2019 Chase Season Epilogue: How was yours?

[Marc R. O'Leary]

I still loved 2019 because I got out again. No fully condensed tornados, no big deal. Not much lightning...bummer. Got some decent structure.

Despite it being a cold HP season, being able to get out and chase is worth it to me. I look forward to May and June every year because it offers a decompression distraction to normal day to day life and a sign (usually) of the end of a long winter.

So im happy just to get out. If you want to bitch about it, fine, but you may be looking at this whole hobby from the wrong perspective.

 

[JohnHuntington]

I'm a college professor and my school goes very late, so usually I rush out in late May and chase whatever I can into June. This spring, though, I was on sabbatical, so I kept May totally flexible (except, of course, for an event in the middle of the month which meant I missed probably the most photogenic days). And that meant, for once, I was out in the peak season with everyone else. In general, this season was fine for me but it really was a grind, as everyone has been saying, with the haze and the early firing storms, and the grungy looking everything etc etc. And for me, as a photographer, I'm always looking for photogenic days and those were few and far between. Some days I didn't even get out the big camera. I was on probably a dozen tornado-warned storms on the trip, but only got one clearly visible tornado (landspout?) in IL on my way back east, and I was one of the only ones out in that area and got to call it in to the weather service and they even called me back to follow up a while later which was fun.

I did get one storm in eastern KS on my way back east which I shared with only a handful of chasers, and I followed that from a small cloud to a massive tornado-warned supercell, and that's a process I really love That was probably my favorite day (even though I lost some good dashcam video of the storm due to a technical problem). The lightning by the end was amazing, but my chaser partner had to go home by then and I was by myself and lost a lot of good shots while positioning.




And probably my favorite little storm was on our way back to the hotel one night in SE KS, and one little storm had like 10 lightning bolts. I set up my camera, and boom, it fired like two more and then died:


So all in all, while I missed the well publicized big events. I did fine. I guess I'm always looking for another Rozel (my first big tornado), especially now that I have much better cameras and--most importantly--a lot more chasing experience.

My full writeup is here.

I'll be out on every NYC thunderstorm I can get to this summer, but I'm likely (sadly) done on the plains for the year. Looking forward to 2020!

John

 

[George Sargeant]

Was thinking about this on my drive home yesterday while keeping pace with a lone supercell along I-70 in Kansas. How does this year pan out for me? It's definitely not my worst, but it's no where near the best. What it lacks is that one day that makes a season, something I kinda live by in terms of what I think makes a good season. I have no one single tornado day I can point back to and be like, "yes, that was the day". But I kept my "seeing a tornado every year since 2003 streak alive", which is kinda cool. I do have two memorable tornadoes on the year.

Here's what that lone supercell almost produced near Ellsworth:

 

[JeremyS]

I'm not sure if my chase season is actually done yet as living in Omaha, I'm far enough north that I seem to be able to make it out a couple of times in July or August. That being said, I figured I would write up my summary.
Much like others have stated, it's been a pretty disappointing season(again). I feel like I haven't had a really good season since 2016. Funny thing is this year, I've seen tornadoes on more than 1/2 of my chases, but nothing that felt like it was a tornado that made my season. It was cool to have some firsts though this year.

I've chased 7x this year driving a total of 5,271 miles.
I've chased in TX, OK, CO, KS, NE, and IA.
Saw tornadoes on 5 of my 7 chases (counting 2 rain wrapped tornadoes).

On 5/6, I saw my first nighttime tornado near Lewis, KS. This was the storm Tony Laubach was also on. Definitely cool to see my first one at night, but would have loved to see it during the day. Here's my video I took:

On 5/7, "saw" the rain wrapped tornado near Tulia, TX. I guess, I'm never sure whether to count confirmed rain wrapped tornadoes when you don't technically see them.

On 5/17, I saw the McCook tornado. This was actually pretty cool as I was right there to see the huge RFD cut form followed by the tornado develop right as it crossed the highway to my west. This could have been an amazing chase except I couldn't really see the tornado clearly after it formed from my vantage point due to all the dust. Then after that, I made a bad navigational choice which caused me to miss the rest of the tornadoes that day being stuck behind the storms. Here's my video of the McCook tornado forming:

On 5/26, I had my first basically full chase in Colorado. I've been in the state briefly before, but that was chasing a storm that moved from the Nebraska panhandle into the northeast corner of Colorado. I saw a very brief tornado near Eads, CO, but didn't last long enough to get any pictures. Also, was the worst day of chaser convergence I've seen this year.

On 5/28, I chased the monster, rain wrapped wedge near Lawrence, KS, but missed the prettier tornadoes back to my west. Like Tulia, I was within several miles of this tornado, but don't believe I actually saw any part of the tornado back in the rain.

The first week in June, I was supposed to go out for a full week with my chase partner for an actual chase vacation. Unfortunately, this was right when the active pattern ended. I wanted to still go out and see what we could see for structure, etc., but couldn't get my chase partner to commit to marginal days so I ended up being home the entire week and didn't chase again until 6/20.

On 6/20, I chased close to home and finally a decent cell formed around 630-700p near Onawa. Made it there just in time to see it try to wrap up with a nice wall cloud and decent structure. It fell apart pretty shortly thereafter though.


On 6/25, I chased in south central Nebraska and north central Kansas. A pretty impressive storm formed with up to baseball sized hail, but was rather HP. Stayed with the storm into northern Kansas before calling the chase. I was on my way home and stopped in Belleville, KS to get some lightning shots when the sun came out and formed a complete rainbow to go along with the lightning. I caught what might be one of my favorite all time non tornado pictures!

 

[John Farley]

My 2019 season went legend this week, though technically it's summer now: 2019-6-24 REPORTS: WV

That's OK. The chase season extends into and beyond summer. Some of my best chases have been in July, August, and September. The season is more than just April, May, and early June.

