Saturday, October 5, 2024

Gierach

 Many things set me on the path I follow today. One such thing is a copy of a book titled No Shortage of Good Days, by John Gierach. That copy sits on a shelf next to a number of pieces of literature, now far more tattered and worn than it was when it came into my possession. Actually I think I'll grab it now so it sits next to me while I finish writing this short post. The page and cover corners are folded, some torn, and brownish stains mar the lovely illustration on the cover. This collection of stories from Gierach's fly fishing adventures was an introduction into non-fiction fishing writing that wasn't a how to. The stories within weren't there to tell me how to tie knots, or read water, or cast a fly rod. Sure, there were little bits in there, but only to further the stories. The stories were to entertain. They were true, apparently, but laced with humor and were about more than fishing. This goal wasn't unfamiliar to me as I was on an atypical path compared to the other kids my age in school. I was reading mostly nonfiction novels at the time, spanning a broad range of my own interests from geology (John McPhee's Anals of The Former World) to exploration (Alvah Simon's North to The Night). I enjoyed reality but through someone else's perspective, true things told from a specific voice. No Shortage of Good Days was my first introduction to that with fly fishing. That novel means rather a lot to me. It's a not insignificant reason why this silly blog exists, and how the words running across this page exist at all. It steered my course as a writer, and it's one of many things that resulted in me being where I am now. 

So, thank you John Gierach. You will be remembered fondly. 


Thank you to my Patrons; Erin, David, John, Elizabeth, Brandon, Christopher, Shawn, Mike, Sara, Franky, Geof, Luke, Noah, Justin, Sean, Tom, Mark, Jake, Chris, Oliver, oddity on Display, Sammy, and Cris & Jennifer, Courtney, Hunter, Gordon, and Thomas for making Connecticut Fly Angler possible. If you want to support this blog, look for the Patreon link at the top of the right side-bar in web version.

Monday, September 23, 2024

Water Ghosts

 Emily called them "little water ghosts". Dozens of jellies floated and pulsed in the hazy green bay upon we floated on a warm, breezy mid September day. They were ghostlike but tangible, lingering in view for extended time and existing their extraordinarily simple little lives. Jellies waft with the ebb and flow of the tide and other currents. This means they're plankton, which may buck a traditional sense of the word. Planktonic animals are often though of as microscopic, or at least very tiny. But jellies aren't strong enough to fight the tide, the ride with the flow, and that makes them plankton. 


These jellies were mostly Sea nettle, Chrysaora quinquecirrha. Smaller, more transparent, and perhaps more elegant than the often seen Lion's mane jellyfish that are also numerous in long island sound. They were so numerous that some drifted into my anchor line, losing bits of their long and delicate tentacles as they did so. Though just a minor irritant to a human swimmer, these jellies are death incarnate to tiny fish and crustaceans. Passive as they are though, it is very much up to the prey to make an error. The jelly is not going to chase it down.



As I pulled up my anchor line, it tugged through a Sea nettle, breaking bits off of its long tendrils. This seemed to upset me more than it did the jelly as it continued pulsing away as though nothing had happened. I never like breaking bits off of a living thing needlessly, even if it's a mindless little water ghost. 

Thank you to my Patrons; Erin, David, John, Elizabeth, Brandon, Christopher, Shawn, Mike, Sara, Franky, Geof, Luke, Noah, Justin, Sean, Tom, Mark, Jake, Chris, Oliver, oddity on Display, Sammy, and Cris & Jennifer, Courtney, and Hunter for making Connecticut Fly Angler possible. If you want to support this blog, look for the Patreon link at the top of the right side-bar in web version.

Saturday, September 14, 2024

Gotta Be a Mango Tree Here Somewhere

 The rumble of the Honda 2.3 disturbed the cool, foggy south Jersey morning as Joe Cermele navigated his Clackacraft up a winding, murky river. In the front was Drew Price, wearing the weary, somewhat tired, but a little bit hopeful mask that anyone has on after three days of doing little other than fishing. I had the same mask on. We'd fished hard in my neighborhood for two days leading up to this. It had been pretty good, too, and I'd managed to get Drew on 11 new species and hybrids on the fly in all sorts of water, from mile long jetties to tiny cemetery ponds. There were some notable chunks of inactivity but there are pretty much any time you voluntarily fish for about 14 hours straight two days in a row. 

