Blowing it during big outbreaks

[Tim Vasquez]

How about some stories of defeat: when you made it to a well-known tornado outbreak target in plenty of time but came away empty-handed; not even a visual sighting. Perhaps you got on the wrong storm or thought that big tornadic Cb was just a turkey tower and decided to hit the Chinese restaurant.

I'll start with my own bookmark in this subject area: October 4, 1998. Shannon and I ended up somewhere near Enid, and by the time we were able to see what was going on there were 3 or 4 cores between us and the tornadofest on the tail end. We got as far as Hennessey or Dover through massive rain cores and decided to call it a day. As I recall there was a lot of haze and we were going without any data or radios, so... I think if we had driven to the target from the south (paralleling the boundary) rather than the east we would have been more aware of what was going on.

Tim

 

[Danny Neal]

May 30th, 2004 - Sat in El Paso, Illinois, all day. Got baited by an isolated supercell in EC IL. Left for it and 45 minutes later a supercell developed and dropped a very photogenic tube 4 miles west of where I had been sitting. I came away with great structure from the other storm, but missed the awesome tornado in the exact town I targeted! Live and learn!

 

[Elinor McLennon]

It hurts but I'm willing to admit to my moment of defeat. May 3rd, 1999, OKC. Remember the forecast that day was for about a 20% chance of rain9if memory serves me correctly).
It was my first time to chase. I have an obsession, passion, an inner calling for severe weather and I was sick and tired of watching it on tv!. So I grabbed my husband, a camera and headed to chase the storm as it left Moore, not a clue what I was doing but determined not to miss out. The hail was enormous, my husband whimpered like a kid and all I saw that day was the storm from the north and totally wrecked the vehicle with hail!!! 66 tornadoes that day and I missed them all!!!! Don't think anyone can beat that But, I vowed to never sit at home again and weather watch on the couch!!!!

 

[Jason McKittrick]

May 22, 2004, targeted York, NE arrived early afternoon full of anticipation. Got a little over excited I suppose and jumped on the warm front action along the Platte River. By the time we realized the monstrosity that had developed SW of Hallam it was too late. We wound up watching the storm from SE of Hallam after dark. Still trying to learn not to jump of the first storm that forms.

 

[Skip Talbot]

I had a lot of these moments before I had mobile data:

May 10, 2003 - 35% hatched tornado risk across IL during the "10 days of May." Left late, and intercepted after dark. Went past a monster supercell that dropped a big tube in South Pekin, IL, and wound up driving into the core of a tornado warned left split to the north. Didn't see any tornadoes that day.

May 30, 2004 - Danny was closer than me to that beautiful Secor, IL rope. I wound up near Vandalia, on a left split again and saw nothing. Without radar and poor visibility, you can't tell you are on a left split.

 

[Scott Weberpal]

May 4/8, 2003 - May 4th was near KC but couldn't get in position to visually see the tornadoes on the west side of the city. May 8 was among the many who were in great position to catch the Lawrence tornado but the storm literally evaporated in a matter of minutes. Missing those 2 days was a huge downer, however, May 10 certainly made up for it.

May 12, 2004 - Ended up on the north storm completely blind to the south storm (Attica/Harper) and missing all but a distant view of the first small tornado with the north storm. I wasn't all that upset after a 6 tornado day 2 days earlier near Limon, CO.

May 11, 2000 - Ended up on the Waterloo storm (a bit late) but couldn't get into position for the tornadoes because we tried to come around the back side of the storm (we were north of the storm at initiation) after a radio report said the storm was moving SE...it was moving NE. I've screwed up 3 big days in the Waterloo area (2000, 2004, and 2008).

 

[Chris Gullikson]

May 4/8, 2003 - May 4th was near KC but couldn't get in position to visually see the tornadoes on the west side of the city. May 8 was among the many who were in great position to catch the Lawrence tornado but the storm literally evaporated in a matter of minutes. Missing those 2 days was a huge downer, however, May 10 certainly made up for it.

May 11, 2000 - Ended up on the Waterloo storm (a bit late) but couldn't get into position for the tornadoes because we tried to come around the back side of the storm (we were north of the storm at initiation) after a radio report said the storm was moving SE...it was moving NE. I've screwed up 3 big days in the Waterloo area (2000, 2004, and 2008).

Ditto on those 3 events and I need to add the 5-17-2000 Brady Nebraska tornado. I was on the storm early but left it due to its NW motion.

LOL on that Lawrence tornado, drove to the east side of town fully expecting to see a tornado to the west but the storm just evaporated into a clear blue sky. Amazing...

 

[Adam Lucio]

May 10th 2008 is the biggest:

After sitting in a rest stop for a couple hours I decided Stuttgart, AR would be a good place to target. We get there and couldnt find a decent bite to eat, so we left...3 hours later an EF-3 makes itself known while we go 4-wheeling on horrible AR backroads.

That was the biggest, there were a couple other big outbreak days where we got on the wrong storm, like May 5th 2007. We stayed on the 1st storm that went up near Pratt, we scored a couple brief tornadoes but obviously missed much bigger and better things going on.

May 23rd 2008 - got stuck in the mud while everyone and their uncles brothers mothers nieces dog watched the show at Quinter...Im still afraid that one day Skip is gonna come after me with a knife for that! We did score near Ellis that day, and I believe near Ness City too, but that one is inconclusive.

You cant win all the time, failure is an important part in developing ones character in this game, if you expect to win everytime your just foolish

 

[afischer]

Wow, plenty for me to choose from especially early in my career... luckily, as noted above, they are often a vital part of the learning process.

