Blowing it during big outbreaks

[Chris Nuttall]

October 9, 2001: Biggest October outbreak in Oklahoma history. Wedgefest in western Oklahoma including the F3 that hit Cordell and a very photogenic tornado that tons of people saw near Foss Reservoir. I targeted Seiling, and was way too far north. I was never able to get far enough south before dark.

 

[Chris Vagasky]

4/24/06

Not so much a big outbreak, but I missed the El Reno tornadoes that day.

I was told to head towards Deer Creek. I thought the city instead of the development. Made it to Edmond and heard about the tornado on the ground in El Reno.

Took off down the turnpike at 80 or 90, but missed it.

 

[Shane Adams]

May 22, 2004 - Target was Fairmont, NE. Sat there for over three hours, waiting. Freaked out when storms fired earlier to the west and northeast, and thought I would miss the outbreak sitting on my arse, so I bailed out and raced west to meet the dryline storms...which died just after we arrived. The storm which produced the Hallam tornado developed 20 miles south of Fairmont, about an hour after we left.

May 24, 2004 - After vowing not to repeat my mistake from two days earlier, I did it again.....except after nailing the eastern target on this day, our chase was thwarted by the Mississippi river, which forced us to abandon our storm just a half hour before it started producing tornadoes in Missouri. By the time we got back west to the dryline, the tornadofest out there was ending. Not my greatest two days of chasing.

June 12, 2005 - Spent the night in Shamrock, TX. Woke up and went to the Best Western to do a morning forecast/analysis. Ran into too many other chasers and opinions, and could never decide on a game plan. Kept chasing in circles, as every storm that developed would crap out as we got to it, all the while we were being suckered further and further from home. The storm where we finally said "screw it, we're not falling for this again"?.....the big one that went nuts.

 

[Jay McCoy]

Easy....

May 15th 2003. Texas panhandles biggest tornado outbreak. I and the team set up in Vega on I-40 near the dryline and south of the warm front waiting. I had no idea a warm toungue had moved up towards Dalhart so we sat there all afternoon while others videotaped a number of multiple vortex monsters near Stratford. We finally had some cells blow up and move towards Shamrock but it was too dark to catch anything so scored a big gooseegg in my backyard on our biggest day ever. I still catch hell about that day from Kanani and the gang.

 

[Linda Kitchen]

For Kathy and I it was the Spencer S.D. storm, May 30,1998. We woke up in Ogallala, Nebraska and picked the target of Sioux Falls, S.D. We blasted across the state and made it there. We stopped in a Best Western and watched the weather channel to get radar. We have a very hard time waiting and when we saw a cell up in De Smet we decided to go for it. The De Smet storm was intense but no tornado for us. We headed back to I29 and headed south. We pulled into a hotel to get a room and everyone was in the lobby. They were under a tornado warning. We couldn't believe it when we turned on the news and heard about the Spencer tornado. Our original target was slightly west of Souix Falls. We actually do alot better when were running late! Now with radar in the car we wouldn't have missed it.

 

[Jason Boggs]

Easy....

May 15th 2003. Texas panhandles biggest tornado outbreak. I and the team set up in Vega on I-40 near the dryline and south of the warm front waiting. I had no idea a warm toungue had moved up towards Dalhart so we sat there all afternoon while others videotaped a number of multiple vortex monsters near Stratford. We finally had some cells blow up and move towards Shamrock but it was too dark to catch anything so scored a big gooseegg in my backyard on our biggest day ever. I still catch hell about that day from Kanani and the gang.

DITTO this one. I sat west of Canyon, TX and also heard of the big wedge near Stratford. Like Jay, I made it to Shamrock, but it was way too late.

Also May 29th 2001 was a bad day for me. I was on the cell early on that produced the wedge near White Deer. Thing is, I got off that one and went south to a very nice storm while the initial cell I was on was producing the monster tornado. Did the southern cell produce a tornado? Well, of course not.

 

[jshields]

