understand what they’re up against, convince them to heed forecasts and warnings and be prepared, and inspire the next generation to go into the science … or the art. With climate change, I have no idea what’s ahead of us, but it’s going to be intense. We could all use a little more awareness when it comes to the weather.”
In the meantime, we can lose ourselves in an image, feel the wind on our face and imagine what’s next.
“It reminds us of how small we are and how we are all a part of something vast and mysterious.”
Chase videos: Into the storm
Go behind the scenes with Chris Kridler and Alethea Kontis as they hunt extreme weather.
Chris Kridler with a tumbleweed on May 14, 2024.Storm chasing tips from Chris Kridler
Don’t forget batteries!
While forecasting, timing and patience are critical to a successful chase, veteran storm chaser Chris Kridler graciously shared some other essential tips for newbies preparing to hit the road.
1. Abandon thoughts of having any control over what happens.
2. Learn your stuff and chase “smart” to avoid disaster. Sometimes, you find disaster
anyway. See No. 1.
3. Dress as if you’ll have to stomp around in the mud and be devoured by mosquitoes,
because you will.
4. Pack a snack bag that can sustain you through long days and a seriously
compromised diet.
5. Keep in mind that you and your crew will have to listen to each other’s music during
the non-chasing drives, no matter how terrible it is.
6. Take a photo to remember the moment, because it’s ephemeral and fleeting,
but remember to look at the storm with your eyes, too. Storm chasing is all about the
experience.
