Epic Fail Chase wall of shame

[Bob Schafer]

Has nobody mentioned Throckmorton? I felt obliged. How could we forget? There were even T-shirts made afterward: "I busted Throckmorton" LOL. April 7, 2002.

My personal worst was really May 15, 2003, when I was totally ON the storm at initiation, then missed the prize because of stopping for a Coke.

 

[Jay McCoy]

Has nobody mentioned Throckmorton? I felt obliged. How could we forget? There were even T-shirts made afterward: "I busted Throckmorton" LOL. April 7, 2002.

My personal worst was really May 15, 2003, when I was totally ON the storm at initiation, then missed the prize because of stopping for a Coke.

You just had to bring up those dates didnt ya Bob??

Missed the Throckmorton tornado by about 15 minutes and a few other times there. I HATE throckmorton!! My chase partners started calling the mayor of Throckmorton as a running joke.

May 15th, 2003 was a major screwup for me. Sat all afternoon in Vega having no clue storms were going nuts to my north (haze and no data in Vega and its still a data dead zone to this day) and missed all the tornados that day.. a big zero on the panhandles bigest outbreak.

But my worst "bust" came on June 12th,2005. I had targeted Kent county, Tx all day and headed out the door by 11am. I had been a bit sick with a chest cold that week and when I was about 20 miles east of Amarillo I started coughing real bad. One cough I guess was too hard cause I felt a huge sharp pain in my side. I almost blacked out and couldnt breathe. I knew I was in trouble so pulled a uturn and drove back to amarillo and straigh to the ER. After xrays and exams they discoveredd I had broken a rib near my back right where it curves around the side. Needless to say I missed the tornadofest that day but have seen Steve Millers(tx) video showing exactly what I would have shot since it all dropped within miles of my target. I wont even let him show me the video anymore at our annual chase parties. Its too painful and frustrating. That ended my chasing for that year. 6-7 weeks of sleeping in a recliner and very limited activity.

 

[Joe Schaub]

Two weeks ago tonight. I was a mere 15 miles from all the action of the Elmwood/Yates City tornadoes and decided that the sky just didn't look right so I went back home.

I am going to kick my butt for years over this.

 

[Jason Persoff]

Has nobody mentioned Throckmorton? I felt obliged. How could we forget? There were even T-shirts made afterward: "I busted Throckmorton" LOL. April 7, 2002.

Wasn't that also the year for the "Sitka Bust Club"? As I recall, a fair number missed the Sitka tornado (myself included).

 

[Rich Thompson]

Tough to list them all, but two seem to still stand out: 3/13/90 and 5/8/03. I left NSSL around 10:30 am that morning, which was quite early in the days before "routine" 500-1000 mile chases. Anyway, got about an hour north of Weatherford, OK, and watched one storm try several times then tilt over and string out. Another storm went up to its south and seemed to be evolving in the same way, so we blew it off to head south (this became the Wakita tornadic supercell). Visible beneath the anvil of the storm we left (about 40 miles to the N) was the start of the Hesston supercell. On the way back we had a series of mishaps and odd encounters, only to end up stopped by tornado damage along highway 9 in Norman. No, we didn't see the tornado.

The 5/8/03 event was cruel in that we started in Norman and had to be back at midnight for shift. You'd think that would keep us closer to home...but we somehow managed to drive 30 miles NORTH of TOP by about 8 pm! We had effectively made a good forecast (target Emporia), left the target too soon, then drove completely across the HIGH risk and missed everything! The icing on the cake was having to drive across multiple damage paths and slink back into work and have the other forecasters ask how it had turned out for us.

There are many others that are close, like sitting in view of the Brady NE storm 40 minutes before the tornado, only to turn and go southeast where there must have been something better. Still, those two have caused me the most heartburn over the years.

 

[John Farley]

I had an epic fail tonight - not the chasing part, but the video part. Hadn't used the camera in over a month, so guess I was rusty, but no excuse for this! As the storm that produced the flood that shut down all the freeways that go through downtown St. Louis moved in this evening, I positioned myself perfectly and thought I had gotten 10 minutes or so of video of one of the best barrages of close CGs that I have seen this year. When I got home and looked at the video, all I had was 20 or so seconds of mainly the inside of my car. Apparently when I started I had accidentally hit the record button then when I hit it to record, I shut it off. So all I recorded was what I thought was a short break between two periods of recording. At least that is what I THINK happened - but however it happened, I have no video of the CG barrage, nothing but the inside of my car. ARRRGH! I have made these kinds of mistakes before; even failed to capture video of a brief tornado April 23 because I had the camera in photo mode not video mode, but then I redeemed myself by getting video of a second, much better tornado a few minutes later. No redemption tonight, at least on the video side, though I did get a few photos of a nice rainbow at the end of the storm.

