In a bad chase year, be thankful for what you've seen

[Dan Robinson]

I don't think I've seen chasers so irritable and bent out of shape before on forums, social media, everywhere over this season's doldrums. Come on, let's get a grip.

Did you see Rozel, Bennington 1/2, Pilger, Dodge City, Simla and/or Campo? You're doing better than 90% of chasers did from 1980-2005, and you're probably in the top 50% today. You've seen things that every chaser starting out - and some who've been doing it for years - has wanted to see.

Yeah, I get it. Bad years are rough, especially after waiting all summer, fall and winter, saving money and PTO and planning your trip all of that time only to have it slip away. But we know these bad years are a thing. They are a part of chasing. This isn't the first "down year" and it won't be the last.

Take your vacation days, enjoy what you have, appreciate what you've seen already and what you will see in the future. Being thankful is the way to weather these bad seasons.

 

[Jeff House]

Good perspective Dan! Last year was easier to swallow knowing we had the total solar eclipse coming. This year, we do have to just be thankful for what we've seen, including the eclipse. While camping in Jasper NP Canada, I have also seen a brilliant display of Northern Lights by total accident, in June of all times - the shortest nights of the year!

While chasers take great pride in forecasting ability, no one can deny the weather models have improved greatly in the last 10 years. CAMs have really come of age the last 5 years. Honestly, two of my four big multi-cycle wins were pretty lucky. Plus all the singles.

I saw all of Harper/Attica 2004 stumbling out of Wichita work. For such absurd luck I should be more thankful. Missed Quinter in 2008 due to logistics, but caught a 3-4 cycle show starting near Hennessey OK May 24 that year. Wichita felt clammy so we went south to the OFB instead of the WF. Not expecting much we got a 90 minute show!

Models helped more for Rozel and Dodge City, as opposed to crazy luck in the above two. We knew Rozel was on an outflow. Apparently the CAMs nailed it but we did not check them much back then. CAMs also nailed Shawnee, which we blew off for the KS TP. It was then I started paying attention to radar simulation, lol. Thankfully the TP gave us a brief rope/hose.

Then DDC was a lovely case of numerical and conceptual models matching. CAMs had a beast on the actual DL/OFB intersection. Wow! Oh yes DDC and Hennessey were both May 24. I saw an Oklahoma cone May 24, 2010. May 24 is my mode. I should cheer up. It is still a week out and anything can change in late May!

 

[JamesCaruso]

Dan, as Jeff said, good perspective.

You listed seven events that would put a chaser in the top percentages - your list was “and/or” and I am going to hope that was intentional and hang my hat on that because I have only seen two of those events, Dodge City and Campo. Simla and Pilger I just wasn’t on my chase vacations at those times so not much I can do about that. Bennington 2 was a blown forecast but plenty of chasers chose the more southern target east of ICT so I can even live with that, especially having seen DDC the day before. But Bennington 1 was a missed forecast plain and simple, while Rozel particularly hurts because my targeting was very close but I went after the first storm and stayed with it too long as it sped north. Jeff mentioned Shawnee too, that was another blow just a day or two later, and that time I purposely stood my ground at my original target near Enid and avoided going after the first storms to fire to the south in reaction to what had happened to me at Rozel. (I remember the triple point being near Enid, corroborated by an SPC MSD, not in KS.)

Anyway, that’s not really what this thread is about, it just made me assess how satisfied I have a right to be relative to Dan’s list... Notice I said satisfied, not thankful, because safely seeing even one tornado is an amazing blessing that should never be taken for granted.

Although I can argue with nothing in your post Dan and appreciate the reminder, it is easier said than done. When you have a passion that to begin with can only be experienced a lousy two weeks a year, it is profoundly disappointing to just “wait until next year,” especially after a crappy 2017, and even 2016 shut down right after Bennington 2, limiting my chase vacation to one week, so this is a pretty bad run here. “Just wait until next year” is fine in sports when the new season starts in six months, not 12. None of us are guaranteed to even be around next year - a morbid thought but true. More likely we will be alive and well, God willing, but personal, family or work circumstances can all get in the way of next year’s trip. That’s why I advise everyone to still get out there, absent a complete death ridge.

