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!

 

[JamesCaruso]

Resurrecting this old thread, inspired by @Andy Wehrle ‘s post here about last night’s OK wedge
Post in thread '2026-03-05 EVENT: TX/OK/KS'
2026-03-05 EVENT: TX/OK/KS

Ironically, Andy was replying to a post by @Todd Lemery , who started this thread!

Frighteningly, nearly 8 years have passed since the last post here. And Andy is most certainly correct that night chasing is no longer taboo. Many younger chasers may be surprised to learn it ever was. I still recall Marty Feely, my tour guide when I started chasing back in 1996, reacting to the three of us tour guests wanting to just go down the road to check out a late supercell after dinner, saying “We don’t chase at night” in the way you might tell a child, “We don’t throw our food” “Taboo” is indeed the word that comes to mind.

Although mobile radar and GPS have made night chasing safER, it is still not SAFE. Then again, I suppose technically neither is chasing in the daytime. I don’t have the modern camera equipment Andy mentions that can better capture stuff in darkness. But even if I did, night chasing just doesn’t seem worth it to me. Seeing structure or a tornado for micro-seconds at a time in lightning flashes is just not that interesting to me. It’s actually frustrating - it just makes me wish I could see it better and longer. It’s torture. Like being thirsty and being given ice chips instead of a glass of water. Even if I had a camera to capture it, so what? If I couldn’t enjoy it with the naked eye, capturing the image loses its meaning and satisfaction. At the end of a long chase day, I’m ready for a meal, an adult beverage, and sleep. I just don’t want to keep going in the hope tha5 something great happens. I was always like that, so it’s not an age thing either. Yeah it would be cool to see something like last night’s wedge, or Greensburg, or that storm in the same area on May 18 2025. If that was happening, and I was nearby, yeah sure I’d go for it. But to keep chasing at night in the hopes of seeing that? It’s low probability that it will happen, and that it will be visible if it does. Overall, it’s high cost (time, effort, frustration) for minimal benefit (in terms of probability and quality). I think it’s also generally higher risk / low reward.

 

[Warren Faidley]

I have gone out at night in areas I'm familiar with (like AMA) and worked as a spotter, which is the biggest reason to chase at night. Now that I've matured into a wiser chaser, I don't really want to deal with all the weird crap that happens at night. For example, last night (3-5-26), a crew from channel 9 in OKC did not see downed power lines in the road and ran over them and they got rapped up around a wheel. I could spend hours talking about all the close calls at night, including looking over old footage frame by frame and discovering I drove under rapidly rotating wall clouds -- before we had onboard radar.

Like James noted, it's high risk low reward, and I don't want to end up just getting a few hours sleep before a big day.

 

[Ben Holcomb]

I definitely shy away from night chasing anymore including last night. Made it almost to Lawton before turning around and hanging out at the gas station/casino between Fort Cobb and Anadarko. Theta-e mesonet map and 20z OUN were contributing factors, as well as veered winds out west.

Could have easily gone after the storms that produced last night, was in reasonably good position to do so. They fired about 35-40 miles west of me near Cordell, and I could have easily headed north on 281. The thought of night chasing just doesn't do it for me anymore, contrary to the past. Like may 18 last year, I chose to head home at dark last night. High risk low reward is kind of the best way to put it. Most will forget all about last nights event by June 1st.

 

[Andy Wehrle]

Yeah, it is definitely a personal preference/comfort level thing. As noted by others above, it is unlikely to capture something memorable at night that you can observe in real time. It wasn't until I was able to go through my side-view GoPro footage from near Cullison, KS last May 18 that I found this:



...and it's the *ONLY* frame that shows that edge under there. Most of the lightning was at anvil level and not illuminating/backlighting under the base from my angle. At that point my chase day had exceeded 15 hours of nearly non-stop driving apart from lunch and the Arnett intercept, and I was fine with breaking off the storm and booking a room for the night in Pratt rather than continuing to pursue the storm on up towards Plevna.

Admittedly some of the Enderlin freeze-frames from last June are pretty spectacular, but again you have to consider how fleeting those views would have been in real time.

The best night shots I've seen are those where you can see an entire LP supercell's updraft tower illuminated by lightning. The opportunity to capture something like that would be the only reason I would *specifically* target an after-dark event.

 

[Sean Ramsey]

I don't chase at night for the most part. I did a little last night in SW Oklahoma but ended up getting home at 10pm while tornadoes were ongoing up to the north. My most successful night capture was the Pampa tornado in 2015. Caught a few here and there over the years when I was out, but there's so much that can go wrong, whether it's data loss (without velocities, you're flying blind), deer running out in front of you, unforeseeable issues with roads, or another storm approaching you and you don't have an out because country roads after dark is a no go.

As Ben so correctly put it, it's a high risk, low reward venture and seeing a .2 second flash of a tornado just doesn't do it for me either.

 

[Warren Faidley]

I posted a separate thread about the accident last night between a KFOR chaser and a reported "amateur" at an intersection. This is another reason I don't chase at night. It's bad enough in the day.

 

[Ben Holcomb]

Like Sean, I would say my best night was Nov 16, 2015 Pampa stuff. That would have been a top 3 chase day of my career in the day time. It's not even top 25 because of the night time.

Other notable days I've done well at night include the Medford 2012-04-30 tornado, the Fog Wedges™ on 2015-05-24, the cyclic monster up by LaCrosse KS on 2012-05-25, Rowlett EF4 on 2015-12-26 and probably more I'm forgetting. That's just it, they are not nearly as memorable after the fact and very intense during the event. If anyone had challenged me earlier in this thread, I would have likely argued the opposite. I guess it's one of the perks of getting old huh?