Uploaded January 2022 | Updated September 2026, 1 hour ago
When people think of storm chasing, images of adrenaline filled chaos with monster tornadoes on the ground from films like "Into the Storm" and "Twister" often come to mind. This if far from realistic of what the average day is like for a storm chaser roaming the wide open spaces of the Great Plains.
However, on exceptionally rare occasions, nature can mimic and exceed the stories we craft in our imaginations. This video documents one of those rare days where the stars align and something truly remarkable happens.
The typical storm chase is not the action packed, Visual masterpiece it is often portrayed as in Films and TV. It is often a slow methodical experience where you may only see one or two interesting phenomena. Whether that be some great storm structure, epic lighting or maybe if your lucky a tornado. However on exceptionally rare occasions reality can mimic fantasy and deliver a truly amazing spectacle. This is the story of May 26th 2021, The Perfect Chase.
Today is Wednesday May 26th, today we are chasing a moderate risk with a 15% chance of significant tornadoes. I haven’t checked yet but I’m sure that there's a PDS tornado watch out. I was actually contacted by Billy of the channel More Pi, he needs some assistance retrieving a lost drone from the Selden Tornado a couple days ago. So we’re gonna help him out with that if we can. This cell looks interesting right ahead of me, it fired up early, we’ll see how it goes.
Pretty soon I had visual on the storms base and could tell something special was happening.
On the other side of this beast, my friend Chris had a much better view.
And it didn’t take long for him to meet us at the crash site.
While we all began to search for any sign of the drone we were treated to a truly otherworldly display as Aliens seemed to invade the Kansas prairies.
Despite our best efforts, we were unable to find any sign of the drone, however it was now time to make a decision on where we would chase for the day.
Two primary target areas became apparent, one in west central Kansas along the dryline, and another along an advancing warm front to the north that was lifting into Nebraska. To make things even more complicated the forecast models were having a very difficult time with the environment on this day and had no consistency amongst each other or from run to run.
So where would you chase? Would you go with the crowd and join the vast majority of chasers on the southern target or take a chance and choose the northern one?
I ultimately chose to trust my gut and stay up north and target storms that were likely to form a little earlier in the day along the warm front where I thought the environment would be more favorable for supercells and tornadoes. After discussing it with Chris and Billy, we all came to the same conclusion and started heading north.
Pretty much as soon as we left Selden, storms were beginning to erupt along the warm front, including a well developed supercell near Benklemen, Nebraska that started to produce tornadoes.
As we raced north to catch it, another storm exploded just to our west near the town of Herndon Kansas.
Although I was initially skeptical of the Herndon storm due to it being interfered with by a left split, we all decided to gamble and break off from a storm that had already produced tornadoes to chase this new one that was rapidly developing to our west.
As we turned around the storm was already beginning to produce a tornado.
As we closed the distance we couldn’t believe what we saw when we came over the hill.
Positioned in front of the storm, we had front row seats to one of natures most spectacular displays… A cyclic Supercell.
While one tornado was dying, another began to form closer to us.
(First Tornado ropes out after being on the ground for 15 minutes..)
While we were trying to take cover from the large hail that was falling, another tornado developed..
After marveling another brief tornado, the Herndon supercell began to get chocked off by a cell firing to its south.
While several rotating storms attempted to develop, nothing else seemed like it was going to tornado so after getting ourselves out of a little trouble we got to enjoy mother nature’s grand finale.
Chapters:
0:00 - Intro
1:16 - The Selden Mothership / The Meetup
3:00 - The Forecast / Positioning
4:17 - The Herndon Supercell
8:30 - Surrounded by Supercells
9:12 - The Grand Finale
Special Thanks to my friends who graciously let me use some of their footage in place of what I lost to my corrupted drive. Please consider checking them out.
More Pi: youtube.com/c/MorePi
High Risk Chris: youtube.com/channel/UCGpPbdVAtTUgW_w98lXC9nw
*NOT FOR REBROADCAST*
Contact Celton Henderson at overflowingcrucible@gmail.com for licensing inquiries.
