I have been back home since June 5, and just finally got the last of my chase reports done yesterday, so now it's time for my recap...
I have mixed feelings about this season. It was generally active, but disproportionately in the early portion of the season (late April / early May). It's not unusual for the bigger outbreaks to be in the early season, but those are usually one and done. They seemed a little more frequent this year, and there was that April 25-27 sequence and also May 6, despite three of those days under-performing (and one substantially over-performing). There were a number of consecutive tornado days in early May as well.
From a personal standpoint, I was excited about the ability to work remotely and stay on the Plains potentially for a whole month, from mid-May to mid-June, bookended by family obligations for Mother's Day and Father's Day. But my first available week beginning May 13 was inactive, so I sliced that week off the front end. At that point it made the most sense to wait for my son to be free to fly out on Sunday, May 19. If I only had my own schedule to worry about, I would have flown out on Saturday the 18th to set up for Sunday. Flying out on Sunday limited our chase range and options for that day - it's never easy to fly from Philadelphia and chase on the same day. My son had to get back on June 5, and it was an easy decision to come home with him, given how the forecast looked for the next 7+ days. I think the only thing I really missed between then, and my latest possible return date of June 15, was the Nebraska structure show on June 7. So, for the second consecutive year that I have had the remote work option, there was no reason to stay much more than my usual two weeks anyway. But at least it gave me a little more flexibility as to which two weeks were best to chase, instead of throwing a dart at a dartboard like in previous years.
The idea of combining remote work with chasing was to take the 10 PTO days I would normally use in a two-week chase vacation, and spread them over a month. The theory was to chase the better days, and pass on the more marginal ones. But this turned out to be much harder to do in practice. The stretch from May 19 through June 2 was fairly active, and I ended up chasing just as often as on any active two-week chase trip, regardless of how good the setup was. I didn't deliberately pass on anything, other than Iowa on May 21 (but that was for other reasons) and I think maybe one other day that didn't seem worth the drive. In practice, it's very hard to pass on a potential chase day when you don't know how many opportunities you are going to have before the season shuts down. Also, I knew my son didn't have the ability to stay out as long as I did, so I didn't want him to miss anything just so I could conserve PTO to use myself later.
As part of the effort to conserve PTO, I tried to just take half-days off. The theory was that I would work in the morning and take off in the afternoon. Here, again, theory failed in practice. While the morning was supposed to be about work, I of course still had to fit in forecasting time. That took a couple of hours away from work. The impact was more than just the time on the clock. I would start work at 7am, and then do the bulk of my forecasting starting at around 9. So it bifurcated the morning. Instead of having a good, long contiguous block of work focus time, it was bifurcated into smaller blocks on either side of forecasting. If I knew morning convection was a factor in the day's forecast, I would look at that first thing in the morning, to figure out if we might have a longer drive than anticipated - delaying me from starting work. It was generally distracting to switch mental modes from work to weather and back again, sometimes multiple times. And sometimes the opposite happened - work distracted me from the weather, as it did on May 28, when I had my target area already, went back to work, and failed to realize the MDs coming out, or how early a tornado watch was issued, or that storms were already popping before hitting the road at 2pm as originally planned. Even on down days, I would lose work time forecasting for the next day, and would sometimes still lose the afternoon for repositioning drives. Having to check out of the hotel made it more difficult to spend a full day working, unless we were staying there again that night, which only happened once or twice. I'm not sure if there is a better way to handle this next year; I'm thinking of starting a separate thread on this topic to share ideas and strategies.
One thing I am going to do differently next year is avoid professional and personal commitments, to the extent possible, in late April and early May. I would have liked to work remotely in the Plains beginning earlier in the season, and then fly home for family events like Mother's Day. Or, fly out just for individual synoptically-evident events, before basing myself in the Plains for my “core” trip. But I wasn't in a position to pull the trigger on any of those early setups this year, due to other commitments and priorities. In the past, when I only had two weeks to chase, I always prioritized the second half of May, which generally features more chase days, albeit mainly mesoscale setups. But it's always been the case that the bigger synoptic setups and outbreaks occur earlier in the season. I don't think it would ever make sense to try timing a two-week chase vacation for that early part of the season, but if I have the flexibility to get out and back, and/or work remotely while staying on the Plains longer, I need to optimize that next year. I think this year I was just stuck in the mindset of focusing on the second half of May, because for 25 years that was really my only reasonable option for scheduling two-week chase vacations.