mine was the tornado outbreak last may 22nd and may 23rd in kansas. on the first day i arrived a little late to kansas so i was only able to intercept the collyer, ks storm. this was the storm with the amazing inflow, and that there are so many amazing videos of. i waited at the interstate for it to cross and it had weakened at that point. i don't believe there were any big tornadoes with it, but several smaller ones south of the interstate. i also missed the wakeeney tornado that evening right before dark.
but the biggest disappointment/aggravation came on the 2nd day. i waited in wakeeney for initiation, etc and just when i was ready to take off, i blew a fuse so i didn't have any computer access/internet. well my computer wouldn't have lasted that long without a power source i should say! i went into town and had to go to 2 or 3 different places to get the right size fuse. it's amazing how hard it can be to find a store in such a small town!! this little delay seemed to put me behind the rest of the day. well eventually, i ended up on some dirt roads south of the interstate on my way to try and meet the storm that later became the first quinter tornado. as many of you remember there was a lot of rain from the day before so the gravel(mud) roads were horrible. as i drove further west and the roads became more soupy, i decided to try and get back to the interstate. i didn't have gps/mapping software so the road i found back only led me UNDER the interstate, where eventually i ended up stuck in a driveway that led to some farm buidings but no farm house where anyone lived. this was only about 10 miles straight east down the interstate from quinter. also even though i was only couple hundred yards from the interstate i had no cell phone service therefore no internet/radar. i knew a big storm was approaching to the west bc the inflow winds again were screaming like crazy and it was very dark so for all i knew a tornado could have been heading right for me. well after an agonizing 40-45 minutes i finally got myself out by using some wooden fencing that was leaning up against a shed for traction! this came only after i was going to try to use a tractor that was parked right in front of me to tow myself out. nevermind the fact that i have never driven a tractor before and it ended up not having any keys in it anyways finally, i made it to quinter, but didn't know at that time a tornado had already crossed the interstate. i stopped there long enough to get a drink, before heading back east towards wakeeney again. for some reason my internet wasn't working still so this was another mistake as the 2nd quinter storm was coming. in fact i believe the tornado warning came out about 10 minutes after i left town. i almost turned back when i heard my weather radio go off, but i had heard about a big storm that was heading towards ness city, so that was my target now. i actually made it there in time, and set up just south of ness city. well nothing was on the ground as it went through town and i let it go by so i could take some pics, etc. next thing i know is there is a report of a tornado on the ground north of there about 15 miles near ransom and brownell, ks heading towards cedar bluff state park. i tried to catch up again and it was near brownell where i ran into the tiv crew and since they weren't chasing after the storm i figured a tornado wasn't on the ground anymore. in fact there still was, and this storm went through ellis, ks. at this point it was near dark, my day was a complete disaster, and i still had to drive all the way back to omaha that night sorry so long, this day still gets my blood boiling!!

 

[Kevin Walters]

Missed the Waterloo, Iowa area tornadoes of May 2000. My son had a track meet in Eldora about 50 miles SW of Waterloo. I did get some nice shots of the supercell, it was quite impressive.

 

[Steve Miller]

Tim, I'm a little late to this thread but 10/4/98 was one of the better experiences of my chase "career". We were able to sit on Richmond Hill in N. Stillwater and watch a beautiful tornado cross the county. The only other chaser I know of who shot that storm is Shane Adams.
Funny how one person's defeat can be such a memorable experience to someone else.
Happens all the time!

 

[Rob Satkus]

For me it is April 26, 1991. I was all set to go out with my usual chase gang but a friend of mine really wanted to go with and we didn't have room for him, so he volunteered to drive his brand new truck... red flag #1...he and I rode together while the other guys took off. We got on a nice Lp-ish storm near Burlington in northern Ok....this may have eventually become the Andover storm, but I am not positive. Anyway, just when things were looking good, he announced he wasn't going into Kansas...WTF? I guess he had a warrant out or something, but no matter, back to our south the eventual Red Rock storm was blowing up. Ok, no problem, we headed after that and in trying get in position we ran into part of the core with nickel hail...remember this was a new truck...so he promptly pulled into an abandoned barn to wait out the hail. No matter how much I tried to convince him we needed to get out ahead of the storm, he wouldn't budge until he was sure the hail was all gone. So we were pretty much behind everything the rest of the day..we did get a brief , hazy, distant glimpse of the tornado near Enid and may have even been caught up in the developing circulation of the eventual Red Rock monster, but that was of little consolation.
In his defense he made up for it on May 16th, 1991, driving thru hail cores with golfballs, which scored us several tornadoes near Wichita that day.

Rob

 

[John MacKay]

One unique story.

May 29, 2004 - Setup for story, my car was in the shop, and I was driving my dad's car to a 2nd cousin's wedding in Conway Springs, KS, and my dad told me to avoid hail. Checking the weather radio every 30 mins after 4 PM, finally get a severe thunderstorm warning for E. Barber and Harper counties. Big mistake, statement said Attica, for some reason I was thinking the geographical position of Anthony, which would have meant I needed to get my butt out of there (especially with baseball size hail). Turned out, all I needed to do was drive 5 miles south on KS 49, and I would have seen the first tornadoes of my life.

Later, storm was tracking towards my former hometown and parents' place in Douglass, KS. I drove the same car down south to Winfield to wait on the storm to pass (it was 10 PM at this time), but had to go back north after 30 minutes because of new storms coming in from OK. Both storms weakened before driving back into Douglass.

This, though, gave me the ability to learn from my mistakes, and I did two weeks later, where the second tornado I saw in my life was the Mulvane tornado. Again, I came from another 2nd cousin's wedding, this time in downtown Wichita.

The ones I have from April 21, 2005, March 12, 2006, and April 6, 2006 were not in a specific target area, and the story isn't as good on any of them.

