2019 Chase Season Epilogue: How was yours?

[Drew Terril]

For me personally, it was a good year, as far as tornadoes/chase ratio. My opportunities to get out were (as always) very limited. Unless we have a repeat of 2015, I'm always going to miss out on a bulk of setups, especially the midweek ones.

That said, May 17 was my best single day in years. Wasn't able to make either the Nebraska target or the Fort Stockton target, so I gambled on something going up in the OK panhandle and the gamble paid off. Even then, because I had arrived back at home base late in the morning from my regular job, I was almost late for the first tornado near Forgan. It was pretty obvious as I raced across US-64 that it was beginning to get its act together, and I was still probably 10-12 miles away when it dropped its first tornado of the day. Luckily for me, I had just upgraded my camera equipment with not only a newer body but a much better lens capable of way more zoom than what I'd had. So I was able to pull off and get some pictures of a classic, "Wizard of Oz" type tornado that I've been after for years, as I greatly prefer that to the dust column that everyone seems to brag about bagging in Colorado.

Stayed with that storm all the way up through Minneola, and it ended up being my best chase day since March 15, 2016. Storms were way better this day, but the challenge of the 2016 chase still leaves a bit more satisfaction.

I also chased the next day, but no tornadoes to show for it. That said, I did meet several in the field that day which presented its own enjoyment.

Most years though, I've traditionally done very well in secondary season. There are several years, in fact, where my only tornadoes of the year are in the off peak (ie, not in April-June) season. So I would not be surprised at all if I end up tallying some more tornadoes before 2019 is done. And after several years and who knows how many miles logged, Kansas finally gave up the goods for me. I've never had good luck there, and almost never can make it up there for the "good" days, but May 17 worked out in my favor.

Reading through this thread, there seems to be a lot of complaints, either about lack of photogenic storms, or by the difficulty of forecasts. As someone who's been around for quite a while, and has seen a lot of ebbs and flows (and in fairness, for whom selling footage/stills is not a priority), I really didn't have complaints. Was there much room for error? No, but there was a far narrower margin for error when I started back in 2006, especially not having any form of mobile data, and having radio communications limited to a 2m handheld ham radio (those from Kansas know that a large chunk of the repeaters in KS are 70cm).

For me, my only complaint was that I couldn't get out more, but that is going to be my issue every year since I'm not willing to give up stability in the rest of my life just to be able to take off work to "chase everything." Given the times I've been out, I think I did very well, and nailed my forecasts when I was out.

 

[Quincy Vagell]

I always speak fondly of June, but I just realized that I did not see a tornado in the month of June (this year) for the first time that I started actively storm chasing in 2014. It's not like I wasn't chasing in June, as I went 0 for 14. I can't even think of many chases that I came close to chasing a tornado in that span either.

It's the first year since 2014 that I did not chase in North Dakota. It's also been the first year, period, with no chases in the GLD or OAX county warning areas, with the latter featuring one of my best chase-to-tornado ratios. I did not chase once in Iowa this year, which is also a first. (tough to say if that's a bad thing or a good thing)

 

[Zack Cooper]

My season sucked from most possible points of views. I saw two tornadoes, one was close but extremely weak and the other was really nice but I was 4-6 miles from it its entire life. Had a handful of other fun chases like all seasons and got some relatively big hail (maxed at tennis balls this year) and some awesome structure.

The big thing for me this year was that I sat out a lot of days, including very local ones. I base out of Norman and I sat out most bigger regional days, including 5/20 and 5/22.

I didn’t sit out those days because my passion for weather is waning, I sat them out because it is shifting. I am becoming increasingly interested in the science of meteorology and learning about it, slightly less interested in always having to experience it, and my goals with weather currently involve speeding up the progress towards my degree and chasing a little bit less.

Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE being out there and always will. This season, I just learned that I’m OK not being out for everything .

Below are a couple of my highlight shots from this season:

 

[Brett Roberts]

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.

The gap in quality between seasons, both from an objective and person-to-person standpoint, is a topic I've been fascinated by for awhile. My feeling is that generally, the gap in "objective quality" (if such a thing exists) between the best seasons and worst seasons is greater than a lot of people give it credit for. For example, for someone chasing 20 randomly chosen days (that offer realistic chase potential) and scoring at the median success rate among all serious chasers, the difference in the quality of experience between 1991/2004/2010 vs. 2006/2018 seems like it would be massive -- massive enough to fundamentally change your view on whether this hobby is worthwhile, for example. So when some people talk like it's all a wash and "it only takes one day," I generally disagree with that mindset.