Just venting. So it’s tough to deal with but yes, the only way to counter that is to take Dan’s advice and adopt a grateful and also stoic mindset.

 

[Jeff House]

James you are right about the TP 5/19/13 near Enid. We did drive south into OK first. Our stomachs dropped when a TOG was reported approaching Wichita. We reversed north. However we stopped near the KS/OK border for a different cell, still not Wichita. It roped/hosed.

At any rate, the TP was indeed in OK. Chasing it was our original plan before jumping north. We did not chase the Wichita TOR either. Few other people documented this KS/OK brief tornado. In 20/20 hindsight, we should have deviated south to Shawnee.

Since Rozel was a two-cycle beauty I rate my 2013 trip a huge success. Oh well about Shawnee. While not 3-4 cycles, Rozel was simply gorgeous. Also my best friend got his first tornado. What a start!

 

[Ben Holcomb]

"Did you see Rozel, Bennington 1/2, Pilger, Simla and/or Campo?"

:'(

 

[Ethan Schisler]

I feel fortunate to have nabbed the Bennington/Culver tornado on 5/1 and a couple others.....I feel bad for the people that are paying a ton of money to be out there on these tours and are getting sub-par conditions. But that is just how it works I suppose.. Years like this though are what make me happy to live in the Midwest where tornado chances can occur nearly year round. Typically late June into July is my favorite time of the year for storm chasing, so I guess its not all doom and gloom yet.

 

[Alex Elmore]

Did you see Rozel, Bennington 1/2, Pilger, Dodge City, Simla and/or Campo?

Yeah...I didn’t see any of these due to work, family, and other various obligations.

I feel that success in chasing is extremely subjective. Myself and others have preached to newer chasers in this forum that you shouldn’t expect to see a tornado every time you chase. While that typically is the ultimate goal of chasing storms, I think that basing chasing success solely off the number of tornadoes you’ve witnessed is setting yourself up for frustration and depression during seasons like 2017 and 2018. So I’m going to take it a step further and say that whatever you’ve seen in the past (linear, discrete, tornado, etc.), and whatever you manage to see this season or in the future, be appreciative of it. I’ve been out for 4 days now chasing these terrible setups, but I’ve seen some really cool structure and phenomena that I wouldn’t have seen sitting at home. Because of that, 2018 will turn out to be an “Ok” season for me.

 

[Brett Nickeson]

Did you see Rozel, Bennington 1/2, Pilger, Dodge City, Simla and/or Campo?

No, no, no, no, no, no, and no.

It's OK to bitch about a record bad year, because that's probably what this year will turn out to be barring a very active June. It's likely on pace to be the slowest spring tornado season in 65 years according to the inflation adjusted tornado reports. And honestly, it's not so much the fact that it's an incredibly bad year. It's the fact that it's an incredibly bad year following another incredibly bad year. And if you weren't able to make it to TX or southern OK in 2015, that was another extremely poor year. As was 2014, arguably 2013 though it had its memorable moments if you were able to get out those few days in late May, and 2012. Really only one year in the last seven can be considered above average or even just average.

Perspective is easy if you've had the chance to be successful over the last 15 years. I'm not looking for a tornado every time I go out, nor am I assuming every chase will end up being memorable. At this point, just having the opportunity to be disappointed in the field by a setup will be an improvement. With seemingly every year worse than the one before it and chase opportunities in the low single digits each year, I don't blame people one bit for bitching.

 

[JamesCaruso]

Brett, I hear ya’... This has been an awful string of years. 2013 I happened to be out during the awesome 2-week period where every day had great chasing and some big events, but mangaged an epic fail each and every day, including some decisions that were the exact opposite of a prior bad decision and still turned out to be wrong - for example, go after the first storm one day, and it was the second storm that produced; resist going after the first storm the next day, and *that’s* the storm that produces. Got stuck in the mud on my last chase day, and the day after that - El Reno day - decided to go home for the next day’s family event instead of staying the extra day and shooting for a 6am flight home the following day. Just complete mess of a trip. Then came 2014 and 2015, no tornados, nothing particularly memorable, but I think it was at least active enough for some fun chasing. Then 2016, which featured Dodge City, but that euphoria didn’t last long because I missed Chapman (“Bennington 2”) the day after and the following week it all shut down so I went home after just one week of chasing. Thought maybe I would come back in June if it turned around but it never did. In 2017, two days of chasing, four days in an OKC hotel room just working remotely, before finally deciding to bag it, had every intention of coming back out but it never turned around. So since my 2015 chase vacation, I have been on the Plains chasing for a TOTAL of 10 or 12 days.

