Boy does this look familiar!

You will never convince me that you can predict how a tornado season is going to go. I am not worried at all. It's only early April. Every year people complain about it being a slow year. In 2004 there was a thread on here about how bad the season was. Then May 12th hit and over the next 30 days we got five major tornado days that all had cyclic tornadic supercells. It ended up probably being the best year for chasing in the last decade.
If we get to June and still haven't had a couple good chase days, then I'll start to worry. Until then, nobody knows what is going to happen and the season still has the potential to go either way.
 
By the end of May/early June, in most years you can see a reasonable number of tornado reports by then, even in the 'quieter' years. Thus, I would expect a reasonable number of reports to come in between now and then! The CPC forecasts suggest a wetter than average May in quite a bit of the Plains - as Mikey says, you can't judge a season by how it starts, although of course the further you go into it, you can at least pick up a flavour! However, it only needs a few good days when you take you chasecation to make it a classic year! Hopefully starting on May 17 this year!
 
Joerg Kudella said:
Man, that will never happen, because +384 is like starring into a crystal ball. You can´t even say, wether the next 7 days weather will develop as predicted.

I´m also kind of getting nervous know, because our trip starts in 12 days. But I have every confidence in a good chasecation this year. You should too:D
Click to expand...

Hi Joerg!

I really hope so! I also hope to meet you under the meso!:rolleyes:
 
The main story in local paper for Joplin, MO this Tuesday morning has an article titled "Cold slows the start of twister season." I read it, nothing to profound in it. Being an amateur, I told my wife last week this weather pattern in southern MO resembles late summer time, but without the heat. Meaning all the storm systems seem to be in the northern plains. Link to Joplin Globe article: http://www.joplinglobe.com
 
4/13/10 ND, SD, & NE Severe storms

I'm wondering why no one has commented on today's ND/SD RUC?
What is not to like?
I am a newbie; so explain please?
Mods: Can you remove this and start another thread?
 

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CHris Whitehead said:
...thats classic NW flow setup with ~40kts of shear at 500mb. Ill take that any day. If we can just get the moisture in place man your looking at epic NW flow setups.
Click to expand...

And then you look at the corresponding 850 mb chart for that time period.

http://www.nco.ncep.noaa.gov/pmb/nwprod/analysis/namer/gfs/00/images/gfs_850_384l.gif

Not a classic NW flow regime, but a classic rush of Canadian air regime with unseasonably cold air across almost the entire continental U.S.

In fairness to the GFS though, it's completely all over the place still and this morning's run does not resemble last night's in any way.

Rob - not many chasers in North Dakota, or many others that are willing to go to North Dakota for a largely marginal day at this point in the year. Aside from immediately ahead of the surface low dew points are in the 40s along the dryline, netting temp/dewpoints spreads of nearly 40 degrees. That won't cut it for tornadoes. Then where you do have smaller spreads near the surface low in North Dakota you've got almost southerly flow at the 500mb level which is likely going to result in linear storm modes, likely in the form of small line segments.
 
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CHris Whitehead said:
Dude look at that graphic over the Plains...thats classic NW flow setup with ~40kts of shear at 500mb. Ill take that any day. If we can just get the moisture in place man your looking at epic NW flow setups. Sometimes I like NW flow setups better then your classic SW flow tornado setups.
Click to expand...

Hi Chris!

For me it would be the first time chasing with NW flow, I always chased in setup with SW flow.

I know the NW flow at high altitude because in northern Italy it can often give good chasing conditions.

Thank you for your inspiration!;)
 
Mikey Gribble said:
You will never convince me that you can predict how a tornado season is going to go. I am not worried at all. It's only early April. Every year people complain about it being a slow year. In 2004 there was a thread on here about how bad the season was. Then May 12th hit and over the next 30 days we got five major tornado days that all had cyclic tornadic supercells. It ended up probably being the best year for chasing in the last decade.
Click to expand...


Heck you can start it on May10th. The tornado machine near Limon.
http://www.spc.ncep.noaa.gov/climo/reports/040510_rpts.html

Some 30 year vets I believe called it the best year to chase(pretty sure Jim Leonard did). There was something on the crazy side almost each of those days between May 10 and June 13. Damn it now I'm motivated to make a page dedicated to it, linking to as many chaser accounts as I could. Just a big fat spoiler season. Most crazy part was pretty much all of them were slow movers and in the plains.