Fishing that hard can be a bit of an unfamiliar concept to many folk that call themselves fisherman. Even avid fisherman aren't frequently fishing that hard. There's probably the healthier way to fish anyway, here and there for a few hours throughout the week or some long hard trips scattered through the year. Drew and I beat ourselves up, this wasn't the first time. Last fall I drove up to Vermont to fish with Drew on a boiling hot day after he had a client, pounded big bowfin that afternoon, beat up drum the next day, floated for musky the day after that, I went out on my own and stuck a nice one on foot the day after that, drove to Saranac Lake the next day, I slept in my 4Runner next to the Ausable that night and fished in the Adirondacks all day the next day, then went back to Drew's area to microfish....

Fishing hard this way isn't great for the body or the mind, and I'm not quite sure we do it. A focused angler may not drink as much as they should, or will miss a meal here and there. When we do eat, it isn't infrequently absolute garbage. We may apply sunscreen at the start of the day, or wear good protective clothing, but there's always something exposed that gets singed. On this trip it was my lips. They felt and looked more or less like a desert watering hole in a drought. I was applying chapstick prodigiously but it wasn't saving it. As I type this some cracks and cuts are still there. 

All that hard fishing was the lead in to this river, and a highly intriguing target species. The catch that started it all happened in Crofton, Maryland in 2002, tipping of fisheries biologists to the start of an invasion. Soon the media was running with it, building a mythical reputation around the species, one that almost matches fear mongering in current events. No, Channa argus won't climb out of the Potomac and eat your pet Chihuahua. Invasive fish are certainly not joke, and the northern snakehead should never have ended up in the waters of the Mid Atlantic states. But the media ran with it and ran hard, while other arguably more impactful invasives didn't get nearly the amount of press. I wasn't hearing rumors about blue catfish climbing into people's lawns with evil intent.... 

Northern snakehead did spread, and certainly hurt native species, but along the way they've attracted quite an angling following. Joe Cermele is one such devote of the snake, as evidenced by his profile image image as Fishing Editor for Outdoor Life and in the many media forms he's presented over the years, from video to articles to podcasts. Cermele is ate up with the snakeheads. And he really wanted Drew and I to see just why it was he was so taken with these invasive fish.

We had completely unearned hope in the boat that morning. As anglers, if we can't be optimistic what do we have? The mist rose off the water in cool tendrils as the light of the new day shot across the sky in yellow and orange. Piscivorous birds lingered on the banks and dead trees until the rumble of the motor was too loud for them to abide. Gentle ripples and swirls emanated from surfacing gizzard shard. Carp bubbled, rolled and tailed along the banks. It was quiet but lively away from the main artery of the turnpike and the grime and garbage that lined it. This all felt very Apocalypse Now, though we cracked lines from a drift boat, not a PBR, and instead of Colonel Kurtz the foe we hunted with extreme prejudice was a fish with an elongate dorsal fin, narrow face, and ornate, python like patterning along its flanks. 


 I flexed my fingers as I watched a great blue heron take off from its morning hunting spot. My hands didn't quite feel all there after one day of making cast after bank pounding cast, and looking down I flexed each finger one at a time. I regretted fly line choices, as the floating line I'd brought wasn't quite short and punchy enough in the head for this sort of fishing. It had made me work harder and both my callouses and muscles felt it. I acknowledged this with some indifference and looked back up to the bank, eyeing bits of structure that could hold what we were looking for. Some edges held an almost clover like vegetation that stuck up from the water's surface on short one to four inch stems, bright green and tightly packed, looking like the perfect place for a notorious predator to lurk. The streaking, out-of-nowhere strike of an angry snake was hard to picture but easy to want in that moment. The day before we'd seen but two fish, and only one of them had bothered to move to a fly and had done so only tentatively. Their lack of interest in all of our offerings and seeming absence from most of the water that should have held was a source of frustrating bewilderment for Joe, and Drew and I just had to follow the lead given our lack of experience. Yet we were still optimistic as we started again... why? We always are, each fresh start makes a fisherman feel like things are new and fresh. And they are, to some extent. But if we'd really thought about it, this day wasn't so different. The night was about as cool, the forecast high was the same. The barometric changes were there but minimal and the wind would kick up from the same direction. The moon was only a day advanced and the flow and water clarity was the same. The only real change was an early start, which Joe admitted rarely factored into snakehead success. 

