I regret that it's taken me so long to post this! And even more embarrassed that I haven't posted any 2025 chase reports yet. I can only attribute this to the busyness of life, which unfortunately for me mostly means work, self-inflicted or otherwise. It's the main (but not only) thing that keeps me from chasing as much as I'd like, and also keeps me from studying and learning to get better during the offseason. Of course, work also funds this relatively expensive hobby, especially when it involves air travel from the east coast (more than once this year, as you'll see) and paying for my son to accompany me these past four years. The good news about being busy is that, before I know it, I'm almost at the halfway point to next season. Anyway, here goes the recap of my 2025 chase season...
First, the TLDR version: Fantasized again about being able to work remotely to extend my chase season. It didn't work out, mostly because of family obligations. However, I did make two separate trips for the first time ever. But this still only added up to 3 weeks combined. I might have been able to go out more in the early part of May, but most of May was ridiculously quiet, except for the sequence for May 16 and 18, which were on my first, short 5-day trip. Completely screwed up that whole trip, to the point where I was so demoralized I didn't even feel like going back out when I could, and in fact did delay for a couple days. Flew out for a 2-week trip on Memorial Day. The first week had some activity but was generally sub-par, ended with four consecutive down days, and the second week didn't start out too great either. But the four days from June 5-8, beginning with Morton day, made up for everything and was my favorite 4-day sequence in as long as I could remember. So I went home relatively satisfied and happy (and also had a great time with my son during the down days). But it was tough to see the activity continue through June and beyond - including a couple different "tornados of the year / century" - without a serious case of FOMO and envy of the "chase everything" livestream crowd. The "second season" on the northern Plains hasn't even really existed for years, but I sure wish I had the flexibility to be up there now that it finally did.
On to the long version...
For the third consecutive year, I entertained the notion of leveraging my mostly remote work situation to spend more time on the Plains. After over two decades of using a lousy two-week vacation to gamble that the weather would cooperate, my theory is that I can essentially work remotely from the Plains for four or more weeks, and still just use 10 PTO days, but use them sporadically and selectively, for actual good chasing days spread over a longer period of time. In theory, this could provide more chase days, because I'd be on the Plains for more weekends, and could also just take half-day PTO on chase days - perhaps getting 20 chase days for the price of just 10 PTO days.
The reality never seems to work out this way. There are usually personal and family commitments that keep me home, even if work doesn't. In 2023 and 2024, by the time I got out there, I had a couple weeks of chasing before the pattern choked and it made no sense to stay out there anyway. My planned approach of spreading PTO over a longer period requires writing off some days and preserving PTO for the better days, but it's tough to do that when (a) you have a chase partner with you that only has two weeks and wants to optimize it, and (b) you can't be sure how long the pattern will remain conducive to chasing, making it tough to blow anything off. Also, the half-day PTO approach doesn't work too well when you need to get from Odessa to Liberal in the same day, and doesn't account for time spent forecasting before hitting the road...
This year, I had a Swiss cheese schedule of family commitments, with my son graduating college, my twin girls graduating high school, and other separate events connected to those, such as award ceremonies. I couldn't stay out there for too many consecutive weeks, and planned to head back and forth. But some of those available windows were only a week or less long, which makes the bar higher to justify the time and cost of heading out. Air travel results in even more lost work time, although I try to fly late in the day or on weekends if I can. I also made it worse for myself by committing to a couple different social events the last weekend of April, thinking "what are the odds anything is going to happen at that particular time, before May even starts?" That decision, combined with a board meeting at work in the preceding week, cost me what IIRC was a good sequence from Thursday, April 24 through Sunday, April 27.
That said, it was in fact the first season ever - since I started chasing in 1996 - that I did actually make it out for two separate trips, although my total time for the two trips combined was still not quite three weeks, and the longer of the two trips was barely two weeks.
The first trip was from Thursday, May 15 through Monday, May 19 - a short trip sandwiched between family events, but it seemed worthwhile; I was purposely trying to be more aggressive about taking a shot and not make excuses. As much as I love chasing, sometimes it's easier to stay home than to go out for an uncertain shot at success, especially on a short trip... Inertia can be a powerful anchor for staying home in my normal routine. Anyway, this short trip turned out to be almost comically unsuccessful. I was flying directly from a work trip in Boston to OKC the night of Wednesday, May 14. The first flight to Chicago was delayed, causing me to miss the last connection to OKC, so I had to spend the night in Chicago. My chase partner and I had been planning to meet in OKC. We were setting up for the weekend and I was just going to work remotely until then; I wasn't even worried about the setup in Illinois and Missouri over the next couple days, because we usually stick to the traditional Plains chase territory west of I-35. But now that I was stuck in Chicago, we scrambled to put together a plan to meet in St. Louis the night of Thursday, May 15 to set up for Friday the 16th. I did a half-chase, half repositioning drive to STL on the 15th, stupidly driving through the RFD of a severe storm just to keep going to STL in time for a late dinner, only to see it become TOR-warned just as I got west of it, as the storm raced 45-mph to the east, making it futile to backtrack. For the 16th, we had no interest in chasing in the trees of southern MO and decided to take our chances in Illinois. Stupid decision. This isn't intended to be a full blow by blow chase report, so let's just say that didn't go too well, as we missed all the action in MO and wasted much of the day with a sickly storm and were unable to get into position for the fast-moving supercell that produced the Marion tornado. The morning of the 17th, we flew from STL to DFW (always risky to fly in on a chase day), targeted northwestern OK, and missed the Paul's Valley OK tornado. (Kind of wish the flight was late, as my flights usually are, which would have narrowed our options and kept us closer to OKC). Sunday, May 18th was supposed to be a big day; we targeted southern KS, later adjusted our target to Buffalo OK, waited too long to commit to the storms coming out of the TX panhandle, and missed the Arnett OK tornado by 15 minutes. Got some structure through a veil of haze, but the best show was over as we pointlessly stayed with the storm heading east. I was soon slamming on the steering wheel, cursing and screaming at nobody in particular, when the southern KS beast exploded after dark. Capped it all off with a linear mess in OK on Monday the 19th. That's it, first trip was over, had to get back home. What a disaster. I worked remotely from Dallas on the 20th and flew home that night with my tail between my legs.
