State of the Chase Season 2022

[Matt Hunt]

I feel for those of you in the midst of, or losing sleep over upcoming, chasecations. To my eyes, there's still a lack of persistent, legitimately encouraging signals in the modeling out to at least D10. It looks more and more certain that May will go into the books well below average for Plains activity, barring a huge turnaround in the final 5-6 days.

I just ran my chase season scoring code on updated data (QCed SPC data thru 2020; preliminary NCEI Storm Data for 2021). The quality of late season (May-June) Plains chasing over the past decade is enough to drive anyone but the most easily entertained mad. From 2014 on, there have been only two late seasons that scored above the long-term median. In only one other instance dating back to 1955 can you find an 8-year stretch with only two "blue bars."

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Now, we're in a position where June will need to overperform for the first time since 2014 in order to bring the late season as a whole up to par. Evidence continues to mount that we're living through a decadal stretch equal to or worse than the infamous mid-late 1980s, wherein making big life sacrifices to chase the Plains aggressively has almost become a fool's errand.

I'm "fortunate" enough to live in OK, so I was able to see a couple tornadic storms during the 4/20-5/4 stretch, and the current dead May blues are only starting to get to me this week. If we can somehow pull off an active June with a few obvious, targetable days, I won't be too upset, what with my ever dwindling annual expectations. But there's no clear signal for that in NWP, there's no precedent for it over the past decade, and the combination of drought and bathwater in the Gulf encouraging ruinous early-season TCs are weighing on the wrong side of the scale. Anymore, I have to wonder if ST will still consist primarily of handing each other reactions by the time we're all retirement age.

This is interesting to look at. Of course for those of us taking a 1-2 week chasecation, all we really care about is how those weeks are! 16 was my best chase season by far, and I see it's in the red. But it sure would be nice to get another stretch like 89-93. When this season started off active, I was afraid of exactly this happening. We hit what's usually the peak of the season only for it to be rather quiet.

 

[JamesCaruso]

This is interesting to look at. Of course for those of us taking a 1-2 week chasecation, all we really care about is how those weeks are! 16 was my best chase season by far, and I see it's in the red. But it sure would be nice to get another stretch like 89-93. When this season started off active, I was afraid of exactly this happening. We hit what's usually the peak of the season only for it to be rather quiet.

Agree on all counts. I had the same fears about what the active late April / early May would portend, and there are some posts exchanged on this somewhere above. We are now over two weeks past the previous ”good tornado day” of 5/4. Let’s hope that by this time next week, when it will be three weeks since then, we find ourselves reverting to the mean, whatever that is these days.

I also agree that us chase vacationers only need to worry about how our individual weeks are… It‘s a roll of the dice that can easily be better or worse than the overall season. In fact, I was amazed to see that, with the exception of 2010, my own trips have had an inverse relationship to the chart. I did not see tornados in the “blue years,” which is due to a combination of bad trip timing and my own personal failures. Meanwhile, my only trips with tornados since 2010 (Campo) were all “red years”: 2011, 2012, 2016 and 2021. (Hard to believe I am even still chasing, with no luck in 2013-2015, and again in 2017-2019 (no chasing in 2020)). Epic personal failures squandered the great stretch of the last two weeks of May 2013 (surprised to see this one in blue, I mean those two weeks were incredibly active but I thought that was perceived as a lackluster season overall because of how little activity there was outside of those two weeks?)

Anyway, I became even more depressed than I already was after seeing Brett’s analysis… But had to remind myself that this does not preclude decent mesoscale events. Sort of like, even when you know your baseball team sucks and the season is lost, you still have a chance to see them win when you go to the game!

One thing that would be interesting to analyze and measure somehow is, how “concentrated” was each season? So for example, a May that had consistent activity throughout the month would score higher than a May with the same number of tornados but disproportionate number of them occurring in two weeks of the month. “Score higher” is of course a relative term, because if you happened to pick the right week(s) for a chase vacation you would prefer the more concentrated distribution… But you get what I’m saying, just another way to judge the attributes of a season…

 

[Andrew Butler]

I'm a little sketchy on MJO connection but perhaps some decent activity (finally) going into Phase 6 being modeled for the end of the month is at least an an encouraging sign?







Interesting to note both the GFS and CFS are going deep western trough during the same time frame. Just trying to inject a little optimism (it's hard for me).

 

[Warren Faidley]

Warren, I am assuming you are reading the forecast discussions for each NWS office in the Plains. I don't know of a broad discussion covering the Plains other than the SPC Day 1-8 outlooks.

Yes, the individual NWS Forecast Discussions. For example, AMA and LBB are nothing severe for possibly this M-W. The GFS soundings also support SVR or marginal tornado risks in some spotty areas. The SPC has nothing outlooked... yet. Still too early to go bonkers, but none-the less a notable trend in late May.

 

[Brett Roberts]

I'm a little sketchy on MJO connection but perhaps some decent activity (finally) going into Phase 6 being modeled for the end of the month is at least an an encouraging sign?