When he'd gotten where we needed to be, Joe cut the motor, got in the rowers seat and Dre and I began pounding banks with loud topwater flies once again. Signs of life were positive and it wasn't long before a few largemouth bass showed interest. 

But that was just a tease. This day would beat us into submission too. We torture ourselves sometimes. I'm not quite sure why. 

 Thank you to my Patrons; Erin, David, John, Elizabeth, Brandon, Christopher, Shawn, Mike, Sara, Franky, Geof, Luke, Noah, Justin, Sean, Tom, Mark, Jake, Chris, Oliver, oddity on Display, Sammy, and Cris & Jennifer, Courtney, and Hunter for making Connecticut Fly Angler possible. If you want to support this blog, look for the Patreon link at the top of the right side-bar in web version.

Sunday, August 11, 2024

Land of Many Uses

 The motto, if you will, of the National Forest system, is "land of many uses". You can see it right on the signs. The first time I can remember seeing that motto was scrawled across the bottom of a sign for the White Mountains National Forest. One of the most striking landscapes in the northeast, the White Mountains feature some of the more severe topography in the Appalachians. Unlike much of the old mountain range, which Westerners often write off pretentiously as underwhelming hills, the Whites stand tall, rocky and steep. The Presidential Range features a stark tree line and some gorgeous high elevation habitat as well as some of the harshest weather on earth at the top of Mt. Washington. But you can drive to the top of that mountain, or ride a train there, and I'd be lying if I said that didn't make me cringe just a little. The White Mountain National Forest feels refreshingly beautiful and natural though compared to a lot of New England. But the reason I remember that signage so distinctly was that my father called my attention specifically to it, elucidating a point my young mind was not yet privy to: a National Forest designation, though it denotes protection to some extent, also seeks to maintain usage of a resource. In the case of the White Mountains, that often meant logging. And on that very same trip we'd hike into a patchwork of cuts, where the star filled sky was visible through where trees would otherwise be visible. It was strikingly beautiful, a far cry from the meagerly star-studded, light-polluted sky in most of Connecticut. 

I think it's very important that I not that cutting down trees often promotes biodiversity. That may seem counterintuitive, but as our forests mature, they often do so in unnatural ways. We've altered the woods here so thoroughly that if you dragged a pre-colonization native American into a time machine and brought them back to present day, they'd think they were somewhere else even if you brought them somewhere without a single building or piece of infrastructure in sight. There is hardly any old growth left, the species diversity has entirely changes, and we manage the land in an entirely different fashion. It is in part because of this alteration that we need to manage habitat now. And cutting down trees can be a part of that. In 2022 and 2023, I surveyed timber rattlesnake habitat with CT DEEP Herpetologist Mike Ravesi. Mike was performing frequent surveys in preparation for a "daylighting" project, which would involve selectively cutting down trees to ensure that sunlight could get to the forest floor in some key areas. This can have significant benefits to a lot of plants, insects, mammals, and birds but we were interested in cutting down trees in this zone to improve basking conditions for state endangered timber rattlesnakes. Sometimes, cuts are done without a direct conservation point like that but still result in positive outcomes and increased biodiversity. And, of course, logging can be very damaging and disruptive as well. But it that clearing in the White Mountains- where the harvesting of trees was done in a scattered, selective manor -berry bushes flourished where little but moss and ferns would otherwise. So use doesn't always hurt. But it does dissuade notions of wilderness or a completely natural setting that would otherwise creep into mind at the mention of a National Forest. 

This was very centered in my mind as I passed the first sign for the Allegheny National Forest in western Pennsylvania on a grey, cool-ish August day. The land of many uses. This can well describe much of Pennsylvania, which is a treasure trove of natural resources. Especially fossil fuels. In 1859 Edwin Drake was hired by New York lawyer George Bissel, who founded the Pennsylvania Rock Oil Company, to travel to Titusville and drill for crude oil. This was a pivotal moment in the industrial revolution, one of many Pennsylvania has been responsible for as a provider of coal, oil, and more recently, natural gas. 

One of the "many uses" for Alleghany Natural Forrest is mineral extraction, and that includes natural gas. The resources bellow that landscape are abundant and in some cases very much up for extraction. There are literally thousands of gas wells in Allegheny National Forest. And according to the Forest Service there were 11 fracking wells as of 2018. For those that may not know what fracking is exactly, it is a method of natural gas extraction using pressurized fluid. If not properly and safely performed, fracking can contaminate groundwater. In Dimock, Pennsylvania faulty wells drilled by Cabot Oil & Gas leaked methane into the ground water, apparently leading to residents of the town being able to ignite their tapwater on. In Oklahoma, fracking and wastewater disposal (pumping the contaminated water into the earth below the water table) resulted in a steep increase in earthquake activity with some rumbles exceeding 3.0 on the Richter scale. Though these are not devastating in magnitude, anthropogenic earthquakes can't be a good sign for the health of the land. And here, in the Allegheny National Forest, corporations spurred on by the gas rush were happy to drill baby drill. Many emphasize the lower emissions and efficiency of natural gas compared to other fuels, hoping to combat the widespread opposition of the practice. 

The Marcellus shale layer containing the gas was far underneath me on that road, on fact it was a geologic feature I'd never knowingly layed eyes on. But the wells tapping into the earth- new and old, gas and oil -were a very common sight all over Pennsylvania. They'd been a fixture of the background throughout my childhood, a relic of history anyone growing up there couldn't really avoid learning about in some capacity. In Connecticut, you don't see oil wells or derricks, large refineries rusting into the ground, or gas wells for that matter. We're far removed from that, though pipelines carry the gas to us and some of us use it. In schools here we didn't learn about the oil rush, other kids didn't believe me when I told them oil "came from" where I grew up, that it was Western Pennsylvania that initially fed that oh so vital part of humanity's growth and development. 

I was back in this part of the world in large part to use it too. The land here has rivers, into which many were introduced a glorious salmonid from the European continent. Ah, the brown trout. What a spectacular fish. Unwittingly they did quite well in part of the Allegheny watershed, and failing natural conditions in some places took good advantage of another use of the land. A handful of large dams have permanently altered the landscape of this part of the world, and in doing so made the rivers below them far cooler. This was an accident, we had no intention of such things. The water was needed to make power or to drink. Mostly to make power. But the deep reservoirs make tailwaters, and the tailwaters provide nice year round homes for non-native brown trout. I was there to use the rivers for my own recreational enjoyment through hunting down those non-native trout. All throughout Allegheny National Forest, non-native trout exist, some succeeding in making more of themselves but many being carted their by trucks from hatcheries to live out a short time before being caught or simply dying of ineptitude. This may be one of the weirder uses on a National Forest: we use it as a vessel for fish we make, fish that wouldn't naturally be there, but fish we like to catch. 

There are plenty of natural fish in and around Allegheny National Forest. Smallmouth bass, suckers, muskellunge, brook trout... all present for thousands of years and all perfectly good at making more of themselves when we don't use their habitat so hard it ruins it. Unfortunately in some case we did use the habitat a little too hard. That was often the excuse for adding new fish. Ironically, in some cases the habitat is used so hard that even the new fish struggle.  Johnsonburg, Pennsylvania was not a particularly hospitable place for fish, native or otherwise, for quite some time. Johnsonburg is a small town near Allegheny National Forest. Really, it is a ways east of the National Forest and tucked between massive chunks of Pennsylvania State Gamelands. Johnsonburg has one primary use, being the site of a big paper mill. The Domtar Johnsonburg Mill is an imposing cluster of structures that puts of a pretty unpleasant smell and according to Domtar's website, "manufactures uncoated freesheet papers used by customers to create brochures, direct mail, stationery, checks, envelopes and hardbound books".