My next and last shot was now from Memorial Day weekend through Sunday June 8. Lofty expectations of an extended Plains stay were now down to just the usual two weeks anyway. To be honest, I was so discouraged from the first trip that I lost all motivation to head back out. This next trip would be with my son, so I was going to go no matter what. But I was in no hurry to get out there on Friday or Saturday of Memorial Day weekend. My son had a couple of post-graduation social events and parties to attend right after his graduation anyway, so combined with my lack of motivation and my desire for some family time over Memorial Day weekend, I decided not to fly back out until Memorial Day itself. I think the Friday heading into Memorial Day weekend was a decent Colorado tornado that I missed. I think that Saturday had some decent storms too. On Monday we landed in DFW and drove west to start positioning for the trip, noting on radar the HP beast down south of Waco.
Don't worry, I won't bore you with a detailed recap of every day on this second trip! I'll save that for my individual chase reports.
The first week of this second trip that began on May 26 was not great. We were all the way down in Fort Stockton for nothing on Tuesday the 27th, and then all the way into southern KS on the 28th, before dropping back into OK and catching the tornado near Forgan, but from over 10 miles away; we couldn't see a touchdown from that distance, but the distant photo we got is a nearly identical angle and view to the one
@Sean Ramsey captured from much closer and posted in the Reports thread for the day. All the way back down to Brownsville TX on the 29th for some brief structure, which turned into a dusty HP beast that chased us more than we could chase it. Next came four consecutive down days. The toughest thing is watching your precious few available chase days disappear like sand flowing into the bottom of an hourglass. But my son and I had a particularly great time in OKC going to restaurants, blues shows, a movie, a comedy club, the women's' NCAA World Series (OU vs Texas Tech), and a traditional Catholic Latin Mass.
The action finally started again on Tuesday, June 3. We got on a pretty cool storm near Breckenridge, TX that went tornado warned even as a storm from the south encroached on it; we were somehow able to maintain a visual on the meso even as we were gradually being surrounded by rain from the merging storm. That was a surprisingly cool chase and got a bit intense at times. On June 4 we got a picturesque storm near Tucumcari.
To that point the trip was underwhelming and my season was going down in flames yet again. But the next few days had promise, enough to motivate my reluctant chase partner, similarly demoralized after our mid-May debacle, to fly to AMA the night of the 4th and get an Uber to meet us in TCC the morning of the 5th. The Morton tornado made the trip! Probably a Top 3 day, despite not being able to stay close enough to the meso to get some of the later tornados. The 6th was also a great day in almost the identical area near LBB - no tornado, but a couple spin-ups and attempts, definitely an exciting and fun day. When you feel that wind pick up, see the meso tighten, there's just this indescribable feeling, like a sixth sense kicks in, and then when the emergency alert comes over your phone and confirms the TOR warning a couple seconds after you already felt it... Man, there's nothing like it! Next up was the serendipitously awesome structure in NM on Saturday the 7th. Our last chase day was Sunday, June 8th, day of the uncommon PDS Severe Watch. This was "lame duck day" - we were flying out of DFW on the 9th, so this influenced our targeting east / southeast of AMA, instead of the northwestern TX panhandle, which I believe had the storm of the day. The southeastern TX panhandle had its own storm of the day though, which we picked up from its birth just east of AMA. Unfortunately, it spent most of its time over the road void of the Palo Duro and Caprock Canyons. We enjoyed some visuals from a distance, but weren't close to the meso until late in the day, in Benjamin TX. At that time we saw a brief spin-up, and the storm was tornado-warned again. Strangely, we saw no other chasers near us at this time. We ended the day, and the trip, near Seymour watching a great CG barrage over a wind farm. Despite missing the tornados in the northwestern TX panhandle, we couldn't have asked for a better lame duck chase day, as we were blasting southeast directly toward DFW the entire day, and had only about 90 minutes to go once we called the chase. Although Morton was the only tornado day in the stretch, this 4-day sequence from June 5 - 8 was the most productive and consistently enjoyable 4-day stretch I could remember in many, many years.
On Tuesday the 9th I worked from a hotel in DFW and flew home at night, trying not to burn even more PTO just for travel. Our flight was delayed, and we hung around baggage claim in Philadelphia for an hour, only to find that there were no baggage crews to unload the plane! We put claims in and had our baggage delivered to the house the next day. Good thing that didn't happen on the way out to the Plains! Although no airport out there has a baggage claim as bad as Philadelphia's, which is the worst in the country in my view. It's been a tough year for me with air travel, for chasing, and for work too - seems two out of every three flights I took so far this year were delayed or cancelled. This is a non-trivial consideration when making decisions about multiple Plains trips.
After I got home from this second trip, I knew it would be almost impossible to get back out to the Plains again, given my family and professional calendar. I never expected the northern Plains to be so consistently good through the rest of June and beyond, and was left lamenting my inability to just stay out there and work remotely to catch those incredible days in Nebraska and the Dakotas. But who knows if I would have chased those days anyway; I would have still had to preserve PTO for the more obvious days, and a couple of those big days were anything but obvious. I'll continue to say "maybe next year," but I know it's just not a practical reality, at least until I can retire in hopefully just a couple more years.