When people think of storm chasing, images of adrenaline filled chaos with monster tornadoes on the ground from films like "Into the Storm" and "Twister" often come to mind. This if far from realistic of what the average day is like for a storm chaser roaming the wide open spaces of the Great Plains.
However, on exceptionally rare occasions, nature can mimic and exceed the stories we craft in our imaginations. This video documents one of those rare days where the stars align and something truly remarkable happens.
The typical storm chase is not the action packed, Visual masterpiece it is often portrayed as in Films and TV. It is often a slow methodical experience where you may only see one or two interesting phenomena. Whether that be some great storm structure, epic lighting or maybe if your lucky a tornado. However on exceptionally rare occasions reality can mimic fantasy and deliver a truly amazing spectacle. This is the story of May 26th 2021, The Perfect Chase.
Today is Wednesday May 26th, today we are chasing a moderate risk with a 15% chance of significant tornadoes. I haven’t checked yet but I’m sure that there's a PDS tornado watch out. I was actually contacted by Billy of the channel More Pi, he needs some assistance retrieving a lost drone from the Selden Tornado a couple days ago. So we’re gonna help him out with that if we can. This cell looks interesting right ahead of me, it fired up early, we’ll see how it goes.
Pretty soon I had visual on the storms base and could tell something special was happening.
On the other side of this beast, my friend Chris had a much better view.
And it didn’t take long for him to meet us at the crash site.
While we all began to search for any sign of the drone we were treated to a truly otherworldly display as Aliens seemed to invade the Kansas prairies.
Despite our best efforts, we were unable to find any sign of the drone, however it was now time to make a decision on where we would chase for the day.
Two primary target areas became apparent, one in west central Kansas along the dryline, and another along an advancing warm front to the north that was lifting into Nebraska. To make things even more complicated the forecast models were having a very difficult time with the environment on this day and had no consistency amongst each other or from run to run.
So where would you chase? Would you go with the crowd and join the vast majority of chasers on the southern target or take a chance and choose the northern one?
I ultimately chose to trust my gut and stay up north and target storms that were likely to form a little earlier in the day along the warm front where I thought the environment would be more favorable for supercells and tornadoes. After discussing it with Chris and Billy, we all came to the same conclusion and started heading north.
Pretty much as soon as we left Selden, storms were beginning to erupt along the warm front, including a well developed supercell near Benklemen, Nebraska that started to produce tornadoes.
As we raced north to catch it, another storm exploded just to our west near the town of Herndon Kansas.
Although I was initially skeptical of the Herndon storm due to it being interfered with by a left split, we all decided to gamble and break off from a storm that had already produced tornadoes to chase this new one that was rapidly developing to our west.
As we turned around the storm was already beginning to produce a tornado.
As we closed the distance we couldn’t believe what we saw when we came over the hill.
Positioned in front of the storm, we had front row seats to one of natures most spectacular displays… A cyclic Supercell.
While one tornado was dying, another began to form closer to us.
(First Tornado ropes out after being on the ground for 15 minutes..)
While we were trying to take cover from the large hail that was falling, another tornado developed..
After marveling another brief tornado, the Herndon supercell began to get chocked off by a cell firing to its south.
While several rotating storms attempted to develop, nothing else seemed like it was going to tornado so after getting ourselves out of a little trouble we got to enjoy mother nature’s grand finale.
Chapters:
0:00 - Intro
1:16 - The Selden Mothership / The Meetup
3:00 - The Forecast / Positioning
4:17 - The Herndon Supercell
8:30 - Surrounded by Supercells
9:12 - The Grand Finale
Special Thanks to my friends who graciously let me use some of their footage in place of what I lost to my corrupted drive. Please consider checking them out.
More Pi: youtube.com/c/MorePi
High Risk Chris: youtube.com/channel/UCGpPbdVAtTUgW_w98lXC9nw
*NOT FOR REBROADCAST*
Contact Celton Henderson at overflowingcrucible@gmail.com for licensing inquiries.
