This was a really difficult year for our business. It started out normal enough, and although I was keeping an eye on the situation developing in Wuhan, I never imagined it would hit here as hard as it did.
Tornadic supercell over Leander, Texas on April 12, 2020.
Our first week of workshops were scheduled to begin on March 20th. In seven years of running workshops we had never cancelled an event. Our number one priority had always been our guest’s safety and facing an uncertain risk in a region with extremely limited medical capacity, we decided to cancel the astrophotography workshops on March 16th. The first stay at home orders were issued (by California) on March 19th and so began our rolling wave of cancellations.
We are a very seasonal business, with a majority of our sales coming in March, April, and May. The pandemic couldn’t have hit at a worse time. We cancelled everything through April 1st, then extended that to April 15th, then April 30th. Wow, there goes the entire bluebonnet season. I was hopeful we could reopen by the middle of May as we started cancelling the first of our Tornado Adventures.
We finally were able to resume operations on May 15th. We took extra precautions; masks, hand sanitizer, Microban, to-go meals, etc. It was weird being in the hotels, where the lobbies were empty and breakfast was a thing of the past.
In true 2020 fashion, tornado season was basically nonexistent. We still managed to see a few tornadoes though and a ton of epic supercells in the three and a half weeks were able to run the tornado tours. We chased storms in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Colorado and Wyoming.
Due to elevated coronavirus numbers and the main attractions being closed, we cancelled our Monument Valley and Arizona Canyons summer workshops. Our Monsoon Adventures were the only Arizona workshops we were able to run. It was a very weak monsoon season and it was challenging to even get the groups on storms producing lightning. We also had all guests using their own vehicles for a storm chasing workshop for the first time ever. Overall the worked out very well.
The setup was so lousy for the second workshop that we left Arizona and chased some awesome storms in Northeast New Mexico and Southwestern Kansas (definitely not where you expect to end up monsoon chasing)!
I was thankful we were able to run a week of summer astrophotography workshops in Terlingua, Texas. It was nice that the subjects finally cooperated to the extent I always hope for.
The skies were clear each night and the 2020 Perseid Meteor Shower was one of the best meteor showers I had ever witnessed. We even got to shoot a brief thunderstorm that tossed out a couple night cloud to ground lightning strikes.
The Milky Way over a distant thunderstorm in Big Bend.
Lightning strikes in Big Bend National Park.
We finished our very abbreviated year with an astrophotography workshop at McDonald Observatory in Fort Davis, Texas. I was very honored to be chosen to assist this workshop by the University of Texas astronomers. The workshop was supposed to be hosted in April and then June but was cancelled on both occasions.
That’s all I have for y’all this year. I usually have a much longer write up and produce a video, but there just wasn’t enough material from limited opportunities this year. I’m looking forward to hopefully at least a step towards normalcy in 2021. Have a safe and happy new year everyone.