Biggest Busts of 2010

[Scott Hammel]

April 5th and May 10th are right up there for me. Both days entailed early 4AM wake up calls with long drives to SE KS and both resulted in nada. I'm gonna give the edge to April 5th only because on top of the bust, I had problems all day with my inverter not working, and my brakes on my car went out as well. Fortunately I was with great company that day and we made the best of it. Ended up meeting Connor McCrorey, Aaron Estman, Jake Wallentine, and Kevin Ryder in Medicine Lodge where we all played football on a dirt road and then ate at Pizza Hut. In fact I believe Tony Laubach has a pretty funny picture of all of us giving a big thumbs down.

As far as May 10th goes, lets just say that my High Risk shutout is still very comfortably in tact. We narrowly missed tornadoes earlier in the day in W KS from a storm we shrugged off. Then I made one of the worst drives of my life through the core of the Wichita HP beast right during rush hour. It was just miserable especially with the 55mph storm speeds. Another 20 hour drive with no results. But again, great company with me still made the day somewhat fun. And I think that's the key; if you've got good people on board even the most frustrating days can still be enjoyable, or well, tolerable.

 

[Josh VandenTop]

June 17, followed a storm i thought was gonna go and it did nothing, i was in a position that if I had gone farther east or farther north I would have seen amazing storms but I got nothing, that was a bad day to miss

 

[George Grant]

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.

Oh, brother, why did I even read this thread?
22 May: I missed the Bowdle wedge by about twenty minutes, if that much (figured the Pierre to Huron corridor that day). Got north of Roscoe to watch some insane cloud motions. Walked over to the Sheriff who had parked across the road from me and mentioned to him that he might want to move back south towards US12. If there was a tornado in the rain, it was moving directly towards us. Vrooom! He was gone. And, I almost talked myself into going north and east of there where some guys got stuck.

24 May: Figured southwest to central NE this day. Made it almost to North Platte as a nice looking storm crossed I80 around Keith/Maxwell area. Went racing up US83 much to the chagrin of my nowcaster, Pete McConnell. Almost got a ticket on the north side of North Platte as a Trooper got me going about ten over, but he just looked as me as I drove by. Could see two tornado-warned storms moving north, but couldn't catch them as I made it to Thedford. Turned for home along NE2 and made it to Broken Bow as my alternator started failing. Got a room in Grand Island. Wife called at midnight telling me my nephew's house was burning down. This day couldn't suck enough. Epic fail.

Geo

 

[Josh Richardson]

Well let's see....pretty simple for me. Early Spring my family and I had finally scheduled a date to take off for vacation down to Austin TX. That week was planned for Mid June, so on June 17th I was driving back from San Antonio Sea World to Austin fielding call after call after call about the ensuing outbreak 30 minutes from my house in the Northern IA/Southern MN area. Turns out to be the best outbreak of the year of course. Not only was I getting calls from almost every chaser I know from the Upper MS Valley Region but then I got a call from everyone I knew that wasnt a chaser in Northern IA about it the next day. So after getting to hear about 30 different stories of how simple it was to catch every type of tornado there is that day....I was very annoyed....actually still am, lol.

Just thought I would point out that obviously that wasn't a bust considering I wasn't chasing but still that was pretty bad luck.

 

[Joel Wright]

Worst bust for me was June 20th. Drove all the way to Columbus Nebraska. Got suckered into believing the morning elevated convection would clear the area. The high-res WRF and RUC models consistently weakened the elevated crapvection leaving the area primed for surface destabilization. That was a long and depressing drive back.

 

[Damon Scott Hynes]

Since I only chased cross-country twice this year, I have to go with 10 May, even though I wasn't really disappointed with what I did see.

Drove through South Haven on my way to Blackwell. At the time, local radio wasn't too interested, and I'm sure I would have had a better chance to intercept what was leaving Wakita had I stayed in South Haven. But, even after hearing about the wrecks on I-35 there, I had no reason to believe that Blackwell wasn't a great place to wait, either.

I just need a cell-phone card for my laptop is all...

 

[KendraReed]

My biggest bust was unfortunately on 5/22 in SD. Stopped in KS...should have kept driving. Left hotel late and even driving "FAST" through NE we were STILL 15 minutes late to the party...tornadoes everywhere around us and we failed...miserably. Hearing the radio chatter from others was a knife in the gut. Hell, Kris was so pissed, he drove back home to TX from SD that night.

Although it wasn't "TECHNICALLY" a bust day, it was for the group I was with...since we saw nada.

