Biggest dissapointment in 2004?

[Andrew Pritchard]

I wanna add another one...but im not addig it to my original post. Skip's long bust reminded me of May 29th. I was in Wisconsin that day...and my chase partner, Dave bellmore and I decided to head to the Iowa/Nebraska area for a high risk chase. Left at about noon for Omaha. To make a long story short, we didnt see anything. We got there after dark, and there wasnt even anything there. So...we turned around and drove all the way back to Wisconsin. The thing is...half the LONG drive is hills and trees...so, you cant go more than 20-30 mph. ALSO...the thing about wisconsin is...the deer. You cant drive fast, or your going to get a deer plastered to your hood. In total on our drive back...we saw 57 deer. We never stopped because we were both determined to get back home...and did so around 5 am.. Nothing like chasing, spendig 17 hours STRAIGHT in the car...not seeing a thing, and not getting back until the sun is freakin rising the next day. :roll:

 

[Andrea Griffa]

Missed Attica and Harper tornado on 12 may!
The day before I was in South Dakota and saw a very nice bow echo, but on 12 may I arrived in Kansas a bit late( 1 hour in late) after I think nearly 1000km and I lost all tornadoes of Harper county, but I could see the beautiful meso with lightings during the night :wink:

 

[Bill Tabor]

I'd have to say my biggest disappointment for 2004 was that I chose to not chase some of the bigger events even though I forecasted them well.

Why? Hell I don't know. Some crap about balance in my life or something. Apparently balance is the bullshi~t that keeps you from getting to the storm! LOL!

In keeping with my track record, most of the supercells I go to don't produce good photogenic tornadoes it seems. I pound these things time after time, and the wierdest things happen. Of course the events I chose not to go after were the better photogenic ones. Sometimes it seems as if I am cursed.

There were some issues though. There always is. On the Sapulpa tornado, there was no place to pull off. The thing had just started producing but didn't stay down long. I saw it but by the time I got my cam on it, and the damn thing malfunctioned it killed my shot. This isn't the first time this has happened to me. (I remember Caldwell Tx back in '95 was it - just as I was shooting the torn - time to replace the camera.).

The day of Mulvane I couldn't get internet data in Kansas so most of the day I had no idea what was going on. So I showed up late.

I got Calumet, but picked the wrong side of town. I thought it was headed straight for the town and was about to eat it. Instead the tornadic portion passed just to the north of town. Of course, had I been on the storm just north of Calument, I would have gotten the tornado producing wonder on the Kansas border. However that day I had pulled the antenna out of my cell phone so no data to figure out what to do. I was just going full visual and based off an older forecast.

This is the short list, and maybe you just shouldn't bring it up - LOL!

I did see some cool things and some great storms though. How could I complain? You get what you give I suppose, and this last season I no doubt pulled back.

What does the 2005 season hold for me? Hard to say, but I'm tempted to not hold back since this burned me so bad last season. However Murphy's Law rules in my life it seems at times. If I choose to go all out then it will be a non-tornado producing year. The only reason the rest of you got any tornadoes last season is because I didn't chase some of the events so Ma Nature just let all Hell break loose, and it may break all records now.

 

[Bill Tabor]

I got Calumet, but picked the wrong side of town. I thought it was headed straight for the town and was about to eat it. Instead the tornadic portion passed just to the north of town. Of course, had I been on the storm just north of Calument, I would have gotten the tornado producing wonder on the Kansas border.

Re-reading this post I should clarify. I was able to shoot the Calumet tornado, but it wasn't the up front and personal footage I would have liked to have had. I believe I have some of the footage of the tornado leaving Geary to Calument's west, but from my angle with the inflow blowing so hard a lot of this was obscured by dust. I should have gone to a position between Calument and Geary on the road connecting them as the tornado was inbound. Did anyone else get this position? If so I'd like to know how it turned out. I know a lot of chasers got on the north side of Calument, but most were probably after I had already set up on the southwest outskirts of town. They may have missed the Geary action.

Also, when I refer to the storm north of Calumet I mean a different storm that I believe started near Attica near the KS border and went to Harper, etc putting down tornado after tornado. I know Gene Moore captured all of those tornadoes including the Harper night F4 well.

 

[Scott A. Kampas]

Let's see, where to start? I had a pretty good year, but there are several things stung too...

The worst was leaving too early and not getting a chance to do a proper forecast on Jul 13th in IL, thinking I had to get on storms that had fired early in the morning before it morphed into a derehco. I had data and nowcaster problems after I left and fooled around with warned storms away from the Woodford County storm for too long before realizing that was the area to be and missing the extraordinarily rare July violent photogenic tornado by mere miles and less than 10 minutes.

Also, ignoring my instinct and jumping the gun in leaving the Lincoln area for storms to the north on May 22nd... On May 24th, just barely not getting back in time from the east (made last minute decision to chase IL on the 23rd)... With Blake Naftel on June 13th, staying overnight in the town near where Mike Hollingshead saw this (congrats! btw) and unable to stay due to committments at home for both of us (not that we knew it would be THAT good)...

Scott

 

[Craig Maire II]

My biggest dissapontment in 2004!

My biggest dissapointment/bust this year was shared with many other chasers on May 19th in southwest Iowa. The day started out looking decent with a moderate risk having been issued for western Iowa and with the most favorable conditions being in southwest Iowa. By the afternoon I was in a library looking at computer models surrounded by other chasers who were just as excited as I. By mid afternoon a tornado watch had been issued and a statement was issued by the Desmoines weather service office stating that during the next few hours there would be a heightend risk of DAMAGING tornados in our area-NEVER HAPPENED! Storms tried there best to fire in our area but would build up to 20,000 or 30,000 ft and then would quickly die! While up in northwest and northcentral Iowa an elevated supercell was causing much havoc in the form of LARGE hail. To make a long story short, I didn't see diddley squat on this chase day but on the bright side did atleast meet a number of other chasers and made some new friends.