Interesting to note both the GFS and CFS are going deep western trough during the same time frame. Just trying to inject a little optimism (it's hard for me).

The ECMWF forecast MJO progression does look intriguing, as phases 8, 1, and 2 are correlated with western troughing and enhanced severe activity in the springtime. Taken literally, and assuming the MJO continues to propagate eastward without weakening after the end of the projected circuit, that would suggest some hope for early-mid June. If that comes to fruition, perhaps we could hew fairly close to 2009 (a decent second Nina analog) which had a fairly active March-April, absolutely dead May, and then a resurgence of activity from about June 5-17.

Agree on all counts. I had the same fears about what the active late April / early May would portend, and there are some posts exchanged on this somewhere above. We are now over two weeks past the previous ”good tornado day” of 5/4. Let’s hope that by this time next week, when it will be three weeks since then, we find ourselves reverting to the mean, whatever that is these days.

I also agree that us chase vacationers only need to worry about how our individual weeks are… It‘s a roll of the dice that can easily be better or worse than the overall season. In fact, I was amazed to see that, with the exception of 2010, my own trips have had an inverse relationship to the chart. I did not see tornados in the “blue years,” which is due to a combination of bad trip timing and my own personal failures. Meanwhile, my only trips with tornados since 2010 (Campo) were all “red years”: 2011, 2012, 2016 and 2021. (Hard to believe I am even still chasing, with no luck in 2013-2015, and again in 2017-2019 (no chasing in 2020)). Epic personal failures squandered the great stretch of the last two weeks of May 2013 (surprised to see this one in blue, I mean those two weeks were incredibly active but I thought that was perceived as a lackluster season overall because of how little activity there was outside of those two weeks?)

Anyway, I became even more depressed than I already was after seeing Brett’s analysis… But had to remind myself that this does not preclude decent mesoscale events. Sort of like, even when you know your baseball team sucks and the season is lost, you still have a chance to see them win when you go to the game!

One thing that would be interesting to analyze and measure somehow is, how “concentrated” was each season? So for example, a May that had consistent activity throughout the month would score higher than a May with the same number of tornados but disproportionate number of them occurring in two weeks of the month. “Score higher” is of course a relative term, because if you happened to pick the right week(s) for a chase vacation you would prefer the more concentrated distribution… But you get what I’m saying, just another way to judge the attributes of a season…

So many great points here from the fixed-period vacationer perspective. The scoring system is designed to reward activity that is spread across more days over activity concentrated within a small handful of days (i.e., tornado days are part of the formula, in addition to total monthly tornado count), but the concentration of the days themselves is not considered (an incredibly active May 1-5 would score the same as five similarly active days spaced out evenly through the month). That is an interesting idea to consider, though.

It's definitely important to stress the limitations of these scores: they are purely a function of tornado and hail reports, so storm/tornado quality really cannot have any impact (beyond longer-path tornadoes being rewarded), and they also use a very crude method of addressing report inflation over the years. It's probably fairer to call them "chase season activity scores" as opposed to "chase season quality scores," which is why very messy, firehose El Nino years like 2015 and 2019 rack up so many points. I recall the 2019 end-of-year thread here being surprisingly gloomy, with many of us feeling it wasn't subjectively much better than the two far less active seasons that preceded it. Obviously, the converse can also be true: some of the "red bar" years may have disproportionately tended toward high-quality events when storms did happen: I'd suggest 2021 fits this description, given how dreadful its score is; 2016, perhaps, too. There are no doubt a ton of legitimate, conflicting viewpoints on any of these seasons individually... yet it still seems safe to say there simply hasn't been a great, classic Plains season since 2010, and also that the period from 2017 to present has been really bad from an objective/activity standpoint overall.

 

[JamesCaruso]

Well I have decided (at least for now, I still have 24 hours ) to stick with my originally-planned trip of 5/21-6/5. Next week does not look good, and it is an option to delay a week and change to 5/27-6/10. But I feel it would be foolish to bail on all of next week based on models that have been fluctuating all over the place. Regardless of which trip I do, I will be out there for Memorial Day Weekend and the week that follows. So the “swap” would be to give up 5/21-5/26 in favor of 6/6-6/10. Obviously we can’t say with any confidence how 6/6-6/10 looks; it has just as much chance of being even worse than next week. If by some miracle it looks great, I’ll worry about it then… Maybe try to squeak out a few extra days, especially if I am able to get work done during the down periods. That week is shorter for me anyway; I would have to return home on Friday 6/10, instead of on a Sunday like I usually would, because of a major family event.

My other option is to back the trip up just a few days instead of a whole week… But I really don’t like doing that… A two-week trip that starts in the middle of a week disrupts three different work weeks. And the models present the same conundrum as to exactly when to head out. Unless I could make the decision the day before - which I really can’t - it’s a pretty futile exercise.

