Storm season 2024? If you’re a chaser or weather enthusiast on the Canadian prairies, you’d be forgiven for thinking “what season?” Indeed it was an incredibly lacklustre year with only a couple of notable “bangers” to speak of but that doesn’t mean many attempts to chase weren’t made and that there aren’t any great stories and images to share.

Interestingly enough the season looked promising at the start. After last year’s intense wildfires, a fairly dry winter, and a transitioning El Niño, folks weren’t entirely sure what the spring would bring and I think many expected continued dry conditions. But to our surprise, May and June experienced a lot of rainfall, driving strong crop growth, all of which should have resulted in a strong season once the July heat hit. Notice I said “should have.”

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Once again my eagerness for storm season began a few months before the season itself when I attended the new Storm Chase Canada event in early March. This event seems as though it’ll be the replacement for ChaserCon and I had a blast all weekend, hanging out with old friends, meeting new ones, taking in some insightful presentations and even seeing the original Twister in an old skool movie theatre in Olds! This event, as great as it was, just wet my whistle with frustration as June was still months away and the anticipation was starting to get the better of me.

After a busy March, April and May with my Lightchasers Nature Photography Conference wrapping it all up, it was time for the season to begin in earnest. My first chase attempt came on June 11th and while I didn’t have high expectations, the day did end up falling even flatter as the system turned into a giant mesoscale convective system (MCS) that stretched from Calgary to Legal, north of Edmonton. Thankfully I didn’t go too far out for this one.

My second chase day came on June 14th when a messy system popped several unorganized cells up around the Edmonton area. I opted to chase one small set up near Millet and while I waited on that one, another popped up east of Fort Saskatchewan that looked like it had the potential to drop a tornado. I rushed to it as quickly as I could but it fell apart when I was about 15 mins away. Judging from friends’ photos it was reasonably photogenic but I didn’t feel too bad about missing it.

Next up was a highly anticipated severe weather day in Saskatchewan on June 23rd. My old pup Kwinn and I packed up early and made our way to North Battleford where things were hot and humid by noon. After re-evaluating the models, we cut south and placed ourselves near Cando to see what popped. After watching clouds percolate up and then get sheared off for over an hour, things finally started to build around 3.

I was in a great position, just behind the developing cumulo and we moved quickly to an intercept position just to the south of the storm’s base as it took shape. By 4:20pm a rotating wall cloud began developing under the cell near Radisson (home of the radar station!) where I inadvertently met up with fellow chasers Brendan Peters and Graham and Tidum Christensen from Laramidia Storm Chasers.

By 5pm, just north of Borden, under a rapidly rotating wall cloud, shit really hit the fan…

We ended up right underneath the condensing funnel cloud and subsequently INSIDE a weak EF0 tornado as it touched down!!!

To be clear, this is NOT a situation I ever want to find myself in. As a storm photographer, I typically like to be 5-15km ahead of the storm but as this had the potential to drop a tornado, and due to my relative early position to the base, I opted to stay closer to photograph that opportunity instead. Unfortunately, Google Maps dead-ended us on a bad road network (common in rural Sask) and attempts to move away from the intensifying storm were thwarted on two separate occasions. In hindsight, it’s easy to see what I should have done but at the time, you’re forced to make split second decisions that sometimes aren’t the correct one. It happens to the most experienced of storm chasers and that day it happened to us.

As the funnel started to condense, we cut north hoping that the next road east would be open (missing the No Through Road sign in the chaos). As we came up from a dip in the road with two deep bodies of water on each side, the funnel touched down right in front of us as seen at the 3:10 mark in Laramidia’s dashcam video on their YouTube Channel here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TxB4yCD6a0&t=40s

We cut east on the next road only to find ourselves dead-ended once again with the intense precip core bearing down on us, dropping ping pong ball sized hail as we turned back west to get out of the danger zone. As I made my way back south my vehicle lost control on the greasy, baby-shit-slick roads just as I approached the deep bodies of water. Fishtailing from east to west to west to east, my mind raced as to which body of water I’d end up in and how Kwinn and I would escape the deep drink when thankfully I regained control of the Jeep. I continued south to Highway 16 and clear skies at Borden.

I haven’t spoken too much about this incident, as quite frankly, I’m still processing my feelings about the situation. I pride myself on being a VERY safe storm chaser and never, ever want to put myself in a dangerous situation. I also don’t ever want to promote the idea that zero-metering tornados is an acceptable practice, which seems to be a cool new trend amongst clout-chasing “chasers” on YouTube. At the end of the day, it was an intense learning experience that has resulted in a pretty cool story but one that I still don’t feel good about.