May 10 Colorado Limon tornadofest
May 12 SC Kansas/Attica amazing tornadic sup
May 16 tornadoes in NE
May 19 ND tornadoes
May 21 tornadoes in IA including a massive mile wide wedge
May 22 big tornado outbreak including Hallam NE
May 24 sc NE/nc KS sup produces like 15 tornadoes(another one in nw MO I think)
May 28 crazy storm in ne NE(not a heck of a lot chased that day) and tornadoes in se SD
May 29 big tornado outbreak
May 30 big tornado outbreak to the east
June 6 ND tornadoes
June 10 Big Springs NE tornadic sup and later sc NE twilight tornado and sup
June 11 small outbreak in nw IA(Samaras tornado probe video)
June 12 bust in NE...Mulvane tornado in KS
June 13 crazy looking tornadic sup near Lincoln NE
July 7 nw flow produces a small tornado outbreak in nc KS
July 12 Bartlett NE tornadoes
July 13 Roanoke IL tornado

That is just listing some of the bigger ones I can think of. Looking at storm reports between those there are a lot of other storm days and even tornado days on the plains. That is just a silly period that I think is going to be real hard to top. To have so many big chaser days with so VERY few days of nothing, well would be nice again! Jinx.
 
Mike Hollingshead said:
Heck you can start it on May10th. The tornado machine near Limon.
http://www.spc.ncep.noaa.gov/climo/reports/040510_rpts.html

Some 30 year vets I believe called it the best year to chase(pretty sure Jim Leonard did).
Click to expand...

Great news (sarcasm) so I started my chase career on the best year ever and then I got hooked ? I could have quit in 2004 and have basically had a very high tornadoes/mile ratio. Instead year after year, I add mile after tornado-free mile.

--
Tom
 
tom hanlon said:
I could have quit in 2004 and have basically had a very high tornadoes/mile ratio. Instead year after year, I add mile after tornado-free mile.
Click to expand...

This is starting to get a bit off-topic, so maybe we'll start a 'stats' thread. But anyways, since you mentioned tornadoes per mile, I figured I'd include my "stats" below to show how hit and miss chasing has been for me. There are two years that stand out -- 2004 and 2007 -- in terms of awesome years, and the rest are either okay or bad (2002, 2006, etc.). Unfortunately, we can only chase each day once, and there were some very good days in 2005, 2006, etc. Heck, even though my "stats" for 2009 weren't very good, I'm extremely pleased to have seen the 6/5/09 Goshen Co tornado and the 6/17/09 Aurora, NE, tornado (and the late April 09 Roll, OK, tornado was pretty awesome as well). In terms of my memories of 2009, it probably helps that my two best chase days occurred near the end of my "chasing year", so at least my last impressions of 2009 were pretty good.


Code: 
[FONT=Courier New]Year   Tors   Tor. Days  Chase Days  Total Mileage  Miles/Tornado                 
[URL="http://tornadocentral.com/chasing/pre2002.php"]1999[/URL][/FONT] [FONT=Courier New]    5        1          3           1200         240
[URL="http://tornadocentral.com/chasing/pre2002.php"]2000[/URL][/FONT] [FONT=Courier New]    1        1          4           1500        1500
[URL="http://tornadocentral.com/chasing/pre2002.php"]2001[/URL][/FONT] [FONT=Courier New]    1        1          5           [/FONT][FONT=Courier New]2000        2000
[URL="http://tornadocentral.com/chasing/2002.php"]2002[/URL][/FONT] [FONT=Courier New]    0        0          9        [/FONT][FONT=Courier New]   3200           ∞
[URL="http://tornadocentral.com/chasing/2003.php"]2003[/URL][/FONT] [FONT=Courier New]    7        3         10        [/FONT][FONT=Courier New]   4700         671
[URL="http://tornadocentral.com/chasing/2004.php"]2004[/URL][/FONT] [FONT=Courier New]   22        7         13           6600         300
[URL="http://tornadocentral.com/chasing/2005.php"]2005[/URL][/FONT] [FONT=Courier New]    3        3         18           8380        2790
[URL="http://tornadocentral.com/chasing/2006.php"]2006[/URL][/FONT] [FONT=Courier New]    3        2         20           8480        2827
[URL="http://tornadocentral.com/chasing/2007.php"]2007[/URL][/FONT] [FONT=Courier New]   21        4         23          10518         501
[URL="http://tornadocentral.com/chasing/2008.php"]2008[/URL][/FONT] [FONT=Courier New]    7        3         21           8567        1224     
[URL="http://tornadocentral.com/chasing/2009.php"]2009[/URL][/FONT] [FONT=Courier New]    5        4         37          16350        3270
TOTAL   75       29        160          71495         953[/FONT]
 
boy, all I can see is "death ridge" open end. GFS gives no hint at all in any other direction at the time being. Luckily we have some time left, until GFS and ECMFW get close to being reliable for the 25th of April. I will take a closer look on Wednesday next week. By then I will decide wether to get concerned or not:mad:
 
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