Forecasting From Your "Gut"

[Skip Talbot]

One example heavy in my mind is El Reno. I broke away from the storm before the wedge came down, as I just had a strong gut feeling that it was too much for my experience level and the traffic and proximity to the city freaked me out. I still wonder what would have transpired for me if I had not listened to that voice.

That's a good example for discussion. I feel that you indeed made a logical (and a good!) decision based on specific evidence. You weren't so much going off your gut, but reasoning why you felt uncomfortable with your situation by recognizing the dangers present with the state of the storm, the traffic, and proximity to urban areas.

While in my original post I was thinking more along the lines of forecast decisions, I feel that a number of chasers may be putting themselves in danger by relying on their guts when making maneuvering and safety decisions underneath supercells. It seems to be a habit of many (myself included) that when they sense danger they immediately act on some default exit path. This is usually toward clear air, or simply south. It's a knee jerk decision. It's a gut decision. The two step thought process usually goes something like, "Danger! Way out!" There's little consideration for the way out. In the case of El Reno, dozens of chasers were racing the tornado across its path or driving straight into the tornado, mainly because they were acting on a knee jerk escape route. Stopping to think and using a little reasoning could have saved many from vehicle damage and injuries. Pausing to use some reasoning, the thought process would go something like: "I'm in danger! I'm northeast of the tornado. The tornado is moving east. While there is clear air to the south, heading north would take me directly away from the tornado."

There are times during the chase when gut decisions are great. Moments that rely on creativity and artistic expression and not logic and reasoning, such as framing a photograph, are moments when you're using specific reasoning, but also relying heavily on your emotions, subconscious, and other miscellaneous influences.

The forecast is a scientific process. There's no voodoo involved. If it seems that there is, it's because the atmosphere is overly complex and we don't have all the variables. It's usually possible to make a forecast decision from the few variables we do have a grasp on, however. Underneath the storm, making a decision that your safety depends on based only on emotions or reflex is almost as dangerous as panicking.

 

[Justin Wilcox]

I did the same thing Dave. I too felt it was just too much to deal with. I broke away and went south on 81 to double back north of Minco on 37. I just felt too overwhelmed, plus I was having issues with my laptop and Radarscope wasn't updating. I sort of had it thought out that way the night before anyway. I got a room at the Budget Inn in El Reno and spent the day driving roads within a 100 mile radius or so just to get a better feel for the roads, since I have always avoided chasing near OKC.

 

[Ryan McGinnis]

There is a great deal that goes on inside the brain that does not surface to the level of conscious thought. When you have sudden spurts of problem solving brilliance while taking a shower in the morning, said brilliance does not emerge from thin air - your mind has been quietly churning on said problem in the background for some time. Additionally, humans are capable of recognizing very subtle and intricate patterns. Intuition is often the brain trying to tell you "Hey, I've seen this before. I think I know what is going to happen". A farmer with no meteorological training or weather data may be able to walk out in the morning and predict tomorrow's rain through subconscious pattern recognition. A storm chaser who has chased for a couple decades may be able to sense what a storm is going to do just by listening to their subconscious mind's calculations on pattern recognition.

To give you an anecdotal example, I've seen entire armadas of storm researchers with millions of dollars of weather sensing equipment rely on good and solid data to make the wrong calls on storms over and over again, while a single embedded veteran storm chaser who was working with them (but allowed to roam where he liked) saw and intercepted the available tornadoes nearly every time. I don't think this storm chaser was necessarily more intelligent than the combined intelligence of all the other storm researchers -- I think that he just didn't need to come up with reams of data to support sound meteorological arguments to logically convince a committee (or himself) in order to pick a personal target. Oh, he knew his weather, and he looked at data. But his experience and his ability to nimbly act on what he thought would happen next made him very successful where others were not.

So, yeah, when the data is all in and you're not sure what to decide about targeting or storm positioning, I'm all about using the gut. I just wish my gut feelings were as worth listening to as the peeps who have been doing it for multiple decades. Hopefully a few more handfulls of years in the stew will improve my spidey sense.