In an earlier time, this mill and other industry in the area were absolutely raping the Clarion River and it's forks. The East Branch flows essentially through the Johnsonburg paper mill. For a long time, these were essentially dead water. But by the 90's, improved regulation and cleanup efforts rendered many rivers in the industrial towns in Western Pennsylvania viable fisheries once more. 

Now, I hate talking about places in fishing. I don't like burning spots. But I'm not going to talk about fishing here much now, if you care to know what these rivers are like there are plenty of resources online that will tell you all sorts of things, much of it old, much of it certainly untrue. I will tell you this: the rivers I've fished in that part of the world were not earth shattering in any capacity. Some were very pretty, some fished quite well. Often though, I struggled to find fish, access was difficult, and there wasn't anything particularly universally appealing. At times there were very obvious drawbacks to the casual angler. That is precisely my cup of tea though; high risk, high reward. Coupled with relative proximity to the place I was born but never got to fish these rivers of western PA became highly appealing to me personally... even if I walked and fished miles of them without seeing a trout. So, yeah, you know where I was now. Good for you. Good luck with that. 

Though Johnsonburg has one defined use in the paper mill now, the land around it was just as much the land of many uses as the National Forest was. More so, really. It was being used to live on, travel on, grow food on, find and kill food on, have fun on, dispose of waste on, and all sorts of other things. Though the amount of users here was much smaller than back at home and it felt a little easier to get away from obvious signs of use, the signs were still there. A low hum of anthropogenic alteration was always a little bit audible. But when darkness fell and a light rain began, after I'd caught far fewer and smaller fish than I wanted to and trotted through a setting no less urban and industrial than cities I fish in other parts of the world, I went about looking for a place to spend the night. 

Two things struck me in that search. There were far fewer cars whizzing around at 9:45 than would be at home. And there were far more animals in the road. In mere miles I saw dozens of frogs, mostly green frogs and pickerel frogs, quite a few smaller salamander species as well as red efts, a few possums, numerous very healthy deer, and three snakes of three different species, all robust and happy. In the same amount of time and distance traveled in Connecticut I'd be hard pressed to see the same abundance and diversity of wildlife under the same conditions at the same time if year. This wasn't mass migration season, this was a light drizzle on a cool August night, barely enough to keep the wiper blades going. These were just animals going about their normal nocturnal patterns, and though the roads were there they weren't so traveled that most wildlife populations forced to trek across them had been smashed to pieces by speeding vehicles. 

This land has a great many uses. It had been used and used hard. But our use hasn't ruined it yet. It is still vibrant and lively, much in the way the White Mountains always felt to me. There were things here and there that made me cringe like a road up Mt. Washington. The smell of the paper mill, the stands of invasive knotweed along the river, gas wells in the National Forest- all scars, deep and painful to the touch. Between the deep scars were just shallow ones. Land still used, but less hard. It was impossible to find land the way it always had been without interference. There isn't any left. 

I think the National Forest signs are misleading, perhaps on purpose. They try to convince us that they're protected from abuse. The signs have rounded, happy edges and the same color as signs for parks and historical landmarks. But they don't fully hide the truth, it's right there at the bottom. What do people sometimes say when we feel like someone takes advantage of us? "I was used!" "You used me!" The feelings associated with that are not positive ones. Sometimes they are deep, lasting scars. In no way am I suggesting that the land has a conscious to feel used, but perhaps it is best to think it does. It seems that in human history the cultures that treated the land as though it were aware and alive were much more sustainable in their impact. Those that treat the land with dominion, lording over it as owners and users, often lose sight of the value of that land and its resources to the point of depletion and destruction. We need to stop viewing the land as something inanimate for us to use. 

