2009 TOUR SCHEDULE AVAILABLE!
Our 2009 Tour Schedule is now available and we are accepting early reservations at this time. If you book your tour before May 10th, 2008 you will receive a 10% discount off the normal tour fee (no other discounts may apply). To book a 2009 tour, visit the 2009 Storm Chasing Tour Schedule and simply select your tour.
America's Favorite Storm Chasing Tours!
Violent Skies Tours is more than just your ordinary storm chasing tour company, it's the home of the best storm chasing team in the world! Our team of storm chasers and professional meteorologist is led by Tour Director Brian Barnes to get you into the best locations for viewing severe storms and tornadoes safely. You'll see our team working together to forecast our targeted areas for the best chances of severe weather, you'll ride along with them as we travel hundreds of miles across the Great Plains to intercept nature's most destructive force, tornadoes! You've seen us on The Weather Channel, CNN, Fox News, and many other networks, now you can be a part of the action. And, it all happens in our storm chasing vans that are customized with luxury features such as captain seating and in-motion satellite television. Our customer's satisfaction is our mission, storm chasing is our passion! Signup for a tour today and let us treat you to the Ultimate Storm Chasing Experience!™
2008 Tour 1 Intercepts Tornado in North Texas
Tour 1 started with a bang and a supercell on the Oklahoma and Texas border that produced a mult-vortex tornado. It appears that we have active chase days ahead of us for as long as the forecasting models can see!! There are still seats available on Tour 2, which starts on April 20th. Don't miss your chance to be a part of the action this year! Reserve your tour today!!
Violent Skies Tours & Thunderbolt Tours Announce Strategic Partnership
It is our sincere pleasure to announce the partnership between Violent Skies Tours and Australian Thunderbolt Tours.
Thunderbolt Tours was established in 2002 and is the only Australian Storm Chasing Tour company to offer tours in Australia and Tornado Alley. Thunderbolt Tours' operators Jimmy Deguara and David Croan have been storm chasing since the early 1990s and are excited to join forces with Brian Barnes and the team at Violent Skies Tours.
The combined storm chasing and operating experience across two continents will provide our clients a truly unique and entertaining storm chasing expeditions that our industry has never seen before. This is truly a first of its kind partnership in the storm chasing tourism industry that combines the experience and mastery of two outstanding storm chasing teams and furthers our effort of offering The Ultimate Storm Chasing Experience™.
Special: Volumetric Radar Images of "Georgia Dome" Atlanta, Georgia Storm
A few hours ago (at the time of this writing) the Georgia Dome in Atlanta was hosting the Southeastern Conference Basketball Tournament between Alabama and Mississippi State when a storm ripped a hole into the roof of the 16-year-old building and sent fans fleeing for safety. We were tracking this storm on radar from our forecasting lab and have provided a 3D volumeteric image of the storm taken just shortly after it hit the stadium. This image also provides an example of just one of the tools that we use during our storm chasing tours to help us develop successful and timely interception strategies while chasing.
Feb 26, 2008: 1st Successful Storm Interception of 2008
Tour Director Brian Barnes and a small group intercepted a tornado warned supercell in east/central Florida during dusk. A chase log for the Feb 26 tornado warned supercell interception is available here: Florida tornado warned storm interception - storm chasing log.
February Storm Chasing Tours Update
Spring is now just right around the corner and we've already witnessed several tornado days in the United States. Most of our tours only have limited seating left, so if you are planning on a tour in 2008 do NOT wait any longer - either sign up for our tour today using our convenient online booking tool (See our 2008 Schedule for Availability and Times), or contact us immediately to let us know that you want to chase this year. We will try to expand a few of the tours by adding some additional vans if necessary, but most of our tour sizes are kept to only one or two vans to increase our mobility (which is one of the reasons why we are so successful at intercepting great storms!). So don't wait, sign up today!.
September 13 - Hurricane Humberto
We've heard several news broadcasting companies this morning say that Hurricane Humberto "slammed" into the Gulf Coast, or "roared ashore." But, in reality it basically crawled on land at a snail's pace. Although "Hummy" came ashore at a whopping 8 miles per hour, the storm was not classified as a hurricane until a mere 1-hour before it hit the mainland at 2:00 AM local time.
On August 24th we updated our QuickFlight XML Feed (at the bottom of this page) with information that we believe any storm would form fairly close to land. This was certainly the case with Humberto, even though we'll admit that this surprised us a great deal. What we were initially referring to as being "fairly close to land" was a day or so before the storm made landfall (not 1-hour). In any event, we called it right and we're closely monitoring Tropical Depression EIGHT, which appears that it will become "Ingrid" within the next few days as it moves into a better environment for tropical cyclone formation.
August 30 Update - 2008 Schedule Published
Our 2008 Storm Chasing Tour Schedule is now published and reservations are being accepted. We made a few exciting changes to the tour schedule and put a new spin (pun intended) on a few of our speciality tours.
August 13 Update - Hurricane Chasing Deployments!
Calling all Hurricane Chasers! We can't just accept reservations for hurricane chasing based on a set schedule due to the highly unpredictable nature of hurricanes, if we did, it's possible that a hurricane might not make landfall and you would be out of the money. To solve this problem, we maintain a list of people who want to safely experience the intense power of hurricanes and who can quickly deploy to a designated airport and meet up with our interception team on very short notice; we call it the "QuickFlight List™".
To get started, you just need to email us today at:
to let us know that you're interested and we'll contact you when we are considering a deployment. If you're available at the time then we'll arrange for a secure payment via PayPal and you'll be on your way to meet up with us to witness the amazing fury of nature's largest storms.
Mobile Communications Technology Upgrade
We have upgraded several key pieces of technology in our lead storm chasing van. This includes updating our live radar system with the newest state-of-the-art features; we've upgraded our mobile 2-way satellite communications system and expanded our cellular technology for mobile internet as well. The vans have also received a major overhaul to the in-van communications system, so even the people in the seated in the back can hear every word in-detail! You don't want to be on a tour when you can't hear about what is happening and nobody cares more about their storm chasing tour customers than Violent Skies!
Website Update: New Storm Chasing Logs Launched 2/26/2007
What started out as a major overhaul to our gallery, ended up being a brand new fully dynamic system to log our future storm intercepts. We selected various photographs from our old gallery and compressed everything down to a single page for a brief representation of our storm chasing tours from 1999 to 2006. All future chases will be logged in our new system that contains a summary of each storm chasing account along with various types of images and if available, a highlight video. We've already logged many key intercepts from the 2007 storm chasing tours. Click here to visit our new Storm Chasing Logs!
QuickFlight™ Storm Chasing Tours
QuickFlight Status: Not ActiveLast Update: March 15, 2008 - 2:07 AM CST
In order to get signed up for these tours, you'll have to email us at: info@violentskiestours.com and let us know that you're interested in our "Tornado QuickFlight Tours". If we decide to operate a non-scheduled, pre-season tornado tour we will send out an email to everyone on our QuickFlight List to announce the tour. You'll then need to either call, or email us immediately to make arrangements for the tour.