- The 1-2 punch of 05/08/03 and 05/10/03. I felt pretty good coming off my first violent tornado day on May 4, but that would change in a hurry.

I initially wanted to play the dryline near Council Grove on May 8, but then moved north along with the lifting (and then stalling) warm front. Of the arc of 5 supes, I observed the northernmost two (extremely sheared) as they flew by me near Paxico and then Silver Lake... and I then zipped in front of the third one between Lawrence and Bonner Springs, but it had dissolved of course. May 10 I chased the middle and then southernmost of the three tornadic storms as they rocketed ENE across northern MO. It was extremely tough, bordering on impossible, to keep up (my starting point was just east of KC!) and I gave up right before the southern one became tornadic near Monroe City. On both of these days I obviously learned a thing or two about setting up downstream with fast storm speeds, especially on days with initially modest low-level shear like May 10.

- 05/12/04 ... not much that needs to be said about this one. I stuck with the northern storms near Pratt/Sawyer/Isabel KS too long, continuously wondering if tail-end charlie to the SSE would disrupt the inflow. This chase stung probably as much as any I've ever had, but witnessing the Alexandria-Daykin-Hallam storm 10 days later helped me get over it.

-11/12/05 ... was all over the future Minburn-Woodward-Luther-Ames-Gilbert-Roland IA storm when it rapidly intensified near I-80. The storm averaged 50mph during its prolifically tornadic phase, on a due northeast heading... a little trigonometry will give you a clue as to how fast you need to drive to keep up. I made one navigational error between Redfield and Minburn, and the rest was history... I never saw a tornado.

 

[Mike Weiss]

May 12, 2004- My partner, Shane Andra and I were targeting Anthony/Conway Springs, KS. We made it all the way to Anthony, before we finally found an internet connection and saw the "Mothership" storm that was over Geary, OK area. We Hotfooted back south and intercepted that storm near Piedmont, OK. It turned into a night time chase up I44 to Kellyville, Sapulpa, Tulsa finally calling it a very late night near Locust Grove, OK. All in all wasn't a total bust as we got a good view of the night time tornado as it went through Kellyville, OK.
It was onlt after we got home and checked the next day did we see the storm report and picture of the nice photogenic wedge near Conway Springs, KS.

I believe the date is correct on this, but as I get older, some dates escape me. If it is not the right date, Please feel free to correct me...

 

[Dean Baron]

May 25th, 2008: Moderate risk with a 15% hatched TOR risk over east central and south central Minnesota. Targeted an area about an hour away from home, storm ended up producing the deadly Hugo, MN EF3 just to the north of where I live. I didn't go after it of course, the storm looked really disorganized when it first developed and then we lost data.

June 5th, 2008: Wasnt really because we made a wrong move, it was just a huge bust. HIGH risk w/ 30% hatched TOR for our target, we didnt chase a single storm the entire day.

 

[nickgrillo]

Two HIGH risk bust days:

• May 30, 2004 (the worst)

Targeted Indianapolis, IN; was less than fifteen minutes late for the (E)F2 tornado. However, I did get a (nocturnal) tornado a couple hours of later near Anderson, IN. Widespread productive tornadic supercells fired in the open warm sector that afternoon.

• June 4, 2005

While the vast majority of chasers busted this day too, I opted to chase the dryline in southcentral KS versus the area further north near the warm front; figuring it would be too cluttered with convection given the stronger deep-layer ascent. Most pulled off on the Hiawatha supercell before it produced, due to it's outflow dominant appearance. I didn't get a single good storm shot besides a rather pretty sunset with decaying updrafts.

 

[Robert Rohloff]

02-05-2008 I thought we would setup east of Little Rock AR in the high risk area. When the storms fired SE I thought no, do not go across the Mississippi. Then the storm back west fired up with the tornado that was on the ground for 123 miles. Of course by the time we got back west it was moving too fast NE and we missed it. I sat us up in the middle to miss everything.......

 

[Dave Kaplow]

May 22, 2004, that one probably hurts the most. We waited and waited and waited for something to pop in the good air where we knew damn well tornados were likely… But nothing did, and meanwhile other chasers were deserting the hotel one by one, until it seemed like we were the only ones left still looking at data. In the end we caved and made a run for the existing stuff coming out of the southwest, which we core-punched at the cost of our windshield - a single huge baseball out of nowhere smacked dead into the driver’s side - only to find we’d missed the photogenic stovepipe by a mere 15 minutes. The storm proceeded to go downhill right after that, and we were left hopelessly out of position for the Hallam storm which blew up right in front of the cell we were on, right smack in the middle of our original target area, naturally.

A huge historic outbreak, and we were right there in the center of it all, but saw only a single brief funnel that likely didn’t touch down all the way, that and a truly amazing lightning display. Our forecasting and strategy can’t really be faulted, it was just dumb bad luck we headed out at the one moment in time that proved to be both a little too late and a little too early. Possibly if we had had access back then to the kind of real-time data everyone takes for granted these days, things might have gone differently... But maybe not, there's no way of knowing. I suspect high-risk day busts will always be a part of chasing, regardless of the available technology.

 

[Tony Laubach]

Two come to mind for different reasons..

May 24, 2004: I think Amos can stand with me on this one. I don't remember how many tornadoes everyone saw, but myself and a small group of us missed them all. In fact, I think we bailed on a storm that later went on to produce a wedge in Missouri. Missed the spouts in northern Kansas by minutes and ended up with nothing to show for it but 1000-plus miles and a bad hotel story in Topeka.

September 16, 2006: Would've made it on time, but an Arby's lunch killed us. We pulled up in time for the last tornado to rope out. Ended up with 1000-plus miles on that venture, too.