 Thank you to my Patrons; Erin, David, John, Elizabeth, Brandon, Christopher, Shawn, Mike, Sara, Franky, Geof, Luke, Noah, Justin, Sean, Tom, Mark, Jake, Chris, Oliver, oddity on Display, Sammy, and Cris & Jennifer, Courtney, and Hunter for making Connecticut Fly Angler possible. If you want to support this blog, look for the Patreon link at the top of the right side-bar in web version.

Monday, August 5, 2024

A Supercell of my Own

 The distribution maps for the Northern Illinois Cicada brood threw me for a loop. There were counties highlighted all over the Northeast corner of Iowa- a little slice of the driftless region, an area I hoped I could not only find the magic cicadas but also locate some trout as well. But the brood proved elusive in that area as Emily and I zig zagged our way ever northward through Iowa, stopping near rivers, creeks, and ponds, and driving wooded roads with the windows down hoping to hear the low drone of a million horny bugs. We weren't hearing it though, nor did the ground reveal signs that there'd ever been any cicadas anywhere we went- the emergence holes, nymph casings, dead individual, the wings from those that had fallen prey to birds -and it was beginning to drive me crazy.

I'm a cicada addict. Periodical cicadas, making up a handful of species and 13 different broods that emerge on the same schedules. 12 broods are on a 17 year cycle, three are on a 13 cycle. This year, the Great Southern Brood (a 13 year brood) and Northern Illinois Brood  (a 17 year brood) emerged in coincidence. I wanted to be there for at least some of it. My fascination with periodical cicadas arose young, and I was always bug obsessed. When I was 5 years old Brood VIII emerged in Western Pennsylvania. The memory of the sound, and finding dozens of casings at the base of each large tree in my grandparent's yard was easily ingrained in a young naturalist's mind. When the Brood II emergence in CT didn't result in an abundance of cicadas within immediate proximity to home, I was very disappointed. I'd later learn that development had severely impacted this brood and that it is no longer very broad in distribution. In 2021, I made the short trip south to fish and observe Brood X in Maryland, my first time seeing the bugs since 2002. It was thrilling. Being that I have both a cicada addiction and wanderlust, the Midwest called. 

But Northeast Iowa was disappointing me in terms of bugs. It became clear the distribution was just patchy here, and a third addiction was calling me west, one that had nothing to do with cicadas or fish. The sky had a lot to say that day, but not where we were. If we wanted to hear what it was going to profess, Emily and I had to go further west. 

So across the flat plain of Iowa we went on a highway so straight and uniform it was numbing. Thin, grey clouds and a light shower gave way to sun, humidity, an a wind so strong it periodically threatened to blow us away. We stopped for gas station at the exit for Parkersburg. I only know that Parkersburg was a town in Iowa because in 2008 a massive tornado tried to wipe it off the map. Along a 43 mile path and over 70 minutes, the Parkersburg-New Hartford EF5 killed 9 people and changed the lives of those who it didn't kill forever. I only know about a lot of otherwise small, insignificant towns because they were hit by tornadoes. In fact, though I didn't know it yet for sure, we were going to pass through quite a few more on this drive. Stepping out of the gas station off the Parkersburg exit I was blasted in the face by hot southerly wind. This wind could fuel more tornadoes. That's why we were going west. 