 

[Ben Holcomb]

Biggest busts of the year? I have a bunch of them. I would classify June 17th as my biggest, but the rest really sucked as well

June 17 - 20 minutes late to Wadena. Stuck up north and missed the wedge tornado in Wadena, and missed the wedges down south. I think I was the only one in Minnesota not to see a tornado that day.

June 5 - Originally targeted Monmouth, IL. Took a picture in Monmouth. Commented how I am stupid on Facebook about going to Iowa. Went to Iowa. Scott Bennett called me, I went further west into Iowa. Tornadic supercells go up just west of Monmouth. I make it back to IL to see nothing, and drive over tornado debris at 45 mph, breaking a ball joint and throwing my alignment way out of whack.

May 24 - I tried to get Adam and Danny up and motivated to go to Bison, SD, but not early enough to make it out to see the tornadoes. Oh well, wasn't so bad since Bowdle was 2 days before.

May 19 - On the only freaking supercell in Oklahoma that didn't produce a freaking tornado. What's worse is I had gotten up at 2 am, driven to Chicago Midway, flew from MDW to MSP to OKC and spent an hour getting my electrical stuff working in Adam's expedition only to bust.

April 30/May 1 - Big bust, wish I had just gone home after April 29th.

April 24 - Intercepted Wedge tornado and was in the RFD or outer circulations. Had my driver side window down, camera out, focused. I forgot to hit record.

April 22 - I over forecasted and stuck south, missing the 7 tornadoes up north. It hurt more when Scott Bennett texts me and asks how many I saw, and I said 0, and he said 'no really'. No, really, I saw 0.

 

[Mark Blue]

Biggest busts of the year? I have a bunch of them. I would classify June 17th as my biggest, but the rest really sucked as well

June 17 - 20 minutes late to Wadena. Stuck up north and missed the wedge tornado in Wadena, and missed the wedges down south. I think I was the only one in Minnesota not to see a tornado that day.

June 16th and 17th: You weren't the only one Ben, but it sounds like you're as upset about June 17th as I was. The day before (June 16th) I had made a decent forecast and should have stuck with it. Here's the forecast for reference http://www.stormtrack.org/forum/showthread.php?t=24505. On the 16th we were in Rapid City fueling up and could see the huge towers going up to the north and east along a surface warm front, but radar also showed storms initiating in NE WY moving towards SE MT. Like a dummy I decided to bail out on the warm front play and headed towards NE WY and SE MT. We lost data in SE MT shortly after arriving there and wound up not seeing much more than some structure and hail storms. We ended up in Miles City, MT for the night. Had we gone up to the north east of Rapid City we may have been able to witness Dupree, SD on June 16th. Miles City put us a long ways away from the target area for June 17th, but we gave it the old college try by getting up really early. We blasted east through North Dakota on June 17th and wound up in Fargo right at the time storms were initiating. We should have stayed on I-94 and headed towards Fergus Falls, then east towards Wadena, but there were tornado warned cells to the north in the same line, so we chased two or three of those then kept dropping south as the cells to the north didn't produce. At one point we were only a few miles from Wadena as it was happening, but we were not close enough to get there in time. I still kick myself every time I think about those two days, but particularly June 17th.

May 24 - I tried to get Adam and Danny up and motivated to go to Bison, SD, but not early enough to make it out to see the tornadoes. Oh well, wasn't so bad since Bowdle was 2 days before.

Once again we had planned to try and make it to SD for the warm front play, but as we were driving north in the panhandle of Nebraska we kept getting side tracked by storms that were tornado warned and we chased those as we drove north. The storm motion was so fast to the north (60 - 70 mph) that it was a lost cause. We ended up going east into the Pine Ridge reservation and tried to intercept some cells coming out of Nebraska, but the storms were moving so fast that it was nearly impossible to make any kind of play other than to let them go by on a hope and a dream. It wasn't until later that I read that thread about how dangerous this part of SD can be and realized we were being eye balled quite a bit by every car that went by us. I guess we were lucky that day and someone was watching over us. This was the day that the Faith wedge occurred, so we missed out on the action there once again.

Having been there on May 22nd for Bowdle, it soothed the two or three misses above, but if there is a tornado I want to be there to see it. I guess I can only aspire to get better in the coming years!

 

[Dean Baron]

June 16th was another day that really hurt. Was up in western ND thinking storms would up farther northwest on that warm front closer to the low, but that area remained capped. Blasted southeast towards the Dupree area. What many may not remember was there was actually two tornado warned storms in that area and the Dupree was not the first one of those two to go tornado warned. The one that didn't produce was of course the closer one to us and wasted time on that. If we had kept going towards Dupree and not wasted any time on the tor warned storm farther west we may have been able to catch at least a couple TOR's from the Dupree storm. I've had a lot of dissapointment this year now that I think about it lol.

