joel ewing
EF5
I don't know if anybody is still reading this thread or not, but here goes anyway.
I chased alone for years. I remember spending nites in my vehicle in totally and completely desolate areas after chases ended...like Grant county in the Nebraska sandhills, etc. etc. Lots of times I slept with a giant knife under my pillow...always with one eye open. I'd buy showers for $3 bucks at large truckstops all throughout the alley, trying to save money. Thank God I never got mugged or worse. But man....I was dedicated about someday seeing a frickkin' tornado!
There is something inside of us chasers that makes us relentlessly pursue these tornadoes. Don't ask me what it is....I've tried and tried to figure it out. I've even begun wondering if I might have gotten killed by a tornado in a "past life"...lol....(not too sure about that...but...hmmm?). Anyways...just like fighters that keep getting up when they get knocked down...we chasers have to do the same. And like fighters...the getting up part depends on how much "fight" we have deep inside. So...if you manage to string together a lot of bust chases....which is absolutely normal in this tough game....you'll soon know just how much "chaser" you really have down deep. If you have alot....you'll get past a lot of busts to a sweet payday someday...and it'll all be worth it!
One thing that naturally came to me while driving after long bust chases, was that I would think intensely about "what went wrong". Was it basically my ignorance that allowed me to chase a marginal setup....a setup that with perhaps a bit more learning on my part, I could have avoided? Being a non-meteorologist....I had to rely on kind of being like an "Indian" of the past..it was paramount that I observed every little nuance in the sky and the ground that either did or did not lead to tornadic development. I'm proud of that type of learning that I accrued. And it's directly related to the tornado successes that I've had to date!
Best of luck to you! Keep dusting yourself off each time you get bucked off of that pony!!
I chased alone for years. I remember spending nites in my vehicle in totally and completely desolate areas after chases ended...like Grant county in the Nebraska sandhills, etc. etc. Lots of times I slept with a giant knife under my pillow...always with one eye open. I'd buy showers for $3 bucks at large truckstops all throughout the alley, trying to save money. Thank God I never got mugged or worse. But man....I was dedicated about someday seeing a frickkin' tornado!
There is something inside of us chasers that makes us relentlessly pursue these tornadoes. Don't ask me what it is....I've tried and tried to figure it out. I've even begun wondering if I might have gotten killed by a tornado in a "past life"...lol....(not too sure about that...but...hmmm?). Anyways...just like fighters that keep getting up when they get knocked down...we chasers have to do the same. And like fighters...the getting up part depends on how much "fight" we have deep inside. So...if you manage to string together a lot of bust chases....which is absolutely normal in this tough game....you'll soon know just how much "chaser" you really have down deep. If you have alot....you'll get past a lot of busts to a sweet payday someday...and it'll all be worth it!
One thing that naturally came to me while driving after long bust chases, was that I would think intensely about "what went wrong". Was it basically my ignorance that allowed me to chase a marginal setup....a setup that with perhaps a bit more learning on my part, I could have avoided? Being a non-meteorologist....I had to rely on kind of being like an "Indian" of the past..it was paramount that I observed every little nuance in the sky and the ground that either did or did not lead to tornadic development. I'm proud of that type of learning that I accrued. And it's directly related to the tornado successes that I've had to date!
Best of luck to you! Keep dusting yourself off each time you get bucked off of that pony!!