The terrain changed notably as we approached the Missouri River, which serves as the border between Iowa and Nebraska. I'd never been to either of these states, and though the middle of Iowa had been most dull from the highway Nebraska would get much less so. Once we crossed the river and got off the highway we were greeted by rolling hills, lush green farmland, and some of the most beautiful old barns I've ever seen. Overhead, the signs of storms were becoming clear. Anvils are the spreading tops of thunderstorms as they hit stratospheric stability. Basically, they rise to a layer of air they can't punch through easily. On big supercell storms like these ones were, especially in a place so open and expansive in terms of views, the anvil is an imposingly big thing that denotes the massiveness and power of the storm making it. I was behind the wheel at this point and trying to navigate us quickly to one of these storms before it made a tornado. The roads were doing everything I needed, and I thought I'd picked a pretty good storm. It was looming larger and darker by the moment now. It was coming Northeast and we were going Southwest, so both parties gained ground. Soon we passed by Pilger, a small town where in June of 2014 (just a few days to the date as we were driving through, in fact) a freak of nature occurred as two concurrent EF4 tornadoes traveled along a nearly parallel course of destruction. The town would suffer incredible damage. As I glanced at the water tower my brain flashed images from other storm chasers that had been there then, of two dirt and debris filled funnels, of airborne roofs, of nature doing something completely astonishing. I couldn't even drive in 2014, but I was completely obsessed with storm chasing. I would set out on my bike some days, leaving the safety of the house behind in favor of a better view and better places to take pictures of the sky anytime a thunderstorm came. Now I could really chase and found it hard to believe that I was not only driving through these towns where notable tornadoes had occurred but headed toward a supercell of my own in Tornado Alley. 

I was getting us in a good spot and doing so quite quickly. We stopped to take a brief look on route 31 east of Madison. Our storm was tornado warned. It had a huge base and dark, evil core and wasn't being interfered with by other storms yet. It looked very good. Emily and I switched. I now had to do to many things to drive safely, what with the radar, map, and sky all calling my attention. There's nobody I'd rather have driving me towards an impending tornado though. 


We continued west, then turned north to get close to the storm's path. Not far north of Madison we left the main road, climbing a gravel hill of 831st Rd. At the top of that rise was one of the most spectacular views I could ever have hoped for. A perfect funnel lowered from the storm's rain free base, back lit by a yellow and orange sky with the dark base overhead and the rain core just to its north. In the foreground was a grove of trees and a beautiful red barn. 




Though it lasted only a few minutes, this little tornado south of Battle Creek, Nebraska was my first outside of the northeast and far and away the prettiest I'd ever seen. It also didn't do anything in the way of damage, other than kicking up a bit of dust and blowing some crops around. As it roped out and withered into the ether in the distance, Emily and I cheered, jumped for joy, and kissed. But it wasn't over yet. The storm was still tornado warned, and pummeling the town of Norfolk with heavy rain, hail, and strong winds to our north. 


We jockeyed with the rear flank, staying just ahead and south of its track. For a brief time it carved out a stunning mesocyclone. 


Around the same time, a storm just to the southeast of us, which I'd been watching carefully on radar, was making a tornado of it's own near Clarkson. Simon Brewer and Justin Drake, who had been on the same storm as we were still watching initially, had bailed before the Battle Creek tornado but caught the much more powerful and longer lived Clarkson tornado from close range. You can watch their video of that amazing tornado here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_igTrkv5_Q

I soon decided that we should try to hook-slice that storm as it crossed the main road, as it was looking much more tornadic than ours. Emily handled the heavy rain of the rear flank with stern focus and intensity, and the storm's area of rotation crossed the road a few miles ahead of us. We got ahead of it and positioned south the the storm's now thoroughly saturated rotation. This was what is called a high precipitation supercell, the whole rear flank was loaded with heavy rain that would likely conceal any tornado. It was still strikingly colorful and beautiful. 


Though it made another attempt with a fat, short lived funnel cloud, our storm was running out of juice for rotation. A big line formed, and we stuck with it into the late evening hours. We crossed the Missouri River back into Iowa with it, and it spiderwebbed the sky over the motel we found with lightning well into the night. The storms of the Great Plains are a whole different animal. Not to throw shade on our storms here in the northeast. But their size, intensity, and longevity is just not comparable. Getting to experience them was a longtime dream achieved.

 Thank you to my Patrons; Erin, David, John, Elizabeth, Brandon, Christopher, Shawn, Mike, Sara, Franky, Geof, Luke, Noah, Justin, Sean, Tom, Mark, Jake, Chris, Oliver, oddity on Display, Sammy, and Cris & Jennifer, Courtney, and Hunter for making Connecticut Fly Angler possible. If you want to support this blog, look for the Patreon link at the top of the right side-bar in web version.