 

[Glenn Dixon]

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

Funny you should bring up that date. The wife and I were talking with a friend at the coffee shop about that day just this last Friday. We were relatively new to chasing at the time with just one tornado under our belt. We were chasing with someone else (who was in another vehicle) and were out west of OKC. While waiting for something to fire up in our vicinity storms became TOR warned just north and south of us. I had basically no forecasting skills so when our chase partner explained all these great reasons to stay where we were I had no way to argue the point. But my first instinct was to drop south to a storm that was, in fact, actually in existence! (and rotating enough for a warning) But it would have been rude and potentially confrontative so I didn't. And on a day referred to as an 'outbreak' we saw nothing.

The lesson I learned was one of independence. This is why I don't ride along with other chasers (at least not inside their vehicle). If I bust, I want to do it by myself with no one else to blame. If someone else is around and influencing my decisions I will most likely later blame them for any bad results, and this can potentially damage relationships. Plus I won't learn the appropriate lesson regarding decisions in the field. It will always be that 'other guy's' fault.

Speaking of blowing it all by myself, someone else mentioned May 17, 2000 (I think) - Brady, NE. I got separated from some fellow chasers that had good data (Jeff Piotriowski and Blair Kooistra) when I had to backtrack to retrieve a tripod I had left on the side of the road. They were gone when I got back but I did manage to find the cell they were tracking. It didn't seem to be doing anything spectacular and after about 20-30 minutes of following it I gave up and went for some other cell elsewhere. The one I left produced the Brady tornado.

I had to drive all the way back to Texas kicking myself for that miss.

 

[Derrick Herndon]

I made a similar mistake. However I was positioned to the East near Atlantic. This was my first time chasing in the Plains. All of my chasing up that point had been in the SE and WI/IL (chasing since 1988, with an 8 year break while in the Navy). So I positioned myself closer to the juice just across the NE border in IA. Once I saw the development back towards Fremont, NE I jumped on that cell. To be sure this was a nice storm with a good wall cloud and a meso. Another meso developed behind this one and I watched as the first fujiwara'd into the second. Saw the largest hail of my life up that point too, about 2 inch diameter. As the hail hit I was able to take shelter under a shed with my car (a very nice farmer who was also pulling a car in let me join him). After this event and looking back through the data I learned I needed to be on the Western edge of my composite bullseye. I thought the storms would come to me, and they did, but I was too far East. I know now that the dryline/warm front intersection is a good place to be given the right storm motions. I saw the Hallum cell near Omaha but the show was over by then. I also learned that SPC has an eastern bias with their outlooks, likely due to the models. So now I target more West unless I have a very good reason not to.

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.

 

[Scott Hammel]

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.

This day will haunt me for years to come I'm sure. I wish I could say we missed it because we got stuck in the mud but it was just a flat out bad forecast on my part. I was convinced nothing would happen on those cells until they were north of I-70. Whoops. By the time we got down to Quinter we missed the second tornado by about 15 minutes. Needless to say it was a good learning day for me.

 

[William Reid]

I think I could list a horror story for each year since 1994. Here are a handful of disasters:

June 2, 1995: began chase in Amarillo, wasn't patient and went after first cell in northeast NM, missed Friona and Dimmitt.

June 8, 1995: was in Amarillo on the 7th, chased up into northeast CO on 7th, got out of Fort Morgan too late on the 8th (target area had shifted from W KS to the TX PH) and missed Pampa and Kellerville and Allison.

May 30, 1996: Left Amarillo about an hour too late and missed the Elba, CO, tornado.

May 3, 1999: chased W TX from April 28 to May 1 and drove back home to L.A. on the 2nd! We stopped for gas near Palm Springs on the evening of the 2nd and the winds were howling. I told Charlie: "Tomorrow's going to be a big day on the Plains."

May 7, 2002: I dread to even think about this day. Sat in the Hutchinson, KS library, with the triple point staring me in the face (out west near Greensburg). I favored the warm front near Great Bend, and was late for the show. Got into Pratt at night to get rooms and was nearly run over by a tornado as we were checking in ---- the hail got huge, the lights went out, the winds started screaming....

May 4, 2003: This one still hurts. Sat near Denton or Decatur in north TX and watched a tower fizzle and now have to watch the Girard, KS tornado every ten minutes on TWC.

May 15, 2003: played the southern game and was in perfect position on the Shamrock storm. At night. And in the dust. Missed the wedge(s) in the northern Panhandle.

May 4, 2007: marginal incompetence (chased the daytime cell north of I-70)
May 5, 2007: general incompetence (targetted southern NE)

June 23, 2007: Left Scottsbluff at 7 a.m. and wound up about 45 minutes too late to reach the southern Manitoba tornadofest. We lost 45 minutes at a road construction stop and at the international border.

May 10, 2008: Near-perfect forecast and chase strategy and positioning to reach Picher, OK, just prior to the tornado...the road south out of Columbus, KS, to Baxter Springs and Picher was closed. Game over.