December 28, 2025    
(Click on images to enlarge them)

A late December storm chance was in the cards today.  My son Ryan and I decided to make a wildlife trip out of the day and if things looked interesting as storms developed, transition into the storm mode.  The Tornado opportunity looked to be slim as the storms were forecasted to initiate late in the afternoon toward dark, then would quickly transition into a squall line, were lacking several key ingredients, and were moving at 50+mph.   The Storm Prediction Center put out a Slight Risk with a 5% Tornado Risk.



Ryan and I headed out in the late morning and traveled to the area around Carlyle Lake.  We did several hours of photography of our typical bird, snake, and mammal targets.  We kept our eye on the radar watching an on-going storm line to the north, but now noticed new storms initiating in Eastern Missouri by mid afternoon.  We kept our eye on them as they approached.  We saw a Tornado Warning in the storm line to the north giving us some hope that the cells approaching us could do the same before lining out.




As the approaching storms continued to move toward us, we moved eastward along Interstate 70 staying well out in front of the fast moving line  The individual storm cells had now formed into the expected squall line.

We continued to stay out in front of the squall line hoping something in the line would draw our attention.  The part of the line around us finally became severe thunderstorm warned, but there was no sign of anything tornadic within our range.

As the daylight faded, we let the storm line overtake us before heading back toward home.

Photos of storms this day were few.  We found ourselves staying so far in front of the approaching storm line due to the storm speed that we rarely could see anything except the very top of the clouds at a distance.  Our dash cameras were mostly facing east all day as we continually had to keep moving that direction with the fast moving line behind us.  During our trip, we kept hearing that 60 miles to our north there was a confirmed Tornado.  Unfortunately, we had nothing similar in our area.

Trip Log

8.5 Hours  -  299 Miles

Click on the link below to see video of some of these storms.


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