 

[cdcollura]

Good day all,

Like many others, I had my share of busts during this rather successful year of 2010.

1). May 24 ... Could not make it near Faith, SD and got suckered to the linear garbage in SW SD / NW NE instead after spending nearly an hour and a half as a "blind robin" (data-wise) crossing the Pine Indian reservations (yes, no cell service, I guess they still use smoke signals) ;-)

2). May 31 ... Epic failure on pressing on the SE CO from Oklahoma. Left OKC at 11 AM instead of 9 AM like I should have (thanks to seeing ET) and turning around west of Woodward (half-way there). In Campo, CO the rest is history (what I missed).

3). May 21 ... Stuck for neary an hour and a half between two massive road closures heading north out of NE CO on 385 due to construction. I'll never think of a pilot car the same way again. Still, never would have made the storms in East-Central WY (mildly tornadic).

 

[Tyler Burg]

-June 17 - easily number one bust for me. Drove from Omaha up to my parents house near the twin cities the night before (should have chased in SD instead). See that the models are on crack at 00z and go to bed thinking I'll end up in IA. End up driving to extreme SW Minnesota to where the "dryline" was literally on the SD border. Of course as everyone knows storms fired well east of there, I didn't have data besides radar on my phone, figured the east crap was elevated... nope. Once I hear its tornado warned I hop on I90 and blast east from Worthington, for some reason I thought Iowa might do something and exited south into IA. Bad Idea. Could have easily made it for the Albert Lea wedge had I continued on 90. What made things worse was that I passed Brandon Sullivan on 59 and he ended up getting all those tornadoes. Bad, bad day. It will haunt me for a long time.

Thats really the only bad bust I've had all year, besides the "Days you should have chased" busts like 4/22, 5/22, 5/24, 6/16, although I had to work on 5/22, I should have called in lol. Other crappy days would include:

April 5, 6, 23 were all pretty crappy, still did see tornado warned storms each of those days though. June 18th was a dumb day to chase... Iowa. Uhh June 22 in Nebraska, but it was really local so wasn't too bad. Granted people got tornadoes in Iowa that day, but it was after sunset, I wasn't too upset lol.

-July 14 was really gay, was about 5 minutes late to leave and missed the northfield tornadoes, then of course on my way back home the timing belt in my car breaks. End up sitting on the side of the road for 3 hours in 93/81 with no A/c waiting for a tow. Thought that ended my season but did get a MN tornado on August 12.

Overall a very satisfying year, success to fail ratio wise. Next year should be even better without a Job in the spring!

 

[Marcus Diaz]

March 8 - Decided to stay in the TX and OK panhandle for that cold core setup. I even targeted Sayre, OK the day before but had a change in plans.

May 10 - Did nearly a huge 1,300 mile circle (from Shamrock, TX - Liberal, KS - Wichita, KS - OKC - Amarillo) and was only in a bunch of rain. Did get to see some of the damage down I-35 on the way back. I had targeted Perry, OK the night before.

May 31 - Didn't think the storm in CO was going to last that long, so I stayed home. I could've easily have jetted up there in time to catch the glorious Campo tornado, but we stuck it close to home.

 

[Paul Sherman]

Joining in the May 22nd to May 24th Timeframe for Epic Busts here as well.

1st Mistake was getting suckered onto some LP Supercells in the Texas Panhandle on the 21st and then gambling that the risk area for the next day would be N Central Kansas up into C North Nebraska. Woke up the next day with the Slight (How in the hell was Bowdle only a Slight) being shifted much further North from SPC. Went with it anyway and just had a driving day, getting to the Hotel in Nebraska watching TWC Then had me kicking things in the room.

May 23rd was annoying as well, Target of W Central Kansas and somehow missed the Tornadoes on that day as well, was on the best looking storm with the rest of Vortex2 but it could just not get it done, final insult was when we went for the Storm west of Colby just before Sunset that produced and had our journey ruined by a Cement Mixer truck that was overturned blocking both lanes on our route to I-70.

May 24th - Short story was suckered into the Line near ScottsBluff Nebraska and gave up on the 70+ mph Storm motions.

But in Storm Chasing you always get chances to redeem yourself and May 25 then produced the Tornado of the day near Walsh (CO) Followed by Campo 6 days later, and days earlier we scored 7 Tornadoes on the 18th and 19th May. Everything seems to balance out in the end.

Paul Sherman

 

[Jason Boggs]

Really. my only bust of 2010 was on May 23rd. I targeted Liberal, KS on this day, and multiple tornadoes developed in the NW TX Panhandle near Texline.

Here is some video from a local chaser: VIDEO