Skip Talbot
EF5
What a great year it was, but amazingly there were only three days out of twenty-seven that made it great for me (4/22, 5/22, 6/17). I had plenty of other fun and exciting chases, but just three of them went nuts with tornadoes. I had a fourth tornado day but it was brief, rain wrapped, and I only got a few blurred stills of it and no video. Those three days were quite significant, however, each featuring multiple, large, high contrast tornadoes. Each of them I thought of as a multi-year event, so now 2010 has probably spoiled me.
Mike brings up an interesting points about becoming a wiser chaser to try and chase the most meaningful days while weeding out the no show events. I've thought about this as well, but came to the conclusion that as long as I've got the gas money and the time, I'm going to chase as much as I can. I really went all out this year though and one thing I've learned is that you literally have to chase EVERY SINGLE SETUP in order to get the best shots. This isn't very realistic unless you have unlimited resources, but I'd still like to try to be on every setup as much as possible. In terms of the tornado probabilities (some of these days went moderate for hail or wind) it was the slight risk days that proved the best chase days: 5/22, 6/5, 6/10, 6/16, 6/17 come to mind and 3/8 and 5/31 weren't even slight risks with only a 2% tornado outlook. If you want to score those super photogenic tornadoes on days like 3/8 and 5/31 you literally have to chase every single setup. This means busting A LOT. I'd much rather spend a week on the plains chasing mediocre storms than miss one of the most photogenic tornadoes of the year. I've found that I can chase very economically by comfortably camping in the van for days at a time, packing food, and the van is quite conservative on gas consumption. Spending time on the plains is a treat for me. I love the scenery and I see something neat on almost every chase I go on, so utlimately I've come to conclusion that I should be out there as much as I can possibly be. This means a lot of empty miles. It means my success to bust ratio goes way down, but hey, if I bag a really awesome, under forecasted event like 5/31 (which I didn't) its all worth it.
Three of my chases this year were some of the best I ever had, and the interesting thing I've found about them is that I still have some regrets about those days. There is never the perfect chase. You can come close but there is always something (even if its really little) that I've found I would have liked to have done differently.
On 4/22 I came away thinking, "Wow, what a great chase, I saw several tornadoes (I wasn't sure at the time how many)." I tally them up and come up with 3 photogenic ones and a couple brief/low contrast ones, and then I see people counting 8, 10, 12... and it makes me think, "Gee, what did I do wrong?" That makes me stop and think though, "You greedy bastard, you got FIVE TORNADOES, you should be happy with that!" And as Mike has stressed a few times, the count is almost irrelevant. Everyone counts tornadoes differently. Some count each spin up in a multivortex tornado. Some people count tornadoes that were probably just funnels. In the end its probably more about the total tornado time and how photogenic they were then just a simple count. Afterall, one high contrast wedge that's on the ground for 30 minutes is infinitely better than 5 (or even 15) bird fart dust whirls. One of my regrets from 4/22 is missing the Goodnight, TX tornado. It was probably the most photogenic tornado of the day. I was on the initial, more northeastern storm that produced several times and wound up following it quite a ways after it was done. In hindsight, I probably could have bailed on it a lot sooner than I did and maybe gotten down to the second storm in time, but on the other hand that first storm could have easily cycled and produced again despite how outflowy it looked (which I've seen in the past). Its a toss up, its luck.
5/22 to me was practically a perfect chase. We intercepted the cu field and saw the first towers go up. We were so close to the wedge that I could hear it, my ears were popping, and the funnel practically filled my frame, and yet I have regrets from this day too. I wish I could have stayed by that wedge longer. We bailed south before it crossed the road out of Bowdle because I thought we were going to get cored massively by the RFD. In hindsight, we would have been fine, but with a wedge like that on the ground I was expecting baseballs driven sideways at 80 mph or 100 mph RFD winds to slam us or something. We also bailed on the storm too early, more than content with our catch, not wanting to chase an HP, and eager to get Kevin back to his car which he ditched sotuh of Bowdle. We missed the drillbit and other tornadoes that those who were stuck in the field saw. However, we probably would have had to have been stuck in the field with them to see those so I'll let that go. I was still extremely pleased with my shots from that event though so any complaints are just nit picking.
