Missed tornadoes and storms

[JamesCaruso]

I have so many of these, which is either a normal result of chasing 20+ years or is because I just plain suck. I think I am the George Costanza of chasing. If you remember the episode where he recounted all his failings and hard luck in order to win an apartment from an Andrea Doria survivor, this will sound just like that:


Jamestown KS wedge 5/29 2004 - all happy and giddy with a satellite tornado, having fallen behind the main meso that went on to produce a wedge. Maybe I was a bit rusty after being unable to take a 2003 chase vacation.

Hill City KS wedge 6/9 2005 - almost right under a rapidly rotating wall cloud that failed to produce; later saw one tornado from a distance and still later a tornado at Zurich; but much like @Michael Towers post above, I was demoralized after running into Bill Reid and him asking me, “did you see the wedge!?!” Umm...., no...

Quinter KS 2008 - saw the first one emerge from the rain near I-70 but wasn’t in great position on that storm to begin with. Stayed with it too far north and screwed up trying to intercept 2nd Quinter.

Kearney NEB 2008 - was on this storm but somehow failed to stay with the meso, missed the tornado, and ended up trying to outrun and ever-expanding precipitation shield. Maybe in 2008 we were a bit rusty, after being unable to take a chase vacation at all in 2007. (Haven’t missed a year since, although some trips have been short).

Canadian TX 2015 - on my way to a southwest KS target, paused in the Canadian area, liking the sky, liking the data, but stubbornly sticking to my original target, perhaps enticed by SPC products highlighting that area before highlighting the TX panhandle

Dora NM 2015 - was on this storm only by luck, not by targeting; we were simply on our way back to DEN for flights home the next day. But when it looked like it was lining out, we allowed it to just pass over us, only to learn that we somehow missed an almost Campo-like tornado, probably blocked from our view by the rain. This bothers me quite a bit because I’m not even sure how we let this happen and it was salt in the wounds from Canadian when it could have easily been our redemption.

Chapman 2016 - like many, were in the ICT area but we saw this storm go up on radar while en route and could have gone after it. But it seemed ridiculous to go after the first thing that had popped up, then 80+ miles away. If ICT didn’t work out, we stupidly had in our minds the contingency prospect of our first decent sit-down dinner in Wichita after five nights on the road chasing. Probably a bit complacent and less aggressive after Dodge City, figuring nothing could possibly be anywhere near as good as that anyway.

2018 - missed three consecutive tornado days - WY due to bad targeting, CO landspouts due to poor field adjustments along the OFB, and Dodge City by sticking with the supercell in northern OK, influenced by the ICT AFD that seemed to think the greater tornado risk was along the KS/OK border.

The above was in chronological order but I left the worst for last.

The entire last two weeks of May 2013 was one screw-up after another. Missed Rozel by starting in the right area but chasing the first storm up to the north as it turned to crap. Missed Shawnee by sticking to my original target just a bit too far north nearer the triple point in Enid. Missed Moore by heading down toward Duncan and somehow missing the tornado down there too. Completely blew the Bennington forecast and was down in the OK panhandle. Missed a tornado somewhere in northern OK on May 30 because we got stuck in the mud. I know this thread is about missed tornados, but to make my 2013 failure complete I also missed the Nebraska LP because it was 6pm, the skies were still blue, and I had a three hour drive back to Hays where I had already booked a room because it was Memorial Day weekend. And then to cap it all off, I went home on May 31 as scheduled, instead of changing my travel plans to be able to chase El Reno.

Like @Alex Elmore, I don’t get as upset about missing things when I just wasn’t on my chase vacation, but I can’t help wondering if I could have chased Hallam Nebraska in 2004 if I hadn’t pushed my trip back a day in order to attend a church committee meeting, or Bowdle SD if I had flown out on a Friday night instead of feeling obligated to stay at work to help a client with a project that turned out to be aborted anyway... When I finally flew out to DEN on that Saturday, I saw the massive anvil out the window.






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[Dan Robinson]

I have another soul-crushing miss to add to this thread, again in the non-tornado category. After buying a high speed video camera in March, the "big shot" I was after was upward lightning hitting the Chicago skyscrapers. And so, I have prioritized it, making a total of 7 trips to the city since mid-June for mostly garbage storms up to this point.