Be that as it may, I've also realized with time that personal experience can really cloud your judgment of seasons you've chased. I think this year is hammering that home for me. This year went terribly for me -- from the perspective of someone who lives in the Plains, chases a lot, invests a lot into it, and generally arranges significant portions of my life around chasing expecting a big return -- and yet it was clearly a year where the core of the season was more active than average. My subjective impressions of many (though not all) events this year I either couldn't chase or busted on were that they were tainted by HP character, visibility issues, "flukiness" (not an obvious forecast), etc. Realistically, I know I'm probably judging them more harshly than I would've if I'd scored those events, though. I really see this as a close cousin to 2015, another active but wet/HP leaning year that I personally did better in. Was 2019 better overall? Probably so. The clearest difference is that 2019 was very compressed into a few active periods in May, whereas 2015's good days were spread more evenly from mid April to early June (a scenario that would've benefited me greatly this year, since May is when I have restrictions). In 2016, the entire season was compressed into a 2-3 week period in May -- but I could chase everything then and scored most of the good events, so I viewed that season as above average even in a big picture/third person sense. Now, it's easy for me to see how 2019 was in many respects better than 2016 due to a much larger quantity of decent-or-better Plains tornado days (I'm not sure we saw a specific storm that quite matched DDC or Chapman this year, but hey, maybe even that is a product of my personal bias).

I'll say that the overwhelmingly negative responses in this thread surprised me a little bit at first. It was a horrible year for me, relative to my circumstances and level of investment, but I didn't realize it went this badly for quite such a large percentage of serious chasers. Based on that, I feel like dinging 2019's overall grade based on subjective elements of exceptional difficulty and messiness is probably justified. I'd be very curious to hear whether any veterans would put this year's subjective quality on the same level as a legendary season like 2004 or 2010. I only chased the latter, but from what I understand of both they were a whole lot less messy with easier forecasts, more targetable big days, and more photogenic activity spread more widely in space and time. All that despite 2019's raw numbers suggesting it was similar or superior to 2004/2010 in terms of tornadoes and even tornado days, especially in May. Perhaps it's best summarized this way: an active pattern with numerous tornado days is a critical and necessary, but not always sufficient, ingredient for producing a top-tier chase season.

 

[John Farley]

Brett Roberts said:

"I've also realized with time that personal experience can really cloud your judgment of seasons you've chased. I think this year is hammering that home for me. "

and "I'd be very curious to hear whether any veterans would put this year's subjective quality on the same level as a legendary season like 2004 or 2010. "

I don't know that I qualify for the rather subjective concept of "verteran" but I did chase 14 days in 2010 and, from the subjective quality standpoint of my personal experience, I would rate 2019 above 2010. I had one really good day in 2010 in which I saw three tornadoes, but the rest of that season I saw some good structure but no tornadoes. Compared to 2019 in which, due to a complicated array of personal commitments, I only was able to chase 3 days but 2 of them gave me photogenic tornadoes. Most of the difference comes down to when and where I could chase, as I was limited in 2010 from early April to mid-May to chasing in places within a day's drive of St. Louis. From late May to mid-June I was able to chase on the high Plains and saw some nice storms, but no tornadoes. In contrast, this year my 3 chase days included two very good days, May 17 and 26, and my forecasts and luck were both pretty good. But it did come down to that - a few mistakes like I have made in years past, and this might have been a lousy season. Avoid those mistakes, and it is a good season. Probably didn't hurt that I had very low expectations because I knew I would not be able to chase much during the prime of this season, so exceeding those expectations made it seem better. All of this, I think, is part of the subjectivity we are talking about.

 

[JamesCaruso]

One thing particularly frustrating about this year, which I forgot to mention, was that the tornado activity was hyped up even in the mainstream media, so everybody back home in Philadelphia is like “wow, you must have seen a lot of tornados this year,” or “how could you not have seen anything, I was hearing about tornados on the news every night?!?” That can happen with a single event any year - for example, even in 2018 there was a Dodge City tornado that made the news, on a day so many of us were in NW Oklahoma. But this year it was worse to hear people think there are tornados dropping all over the place, not understanding the nuances of chasing. As @Brett Roberts said, “an active pattern with numerous tornado days is a critical and necessary, but not always sufficient, ingredient for producing a top-tier chase season.” I had to keep explaining to people, “Well, two of the events you may have heard of happened before I even got out there (5/17 and 5/20), then there was Jefferson City MO which was at night (and on the night I was flying out), then there was El Reno OK also at night, then there was Dayton OH which was out of range, then Lawrence KS which I stayed away from because it was a metro area.”

Ironically, the only tornados I really missed were NOT mainstream newsworthy: TX panhandle on 5/23 and Tipton/Waldo on the same day as Lawrence, 5/28.

I try to explain to people that it’s not like going to a movie, you don’t know the exact time and place you should show up,

 

[JamesCaruso]

Not to get OT but there are a few references to 2010 being an example of a great season. I got Campo that year but don’t remember much else noteworthy. I was out for two weeks and Campo (5/31) was right in the middle, what were the other noteworthy events that year? Can’t remember if I missed anything big while out there, or if it was just poor timing of my chase trip.