As far as actual chase results, I get as frustrated as anyone when I make a bad forecast, or when a good setup craps out like on May 25. But even the professionals get it wrong sometimes. I don't even mind making bad decisions that are only bad in hindsight and were perfectly logical at the time; I can even allow myself to put bailing on Iowa on May 21 in this category. However, what fills me with awful regret and profound disappointment that takes weeks or months to shake off is making bad decisions that I don't even have good explanations for - such as stopping at McDonalds and for gas while trying to reach a tornadic supercell on I-70 all the day from KC after landing there on May 19; ignoring the developing storms in southwest OK on May 23 and continuing on to southwest KS; and heading east toward Midkiff instead of south on 349 for the Midland storm on May 30. These are actions that have little or no reasonable defense, and I simply wish I could take them back and have a do-over.
But like I said, mixed feelings: I feel pretty good about the trip, even if I maybe don't deserve to... More of the early-season events over-performed than under-performed, so I didn't miss much there (except April 26). We got a generally active stretch for the second half of May. Although there was no reason to take advantage of the nearly four weeks I had available, it was probably the first time I ever was able to stretch my trip longer than two weeks (albeit only by three or four days). I genuinely enjoyed the May 30 Midland chase and the structure show, despite missing the tornados. And we capped it all off with a successful chase in Silverton on June 2, which was my son's first photogenic tornado. There were plenty of other enjoyable chase experiences as well.
Here's a quick rundown of each day of my trip, from May 19 through June 4:
5/19 - landed in KC, only the northern KS target was in-range, got the I-70 supercell but reached it just after the tornado and when it had gone HP
5/20 - saw a couple of tornado-warned supercells near Akron CO, but all HP
5/21 - bailed on Iowa day due to distance, fast-storm motions, and expectation of rapid upscale growth into a line; I kind of regret this one, but not as much as maybe I should… But that could just be because it was overshadowed by worse mistakes later…
5/22 - briefly-exciting chase of a tornado-warned HP. It had initiated fairly early (before 1pm) further west near the triple point, but by the time we got to it, it was in Coleman. Missed the storm that initiated back west on the dryline a bit later, which produced tornados after ingesting the OFB from the storm we were on...
5/23 - one of the biggest failures, targeting southwest KS and ignoring the opportunity to backtrack to southwest OK. This was Eldorado day while I busted needlessly under a blue sky
5/24 - down day
5/25 - we all know what happened this day... Despite the OK potential being wiped out by outflow, personally I think my bigger failure was not getting to my target area earlier. I had been favoring northwest TX. (Vernon/Seymour) but by the time I got to Altus a line of storms had already formed and I was caught behind the action to its northwest. Later storms in northwest OK were moving so fast I just couldn't catch up.
5/26 - down day
5/27 - mainly a repositioning day to Midland, but deviated to Mineral Wells for potential severe. Bailed and continued on to Midland when the only storms (IIRC) were on the longitude of DFW (can't remember if they were north or south of DFW).
5/28 - fun chase of a weak LP near Odonnell TX and then a few hours on a supercell from north of Brownfield to Tahoka.
5/29 - down day, repositioned to Amarillo (which would turn out to be a waste, see 5/30)
5/30 - all the way back down to Denver City TX to play the OFB, then adjusted further down to Midland. Missed the tornados (won't rehash all that here, see Reports thread) but enjoyed the awesome structure, best I've seen in a few years.
5/31 - down day
6/1 - enjoyable chase in Fort Stockton, finally ridding myself of my aversion to the area
6/2 - Silverton TX tornado day!
6/3 - another blue sky cap bust, this one in southwest OK / northwest TX, but at least no forecast-related errors or regrets
6/4 - close to another cap bust, in west-central OK, until late (~8pm) initiation grew instantly upscale into a linear MCS
Total mileage: 5,619