It is a 5-hour drive each way from my apartment to my spot just outside of the Loop. I spend anywhere from 3 to 8 hours there waiting for storms, and I don't go home until the last electrically-active cloud is at least 15 miles away from downtown. Many of these trips have involved leaving after midnight in order to arrive downtown in time and to avoid the all-encompassing morning traffic jams on the city's highways. I can't afford to go up there every time there is the slimmest chance of storms - I'd have made 20 trips since June if that was the case. I have to make my own forecast and decide which ones are worth the drive.

On the days leading up to this September 3rd, models had been showing an MCS getting close enough to the city to put me on watch for the 8th trip that morning. Like before, I set my alarm for midnight and went to bed at 4pm to prepare for the long day ahead.

When I awoke and started looking at data, all of the short term models - the HRRR, the RAP and the 3K NAM - all had storms either dissipating or weakening long before reaching northern Illinois, let alone the city. On mesoanalysis, the MUCAPE gradient ended at the Iowa border to the west, with RAP and HRRR showing little eastward progression. In my experience, once storms begin outrunning the MLCAPE gradient, they are on their last legs and typically don't last much longer. The MCS maintenance parameter is another one that I have found useful, and it too cut off in the same general areas. Radar trends also were not very promising, with the trajectory looking more easterly rather than southeasterly, just like the models were hinting at.

So, seeing a scenario I'd seen many times before in which storms died well before reaching the city, I decided to stand down.

At 5AM, the radar trends started to become worrying. The southern end of the MCS was still very much solid, and mesoanalysis showed the LLJ was pushing the MUCAPE gradient rapidly eastward. There was no way I'd make it in time, especially with morning rush starting in 2 hours which would make the drive in more like 6 and a half hours instead of 5. I could only watch lightning and radar data as this unfolded between 7 and 8am:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1168895013205491719

The Perfect Storm! My first daytime lightning composite. With only a little rain, storm clouds over the city and norther Instagram Photo by Ian Wall - @ebeermat on Instagram - Uploaded on Tuesday 3rd of September 2019 04:38:57 PM

The Perfect Storm! My first daytime lightning composite. With only a little rain, storm clouds over the city and northern skies illuminating the city, I got 7 strikes in 1891 shots from 8:03 to 9:49 am :) Individually tweaked in Lightroom, stacked in Photoshop as layers with blend of 'Lighten'...

raingrande.com

 

[Bob Schafer]

The most gut-wrenching miss I had early on in my chasing days was missing the White Deer F-4 of May 29, 2001. I had sat there on the north side of Amarillo watching the developing storm from initiation for quite awhile, but then decided to go chase some other stuff on the east side of Amarillo.

Another one was the first wedge of the day on May 15, 2003, because my ex gf had decided she was thirsty and we had to first go to McD's in Dalhart.

There have been plenty of others, but after all the chasing I've done I'm over them. I am extremely grateful for the memories I have.

I have an update. I saw the White Deer tornado, and I filmed it, and never knew it until yesterday. I am preparing a DVD for
Angel Escobales Jr
and as I reviewed my stuff from that day I suddenly realized White Deer is on it. It wasn't just *accidentally* on it, either, because at the time I pointed my vidcam right at it and zoomed in on it. By the day after I had forgotten all about that, and whenever I had looked at the vids later I just wasn't paying attention.

I filmed it while heading east on Loop 335 on the NE side of AMA while pursuing a different storm E of AMA, so I was about 35 miles away, but the timestamp matches perfectly with the SPC reports, and I was pointing the vidcam in exactly the right direction.

 

[Dean Baron]

Funny that I am seeing this thread today because exactly 10 years ago today (6/17/10) I missed the tornadoes in southern MN. I caught a brief view of the beginning of the first EF4 in northwest MN so I can't say I missed things completely, but chasing what turned out to be HP storms moving at 50+ mph through trees and lakes is hard to be excited about when much more photogenic and slower moving storms/tornadoes happened to my south.

The previous day on 6/16/10 I was out in the Dakotas and was on the tornado warned storms out near Dupree, SD. I stuck on the wrong storm too long and missed the tornado machine just to my east that sat near Dupree for hours.

I also missed the Bowdle tornadoes on 5/22/10 due to work and only got a very distant view of the Wilkin county, MN EF4 on 8/7/10 also due to work.

Looking back on it I missed a lot of good stuff in 2010 but still got my share of tornadoes that year.

I've missed other memorable tornadoes and storms but the worst misses were not surprisingly from 2010.

 

[Bob Schafer]

Funny that I am seeing this thread today because exactly 10 years ago today (6/17/10) I missed the tornadoes in southern MN. I caught a brief view of the beginning of the first EF4 in northwest MN so I can't say I missed things completely, but chasing what turned out to be HP storms moving at 50+ mph through trees and lakes is hard to be excited about when much more photogenic and slower moving storms/tornadoes happened to my south.