 

[Brett Roberts]

Not to get OT but there are a few references to 2010 being an example of a great season. I got Campo that year but don’t remember much else noteworthy. I was out for two weeks and Campo (5/31) was right in the middle, what were the other noteworthy events that year? Can’t remember if I missed anything big while out there, or if it was just poor timing of my chase trip.

I knew I remembered a thread on this subject at the time, and was able to dig that up by searching through my old posts: Is 2010 the most photogenic tornado year to-date?

Looks like there was some degree of disagreement in real time as to whether it belonged up with the likes of 2004, but quite a few people thought it did.

Just off the top of my head, the list of quality days that year is pretty staggering: 3/8 (Hammon), 4/22 (TX PH outbreak), 5/10 (I-35 outbreak), 5/18 (Dumas), 5/19 (Leedey/Hennessey/Wynnewood), 5/22 (Bowdle), 5/23 (Texline/Clayton), 5/24 (Faith), 5/31 (Campo), 6/5 (IL), 6/10 (Last Chance), 6/16 (Dupree), 6/17 (MN/IA outbreak). And I'm pretty sure there are at minimum 3-5 other really good days I'm forgetting that might be mentioned in that thread, especially if you include the Midwest. Overall quality is very subjective, but one thing that's hard to debate is that 2010 was a more "well rounded" season across the spring, even ignoring that (to my memory) many setups were also less messy and more straightforward to forecast.

It also wouldn't surprise me that 2019 ranks relatively higher on many non-resident chasecationers' lists than locals like myself, as opposed to 2010, which stretched from early March to late June. I have to admit, petty as this sounds, it's a bit frustrating when living here all year doesn't really pay off with a few good events outside the core mid-late May period when everyone else shows up -- and that's been an alarmingly consistent occurrence in recent years, like Jeff Duda pointed out earlier in the thread.

 

[JamesCaruso]

Thanks @Brett Roberts I will check out that 2010 thread. Based on the dates you listed, the only ones I would have been out for and missed were 5/23 and 5/24 (and 6/5 but I don’t go all the way to IL if I am on the Plains). I will have to go back to my journals to figure out what I was doing.

Understand your point about clustering of events, residents vs chase vacationers etc., but that cuts both ways, easy to miss the one or two big weeks and potentially choose a down week even in the month of May... It’s happened to me multiple times.

 

[Tony Laubach]

I'd be very curious to hear whether any veterans would put this year's subjective quality on the same level as a legendary season like 2004 or 2010. I only chased the latter, but from what I understand of both they were a whole lot less messy with easier forecasts, more targetable big days, and more photogenic activity spread more widely in space and time. All that despite 2019's raw numbers suggesting it was similar or superior to 2004/2010 in terms of tornadoes and even tornado days, especially in May. Perhaps it's best summarized this way: an active pattern with numerous tornado days is a critical and necessary, but not always sufficient, ingredient for producing a top-tier chase season.

No... simple answer... just cause the numbers are there doesn't mean the quality was. And again, my experience differs as I didn't get on the most photogenic storms, most photogenic tornadoes. But in those seasons, there was abundant opportunities for those types of events, and likely on highly obvious forecasts. This year featured a lot of grungy days and situations that were hard to take in, unlike those big days in 2004. My "veteran" thoughts.

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.

The question posed was "How was yours?"... which means I think it's perfectly acceptable for a season to be evaluated based on personal success or lack thereof.

 

[JamesCaruso]

The question posed was "How was yours?"... which means I think it's perfectly acceptable for a season to be evaluated based on personal success or lack thereof.

Oh I agree, my comment was just in reaction to other posts that were talking about the season in general terms as not being that great for chasing, so my point was just to not mix the two; one’s own experience should not lead to conclusions about the quality of the season overall. I think it’s too easy to pick at the negatives and forget that probably most seasons are more like 2019 and will always disappoint relative to the standout seasons. Also, I guess my post was driven by the same interest @Brett Roberts has, he said it best: “The gap in quality between seasons, both from an objective and person-to-person standpoint, is a topic I've been fascinated by for awhile.”

 

[Nate M.]

I would call it a successful season for myself considering the relatively narrow window of opportunity I had to chase with other commitments, storms out of range, etc. My first storm of the season that produced was the one near Crescent Oklahoma with a couple of tornadoes on the ground. I was able to head out there after lunch, see what I needed to see and be home by bedtime. A couple days later came the bonus chase right in my own area code with the gorgeous supercell and wedge near Commerce. Chased it north of Joplin and all the way to west of Golden City until roads were blocked by debris. Unfortunately there were fatalities at that location and I was completely worn out so I called off the chase. So I end up with 4 tornadoes and really not many miles on my truck or hotel expenses. I call that a win

 

[James Gustina]

I'm way late on this thread, at least partially due to how frustrating this year was for me. I finally had to become a chasecationer this year and did May 22nd through Memorial Day on the Plains. Needless to say, things did not go well.

