hi, my name is mike worden.
Adventurer.
Paddleboarder.
Kayaker.
Hiker.
But most importantly, tornado chaser.
This is my life.
With commentary.
dry line.
The most violent storms on the planet.
With jokes.
JUNE 2022 Badlands Nat’l Park, South Dakota
Killing some time in The Badlands today before we venture out to hunt for tornadoes this afternoon.
I took one giant leap closer to being spoon-fed mashed peas in a home yesterday when I somehow forgot to pack my clothes into my suitcase in Kansas, and now I find myself in South Dakota with nothing but the clothes I flew in on.
Thankfully, guide Brandon Ivey took me to a Target this morning where I was able purchase an assortment of ill-fitting t-shirts and a pair of featureless khaki shorts, and now I’m proudly marching around with all the sex appeal of a moped accident.
Our group looks like seven stormchasers and one guy on his way to clean the condor exhibit at the Memphis Zoo.
June 2022 Beloit, Kansas
The Storm Prediction Center just upped our chance we might capture a tornado this afternoon, but we still had a bit of time to kill this morning. So lead meteorologist and storm guide Brandon Ivey rolled us down to a natural preserve where bison roam freely, and to our dismay the buffalo had the nerve to be grazing way out in the middle of a field where we couldn’t loudly gawk at them and feed them lasagne, corn nuts and sno-cones. Buffalo are so selfish!
Not to be deterred, Brandon is also a licensed drone operator, so he broke out a drone and expertly guided it out to the buffalo to take a video so we could see them. In his down time, he also captured a wounded bird, placed a small cast on it’s leg, and built a small set of crutches so it could get around more easily.
Brandon then knitted a dozen quilts for the needy, forged a peace accord between warring Nepalese factions, and then casually prepared to expertly position us in front of a deadly F5 tornado later this afternoon.
Meanwhile, it took me 22 minutes to figure out how to open my turkey Lunchables snack tray.
September 2022 Lower Queen Anne, Seattle
Dear Diary: My first NHL game.
This place is basically a giant bag of cocaine that seats 19,000 people.
AUGUST 2022 Alki Beach, Seattle
Every single year after 93 straight days of rain, fog and 37 degrees:
“I can’t live here anymore! I can’t take one more day of this! Get me out of this city, I don’t care where we’re going! I’ll buy the first plane ticket out of town, I don’t care where it takes me!”
Every single year after 2 days of sunshine in a row:
“I should buy a condo downtown.”
June 2022 Near Brookville, Kansas
While social media seethes with political rage from the Supreme Court decision this morning, I thought I’d share more cloud pictures because clearly the 4,722 cloud pictures I’ve already shared on this blog aren’t enough.
Photographer Trischa Lynn grabbed this incredible shot of a tornadic storm yesterday as it rapidly closed in on us from a hilltop littered with wind turbines.
I wish I had words to describe the experience of these massive storms closing in on you, but I can’t find them.
June 2022 Pratt, Kansas
Alternately shitting my pants and enjoying a light snack as a monster tornadic supercell organizes near Pratt, KS.
Trying not to mix the two.
June 2022 Hyannis, Nebraska
My frequent stormchasing partner and real-life bank CEO Ed Turk readies for battle with dangerous hailstones yesterday near Hyannis, Nebraska. Ed loves to step out of the chase truck into deadly hail and perform various Pilates routines. Why? Nobody knows. We’d complain, but he just makes us call a 1-800 number.
(Alternative joke: Everybody loves to chase with Ed, except every time you don’t report to the chase truck by 9 am, he charges you $237.00 in late fees.)
July 2022 Browns Point, Washington
I’ve been stranded at sea for nearly 27 minutes now with nary a fresh-baked croissant, pulp- free orange juice nor mild pomegranate candle.
Can anyone in a yacht nearby come and save me?*
(*65′ feet and over only please. Fainting couch preferred. In mauve or ochre only. Light ochre, not dark.)
June 2022 Wilson, Kansas
Tornado sirens blare in Wilson, Kansas as a twister churns up the wheat fields just one mile to our south.
I-70 lies between us, teeming with traffic.
July 2022 North Bend, Washington
Home from chasing for a few weeks, and I really appreciate my brother Seth hauling me back into the mountains today like we used to do pre-Covid.