And now this. Am I going to even remember how to chase storms if/when I ever get out there again??

Hard to call myself a storm chaser when I barely get to actually chase any storms.

Sorry to so quickly lose the more positive perspective Dan helped me get, but this does really, really, really suck, and we need to vent to each other because nobody that is not a chaser can possibly understand the deep, emotional, almost physiological desire to be in or near a supercell, the anticipation that builds all year, and the profound disappointment that exists now. When most family and friends think we’re crazy for doing this to begin with, there’s not much empathy to be found here at home. I try to explain to them, imagine you had a cruise booked, but you had to wonder about whether the cruise would actually take place, and then you go down to the dock on the scheduled day and find out the ship isn’t there. And the same thing happened last year. Oh yeah, I bet it’s just so easy to say “wait ‘til next year.” Yeah, sure. A hundred things could go wrong next year too, and not just with the weather. Everything has to align perfectly to be able to get away at the right time when you don’t live on the Plains. It’s enough to make you want to give up completely, because the frustration is just so much to bear, and it’s due to factors completely out of our control, which is the most frustrating part of all.

 

[Jeff Duda]

This is a wonderful benefit having a very reduced (or non-) presence on social media nowadays - I have no idea what you're talking about, Dan! I have not seen much bitching on Twitter, which is the only social media site I use anymore (and I don't follow many other chasers at that). So this really is news to me.

I think a year like 2018 is just another piece of evidence for why you should diversify your life and not put all your eggs into chasing. Yes, we're all passionate about storm chasing, and yes, the past 6 years have been riddled with absolute shit for activity. But if you have other passions in your life besides chasing, they make it way easier to deal with periods like this. When I busted hard last May 18th with my friend in WC/SW OK, we just said in a fairly blasé manner, "Hmm...well this sucks. F--- it, let's go back to Norman and drink!" And that's pretty much what we did (not to any ridiculous degree...we just treated ourselves to a nice dinner with a couple of beverages and moved on with our lives).

You can get all pissed off and bent out of shape if you want, but you'll be the only one hurting when you do that to yourself. Find the silver lining (saved money from not spending it on gas and hotels, for example) within the negatives and you'll get through seasons like this in much better shape than if you let that all bother you.

 

[John Farley]

I pretty much share the perspectives of Dan, Alex, and Jeff in their posts above. Now I admit I am spoiled being retired and living fairly near the plains, and I was fortunate to catch a couple of the events Dan mentioned. But having cut my chasing teeth in the Midwest, I learned to appreciate any good storm and did not have to have a photogenic tornado every time. I will be out tomorrow and Tuesday in NM and, while I probably won't see a tornado (though you never know until you do it), I expect I will see some pretty storms, probably a supercell or two. And if I do, I will be happy. And like Jeff said, I think it is good to have other interests. I enjoy skiing, fishing, travel, and gatherings with family and friends in addition to chasing, so there are always other things to fall back on. (Although the ski season sucked this year, too, due to some of the same meteorological patterns that are causing the chase season to suck.) I think that the kind of approaches Dan, Alex, and Jeff suggest is just better for our mental health than tearing our hair out over the lack of "big" chase setups this season.

 

[Todd Lemery]

As I type this, I’m on the way home to North of Green Bay, WI after spending the better part of a week chasing. I had the pleasure of taking a retired gentleman with me who has never seen a tornado before. He still hasn’t seen one. He wants a picture for his wall of himself with a tornado in the background. One would think that he would be highly disappointed about the lack of a twister, but you would be wrong. He had an awesome time! He said he learned so much and saw so many new things that he’s hooked. He’s now sitting behind me watching you tube videos of tornadoes.
I made a point after last year to not put so much pressure on myself this year and enjoy the ride, just like my retired friend just did. After yesterday I started feeling the sting of disappointment, but slapped those thoughts away and realized I was just lucky to be able to chase. Just like my retired friend.