After 5/22 I thought I'd seen the storm of the year (and for years to come), but then 6/17 comes along and I'm even further spoiled. Again, though we probably missed a tornado or two since we were two far west from the start. Our first three tornadoes were distant and low contrast because we were hanging back too far from the base, and we lost the storm near Albert Lea for awhile when it may have produced again. I've thought about this quite a bit and come to the conclusion that: Yeah I'm gonna miss a tornado or two getting to storms, it happens. Had we been closer to the first three tornadoes, we may not have had such an awesome view of the white cone and three tiered upside down wedding cake/stovepipe. And finally, we had no data so approaching that storm east of Albert Lea knowing there might still be a large wedge embedded in the core would have been damn tricky.
My real learning experiences, however, are with the busts. Where did I go wrong? I had some bad ones this ones year:
5/10 I considered a catastrophic bust. I was chasing with a group and we wound up intercepting the cell south of the Wakita storm. Our cell could have easily produced, and maybe it did, and I wouldn't be writing about this event now, but from my vantage point it didn't. Seeing the Wakita storm on the radar just out of reach a few miles to the north was really painful, but seeing all the footage on the news afterwards really drove it home. Ultimately, I think if we had played the day a lot tighter by being closer to the initiating boundaries, being out there earlier, and keeping the group more mobile, we probably could have easily intercepted the Wakita storm and picked up a tornado or two. It was a lesson in how difficult chasing a high risk setup with screaming storm motions can be with a large group, and it was probably also just being unlucky and picking the wrong storm. Its a day I'd love to do over though.
6/1 was what I liked to call a "missed tornado bust." I was on the storm, but I missed the tornado. To me, its the worst kind of bust there is. You were so close and yet you missed it. We were straddling the two target areas as they developed, a messing looking line with embedded supercells near Omaha and new development to our east in southwest Iowa. We went after the new development, but we just could not catch it. ESE storm motion at 30 mph and approaching from 50 miles from the west only being able to average about 50 mph, made it take foooorever to intercept. Town after town we had to meander through and all of the stereotypical bad Iowan driving, half of whom are completely oblivious to common courtesy including moving over to the right lane, the other half intentionally being asshats by actually preventing us from passing. We never got on the updraft base, just within a few miles northwest of the updraft tower, and we missed a nice tornado. A rock cracked my windshield to add insult to injury. Had we committed earlier to the new development, and maybe had we stayed off the main highway and tried high tailing it down county and gravel roads, we might have had a better shot.
6/5 was also catastrophic in terms of busting. As soon as the chase target shifts into the most infamous bust capitol of the world, Iowa, I should just turn around and head home. I don't know what deal with the devil Mike has made but Iowa never fails to disappoint me. I had originally targeted SE Iowa for the best shear and instability combination, as many many others did. I saw a whole bunch of people piled up down there. As the day progressed though, persistent cloud cover over SE Iowa and Illinois, made me think that these areas would be lacking in instability and too far removed from the the upper level support to see initiation and quality storms. I recognized that the directional shear in Illinois was outrageous, but what good is it if there is no cape? I followed the clearing into central Iowa, hoping something would initiate ahead of that ugly looking line, and it never did until I was way too far west. I wound up meandering down the line hoping Tail-End-Charlie would organize. The line just kept building further and further south with junky storms. I was totally shocked to see a report from V2 of a multivortex tornado mere miles from my location. There was ZERO structure on those storms. Just a low topped band of rain and gusty winds, that apparently had an embedded circulation in it. Man did V2 find the needle in the haystack pulling a tornado out of those storms. Of course there was enough clearing and lift across western Illinois. I had been burning for an Illinois chase all year. Something close to home when my closest chase had been 400 miles from home. Something over the world's best chase terrain and road network, and there it was. I listened to depressing Rolling Stones songs and gave the finger to little old ladies from Ottumwa who were driving in the left lane as I drove home on 80 watching the events unfold in Elmore, IL. Never underestimate an Illinois warm front!
