Night chasing

[Warren Faidley]

Back in the day.... before mobile radar, we would often drive in areas that were very dangerous, especially when multiple storms were occurring. How we dodged tornadoes and godzilla hail is shear luck. Years later, I would often edit dash cam video footage for lightning and discover I drove right under a wall cloud. I also remember those lightning days, staying out until sunrise on some occasions. Most of the great vantage points around Tucson became gang hangouts in the early 2000's and the cops were too afraid to deal with the problem so they closed them. Glad they were open when I was shooting.

 

[Marshall Stoner]

The main issue with night chasing is it's difficult to do alone. You really need a designated navigator to do it safely. During the day you can track the location of storm features visually while driving and pull over once in a while when you need to plan your route. At night you need to look at the radar far more often as it just isn't easy to track the location of storm features by lightning alone while you're driving. Driving directly through a strong core (by accident or out of necessity) in the dark is also a million times freakier just due to the total lack of visibility. It's not just hail but suddenly coming upon deep standing water or washouts on less than perfect roads. I don't feel comfortable so I try to avoid it.

 

[MikeD]

Why not chase at night? Sure, safety, but for any non-beginner chaser who know where they are in relation to the storm can easily and safely chase at night (provided they don’t chase any HP or wet-classic supercells). The (experienced) chaser should be able to identify those kind of conditions using a sounding. As long as there are good conditions and a lot of lightning (to illuminate the tornado), I would go for it. It depends on person to person. Marshall is also right, bringing a partner(s) [perferrably you and two more people] to drive/watch radar/look outside/photograph. If you are on your own, don’t even think about night chasing.

 

[Bob Schafer]

I chase solo most of the time, and I am okay with night chasing, as long as several conditions are present. First and foremost is that I am dealing with only one supercell within about 70 miles of my position. I must have an ability to see my storm via lightning (i.e. I won't chase through a bunch of rain or haze or dust or trees). The road network must provide plentiful escape routes. There must be a high probabilty of "getting" a tornado, meaning I don't chase junk for 2 hours after sunset on the 5% chance of catching a spin-up. I must have good radar data.

Perfect example: the Nov 16, 2015 Liberal to DDC chase!