 

[Quincy Vagell]

This thread reminded me of an old friend (Jackie) back from Connecticut who wanted to join me chasing in 2014 after I had witnessed my first tornadoes earlier in the year.

She came out for about a week at the end of may 2014 and, as most can relate, we didn't have a very great chasecation, in terms of storms. We chased one HP mess in Southwest Texas and that was it. The next day was a cap bust, but we bailed early, so I don't even consider that a chase. Seven days during peak season and we barely chased one day. With that said, we made the best out of the trip, visiting friends along the road trip back east, checked out some restaurants, had a few drinks and finished up with a day at the beach. It was a great trip, even if the storms didn't pan out.

We tried it all again in 2015, except this time she flew out, so we had closer to ten days to work with. After back to back abysmal chases in Colorado (spotty cell service, underperforming storms, washed out roads, etc.), we decided to head west and road trip to the other coast this time. In the process, we missed the Canadian, TX tornado and a few other worthwhile High Plains chases. We weren't too upset about it, as we went to Las Vegas and explored Southern California for the first time.

It was an off year for her in 2016 due to a career move and it worked out, because I partnered with Ian Livingston to have a solid chasecation in late May. It was actually one of the best stretches in my career, at least in terms of consecutive days chasing (11 in a row). Believe it or not, the only late May tornadoes I've ever seen were in 2016. None in 2014,15 or 17. The way this year is going, I wouldn't be surprised if that happens again.

Back to the story, I finally moved to Oklahoma later in 2016 and Jackie decided to reunite with me in late May 2017 for another ~10 day adventure in the Plains. It was another lousy stretch, but it's not like we didn't have any opportunities. We chased a decent day in Kansas and it was one of the best structure days of my year. My inner frustration grew deeply after a moderate risk debacle in northeastern Oklahoma left me dumbfounded. It wasn't even sunset and I sat in my car in disbelief. More than anything, I felt bad that I couldn't even deliver her something close to a tornado. After all, I was basically her tour guide. I all but guaranteed her a tornado this year and the pattern looked decent, but we came up with goose eggs again. We salvaged the trip by visiting some random breweries around the country and places like Devil's Tower and the Badlands. It was another positive road trip, but in terms of storms, it failed, bigly.

In our three trips, we had a lot of unique experiences, great memories and photos to look back on, even while we saw an unusually low number of storms for the time of year.

I think the key to chasecations is being able to make the best of it. Sometimes you have to decide between a marginal risk day and just going out and exploring instead. I think the best compromise is to find local things to do, so you don't stray too far, in case there's a mesoscale accident or the models change. After leaving the High Plains to go to California in late May 2015, it was only fitting that we missed tornadoes over the following days in the same general area that we had abandoned. I learned my lesson that year and now, I won't leave the Plains during peak season, if I can help it.

I know that some people can't afford to miss work or families, so it probably makes more sense for them to end the chasecation short and cut their losses in a bad season. If you don't have such concerns, I would suggest staying in the general Plains area and seeing the local sights. As much as I've traveled over the past 4-5 years, there are still parts of the country I haven't visited yet and I'm hoping to cross a few more things off my bucket list this year, especially if the chase season doesn't ever turn around. I would even be willing to go out on a whim and have a chase or two west of the Rockies... Maybe I'll finally get to chase a bonafide Canadian setup, but who knows.

We had the discussion on social media last night about chase to tornado ratios. I've had 234 career storm chases (not including attempts in the Northeastern U.S.) and 49 tornadoes. That's an average of one tornado every five chases or so. Break it down by tornado days and then the number drops to 28. That's about one tornado day every eight or nine storm chases. The percentage is a bit higher than the 10% I estimated on Twitter, but still. I'm sure most chasers have a higher ratio, but then again, I do chase a lot of lackluster setups. Sometimes it's the fact that I have nothing better to do, or that I'm hoping to find a diamond in the rough.

At the end of the day, it's not just about tornadoes and it's not even all just about structure. I want to enjoy myself. Whether there's a storm or not, I get a thrill of just being out in the open Plains with the potential for a storm. When there are no storms, I do the best with what I can, whether it's visiting unique towns/cities, exploring the outdoors or seeing family/friends. I am thankful for what I've seen, storms and otherwise.