We’re both a little rusty so we put our training wheels on and ballroom-danced our way up to Rattlesnake Ledge with 17,000 other out-of-shape hikers, where I’m pretty certain they’ll be opening up a Starbucks in a week or two.
As for wildlife we saw some squirrels, geese, an eagle, and four meth heads from Bonney Lake gnawing on pinecones in the parking lot.
June 2022 San Antonio, Texas
There were no tornadoes forecast to heave our nation’s sheep supply 3,000 feet into the atmosphere yesterday, so we found ourselves smack dab in the middle of Texas wine country in Fredericksburg with nothing to do. Should we get drunk?
We considered it, but the town is pretty uppity and rich, and frankly, on our best days we look like a traveling banjo repair business that sells berries on the side of the road.
So we decided to go eat, and wouldn’t you know it, we just happened to be an hour away from the 17th fattest city in the nation, San Antonio, Texas! Congratulations San Antonio! You win a picture of yourself in high school and a Peloton pre-smothered with undergarments and last year’s Christmas ornaments.
Did you know The Alamo is located right in downtown San Antonio? I always thought it was located somewhere far out in the Texas desert, but no, it is literally right in downtown San Antonio next to a Denny’s. So we wandered around The Alamo for a while with several hundred other tourists equally confused into how they’d been hoodwinked into looking at a cannon and some fence posts in the middle of a city.
I tried to look up The Alamo on Wikipedia, but I fell down the Wikipedia rabbit hole rather quickly and ended up reading an article about modern animal husbandry. So if you have any further questions about The Alamo, please consult your high school textbooks. If you need to give an armadillo a colonoscopy, hit me up in my DM’s.
After our adrenaline subsided from reading pamphlets about how the settlers milled corn, we went down to the Riverwalk, which is a river that sneaks around beneath the city of San Antonio lined with restaurants, gift shops, bars and hotels. We decided to eat at some German brewery, and I went in there debating whether I wanted a Bratwurst or a burger. But alas friends, this is San Antonio, the fattest city in America, so they ended up bringing me a hot dog INSIDE of my hamburger. No wonder everyone around here has an ass like a Buick Skylark.
Then we went back to Fredericksburg to our hotel and swam in the pool like a bunch of pregnant manatees, and then we went to eat again because, what the hell, this is Texas. I ordered some kind of bird.
June 2022 Morton, Texas
Some incredible shots from a tornado we chased today near Morton, Texas.
Just a beast, and still churning as we drive through the tornado sirens near Levelland, TX.
Photo by Kholby Martin
June 2022 Kingsland, Texas
My Dad got bored one night when I was around 10 years old and decided that he wanted to go see a movie, so he loaded my brother Seth and I into his crappy Saab, and we made the 5 mile drive down to the only theater in our community to see a movie.
“It’s called ‘The Shining,’” he said, “it might be a little scary.”
“The Shining,” I thought, “that sounds interesting. How scary can it be?”
Forty-two years later, I still spontaneously urinate and curl up in the fetal position every time an elevator door opens.
We have a down weather day out here in Texas before the next round of storms, so we have to pursue one of the wide variety of alternative hobbies my fellow chasers pursue, most of which involve apex predators, nightmarish ways to die, and/ or horrific murder. We run a wholesome group.
Our friend/ driver Brittany is quite a fan of murders via both hatchet and chainsaw, so horror movie buffs out there might be excited to learn that today we spent some time visiting the original shooting locations of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre and the cult favorite 2003 remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Interestingly, I have seen neither because I draw the line at Care Bears Take Manhattan 2: A Kitten’s Journey.
If you’d like to invite Brittany to your next holiday family gathering to describe in full detail the preferred horrific slaughtering techniques of human bodies employed in film from 1985 to present, she is available for a small fee.
June 2022 West of Morton, Texas
Storm clouds loom near Morton, Texas.
About 20 minutes after I took this photo, howling winds rose up and our visibility dropped to near zero in the dusty, dry western Texas Panhandle.
Just an hour after that, this massive cell spawned an almost completely unexpected tornado west of Lubbock, Texas in what might unanimously be described as the most photogenic tornado of the season.
But only if you were on the right side of it.
Which I wasn’t.
That’s just how chasing goes sometimes, and it’s very difficult to deal with.
May 2022 Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
This is what a Day 1 tornado chasing truck looks like before it contains 477 lbs. of chili dog containers, Pringles cans, medical waste, bird parts, Brahm’s receipts and live, stinging honey-ham sized insects.