Aaron Jayjack

Pulling lucky out from the closet today...

The path of 2025's "Tornado of the Year" near Wellfleet, Nebraska. This long-lived, incredibly photogenic, and intense tornado exhibited highly unusual behavior throughout its life, at times becoming nearly stationary and following a remarkably deviant path. Storm chaser Freddy McKinney and I collaborated to reconstruct the tornado's track. Freddy analyzed his video footage to map the beginning portion of the path, while I used satellite imagery to trace the remainder of the track through the open fields. The tornado left a visible scar on satellite imagery, something that's incredibly hard to do in this area of Nebraska, which made it possible to map the track in much greater detail. Photo 2 shows the current official paths, which depicts the event as two separate tornadoes. While it's still an interesting comparison, the official track is noticeably less accurate because satellite imagery was not incorporated into the analysis.