Epic Fail Chase wall of shame

[Lee Smith-Whaley]

Two chaser fails that ended in a good way for me were last year. The day of the Sedalia tornado last year, I was supposed to be in Sedalia to drop off some stuff at the community college which was fairly close to the tornado. However, my supervisor disappeared for a meeting before I got final permission to head over there. Otherwise I would've been on it. The next "fail" was the Joplin tornado. I was thinking about chasing that day, however I had already committed to game night with some friends prior to that day. Had I chased, I would've driven down 71 highway, and been in Joplin for that. Though I'm willing to be it was a blessing in disguise I missed that event.

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

In ways that day was a fail for me to. I hadn't planned on chasing, but was supposed to visit friends that lived less than a mile from everything. I decided not to in order to do homework. I spent so much time on the phone/computer talking with people about everything that I didn't get homework done anyways.

 

[John Farley]

Jesse, I was right there with you in having one of my all-time epic fails last April 19. In my case, I headed too aggressively west into the Illinois River flood plain to catch the supercell that produced the Girard tornado and an earlier one in MO just before it crossed the Mississippi River, and misjudged the storm's movement just enough to have to shift south to avoid the hail core while still in the flood plain with no good east option. By the time I wandered through the winding roads in the hills and got back to a decent road network, the storm was 10 miles ahead of me and that is where it stayed, despite my best efforts to blast east and catch up. I got maybe a brief glimpse of the Girard tornado through the rain from 12 or so miles away, and totally missed the Litchfield one. And all I would have had to do to see the Litchfield one was drive 30 miles up I-55 from home and sit and wait. Ouch!

 

[chrisbray]

May 5 this year. After only chasing Illinois for years, my friend and I left at 8:30 in the morning from the Chicagoland area to blast west to western Iowa for our first Great Plains classic supercells. Tempted by encouraging wording and forecasts from the SPC, and eager to test my newfound forecasting and analysis skills, we pressed on, and on, and finally decided we had gone so far that we may as well keep going...into nebraska! There we hung out at a gas station with the "Storm Riders" crew waiting for something to happen. Absolutely nothing happened.

Apparently I failed to realize that the cap that day would be essentially unbreakable before dusk. We ended up staying the night in Walnut, Iowa. We did make it back to Illinois the next afternoon for some storms in central Illinois, but of course missed the only tornado of the day in Watseka, IL, 40 miles south of where I live (and we would have been able to sit on that lone supercall all day if we hadn't gone to Nebraska the day before). Also, because we couldn't make it back to Illinois on the 5th, I had to call off work on the 6th, and after we watched the outflow dominant storms in cental Illinois that day, I got to return home to a very, very angry wife.

 

[CGardner]

I've had many chase fails, but only one fail to chase. This was classic regret because of the destruction it caused and the magnitude of the event. May 8, 2009, I was done with finals and told my parents I would be coming home a couple days later, on May 8, 2009. Well, spent two days chasing plain storms and decided to go back to NW Arkansas cause of a girl. I woke up at my friend's house that morning, May 8, and regretted still to this day. Why I shouldn't have just drove home. I packed up, showered up, in like 30 min. and was off. I get to Anderson, MO at like 9a.m and the storm was to my east. Still to this day, that was the most wicked sight of a storm I have ever seen. Just absolutely massive, however, if I would have stayed in Springfield. I would of been in the middle of it, 98mph winds, and the massive bookend vortex/tornado that transitioned into the "eye" over S. IL. The storm was booking and I knew there was no way of catching it. Biggest regret to this day.

 

[John Fertsch]

OCT 2010, I believe it was - Flagstaff, Arizona received four tornado's - Please keep in mind that I reside in the High Desert section of Southern California, so when any chance of severe weather shows up within a reasonable traveling area, I jump on the opportunity - I remember watching the remnants of Tropical Storm Matthew move up Mexico into Arizona - Was planning on calling sick into work and go for a nice storm chase for the day - I Remember watching the NESDIS satellite images (Funktop and AVN layers) and thinking to myself that i bet this systems going to cause some level of severe weather for Arizona and possibly the bordering edge of California - Instead I spent the day at work watching the weather events unfold on my iphone while i had one of the other backgrounds apps streaming audio from an Arizona Skywarn net - Ended up really upset that I had not gone with my instinct to chase that storm system...

 

[Brian Stertz]

Mine would have to be the Parkersburg IA day. Started the day in York NE. Had eyes on heading east on I-80 into Iowa...especially with my sister in West Des Moines. Had limited data and and from the data I did see...there was substantial shear and CAPE over much of C/E Iowa by afternoon with a decent boundary. After much uncertainty about putting eggs all in one basket, we decided to opt for the SW Kansas - TX Panhandle dryline. We headed south and the commitment was made. The Texas Panhandle turned out to a gust out mess...although we did happen to get a brief strong spinup near Pampa. We decided to end the chase a bit after sunset and headed north towards DDC. Got a cheapo room for the night. Woke up the next morning to video of a flattened Parkersburg. Face palms and f-bombs....data meant all the world on this humongous bust. This was a chase with Rich Thies and his son Ryan and daughter Missy.

 

[Jeremy.Degenhart]

Got two that spring to mind...

June 5th, 2010, sat in SE IA as per the models, raced back and caught a glimpse of a tornado from about 5-8 miles away near Washington, IL - 7 miles from where I was living at the time. Still regret that day the most out of any, mostly because we could've hook sliced into the storm when it was around Elmwood, even took the exit to do so, but decided against it due to safety concerns. At that point, I'd never chased a tornado emergency before...sounded like a wedge was behind the rain curtain.

April 19, 2011...I was chasing with Risley that day. Definitely needed the sweet consolation of Jack Daniels after that one.

 

[ericjkelly]

Hey friends!

I had one yesterday! Was moving along with the Salina cell, actually had it just to my west as it began. I moved a little north thinking it would drift north (that was the path). It exploded and stopped. I got stuck on the northeast edge, and couldnt find a paved road (hate those Kansas dirt roads). By the time I got around on it, it was a huge rain wrapped wedge.

Been kicking myself all night and this morning! Missed the easiest grab of my life. If I just would have stopped instead of worry about staying ahead of it, I would have caught it ALL!

Maybe some of you can learn from my mistake! I suck!

 

[Jacob Ferden]

Worst by far:

May 13th, 2009: had a decent feeling about north central Oklahoma...only trouble was I decided to take a quick nap right before I got ready to leave...eight hours later...never will make that mistake again...

My other favorites all involve days in which I didn't score, and missed significant tornadoes, often in comically spectacular fashion.

May 10th, 2010: chased, saw zero tornadoes, tornado went a mile south of my apartment
April 13th, 2012: chased, saw zero tornadoes, tornado went a mile north of my apartment
May 18th, 2013: was drawn to 0-1 km EHI max, sat in NW Okla. roasting in 98 F heat, wound up with linear crap, saw zero tornadoes, missed Rozel EF4
May 19th, 2013: chased, saw zero tornadoes, Shawnee EF4 formed a couple miles east of my apartment
May 20th, 2013: chased, saw zero tornadoes, EF5, Moore, no other explanation necessary
May 28th, 2013: woke up in McPherson, sat there all morning, finally went SW, chased the panhandles, stationary wedge 30 minutes from where i sat til noon.

This has been a fun year.

 

[JamesCaruso]

Jacob, as the saying goes, misery loves company... I am glad to see I am not the only one that came up empty-handed during the 2013 outbreaks. But I'm afraid I've got you beat... My entire 2013 chase vacation has been one big epic fail, and I am glad to be flying home today so I can at least know the list is complete:

5/18/13 - right on with target area, but committed to one of the first and northernmost storms, stayed with it too long and missed the Rozel tornado that came up through the same area later. Also had trouble keeping up with our storm and missed tornado reported near Victoria.

5/19/13 - targeted near Enid OK, which despite being right near the triple point somehow turned out to be in a gap between the Wichita action and the southern action / Shawnee tornado. Trying to avoid committing too early like the previous day, we stubbornly waited too long before finally catching up to the southern storms, only to see two of them die in succession over Drumright OK.

5/20/13 - targeted further southwest in OK. Saw the first echo of the Moore storm go up, but there were other storms closer to us so went for one of those... Ended up on supercell near Bray, but somehow didn't even see any of the tornados that were reported with it...

5/26/13 - booked rooms early in Hays because of concern about Memorial Day weekend hotel capacity; knowing we had such a long drive, called off our Nebraska chase at 6PM due to apparent capping; storm finally goes up at 7PM and produces beautiful LP structure

5/28/13 - somehow the Salina area was not even in my forecast thinking this day... I think I had some sort of confirmation bias toward southwest KS and hoped that would be better position for the next day...Sometimes reading SPC will help me recognize something I missed in my own forecast, but on this day I pretty much skipped right over the applicable paragraph because it was subtitled to include the MO and MS Valleys, so I'm thinking "too far east...."

5/30/13 - last chance at redemption - intercepted storm near Kingfisher/Guthrie OK that goes tornado-warned; classic lowerings, tornado looks imminent... We slip off a muddy dirt road into a deep rut. Chase over. Trip over. First tornado reports come in about an hour later.

I should have known I was in for a hard luck trip when my bag got lost on the way out here.

Can you believe the above is just 2013?!? I will have to post some of my past bloopers when I get a chance. Imagine how bad I was BEFORE I had this much experience!?!

Hope I don't get kicked out of the Stormtrack forum for the above!

Jim





Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

 

[JamesCaruso]

Add to my list above:

5/31/13 - decide to keep original flight home out of Wichita, instead of changing to Saturday 6/1 so that I could chase incredible setup on Friday 5/31 (but, there was a decent rationale - have family obligations Saturday evening, and only flight that would get me there is 6AM, with risk that if connection is missed I would miss family event... Plus looks like it would have been a difficult, low-visibility, HP situation in a metro area...)

 

[Bryan Stokes]

Jim,

Consider it a blessing. What's occurring in Oklahoma City as I type this is not chase-able and it's not a situation you'd want to be in.

Bryan

 

[Jeff Duda]

Jim,

Consider it a blessing. What's occurring in Oklahoma City as I type this is not chase-able and it's not a situation you'd want to be in.

Bryan

Agreed. You were best to stay out of that mess.

 

[JamesCaruso]

Thanks Bryan and Jeff. I was thinking the same thing as I watched the coverage last night (I am sure my family was not thrilled that I had just come back after a two-week chase trip and spent the night glued to TWC and my iPad...) But I did see some good video of the tornado during its early stages that I wish I had been there to see. Can't consider that without also considering the chasing dangers that ensued from the lack of visibility and the road/traffic problems; but of course we all like to think we would have done alright regardless...


EDIT: When I wrote the above, I did not yet know about the deaths of Tim Samaras and crew, as well as another local who was out chasing for perhaps his first time. I also did not yet know that the "chasing dangers" for the day also included a tornado that expanded at an incredible rate, from a mile wide to over 2.5 miles wide, in 30 seconds... I still have mixed feelings about missing this event... Given the dangers, it is probably best I flew home and didn't chase that fateful day... But the 5/31/13 El Reno tornado is an event that will forever be part of chaser lore, so on one level I can't help but wish I could say I was there...

 

[Scott Olson]

I missed that Paris, TX tornado by minutes - because of a wrong turn. After having went straight from work and driven non-stop across 6 states. Then, I had to turn around and drive back and go to work. No sleep!

Nowadays, I'm on target hours before the cap is even close to breaking.