 

[James K]

I caught what might be one of my favorite all time non tornado pictures!

Wow. That is an awesome & beautiful shot!

 

[JeremyS]

Wow. That is an awesome & beautiful shot!

Thanks! I'm a little annoyed that the picture caught the edge of my car door in the upper right hand corner. I was having to sit in my car with the window down because it was raining pretty good. Unfortunately, I couldn't crop out that part either, otherwise I would lose part of the rainbow, etc.

 

[Todd Lemery]

Thanks! I'm a little annoyed that the picture caught the edge of my car door in the upper right hand corner. I was having to sit in my car with the window down because it was raining pretty good. Unfortunately, I couldn't crop out that part either, otherwise I would lose part of the rainbow, etc.

I didn’t even notice it until you said something....

 

[JeremyS]

I didn’t even notice it until you said something....

Good I'm sure I'm being a little too picky on my pictures like always!

 

[James K]

Good I'm sure I'm being a little too picky on my pictures like always!

I noticed that the one corner was cut off, but it was still such a cool pic that it really didn't ruin it or anything. The eyes are drawn to that rainbow & lightning interaction! Not the dark corner

 

[Paul Knightley]

Living in the UK, my chasing of the central USA is always in the 'chasecation' - with fixed dates, booked months in advance. Almost always, that involves heading over for late May and early June - this year we landed in Denver on May 20th - to snow! Indeed, by the following morning there was 3 inches of fresh, if wet, snow! This is a first for a chasecation for us!

Anyway, I tried to summarise this year in a fairly simple, 'social-media friendly (!)', fashion. A few pics at the end, too.

Chasing 2019:
- miles driven, 5976 (all by me!)
- highest temps 34C (93F)
❄- Lowest temp - around 1C (34F)
❄❄- days of snow - 2, which included 3 inches of fresh snow at Denver after our first night
- Days of lightning - 14 out of a possible 18 (1 being the first evening, 1 being the 2nd day (positioning), one being 29th May (positioning day) and 1 being our return day (6th June) - otherwise we saw lightning on every chase day, and also on our Rocky Mountains day!
- Days with supercells - 11, plus 1 marginal - thus, out of 14 lightning days, 11 provided us with supercells - I think this is, by far, the highest number of days with supercells of any of the 19 storm chasing trips I've been on
- 5 states (TX, OK, NM, KS, CO)
- lots
🌪 - 1 roping out tornado - 1 or 2 'possibles' but likely not...we were in quite a few tornado warnings, though - but that doesn't count for much other than good positioning!

Overall, it was a very busy year of chasing - from the 22nd-28th inclusive, we chased every day - the 27th was a bust (but we still saw lightning) - all the other days in this 7 day spell produced supercells which we intercepted.

Then, we chased 29th May - 4th June inclusive, athough the 4th was called off halfway through - the other days all produced supercells.
Given this, and the long period of strong south-westerly flow, quite a few days were rather frustrating chase days, with lots of low cloud/haze, and also something of a lack of an EML, which allowed storms to kick off quite early. Had the trough been a little more to the NW, with the SW'erly flow somewhat broader, a multi-day, highly visible supercell spell would have been likely.

Of course, it was still a dangerous, deadly, and damaging period for many residents - and so this all pales somewhat compared to that.

A few pics:

Supercell near Orlando, OK, May 22:

Supercell near Clayton, NM, May 26:

Supercell looming over Fort Stockton, TX, June 1:

And finally, a scenic view in the Rockies, on the Ute Pass, June 5th - perhaps the best landscape pic I've taken!:

 

[JamesCaruso]

I didn’t even notice it until you said something....

Same here @JeremyS ! Great shot, didn’t even notice the car door frame

 

[Nikola Pavlovic]

The worst season so far.

4 days in chase, 3000+ miles and less than 20 photos i made.
4 dig through rain tornadoes, zero structure.

But for me season is not over yet. Last year my best chase was on 7/19 in moody Iowa.

 

[JamesCaruso]

It’s interesting how subjective everyone’s impressions of the season are. Of course the level of success/failure, or timing of chase trips, etc., is a highly individual assessment and certainly fair. But looking for reasons the season itself was not up to par is, I think, a little unfair. It’s human nature to make comparisons to other, better seasons, or to look for ways 2019 underperformed. But it’s also human tendency toward nostalgia to always think the past was somehow better. I’m not saying 2019 was the best, and I personally don’t have much to show for it. But as a chase vacationer I really couldn’t ask for much more than the six consecutive chase days we had from 5/23-5/28. And we couldn’t even start until 5/23, obviously we had already missed a couple of good days before then. Sure, some of those days underperformed, and I could have done without the four down days that followed, but every year has that. I remember people complaining even about 2013, and that was the most solid two week chase vacation ever, despite my own comedy of errors that year. That year the issue was that everything was concentrated within two weeks, but I don’t ever remember a year when the entire month of May was active, in my recollection there are always active and inactive weeks. May 2019 seemed to have activity spread throughout, with good days on May 7, May 17, and May 20 before the great stretch from the 23rd-28th. Believe me, I understand the shortcomings, especially relative to the hype, but I just don’t see that as being different than any other year. Just one great day can make a season, and this year had several (17th, 20th, 23rd). I think it’s just important for a season to be evaluated separately from personal success or lack thereof.

 

[Joe Cameron]

Thanks! I'm a little annoyed that the picture caught the edge of my car door in the upper right hand corner. I was having to sit in my car with the window down because it was raining pretty good. Unfortunately, I couldn't crop out that part either, otherwise I would lose part of the rainbow, etc.

i don't really find that distracting to the image.
Same as others, i had to go back and look to see the door frame.
Was focused on the rainbow.