I also like to look back on the days I missed:
3/8 was a surprise event with a long lived, photogenic tornado. I was actually eyeing this chase for a classic cold core setup. The cold core was setting up over the panhandles and looked nice on a few models runs. It deteriorated with some of the later runs and I decided it wasn't worth it. The storm that produced ultimately wasn't even in the true cold core part of the setup, but strong cold air advection aloft had overspread the warm sector creating super steep lapse rates. Everything came together in the last few hours too. The morning of the event there was a lot of cloud cover, the 500 mb low was displaced well to the west, and early convection plagued much of the warm sector. But then everything clicked in the last couple of hours with clearing overspreading the warm sector, cold air advection aloft, and boom tornadic supercells. Had I actually played the day I'm not sure where I would have wound up. I might have busted trying to play the classic cold core part of the setup up in the OK panhandle, who knows.
5/31 which had probably the most photogenic tornado of the year. This day wasn't even on my radar. It was between my runs out to the plains and from my point of view looked like any other upslope day out in Colorado, maybe with a little better moisture/instability, but also lacking largely in upper level support. There was a little blip on the models in the mid level winds and helicity, but it was so localized I chalked it up to being noise or something that would just as easily miss any updrafts that did go up. Had I actually driven out just for that day I would have found myself sitting under a 2% risk and a severe thunderstorm watch asking myself what the hell I was doing out there. I love playing upslope days, though. The structure is amazing with super high contrast, the scenery gorgeous, and usually you can get several of them in a row before a trough comes in for the main event. The upslope event of the year occurred on a day that slipped between the cracks though. Those who were out there on that day were mainly those who were out chasing everything because they were on their chasecations, with a tour, or happened to live within strike distance. That storm was also tornado warned for hours before it finally put down that gorgeous tube. You could have easily driven from western OK, Amarillo, or central CO after that thing went tornado warned and still caught the show.
In the end it was a great year, and it had a lot of stingers too. These are the best learning experiences though. I will also continue to compare my chase decisions with those of others as well as checking the reports to see what I missed. It stings a lot seeing a gorgeous tube on the Weather Channel as you eat dinner at a fast food joint after busting, but nothing makes you learn like a swift kick in the ass. I'm out there for fun, to follow my passion and dreams, but I also want to be the best chaser that I can be. I want to see what I missed and learn from my mistakes instead of busting naively year after year.
Mike brings up an interesting points about becoming a wiser chaser to try and chase the most meaningful days while weeding out the no show events. I've thought about this as well, but came to the conclusion that as long as I've got the gas money and the time, I'm going to chase as much as I can. I really went all out this year though and one thing I've learned is that you literally have to chase EVERY SINGLE SETUP in order to get the best shots. This isn't very realistic unless you have unlimited resources, but I'd still like to try to be on every setup as much as possible. In terms of the tornado probabilities (some of these days went moderate for hail or wind) it was the slight risk days that proved the best chase days: 5/22, 6/5, 6/10, 6/16, 6/17 come to mind and 3/8 and 5/31 weren't even slight risks with only a 2% tornado outlook. If you want to score those super photogenic tornadoes on days like 3/8 and 5/31 you literally have to chase every single setup. This means busting A LOT. I'd much rather spend a week on the plains chasing mediocre storms than miss one of the most photogenic tornadoes of the year. I've found that I can chase very economically by comfortably camping in the van for days at a time, packing food, and the van is quite conservative on gas consumption. Spending time on the plains is a treat for me. I love the scenery and I see something neat on almost every chase I go on, so utlimately I've come to conclusion that I should be out there as much as I can possibly be. This means a lot of empty miles. It means my success to bust ratio goes way down, but hey, if I bag a really awesome, under forecasted event like 5/31 (which I didn't) its all worth it.
Three of my chases this year were some of the best I ever had, and the interesting thing I've found about them is that I still have some regrets about those days. There is never the perfect chase. You can come close but there is always something (even if its really little) that I've found I would have liked to have done differently.