2019 Chase Stats
Miles Driven: ~2,425
Tornadoes: 0
Largest Hail: Golf Ball
Highest Wind: 70 mph
States Chased: TX, OK, KS, CO

We stayed on the High Plains for the entirety of the trip with most of it being in the Panhandle which was a nice change from previous years, but other than that everything that could go wrong did go wrong. I'd almost equate it with a pitcher losing his nerve, because after our first big flub on May 23rd (we bailed south towards the southern end of the Llano when stuff east of Pampa looked linear), everything went to hell.

We got caught chasing the Panhandle the 23rd and 24th, both busts, with the 24th being a flooding grunge fest going into Blanco Canyon east of Crosbyton. The 25th was a bust in southeast CO, chasing a high based cell from Campo/Springfield to Johnson City, KS.

The 26th hurt the most, started in Garden City, headed to Lamar, bit early on fast moving storms, missed the brief tornado north of Lamar and got in vieiwing position too late for the tornadic storm to the south in the Arkansas River Valley to see its brief tornado. Ended it and drove back to Norman that night out of frustration after the supercells dropped the temps into the mid-50s and began looking increasingly more stable.

I don't have any photos from the trip that are worth posting, but a couple of observations I had:

- I've never seen so many chaser wrecks in a season before. Even on the western fringe of the High Plains it was shockingly bad with the worst being an accident in Chivington on May 26th.

- There's still some great places I haven't explored on the Plains, I'm making a point to hit Bent's Old Fort in CO next.

- This is my first goose egg since 2014, and while not nearly as awful as that season was for me, it's a bit disconcerting having a year like this when my opportunities are much more limited than they used to be.

I likely won't be able to chase much if at all next year (wedding) but hope to maybe see a late season push to maybe let 2019 end on a good note for me.

 

[Taylor Wright]

This year was probably the definition of quantity not quality overall, but was kind of the opposite for me. I sat out a lot of good days but scored on a few great ones. Overall, only three real great chase days. Mangum (one tornado intercepted from about a quarter mile), Imperial (saw 3-5 very unremarkable tornadoes and infinite gustnadoes, then best structure I've ever seen), Waldo - Tipton (7 tornadoes, multiple from a distance after two close intercepts near Waldo, almost had friends and family hit by Lawrence-Linnwood EF-4)

Chased multiple Texas/LA April days and don't remember the dates. Had one maybenado near College Station but made a navigation error and missed a very weak tornado by about a mile. Tulia day was pretty uneventful as we stayed north too long to see the brief multivortex near Tulia. Stayed on the supercell forever though and that is one of the more "angry" supercells I think I've ever chased. I never felt comfortable getting in the bear's cage of that thing after it went HP dominant, and some video I saw of chasers almost getting hit by multiple tornadoes buried in the rain kind of makes me glad I didn't.

May 17 - sat out this day due to cap bust concerns and distance (could've only made Kansas target), was technically the first day of my vacation from work, but stayed in The Woodlands and decided between two job offers, ultimately accepting the one I currently work at in Wichita. This helps make it a bit less sour as making that decision distracted while chasing could've meant I took the wrong job.

Canadian, TX wedge, whatever day that was - Targeted Canadian, stayed on the right storm for awhile, then ended up too far north only to miss the wedge to the south as we were heading that way. Very weird chase day where we were aggressively approached by farmers.

Northeast OK tornado fest - started the day with a couple friends and met Rich Thompson in OKC, then went southwest only to have storms fizzle all day. Have never driven back and forth so many times. The classic troll day as tornadoes ravaged my morning target.

East CO Lamar 15 hatched day - saw the end of one weak tornado near Limon, then had to turn around as I came up on a private road and got pounded by tennis balls and busted my windshield.

Chased panhandle multiple days in a row then missed two panhandle tornadoes in a row after leaving.

 

[Jay Murdock]

Living in Ohio and not going out west this year, and being a very amateur chaser, I had pretty low expectations. We don't really get structure here much, so I'm mainly looking for lightning and hoping to catch a tornado if one happens. On that front, I did get some decent lightning from a couple of storms, and I was on the May 27 Brookville-Dayton storm before it dropped the first tornado in the dark (I may have caught an image or two of it from long range, but I'll never be certain). Next year, I'm hoping to go west again and see what I get.

On the plus side, Ohio tends to get another "season" in November, so we'll see




And what may be the start of the Brookville tornado (about an inch right of the red light)