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:
![Automobile :red_car: 🚗](https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f697.png)
- miles driven, 5976 (all by me!)
![Collision :boom: 💥](https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f4a5.png)
- 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
![High voltage :zap: ⚡](https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/26a1.png)
- 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!
![High voltage :zap: ⚡](https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/26a1.png)
![High voltage :zap: ⚡](https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/26a1.png)
- 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
![Flag: United States :flag_us: 🇺🇸](https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f1fa-1f1f8.png)
- 5 states (TX, OK, NM, KS, CO)
![Hamburger :hamburger: 🍔](https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f354.png)
![French fries :fries: 🍟](https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f35f.png)
- 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!: