Favorite interception strategies

[Gerrit Gulden]

I live on the Upper Snake River plain here in Idaho. If you look at the state of Idaho you can see a Valley that goes almost from Boise then east to Pocatello and then North to My area. Typically storms fire on the Idaho/Nevada/Utah Border and move North. I will typically drive to Pocatello (1 hour from me) and follow the storms north while getting cloud shots and lightning photos. My strategy is just watch the radar till I see the border get active and then start heading South. Every now and then I will get a decent Shelf cloud or even a wall cloud but its not very often although when they occur they are gorgeous.

My Spring season has yet to start here. Just the other day we got 4 1/4 inches of snow. Hopefully by June,July I will be getting lucky...

-gerrit

 

[Paul Redmond]

Jim Ladue maintains an excellent storm chaser education presentation at:

Short Term Chase Target Selection

The last several slides of his online presentation (#131 through #136) show "common targets" and miscellaneous chase strategies.

Jim writes that he gave this talk for the first time early in 2002 as part of Tim Vasquez’s forecasting class. It's geared towards the novice/amateur storm chaser.

That Jim Ladue's target selection web site was actually very helpfull. It explained what I did wrong on 4/8/08. Of course it would be better in person, but it was still quite educational. Thanks.

 

[Shane Adams]

starting south is usually better than starting too far north for a target.

Not if your storm motions are NE at 40 mph. Depending on storm motion, I tend to favor the area downstream if I don't have a "locked" target spot, simply because storms will come to me if I screw up initiation, instead of running away from me. This was a much bigger issue for me when I was still green, because I couldn't forecast at all. Nowadays, I can usually get within 50 miles of initiation. And once storm speeds slow down in the "meat" of the S Plains season, and instability rules the game, it's much easier to play catch up.