The previous day on 6/16/10 I was out in the Dakotas and was on the tornado warned storms out near Dupree, SD. I stuck on the wrong storm too long and missed the tornado machine just to my east that sat near Dupree for hours.

Wow... me too! I was also on the west side of the Dupree storm, left Faith about 7AM, drove all day to MN and missed the Wadena tornado by minutes.

 

[Ben Holcomb]

Another sad sob story here. Started south, bailed north, missed Wadena by 15 min and never saw anything else. The worst was the next morning in the hotel room seeing all my 'friends' footage on TV. Like %@!$@!#

I have the agonizing story in detail on my site

 

[Dean Baron]

Wow... me too! I was also on the west side of the Dupree storm, left Faith about 7AM, drove all day to MN and missed the Wadena tornado by minutes.

That night of the Dupree storm is another story entirely. That Dupree storm caused flash flooding on highway 212 which forced me to turn around and do a 20+ mile detour thanks to the lack of roads out there, all while on less than a 1/4 tank of gas. I backtrack to find gas and start heading east for the night and I’m about to pull over and just sleep in my car. I am on the phone with Andy Gabrielson who tells me to keep my foot on the gas because I’m on a reservation and I might not want to stop until I hit Mobridge. Finally get to Mobridge well after midnight where I get 4-5 hours of sleep in some random parking lot. Wake up around 7:00 to head east for the big outbreak.
Little off topic but that was an interesting night. I know other chasers had an even worse night on 212 than I did.

 

[Bob Schafer]

That night of the Dupree storm...

Well, as long as we're already off-topic,

There are two motels in Faith. The first one had no vacancies and I checked into the second one and was told I got the last room. The storm had knocked out the power to the whole town, so everybody staying in the motel gathered in a meeting room to candlelight and flashlights and a couple of people played guitars. They had a big barrel or something, so everyone threw whatever beer and wine they had into that with ice and it was shared by all. I don't remember what we did for food, but it was probably whatever happened to have been in the frig in the kitchen.

About a half hour after the party started I decided to go lock up my room, and the owner of the motel said to me "Oh, honey, you don't need to lock anything up here". I think the party lasted until about midnight. The power was still off.

 

[Drew Terril]

I missed the Owasso tornado in 2016 that was less than 3 miles from the family farm because I had left to go through CDL training less than 72 hours prior. That's probably the one that stings the most because it was so close to home, yet I was out of state.

 

[Tony Laubach]

I've missed my fair share of storms and tornadoes over the years... some hurt more than others, but it seems as time goes on, most of those vanish into the void that is memory. However, one day ALWAYS makes my list, no matter how much time has gone by.

March 28, 2007... I don't know why to this day why I still hang on to that one. I missed it for good reason... college. I was in a Meteorology class (I cannot even remember which one) that evening and my professor threatened to fail me if I ditched class to chase. It was an empty threat, but I begrudgingly stayed behind. It was a guest lecture; nothing I recall being too exciting (and certainly one in hindsight I would have been fine missing to chase). I spent the entire time watching radar on my laptop anyway, and eventually brought in half the class once the outbreak began to unfold. I was pissed, and I let my professor know it. Perks of being young and stupid, I guess. But alas, two years later, I walked out with a paper that said I'm a meteorologist, so all's well that ends well. Still, I do not know WHY to this day that day of all the days I have missed, still burns me. Perhaps it was because I was young and it just stuck with me. Even today, I can look someone in the eye and say it no longer bugs me, but yet, immediately when asked about such a scenario, March 28 always is the top of my list.


Speaking of lists (and boy do I LOVE lists)... with March 28, 2007 being the #1 spot... I figured I would fill out the rest of my top 10 biggest misses... I'll rate them on a scale of 1-10 (10 being worst bothersome, 1 being least bothersome), but will order them chronologically from most recent.

May 9, 2016 - Wynnewood, OK Tornado (Rating: 5) I chased this day, but thinking the best storms in OK would be east of I-35 in the trees, I settled for the secondary target in north Kansas. I picked up a decent hailer, but was immediately graced with the imagery of what came out of Oklahoma, a target I easily could've made and opted to NOT.