And to be clear, that wasn’t the end of my chase day. I continued along Highway 16 intercepting the storm once again near Warman where the storm began to drop another massive rotating wall cloud. Fortunately no tornado formed as it passed over the town but unfortunately, my chase day was pretty much over at this point. I ended up too far behind the storm due to the bad road network, rivers and ferries though I did keep trying to catch up to it, going as far east as Humboldt before finally calling off the chase.

On June 30th I chased a small storm NW of Edmonton and intercepted it near Busby. This storm wasn’t anything special but I did manage to get some nice timelapse footage from it.

The next chase for us came almost two weeks later on July 11th for a high risk day through central Alberta. I hit the road mid-afternoon, solo this time, and based myself around the Crossfield area to get in good position for where I forecasted storms to develop. And nothing happened. Nothing at all. Several chasers were in the area and all were surprised that nothing initiated. The cap was just too strong that day.

Watching radar I saw a classic Sunchild set-up developing so I hurried north, hoping to catch something on my way home. Some smaller cells came off earlier in the evening followed by a much bigger set up that moved off the foothills closer to 10pm. I intercepted west of Rimbey near sunset before chasing the storm SE past Bentley and catching my best shots of the night just south of Gull Lake before the seeders ultimately took the storm down. This ended up being one of the best and most photogenic storms of the year.

The next few chases were uneventful. July 13th through east-central Alberta on a storm that ultimately went tornado-warned but that wasn’t really photogenic (though I did get some get lovely timelapses of the backside of the storm over canola), the highlight being running into chaser friend Ryan Voutilainen, a July 16th chase close to home on a tiny little pop up cell, July 24th on two very intense cells that were eerily obscured by smoke which took away and all photographic opportunities and made the chase day a little extra intense, especially with one of the worst examples of chaser convergence I’ve seen in Alberta.

By this point, the 2024 season was quickly coming to a close and our opportunities to chase were getting few and far between. I went out on August 4th for a storm I knew wouldn’t do much and only came away with a sick pair of roadside sunnies before getting caught in an intense MCS on the drive home.

Then finally on August 5th, Mother Nature finally gave us the storm we’d been waiting for all season…

The question was, where would this storm (or storms) form? Forecast models gave two strong potentials: near the Olds area and further south near Vulcan. I opted for the Olds play (gas ain’t cheap and this season wasn’t worth paying more than necessary) and got Kwinn and myself there around 2pm to wait it out. One of the keys to success in storm photography is being close to your potential targets well in advance to make sure you’re in position, or have time to adjust your position, before it all kicks off.

A storm did fire near Water Valley around 530pm but it didn’t look too great on radar or via images shared on social media so I held my position and continued to watch the cells to the west build on radar. These continued to build in intensity on the edge of the foothills and after some time watching, I opted to head towards them hoping they would be the ones that popped off. As I did so I could see the first cell falling apart to the south of me and I knew I made the right decision as my targets got bigger and bigger on radar. As I crossed Highway 22, I could see the storm over Benchland and it was looking gooooood! I drove down into a valley to get a little closer and then headed back up to get a better vantage point where I ran into my friends and fellow chasers Dar and Tree Tanner. We chatted for a bit before I went down a different road to set up my first timelapses and watched the storm shelf out and the wall cloud gain intensity. This storm was entering beast mode!

I packed up and headed east for what ended up being a three hour chase over 125km stopping many times along the way to set up timelapses and watch as the storm evolved into a beautiful mothership on the front side and a massive MCS on the backside that stretched all the way up to Red Deer. I ended my chase north of Strathmore knowing that I was getting further and further from home and that I would have the MCS to contend with in the dark on my way back. But the front of the storm itself was far from over and stayed intense all the way to Medicine Hat where some friends chased past midnight. A second supercell did fire up near Vulcan that evening as well, making both forecast models come true in the end. The storm I was on produced baseball sized hail and rolled over Calgary and many other communities and caused over $2B in damage; a staunch reminder that no matter how hard we try, Mother Nature is the ultimate final boss.

This storm was the last chase of the season and ultimately ended up being Kwinn’s last chase of her grand life as her life was cut short by cancer at the ripe old age of 15 in October of this year. I’m grateful she got to go out for one last run under the meso and I will miss my chase partner immeasurably. You can see my blog on her loss and the subsequent grief here.

Though my season ended that day, other friends in Saskatchewan had some late season supercells later that month and even a tornado on September 17th and a crazy lightning storm north of Calgary just before Halloween, marking the end of a very weird summer for wild weather.

Let’s hope 2025 gives us a better season for photogenic storms. I’ll be chasing in the States for the first time for sure next year just in case we have another bust here on the Canadian Prairies.