2025 Chase Season Epilogue

[Tony Laubach]

I think the eastern Dakotas might be my new favorite chase area in the country, at least when ignoring home bias. When I was driving back home after 6/20 from Jamestown to Aberdeen to Mitchell, I kept thinking to myself that I'd been driving for hours and every mile of it had been perfect chase country. It's basically everything good about Iowa but without the hills, and it's in the core of the Plains where high-end structure is more common (a phenomenon that seems to drop off some as you move toward the east and lower elevation).

The eastern Dakotas have been a closet favorite of mine since the TWISTEX days... we've had some amazing chases up that way (most notably Bowdle in 2010). Its VERY unfortunate for me that I don't get up there as much as I would like. Unfortunately for me, it's out of range of a 'morning of' call, so unless I am paying particular attention a couple days out, I'm often at home for those bigger events. Although to my non-credit, I barely looked at anything this weekend as I had plans with family, so I wasn't even looking to chase. But yeah, I love that area. Also helps I have several friends on both sides of the state, so that's always a personal bonus for heading up that way.

I just hope 2025 marks the beginning of a period where the Dakotas come back to life, rather than a brief aberration from their depressing dormancy the past 10-15 years.

I said something very similar after the 2023 season here in Colorado... the last two years (minus Akron 2025) have been rather underwhelming since, so I wouldn't hold your breath haha But on that subject, it's been nice to see the wealth spread around a bit (and out of the southeast) the last few years. I think virtually everyone in traditional 'Tornado Alley' has been well treated (certainly with opportunities) over the last several years, which dips back to the discussion on how high of quality the last several years have been to this point.

 

[Brett Roberts]

And South Dakota pulls a rabbit out of its hat yet again (7/28). The first long-lived tornado east of Winner was even more photogenic than yesterday's, and so far the same storm has produced at least one more fully condensed. And it's only 5pm.

Not to turn this into a real-time reaction thread, but what the northern Plains have done since mid-June is almost literally unbelievable. It's like LCLs don't matter, southward surging boundaries don't matter, morning MCSs scouring moisture don't matter, 14-15 C at 700 mb doesn't matter; nothing matters.

On any individual day, you can piece together how it happened with the benefit of hindsight. But any of us who have been at this for any length of time can only be flabbergasted watching this and recalling stretches of YEARS where you couldn't buy anything photogenic outside the most perfect handful of setups; where any potential marginal failure mode made sure to rear its head on dozens of consecutive chase days. This is like the complete opposite of that. Other than late season 2010, I don't know that I've ever seen anything quite like this.

More and more, I'm buying into the philosophy of striking while the iron's hot, both in terms of good seasons and hotspots within a season. Obviously a lot of the time it's difficult to judge whether the iron's hot based on one or two good days, but the northern Plains this June-July is probably the perfect example of where it becomes undeniable. It sure seems like low-level mositure has overperformed consistently, even if it has to recover from morning convection.

 

[Andy Wehrle]

And South Dakota pulls a rabbit out of its hat yet again (7/28). The first long-lived tornado east of Winner was even more photogenic than yesterday's, and so far the same storm has produced at least one more fully condensed. And it's only 5pm.

Not to turn this into a real-time reaction thread, but what the northern Plains have done since mid-June is almost literally unbelievable. It's like LCLs don't matter, southward surging boundaries don't matter, morning MCSs scouring moisture don't matter, 14-15 C at 700 mb doesn't matter; nothing matters.

On any individual day, you can piece together how it happened with the benefit of hindsight. But any of us who have been at this for any length of time can only be flabbergasted watching this and recalling stretches of YEARS where you couldn't buy anything photogenic outside the most perfect handful of setups; where any potential marginal failure mode made sure to rear its head on dozens of consecutive chase days. This is like the complete opposite of that. Other than late season 2010, I don't know that I've ever seen anything quite like this.

More and more, I'm buying into the philosophy of striking while the iron's hot, both in terms of good seasons and hotspots within a season. Obviously a lot of the time it's difficult to judge whether the iron's hot based on one or two good days, but the northern Plains this June-July is probably the perfect example of where it becomes undeniable. It sure seems like low-level mositure has overperformed consistently, even if it has to recover from morning convection.

Sure would be nice to have been able to be on any of that. These northern Plains setups continue to stubbornly advance eastward and provide a setup the following day along/east of the MS River. Still haven't been able to chase at all this year after the 5/18-19 sequence, other than the mad dash directly out of work on Wednesday 7/16, which popped off way too early.