June 4, 2015 - Simla, CO Tornadoes (Rating: 7) This would've been a 10 had it not been for the epic, all-night lightning photograpy marathon that ensued in Kansas. What made this sting... WE STARTED THE DAY IN LIMON. I think it was all of what, 15 miles? We ignored CAMs and went east into Kansas for the giant CAPE bullseye out that way. Colorado lit up, Kansas did not... at least not til evening. For a couple hours, there was not a hole deep enough for me. But a gorgeous LP, 3"+ hail, and the nearly 5 hours of lightning photography later, I felt a little better. We ultimately made up for it a bit more the following day with several tornadoes in northeast Colorado.

April 9, 2015 - Rochelle, IL Tornado (Rating: 4) I would think this would be higher, but it really never was a sting at the time. I think I regret it more in hindsight than I did in the moment. I was due to fly out of town that morning on a trip I EASILY could've rescheduled. I didn't... but at the time, it was a worthy sacrifice. Looking back, I would definitely reschedule that trip.

May 28, 2013 - Bennington, KS Tornado (Rating: 8) Another one of those I started here and went elsewhere... in fact, I went to basically the same place on this day as I did on Simla. And leaving from Salina that morning for western KS, I hated myself in earnest. This one stung because it was the first time I had stayed in a spot the night before that went on to produce an insane show, and I left that spot for another target that did not produce. Unlike Simla, there was no redeeming moments from this. I chased crap storms that day, and we all know what happened three days later. Bennington kinda fell off the board pretty quick after El Reno, so it kinda blurs a bit during that time.

May 18, 2013 - Rozel, KS Tornado (Rating: 2) This makes the list cause I hung around up along I-70 too long, but I saved this day with getting the pink sunset tornado near Sanford. Fortunately, this was one of those days where social media was a big help, cause I saw the Rozel images being shared and I immediately gave up on the warm front and rocketed south. I caught the very tail end of Rozen from a distance, but had a great, front row seat to Sanford. That saved what otherwise would've been a very painful miss.

June 16 & 17, 2010 - SD/MN Tornado Outbreaks (Rating: 9) I group both these two days together because the events of the 16th affected the events of the 17th. This was perhaps our biggest busts with TWISTEX during our stint together, and probably WOULD be my #1 worst misses if March 28 didn't always pop to mind. On the 16th, we got caught in flooding that stranded us just east of Red Elm, less than 10 miles away from the tornadoes. We had a satellite graze us, but otherwise missed the entire show. When the waters receeded enough later that evening, we got set up somewhere in SD for the night, but had run over debris in the water, which left us with a flat in the main truck the next morning. Unfortunately that delay combined with several one-way construction zones enroute, lead us to arriving in Wadena as that tornado died out. We missed the rest of that outbreak as we assisted in Wadena. This was an awful couple of days for us... and easily ranks in the top of my worst misses. I felt like everything was out of our control and working against us, and we missed out big time on both days.

May 31, 2010 - Campo, CO (Rating: 5) You'd think this one would sting more... but it's weird cause I kinda can forgive myself. After a couple weeks straight of some pretty hard chasing, I was feeling a bit under the weather and opted to NOT join the TWISTEX crew who was heading to KS for the memorial service. Enroute, they took the scenic route and I watched them pull into frame on the live stream of the Campo tornado on TWC from home. Needless to say, I felt even worse after that, but still surprised how little that one bugs me given the epicness of that particular tornado. Even more so knowing I would've been in that truck and had that view of that tornado.

May 24, 2004 - Pick Any Tornadoes That Day (Rating: 3) I think in time, this has gone down greatly... but it was a hard-chased day that seemed like every storm we got on had just finished producing tornadoes, did not produce a tornado the entire time we were on it, then would go nuts after we left for another storm. Later that night, I was held up at gunpoint by SWAT at a Motel 6 in Topeka as they were doing a drug bust downstairs in another room where I appeared to get ice. A perfect ending to a perfect day.

May 10, 2004 - Cedar Point, CO Tornadoes (Rating: 2) This was my first big miss... it hurt early, but like most from these days, it kinda faded. I chased big old hailers in northern Colorado while a nearly stationary supercell dropped half a dozen or more tornadoes west of Limon. It would've been a cherry picking day. This one stung, but I think I was new enough in my career not to understand that kind of defeat. Still, I hated myself a little for picking the wrong target. Now, it barely holds a memory to me.