On a side note, I do agree with @Jeff Duda about social media. Twitter is about all I use these days, aside from Instagram. I largely went dark on even Twitter in 2017, except for solid storm chases. It actually helped with my sanity. My relationship with social media over the years has been realizing that less is better. It was "fun" joking about the storm season recently, but it's time to move on. I have more productive things to do with my time than use it on social media, especially when there's so much nonsense, negativity, etc. on there. It's really not healthy to get consumed in that, at least that's my own personal opinion.

 

[JamesCaruso]

This is a good topic because it touches on different perspectives on chasing, different mindsets and coping strategies, etc. I cannot disagree with anything that anyone has said. Staying grateful and positive is objectively healthier, I don’t think anyone can deny that. It’s just easier said than done sometimes. I think it can also be healthy to vent first - the “anger” stage has to come before “acceptance” stage - and who else to vent to but other chasers, since most people can’t understand why we do this to begin with. Some have said to me that they understand how it feels to miss the season because they know how they would feel if they were looking forward to a vacation and then had to miss it. I tried to explain that it’s much more than that, it a passion, almost a physiological *need* to be in the vicinity of a supercell, craving that “high,” the fulfillment of all the learning and studying all year, each year trying to do better than the previous year; the analogy is not so much a simple vacation - where, depending on the vacation, you can duplicate certain elements at home or on a day trip - no, it’s more like training for a sports competition, getting all psyched up for it only to find it has been cancelled.

I do have many other interests. I have an executive position that is complex, challenging, interesting and all-consuming. I take my fitness seriously and train in Brazilian jiu jitsu. I am a “home mixologist” and enjoying tinkering with different cocktail recipes at my basement bar. I have a family with young kids and all the activities that entails. I like to read and never have enough time to do that. In winter I enjoy the local Philadelphia weather forum, which consists of a bunch of guys as passionate about snow and winter storms as everyone on here is about severe weather. But chasing is still a key part of my self-identity, something I take pride in, I mean how many people can say they are a storm chaser? We are a tiny group, relatively speaking. So take that away, be unable to actually do much chasing for a couple years worth of crap patterns, and a significant part of me goes missing and unfulfilled. Profoundly disappointing. A chase vacation is a way to leave all the normal routines and responsibilities behind, have a change of pace, and be someone different for a week, just out there on the open road living the “chaser lifestyle.”

As with many aspects of chasing, the perspective might be different for chase vacationers and chasers that live on the Plains. Of course I can’t know for sure what it’s like to be a local Plains chaser, but I would think that, since when the season starts you don’t expect to chase on any particular day, it is easier to just stay in your normal routine and do whatever it is you would have normally done that day. But when you have a chase vacation set aside and see that whole experience vaporize, that seems tougher. Easy for me to say though, since I only have the one perspective. I will say that this whole thing now of trying to shift my block of time around is very stressful and disruptive. It might be better to just say screw it. What’s the point anyway, it just seems like each week is as bad as the last. Well I am running out of options anyway, with June including Father’s Day and other family events. Too much to work around. I might even have to make two separate short trips to the Plains, but don’t think that’s nearly as much fun as settling into the cadence of one longer trip. In fact, I don’t think it would be as much fun to just make one three day trip even if there was an outbreak during that time.

Quincy you had a lot of suggestions for other things to do while on an uneventful chase trip, but you did note that you understand it’s different for people depending on family and other responsibilities. That is absolutely true. Being out on the Plains to chase storms is one thing, but if it becomes just me and my buddy jerking around out there like some 2-week guy vacation it’s not going to go over well at home, and just doesn’t seem like a valid enough reason to leave behind work and family responsibilities - or those other interests noted above.

 

[Jeff House]

Other interests are helpful as Jeff Duda notes. I would add outdoor interests are particularly helpful. 2017 goes in the books a a great year because of the eclipse, though I punted my storm chase. Chase or not, by summer I look fwd to our family trip(s) to the beach and/or mountains. Also got weekends on the lake. Come fall it is time for fall foliage. I'm in Tenn. Winter I like to snow ski. Our child is old enough next year we're going out West!

Somebody wrote about saving money and time off, which does matter. Perhaps amp up the family vacation instead. Also some companies let you donate unused leave to coworkers who battle a long term illness. PTO donation option is on the table this year.