On 4/22 I came away thinking, "Wow, what a great chase, I saw several tornadoes (I wasn't sure at the time how many)." I tally them up and come up with 3 photogenic ones and a couple brief/low contrast ones, and then I see people counting 8, 10, 12... and it makes me think, "Gee, what did I do wrong?" That makes me stop and think though, "You greedy bastard, you got FIVE TORNADOES, you should be happy with that!" And as Mike has stressed a few times, the count is almost irrelevant. Everyone counts tornadoes differently. Some count each spin up in a multivortex tornado. Some people count tornadoes that were probably just funnels. In the end its probably more about the total tornado time and how photogenic they were then just a simple count. Afterall, one high contrast wedge that's on the ground for 30 minutes is infinitely better than 5 (or even 15) bird fart dust whirls. One of my regrets from 4/22 is missing the Goodnight, TX tornado. It was probably the most photogenic tornado of the day. I was on the initial, more northeastern storm that produced several times and wound up following it quite a ways after it was done. In hindsight, I probably could have bailed on it a lot sooner than I did and maybe gotten down to the second storm in time, but on the other hand that first storm could have easily cycled and produced again despite how outflowy it looked (which I've seen in the past). Its a toss up, its luck.
5/22 to me was practically a perfect chase. We intercepted the cu field and saw the first towers go up. We were so close to the wedge that I could hear it, my ears were popping, and the funnel practically filled my frame, and yet I have regrets from this day too. I wish I could have stayed by that wedge longer. We bailed south before it crossed the road out of Bowdle because I thought we were going to get cored massively by the RFD. In hindsight, we would have been fine, but with a wedge like that on the ground I was expecting baseballs driven sideways at 80 mph or 100 mph RFD winds to slam us or something. We also bailed on the storm too early, more than content with our catch, not wanting to chase an HP, and eager to get Kevin back to his car which he ditched sotuh of Bowdle. We missed the drillbit and other tornadoes that those who were stuck in the field saw. However, we probably would have had to have been stuck in the field with them to see those so I'll let that go. I was still extremely pleased with my shots from that event though so any complaints are just nit picking.
After 5/22 I thought I'd seen the storm of the year (and for years to come), but then 6/17 comes along and I'm even further spoiled. Again, though we probably missed a tornado or two since we were two far west from the start. Our first three tornadoes were distant and low contrast because we were hanging back too far from the base, and we lost the storm near Albert Lea for awhile when it may have produced again. I've thought about this quite a bit and come to the conclusion that: Yeah I'm gonna miss a tornado or two getting to storms, it happens. Had we been closer to the first three tornadoes, we may not have had such an awesome view of the white cone and three tiered upside down wedding cake/stovepipe. And finally, we had no data so approaching that storm east of Albert Lea knowing there might still be a large wedge embedded in the core would have been damn tricky.
My real learning experiences, however, are with the busts. Where did I go wrong? I had some bad ones this ones year:
5/10 I considered a catastrophic bust. I was chasing with a group and we wound up intercepting the cell south of the Wakita storm. Our cell could have easily produced, and maybe it did, and I wouldn't be writing about this event now, but from my vantage point it didn't. Seeing the Wakita storm on the radar just out of reach a few miles to the north was really painful, but seeing all the footage on the news afterwards really drove it home. Ultimately, I think if we had played the day a lot tighter by being closer to the initiating boundaries, being out there earlier, and keeping the group more mobile, we probably could have easily intercepted the Wakita storm and picked up a tornado or two. It was a lesson in how difficult chasing a high risk setup with screaming storm motions can be with a large group, and it was probably also just being unlucky and picking the wrong storm. Its a day I'd love to do over though.
6/1 was what I liked to call a "missed tornado bust." I was on the storm, but I missed the tornado. To me, its the worst kind of bust there is. You were so close and yet you missed it. We were straddling the two target areas as they developed, a messing looking line with embedded supercells near Omaha and new development to our east in southwest Iowa. We went after the new development, but we just could not catch it. ESE storm motion at 30 mph and approaching from 50 miles from the west only being able to average about 50 mph, made it take foooorever to intercept. Town after town we had to meander through and all of the stereotypical bad Iowan driving, half of whom are completely oblivious to common courtesy including moving over to the right lane, the other half intentionally being asshats by actually preventing us from passing. We never got on the updraft base, just within a few miles northwest of the updraft tower, and we missed a nice tornado. A rock cracked my windshield to add insult to injury. Had we committed earlier to the new development, and maybe had we stayed off the main highway and tried high tailing it down county and gravel roads, we might have had a better shot.
