Biggest Busts of 2010

[Ryan Wichman]

To keep the theme of the 'biggest and baddest' going...

What was your worst bust of the 2010 season or what do you view as the biggest bust. The forecast that was a 'sure thing' but the only thing for certain was that you were going home empty handed.

For me it would have to be May 23rd was the worst day. Had one day off from work, so I decided to make a play for the KS/CO/NE area. Woke up at 5 am, drove all day. Tor watches were issued in the area around noon with supercells heading into my target area. After numerous tor reports in Kansas all of the cells essentially died and all that was left were some cumulus towers with decent updrafts capable of some cumulus pileus. Arrived home at 3am with a bad taste in my mouth.

 

[Terrence Cook]

Deerfield, CO tornado day... stuck with the northern storm. Crap.

 

[Rob Wadsworth]

I was about ~70 S of Bowdle SD - didn't make it on time. Thought the action was going to be farther South.

Best storm of the year - and missed it . . .

 

[Dean Baron]

I've had a few this year for various reasons. In chronigolical order:
April 5th: Everything looked good for southwest IA/northwest MO except for the strong possibility of an early season cap bust. Of course the cap won out. But gotta play to win, right?
May 23rd: I did see a tornado this day (from about 17 miles away and by complete luck). Drove all the way to northwest KS from Minneapolis and besides a very, VERY distant tornado I didn't see anything worth noting this day.
June 16th: Bottomline, missed all the tornadoes near Dupree, SD. To add salt to my wound, I had to take a MAJOR detour around flood covered roads and nearly ran out of gas along the way.
June 26th: 15% hatched tornado for MN and only got a shelf for the day.
July 14th: Missed the tornadoes near Northfield, MN because I decided to stay on the southern cell that day. Crapvection going on everywhere kept anything meaningful from happening in my vicinity.

Other dissapointments from the year (i.e. missing a good view of the August 7th Wilkin county, MN tornado because of work, although I did see it from ~12 miles away) that I wouldn't consider busts, but definitely dissapointments.

 

[J Allen]

Mine really came in a couple of days in sucession.

22nd of May: Missed Bowdle SD by an hour, came down to part of the chase group being unwilling to put in the hard yards. Definitely the biggest miss of 2010 in my mind.
24rd of May: Couldnt get a confirmed tornado but then got to hear about Faith SD. Was in the SW of Nebraska/CO KS are, had a low funnel rip over but for such an anticipated day was pretty poor.

 

[Jason Foster]

Tropical Season 2010. I know, I know...not really what the thread was about...just saying (can you feel the frustration...LOL).

 

[Jane Herbert]

May 19th would be the only bust on this years trip - but it was sort of intentional...we didn't want to play with 50,000 other people on a road too close to the action for our liking, so we dropped a little ways south and watched the low level jet and wall cloud from there...but we just weren't quite at the right angle to see the tornado clearly...

 

[Jacob Ferden]

May 10th: Pretty sure I had the worst bust in chasing history. Left Norman as the storms fired to the west, got caught in traffic on the west side of OKC, saw nothing but a lowering before getting blasted by hail, got back to Norman only to find out about the tornado that went just south of the weather center and was seen from my apartment complex. FAIL!

Biggest southern plains outbreak of the year and I saw zero tornadoes.

 

[Marko Korosec]

My biggest 'bust' was not going to US chasing this year. Lifetime mistake

 

[Marcus Hicks]

For me it was 4/5/2010 in KS, CAP Bust and my alternator failed and had to limp all the way back to SD. That was a situation where salt just continualy poured into the wound. A very frustrating day! Oh and I also played hookie from work that day and a FB post by someone else exposed I was out chasing. So had a lil talking to when I got to work the next morning. That was total karma biteing me in the a$$!

 

[Jeff Duda]

May 27-29: Drove up to Fargo on the 27th in anticipation of a high risk/high reward day in ND/SD on the 28th, and thus missed the tornado(es) in Montana that evening. Then of course the 28th was a big cap bust. Then was driving home on the 29th, crossed the cold front near Valentine just before initiation and decided not to pursue the post-frontal storms. Ended up driving 1,800 miles in 3 days and ever even saw a drop of rain.

 

[James Gustina]

June 15th. Took a jaunt into Southeastern Indiana to hop onto a little supercell that had been tornado warned for about half an hour prior to me getting into Indiana. By the time I got there it had gotten swallowed up by a squall line and to top it all off my camera's batteries died when we were approaching the shelf cloud, so i went home with 2 photos and nothing else.

 

[John Farley]

Another vote for April 5 here. Just 10 miles from home, I actually saw what would be the only storm to produce a tornado that day. Althought it was just getting started and had yet to even produce any lighting, I thought "that looks interesting" and briefly considered chasing it, but stuck to my northern MO target and kept going. As others have mentioned, cap bust in the target area, but the little shower I saw went on to produce the only tornado of the day near Hillsboro, IL.

 

[Adam Lucio]

Busting is toughest when it seems like every other chaser got tornadoes from every other storm except the one you were on, that being said my worst bust in 2010 is:

May 19th - We somehow managed to get on the one storm that day that just did not want to drop a tornado. It came close, very close...but never got it done. Oh, and I don't care what people say about Oklahoma, the terrain to the W and SW of the OKC metro area SUCKS.

Runner up would be May 24th - We left the hotel too late and the storms went up too early, the storms we did get on were junk and fell apart earlier than expected. This day stung significantly less though considering the amazing day we had on the 22nd. The only good thing about it being over by 3pm was being able to get an early jump on the long drive home [a bittersweet thing in itself.]

Cap busts when storms don't go up barely even phase me anymore.

 

[Skip Talbot]

Ah, misery loves company. I have trouble typing these up, but they are fun to read.

As soon as you commit to Iowa, its game over. I don't know why I even bother:

June 5 - A line of sucker storms was ongoing in Iowa. Fairly low topped stuff and mostly linear. The best directional shear was shifting into Illinois near the IL/MO/IA corner, and this was the smart play for prefrontal initiation of discrete supercells. There was lingering cloud cover over eastern IA and IL all day though and as the afternoon wore on I just didn't think there was enough instability to squeeze out some decent supercells further east so I finally committed to the crap in Iowa, and indeed it was crap. I went west down 80 until I hit the line and then went south hoping Tail-End-Charlie might have something presentable. It didn't of course, it just kept building further and further south in a linear fashion. I called the chase off as I approached the Missouri border, retracing the same roads from my June 1 Iowa bust. On the way home I got to watch via GR3 as discrete sups with long track tornadoes tracked across Illinois with numberous Spotter Network reports coming in. That's the worst kind of bust. Trying to play the day as best you can, but missing the show. I'll take a dozen cap busts over a missed tornado bust any day. Cap busts are just part of the game, at least you got out there and tried. But its excruciating missing everything, and then being able to see what you are missing as you drive home. I had been aching for a good IL chase all year too.

May 10 - A good runner-up. Wound up on the cell south of the Wakita storm. I remember seeing the hook on that thing wrapping around on itself three times, and I could have just shot right up 35 north for the intercept. We were in a large caravanning group, however, and we made our play on the closer storm. We could confirm nothing from our vantage point and then the storm just blasted past us, waving goodbye at 60 mph. Seeing the Wakita and OKC tornadoes on the TV at the restaurant during dinner drove that bust home.