Night-time chasing strategies

[Kate Pfeister]

excellent read, and worth bumping now IMO for all those SDS chasers in the ohio valley tonight....

 

[Jennifer Palmer]

This is a great informative thread!!!!

I'm curious how many night chases go on in Dixie Alley, because, in my opinion, at least where I live, that would be suicide!! It's hard enough to chase here in the daytime with all the trees, mountains, and wacky roads, I couldn't imagine doing it at night!

 

[Chris Heater]

Great information...and while I've done plenty of night chasing, I learned a few points from this thread. Subconsciously I've always chased on paved roads at night. The points brought across about going on non-paved roads were a good point and glad it was brought up. I've had two interesting experiences while night-chasing

Easter night 2010 near Jerseyville, IL heading into Litchfield, IL
February 28th 2011 near Fredrickstown, MO

Both of these chases were pretty successful and executed well safety wise (for the most part). The Easter night-chase we latched onto near Jerseyville, IL. Lucky for us, we had a major state route going east west which was just south of the hook echo, while the storm was moving east at 40mph. Some of you here may have been watching my SN icon moving along with the storm. Just east of Jerseyville we did catch a funnel cloud. What I hadn't noticed was this state route we were on slowly shifted further and further north, getting us closer and closer into the path of the storm...something I hate doing at night. As stated earlier, it is VERY difficult to see anything definite in darkness unless you have nearly consistent lightning. We eventually got caught in Litchfield, which is when we decided to bail south and get away from it. Nothing confirmed touched down...but I don't regret bailing on it

The Fredrickstown, MO storm we were on started approaching our area around midnight. Some of you may know that in this area, the terrain isn't the best (very wooded and hilly). I was originally going to call off the chase because of safety, but a Dent County Sheriff saw us on the side of the road and started talking to us. He was kind enough to bring us to an "overlook" area just northwest of our location. He knew the area much better than I did (I had never chased in the area till then). If not for officer Nickelson, we would have called the chase off much earlier before the storm even arrived. As the storm approached the county he escorted us to different areas that offered us vantage points on the storms. And when the storm finally started moving into Fredrickstown, we decided it smart to head back to the sheriff's office to seek shelter and let the storm pass. After the storm passed, there was straight line wind damage just south of town he escorted us to so we could get some video

The above, IMO, is probably one of the better examples of keeping safety in mind. I had planned on breaking off the chase because of the unfamiliarity with the area and the terrain, but because of officer Nickelson he made it possible to gain vantage points and ended up catching some very decent night-time video. These vantage points allowed us to see 10+ miles which, if something had been on the ground, would have allowed us plenty of time to either duck south or find shelter (if we couldn't find a way south) Our relayed reports of what we were seeing to officer Nickelson convinced Fredrickstown to sound the sirens also

One last experience I remember was back in 2010 (can't remember the date off the top of my head). Tornadic supercells were about 4 hours out so I decided to take a nap (was 1am). I was woken up by the tornado sirens blaring which woke me up in a hurry. Already, I wasn't in a good situation. I had fallen asleep and was getting startled awake by sirens. Once I got outside of town, the very first thing I noticed was very little lightning. On night chases, you NEED lightning to see. With no lightning, your completely blind. I looked where the storm was compared to me, and quickly dropped south away from it. I chose this option because of the sparse lightning, and its something I'll always do. Situations like this occur seldomly, and was the first night storm I had "chased" with very few lightning strikes

All in all...I've had decent luck with night-chasing so far. Is it ideal? Of course not. I'd much rather chase in daytime! But, on occasion you may need to do some night-chasing. For those who do want to do night-chasing, take what Danny and others said and be 10x more careful. You can't be as aggressive as you can in the daytime and you must keep an eye on the PAVED road network. Non-paved roads are just asking for trouble

Just my 2 more memorable experiences I wanted to share and my POV on night-chasing. Thanks everyone for giving their 2 cents on night-chasing

 

[Brian Stertz]

Night-time chasing is also about using all your senses and smarts once the Plains get dark and unkown. The body can sense things and those gut feelings can surely mean as much as any radar shot. I have had some close solo experiences when the ears and gut told me it was time to go. You just have to be alert and know storm structure and how things are changing around you. This is why I'll pull over frequently and get a "feel" for things...and if I need to give things more room.