JamesCaruso
Staff member
....
... I find a more interesting question to be: how do people feel about missing (or seeing) Moore this year? It was easily more photogenic and consistently-visible than El Reno, yet also did far more visible damage. Personally, knowing that both El Reno and Moore had tragic outcomes, I easily would trade witnessing the former for the latter. The initial stovepipe stage around Newcastle was one of the most beautiful tornadoes of the year, and from what I've seen, the traffic situation was never as dire with that storm as on 5/31.
TLDR: I witnessed El Reno and didn't find it a particularly memorable chase, in any positive sense. But I sort of feel the same way about Moore (which I missed) that James does about El Reno, ironically.
Brett, think how I feel, I missed both!!! I don't really regret missing Moore, at least not anymore, but your question is interesting because it prompted me to ask myself why I regret missing El Reno more than I regret missing Moore. I guess there are a number of reasons:
- First, I will say that I actually did have regret about missing Moore initially, but I guess that sort of wore off and got superseded by greater blunders during the subsequent week of my chase vacation.
- I think of Moore as the real metro area tornado - it started a lot closer to the city than El Reno and was literally IN the OKC metro area - not a place I would want to be. Similarly, I never even regretted for a moment not seeing Joplin in 2011.
- Moore was much more devastating, so not something I necessarily wanted to be a part of. I could see wanting to be there on one level due to the historical significance of the tornado. On the other hand, it would be hard to ever watch the video or share it with family/friends without feeling unease over its effects. I know El Reno was a killer tornado also, and the death toll was actually not that far behind Moore's, but Moore's utter devastation to a whole community (i.e., wide impact beyond the death toll) and the death of children, makes it seem worse to me somehow.
- I feel it was my error in judgment to underestimate the potential of 5/31 (or, more accurately, to not even look closely enough at it) and to head home that morning, when I could have changed my flights and stayed an extra day. It would have been inconvenient getting back to Wichita for a 6AM flight the next morning, but that's what a hard core chaser is "supposed" to do, right? With Moore, although my forecast might have failed to recognize better conditions in that area, I was in the right general area of southwest OK, was on the Duncan/Bray storm, and was at least part of the overall outbreak event. I don't necessarily feel bad about not realizing that the northernmost echo in the initial broken line of storms would become such a monster. Could anyone really know that? We went for the more southern storm that was due west of us at the time, and that was that... With El Reno, it seemed pretty clear that there was only one place to be from a target area perspective...
- El Reno had more significance *to the chaser community* due to losing three of its own and the questions it has raised about chasing practices, both in our community and in the mainstream media
- El Reno was such a powerful, complex and unusual storm that it somehow seems more fascinating from a meteorological standpoint, plus it tested the chasing skills of many; the Super Bowl of chasing, in a way, so kind of wish I had participated and put my own skills to the test
- Part of it is simply that El Reno is the most recent significant event, sort of superseding the other earlier events in competing for my attention. But believe me, I have plenty of other regrets about my own bad decisions during my chase vacation from 5/17-5/30!
Notwithstanding the above, everyone's posts have helped me realize that I really shouldn't regret missing El Reno. Some great stuff here!