 

[cdcollura]

Good day all...

I was going to start another thread based on this (chasing mistakes) for 2012, but I see this one is already there.

As for 2012, my biggest and upmost embarassing mistake was on May 24, 2012 chasing the garbage-vection TOO FAR into Wisconsin (as far as Eau Clair) and ASSUMING May 25 would be a down-day, spending the night in the Madison / Milwaukee area, and planning through Chicago expecting activity to pick up again west after the 26th.

Ofcourse, when I woke up on May 25, central Kansas no longer had a "see text" and a BEAUTIFUL warm-front / dryline setup was in place - 750 Miles away.

This was the BEST day of my 2-week long trip, and I was too far away to do anything about it - Missing the 7 tornadoes (Russell, Lacross, etc). Ofcourse, rushing back out to Nebraska on the 26th yeilded a measly LP and some windmills. Lesson LEARNED and rubbed in HARD.

I remember Doug K saying "Friends don't let Friends chase too far into Wisconsin" ;-)

Any more stories? ... Add 'em...

 

[Andy Jackson]

Good day all...

I was going to start another thread based on this (chasing mistakes) for 2012, but I see this one is already there.

As for 2012, my biggest and upmost embarassing mistake was on May 24, 2012 chasing the garbage-vection TOO FAR into Wisconsin (as far as Eau Clair) and ASSUMING May 25 would be a down-day, spending the night in the Madison / Milwaukee area, and planning through Chicago expecting activity to pick up again west after the 26th.

Ofcourse, when I woke up on May 25, central Kansas no longer had a "see text" and a BEAUTIFUL warm-front / dryline setup was in place - 750 Miles away.

This was the BEST day of my 2-week long trip, and I was too far away to do anything about it - Missing the 7 tornadoes (Russell, Lacross, etc). Ofcourse, rushing back out to Nebraska on the 26th yeilded a measly LP and some windmills. Lesson LEARNED and rubbed in HARD.

I remember Doug K saying "Friends don't let Friends chase too far into Wisconsin" ;-)

Any more stories? ... Add 'em...

The 25th was a bad decision for me too, I was anticipating something down in SE NE models were forecasting an eroding cap an precip in the warm sector. The problem was I had a 10am appointment so I was mentally prepared for not driving 6 hours to the triple point. When I realized the folly of my ways after seeing a stout tower on satellite imagery I knew my goose was cooked.

Go back a little further to April 13th, I drove from the Russel area to the OK/KS border I realized that supercells were ongoing around the OKC area and all other places. If I only would have left an hour or two earlier. That was a hard day to miss.

June 7th was another disappointment, but not as bad. I made a last minute decision to head out the night before because the models were looking pretty good. I ended up targeting the NE CO area and all the while the storm up in Wy was looking pretty good, yet I felt it may not last very long. So right around Sterling I realized it had gone tornado warned, I guess the tornado was on the ground for over an hour. I ended up on a tornado warned storm around Cheyenne but that never produced while I was within decent distance. I did get some ok meso shots but it's still disappointing.
My main lesson learned is be there early so you can make up for any miscalculations. The early bird gets the tube.

 

[Dan Robinson]

Some recent ones:

June 5, 2010 - I was under the tornadic storm's updraft when it first initiated in extreme SE Iowa. It appeared among a solid deck of grungy stratus, and I didn't recognize what it was until it was too far away to catch. I've never seen a storm initiate in that visual environment, so I dismissed the darker areas of stratus. It really didn't look like updraft bases. I headed southwest into NE Missouri where an outflow boundary was sitting, but storms never latched onto it.

May 2, 2012 - I chose to avoid the Louisville metro at all costs due to thinking that the Sherman Minton bridge (the main E-W bridge on I-64) was still closed. Daytime traffic in Louisville was precarious due to that closure, and with rush hour and storm time that day coinciding, I wanted no part of getting stuck in a jam during a tornado outbreak. I didn't realize that the bridge had actually just reopened. Had I known that, I might have likely stayed on I-64 east. Instead, I diverted south of Evansville. I was also reluctant to go too far east due to recovering from hernia surgery less than 2 weeks prior.

