More likely to have a banner chase day, sure. Guaranteed? No way. Lots of people had just an OK day on 4/14/12, even playing it well. Lots and lots busted, even playing the synoptic warm front, or the center of the 45 hatched. That's kind of my point. You're just marginally more likely to get career chases playing super hyped high risks, and obvious tornado setups, than you are a string of more marginal days that still hold potential.
Lots of chasers are getting the full chase experience right now. Pretty storms, a tornado, and the plains. If you need this every time you chase or it's a bust:
...then yeah you've got different expectations, and I think you'll be disappointed more often than not.
I certainly don't need a Bowdle wedge to call a chase a success, and haven't even implied so at any point in this thread. I was only using that date as an example to illustrate the type of setup I prefer, with the understanding that 5/22/10 itself was an overperformer. As for 5/29/04 and 4/14/12, the common thread I was going for is this:
if you picked the right storm(s), a banner chase day was all but guaranteed. I never said picking the right storm was a piece of cake, but the point is that at 8:00am, you basically knew there would be awesome tornadoes somewhere within a 1-2 state region by sunset. From a risk-reward perspective, that's more than can be said for the Bowdle day, let alone upslope plays.
I'm sorry, but the idea that you're "just marginally more likely" to see something worthwhile on 5/29/04 than a day with yesterday's conditions -- I couldn't disagree more. Unless you consider 5-10x more likely to be marginal. Financially, most don't have the luxury to.
What's kind of funny about this back-and-forth is that I'm not a tornado snob at all. I love structure, and I'd easily concede that yesterday was a better chase day than last Sunday (5/11) in NE -- in hindsight. But I generally play the odds, and from my perspective, without hindsight, the combined odds for seeing either a visible tornado or great structure on 5/11 were still better than yesterday.
Any differences between our standards, Skip, might have more to do with what we consider to be great structure. After nine years of chasing, merely "good" structure like what one might see with your average upslope storm doesn't get me too excited. Yesterday's storm in WY was amazing, but I'd argue you could chase at least 6-8 similar upslope days and get significantly lesser structure on all but one. For example, I chased upslope on
6/9/10 and
6/11/10 (yes, because a more conventional setup was on the plate for 6/10); those storms, while nice enough to watch, would not make me feel good about spending $300-400 and leaving town for 3-4 days. Yesterday's storms would, though.
Really great structure, like 80th-90th percentile for Plains supercells, is a big goal for me -- and lots of other still photogs, no doubt. Tornadoes are also a big goal for me. The ultimate prize is a photogenic tornado, ala Rozel or Campo, and that's always what I'm hoping for. But any tornado at all that's not rain-wrapped is great, too. So, again, I generally look at the odds I'm going to see
either of those two things when I make a decision to chase. The best bang-for-buck setups for me, by far, are those that offer at least some tornado potential that's obvious ahead of time. A big reason is that your classic mid-late season, localized but synoptically-supportive tornado setups also tend to produce great supercells at a high rate. Going back to days like Bowdle and Aurora, those were setups that easily offered a higher percentage for seeing great, beefy structure than your typical 65/45 upslope day in WY --
and much higher tornado potential. What's not to like? Structure fans need not lust after ultra-marginal days where tornadoes lasting more than 30 seconds are almost off the table. If they enjoy both tornadoes and structure, like most chasers, then both ought to be considered.
Finally, geographic bias is an unfortunate fact of life for most of us. I've chased plenty of marginal setups where no tornadoes were expected (most recently 5/10 in S KS), but generally won't make a multi-day chasecation out of those days alone. Likewise, I wouldn't do multi-day for what looked like very messy and HP tornado setups, either. To take the financial plunge, I want to see the reasonable possibility of fulfilling both my goals. The only exception is if it gets to be mid-June and I simply haven't chased/spent much because there weren't many "real" setups all year. I've yet to experience that, but this may be the year!