6/5 was also catastrophic in terms of busting. As soon as the chase target shifts into the most infamous bust capitol of the world, Iowa, I should just turn around and head home. I don't know what deal with the devil Mike has made but Iowa never fails to disappoint me. I had originally targeted SE Iowa for the best shear and instability combination, as many many others did. I saw a whole bunch of people piled up down there. As the day progressed though, persistent cloud cover over SE Iowa and Illinois, made me think that these areas would be lacking in instability and too far removed from the the upper level support to see initiation and quality storms. I recognized that the directional shear in Illinois was outrageous, but what good is it if there is no cape? I followed the clearing into central Iowa, hoping something would initiate ahead of that ugly looking line, and it never did until I was way too far west. I wound up meandering down the line hoping Tail-End-Charlie would organize. The line just kept building further and further south with junky storms. I was totally shocked to see a report from V2 of a multivortex tornado mere miles from my location. There was ZERO structure on those storms. Just a low topped band of rain and gusty winds, that apparently had an embedded circulation in it. Man did V2 find the needle in the haystack pulling a tornado out of those storms. Of course there was enough clearing and lift across western Illinois. I had been burning for an Illinois chase all year. Something close to home when my closest chase had been 400 miles from home. Something over the world's best chase terrain and road network, and there it was. I listened to depressing Rolling Stones songs and gave the finger to little old ladies from Ottumwa who were driving in the left lane as I drove home on 80 watching the events unfold in Elmore, IL. Never underestimate an Illinois warm front!
I also like to look back on the days I missed:
3/8 was a surprise event with a long lived, photogenic tornado. I was actually eyeing this chase for a classic cold core setup. The cold core was setting up over the panhandles and looked nice on a few models runs. It deteriorated with some of the later runs and I decided it wasn't worth it. The storm that produced ultimately wasn't even in the true cold core part of the setup, but strong cold air advection aloft had overspread the warm sector creating super steep lapse rates. Everything came together in the last few hours too. The morning of the event there was a lot of cloud cover, the 500 mb low was displaced well to the west, and early convection plagued much of the warm sector. But then everything clicked in the last couple of hours with clearing overspreading the warm sector, cold air advection aloft, and boom tornadic supercells. Had I actually played the day I'm not sure where I would have wound up. I might have busted trying to play the classic cold core part of the setup up in the OK panhandle, who knows.
5/31 which had probably the most photogenic tornado of the year. This day wasn't even on my radar. It was between my runs out to the plains and from my point of view looked like any other upslope day out in Colorado, maybe with a little better moisture/instability, but also lacking largely in upper level support. There was a little blip on the models in the mid level winds and helicity, but it was so localized I chalked it up to being noise or something that would just as easily miss any updrafts that did go up. Had I actually driven out just for that day I would have found myself sitting under a 2% risk and a severe thunderstorm watch asking myself what the hell I was doing out there. I love playing upslope days, though. The structure is amazing with super high contrast, the scenery gorgeous, and usually you can get several of them in a row before a trough comes in for the main event. The upslope event of the year occurred on a day that slipped between the cracks though. Those who were out there on that day were mainly those who were out chasing everything because they were on their chasecations, with a tour, or happened to live within strike distance. That storm was also tornado warned for hours before it finally put down that gorgeous tube. You could have easily driven from western OK, Amarillo, or central CO after that thing went tornado warned and still caught the show.
In the end it was a great year, and it had a lot of stingers too. These are the best learning experiences though. I will also continue to compare my chase decisions with those of others as well as checking the reports to see what I missed. It stings a lot seeing a gorgeous tube on the Weather Channel as you eat dinner at a fast food joint after busting, but nothing makes you learn like a swift kick in the ass. I'm out there for fun, to follow my passion and dreams, but I also want to be the best chaser that I can be. I want to see what I missed and learn from my mistakes instead of busting naively year after year.
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