I also started swing shifts at work last November (3PM to 11PM), thinking that would be over by March when I'd expected to move to day shift. Well, I am still on swings. Talk about a gut-wrenching thing to be working 3PM-11PM during chase season, with two days per week that I cannot take off without at least a week's advanced notice. So on what days did the biggest supercell days happen in the STL metro/southern IL? Take a guess. At least the April 28 storm came right through where I work, easing the pain of not being able to chase it.

All in all, I consider myself very blessed in chase successes, so I will take the bad with the good, as IMO the good far outweighs it. 2012 has been a great season overall despite the few painful days.

 

[Mark Ellinwood]

I did expedition-style chasing in early May last year (for about two weeks)... yeah, that didn't work. Learned quickly that if you're not spot-chasing, living in the Plains or spending a month+ out there, it's best to hedge your bets and go later in May or early June when tornadic activity is more consistent.

 

[blake foust]

Here is a wall of shame post for ya. Me and a group of buddies went chasing in New Mexico this year which was already not a great place to chase in but we decided to chase anyway because the patter was aweful. On this trip we chased in the mountains in South Texas and the Mountains west of Roswell, NM to only see small hail and back home in Ohio where i lived we had tornado warned storms and funnels and we reicieved lightning and hail on our 2 day trip out west. What an aweful time...

__________
Blake
@stratustatus

 

[Dan Robinson]

My all-time worst series of chases has to be my 2003 Plains season. I paid my dues that year, with *four* round-trip expeditions to the Great Plains from West Virginia. It was the quintessential 'epic fail' to chase so much during that historic year and see zero tornadoes. I did not even bring home any good consolation images. I missed a tornado in northeast OK on 4/19 by a few miles. I chased during the "10 days in May" and came up empty: Started too far west on 5/8, fell behind almost immediately and no chance of catching up. 5/9, the I-44 supercell dissipated before reaching us. 5/10, again fell behind early with no hope of catching up. During the third and fourth trips, I saw nothing but active MCSs that both stopped producing lightning as I caught up to them.

2004 erased all the pain from 2003.

 

[Timothy Finn]

For my first year of chasing, I'm almost hesitant to mention the epic fail.

But, it had to be May 6, 2012. Eric Matthews and I had driven to north-central NE for what looked to be a decent setup, but it turned out to be that awesome cap bust that bit a lot of folks. The cap bust isn't the fail part, however. I dropped Eric off back in Kansas City, and it was like 4 or 5 in the afternoon, and I jumped back on I 35 to head to Wichita, and 20 minutes out of KC, all my stuff starts going off, tornado warned storm on the south side of KC.

Eric jumped on it right there, and got some action, and met up with the TIV guys. What did I do? I got pessimistic, and kept driving south.....when I should have turned around.

Rookie mistake, pessimism, or just ready to call the chase...call it what you will. I still kick myself for that, especially after forecasting it the night before.

Tim

 

[Jeff Duda]

In 2011 I woke up at the ass-crack of dawn twice to leave Ames to chase S KS/N OK and busted both times. On May 11th it was just an all around bust. However, two weeks later, on May 24th, I did what Darrin Rasberry called a "field goal" bust in which we drove right between the two areas of tornadic storms. We targeted the Canton cell from Wellington, KS and had it evaporate as we closed in on it (not to mention, lost data completely for 30 minutes in N OK). We didn't want to mess around to the south. Then we saw that the OFB we overlooked earlier in the day went nuts in C/W KS. Both chases were 1000+ miles.

 

[Jesse Risley]

Two recent ones come to mind here.

June 05, 2010 - I got suckered too far west into Iowa to intercept a broken line of storms that initiated NW of DMX and was propagating southeastward. The high-resolution convective models were showing rapid evolution to linear mode that day, which seemed to coincide the with frontal boundary being a primary forcing mechanism, so I ended up being too far west when the tornadic supercell ballyhoo commenced east of the Mississippi River. A tornado even struck my hometown on Streator, IL and destroyed the home that I had once previously lived in for 22 years that evening; I went home empty handed and ended up spending the rest of the weekend helping relatives that were affected by the Streator tornado.

April 19, 2011 - I lost data for a short while and spent too much time courting an outflow dominant supercell about 20 miles NW of Litchfield, IL. In the most humiliating chase of my career, I blasted east once I realized my mistake, as more cells had exploded to my SE (NE of St. Louis), though I missed the Litchfield, IL and Girard, IL tornadoes by less than 5 minutes each.