DAY I DO NOT REGRET MISSING (May 20, 2013 - Moore, OK Tornado) If I go my entire career without seeing a legit EF-5, I'll consider it a victory. This day, of all the days I have chased, presented the easiest opportunity to see one. And halfway along the drive to our OKC target, I bailed. My gut was telling me this was not a good idea, so after getting to Tulsa after staying in southeast Kansas, I had lunch, and left the caravan I was driving down with. I ended up going to Wichita for the night and watching the Moore EF-5 live on TV. Obviously there is NO way to know what might have happened with me that day had I gone through with the chase, but regardless, I have no regrets in walking away from that chase.

May 25, 2016 - Chapman, KS is a day I see on many lists, many of you guys doing the same thing we did (targeted Wichita area). We immediately bailed on the ICT storms as soon as we saw the first tornado reports go up there. That proved to be the saving grace for us as we managed to get up there in time to see the last 45 minutes of that monster tornado along I-70.

 

[Brett Roberts]

Tony, I think your feelings regarding March 28 are largely justified. I was an undergrad at OU then, and thankfully didn't have any critical commitments that day. However, those a year ahead of me weren't so lucky. They had a big dynamics exam from like 3-5 PM that afternoon. This course being arguably the most core of the core curriculum at OU, and the exam counting for ~30% of your grade, there was absolutely no way out. Pretty much all the chasers in that class sped out after it was over and missed everything in the Panhandle by an hour. It was crushing to the point of tears in some cases, and both then and now, I understand why.

"Historic" is an understatement for that outbreak. Everything about it, meteorologically, screamed "once-a-century event." To get a bent back dryline with half a dozen sigtor-producing discrete storms in the prime High Plains chase territory of TX/OK/KS/NE... that's something we currently haven't seen at all in almost a decade, and this was MARCH! Most years, even setups four weeks later into the season are just desperation plays that we chase due to SDS, and certainly the occasional banner days are in crappy terrain near I-35. It's somehow been 13 years, but it still amazes me every time I think about how exceptional that setup was. March 13, 1990, was of course a comparable or even more impressive outbreak, but also much farther east and likely with faster storm motions -- the kinds of drawbacks you'd expect in March.

The other thing about March 28: it looked good a week out, it looked great 4-5 days out, and it just kept looking great from there. Excitement built and built, then you went out, chased, and basically were guaranteed to see a quality tornado on any storm. Again, something that's so many tiers above the experience of chasing in recent years as to seem quaint now. There would be more setups somewhat in that vein later that spring, and again in 2008, but none that seemed to go quite as smoothly at every tick on the forecast-to-chase timeline as March 28.

With all that being said: in hindsight, I wouldn't despair so much over missing the chase itself. I think any of us who have been at this awhile come to realize the finesse days like Dodge City, Campo, or last week's MN storm provide the top-tier chase experiences, relative to most synoptic outbreaks. For me, especially with 2007 being my first serious chase season, it was the broader experience of watching the event unfold that cemented its legendary status. I think newer chasers have largely missed out on the slow-burning high of watching synoptically evident Plains setups evolve from the medium range to go-time (without dramatically underperforming), instead becoming acclimated to a "never stop chasing" climate where you go out 30 days per spring, each one offering that low-single-digit percentage hope of a Campo or Dalton MN. In summary, March 28 to me is the poster child for a different, and largely preferable, era in chasing.

 

[Brett Roberts]

The idea of misses one least regrets is an interesting one, too. For me, it has to be failing to get a good view of El Reno 2013, despite being in the field that day. Even aside from the tragedies tied to that storm, I find it's simply the most overrated and over-hyped storm in recent memory, from a chaser's point of view. It would have been nice to view the wedge from the N to NE along I-40 as Gene Moore and a handful of others did, but the fact that I failed to do so doesn't even begin to register on my list of chasing regrets.

Really, almost anything that terrorizes densely populated areas is hard for me to regret missing, even though it's precisely those storms which capture public attention and therefore you're constantly reminded for years afterwards. I missed Joplin, Shawnee, and Moore, in addition to El Reno. Of those, only Shawnee really stings in hindsight, and it's still not that high on my list of regrets. In the case of Moore, it would've been fairly spectacular to see either at the very beginning in Newcastle or at the end along Sooner Rd., but a large percentage of the chase experience over the duration of that storm consisted of panic, chaos, dodging wrong-way drivers, partial rain-wrapping, and the debris visually overshadowing the view of the tornado itself.

It took a couple years of chasing for me to decouple my valuation of a storm as a chaser from the storm's impacts, public visibility, EF ratings, and all of that. But anymore, I honestly see a negative correlation between those two attributes of storms, and missing a newsworthy tornado simply doesn't bother me in and of itself.