Still hoping for some LP supercell potential on Monday 5/23 near the TX/NM border between Hobbs and Midland, where I was actually able to get a forecast GFS sounding (issued 0z 5/20) with a marginal TOR.

 

[Andrew Butler]

There is also this: New developments the last few days. Before anyone jumps all over me, yes, I know it's probably too little too late for this chase season. I know how fickle ENSO forecasting is. I know there is "lag" time involved. But the CFS has had a great handle on it all year, it was the first to predict the late winter/early spring season dive back into deep negative territory.

I am searching for any bit of hope I can both for chase season and some sign of drought relief.

 

[Warren Faidley]

From MAF this morning regarding Monday. I'm only re-posting this to show how quickly things can change right now.

THE UPPER TROUGH MOVES THROUGH WEST TEXAS AND SOUTHEAST NEW MEXICO
MONDAY AFTERNOON, WITH MODELS PERSISTING IN FORECASTING SCATTERED TO
NUMEROUS T-STORMS OVER MOST OF THE CWA AS IT MOVES THROUGH. GFS
FORECAST SOUNDINGS DEVELOP AFTERNOON CAPES OF ~ 2000 J/KG OVER THE
LOWER TRANS PECOS, IN 30-50KTS OF DEEP LAYER SHEAR. STEEP MID-LEVEL
LAPSE RATES AND DCAPE IN EXCESS OF 1000 J/KG SUGGEST A FEW SEVERE
STORMS WILL BE POSSIBLE, BUT THIS IS TOO FAR OUT FOR A MENTION ATTM.

 

[Andy Wehrle]

From MAF this morning regarding Monday. I'm only re-posting this to show how quickly things can change right now.

THE UPPER TROUGH MOVES THROUGH WEST TEXAS AND SOUTHEAST NEW MEXICO
MONDAY AFTERNOON, WITH MODELS PERSISTING IN FORECASTING SCATTERED TO
NUMEROUS T-STORMS OVER MOST OF THE CWA AS IT MOVES THROUGH. GFS
FORECAST SOUNDINGS DEVELOP AFTERNOON CAPES OF ~ 2000 J/KG OVER THE
LOWER TRANS PECOS, IN 30-50KTS OF DEEP LAYER SHEAR. STEEP MID-LEVEL
LAPSE RATES AND DCAPE IN EXCESS OF 1000 J/KG SUGGEST A FEW SEVERE
STORMS WILL BE POSSIBLE, BUT THIS IS TOO FAR OUT FOR A MENTION ATTM.

Doesn't the DCAPE suggest more of a wind event, anyway? Better than nothing, I guess but most chasers are looking for tornado threats. I get derechos at home.

 

[Matt Hunt]

Well I have decided (at least for now, I still have 24 hours ) to stick with my originally-planned trip of 5/21-6/5. Next week does not look good, and it is an option to delay a week and change to 5/27-6/10. But I feel it would be foolish to bail on all of next week based on models that have been fluctuating all over the place. Regardless of which trip I do, I will be out there for Memorial Day Weekend and the week that follows. So the “swap” would be to give up 5/21-5/26 in favor of 6/6-6/10. Obviously we can’t say with any confidence how 6/6-6/10 looks; it has just as much chance of being even worse than next week. If by some miracle it looks great, I’ll worry about it then… Maybe try to squeak out a few extra days, especially if I am able to get work done during the down periods. That week is shorter for me anyway; I would have to return home on Friday 6/10, instead of on a Sunday like I usually would, because of a major family event.

My other option is to back the trip up just a few days instead of a whole week… But I really don’t like doing that… A two-week trip that starts in the middle of a week disrupts three different work weeks. And the models present the same conundrum as to exactly when to head out. Unless I could make the decision the day before - which I really can’t - it’s a pretty futile exercise.

Still hoping for some LP supercell potential on Monday 5/23 near the TX/NM border between Hobbs and Midland, where I was actually able to get a forecast GFS sounding (issued 0z 5/20) with a marginal TOR.

I'm trying to decide whether or not to drive all the way down to NM/TX from Idaho for that (currently) marginal setup. 2, maybe 3 marginal days. When you have that far to go it's tough to make the call 2 days out not knowing if the ingredients will come together better, or fall apart completely.

I'm more optimistic about Memorial Day weekend at the moment, but that's still a ways out and obviously a lot can and likely will change between now and then.

 

[ScottCurry]

We're about to get over a foot of snow here in Colorado later today. Might just chase that. Might be the most exciting thing I see this year.

 

[Warren Faidley]

The fact that we are still seeing winter weather up north, and cold fronts are still moving south, the season is not over yet!

 

[Andy Wehrle]

The fact that we are still seeing winter weather up north, and cold fronts are still moving south, the season is not over yet!

Just anecdotally, one of the frustrating things about this spring is you can tell there's a lot of dynamic energy in the atmosphere. Witness the number of vigorous synoptic wind events we've had in the central U.S. going back to at least last December (accompanying the Midwest derecho system on the 15th). I was chasing in SE MN yesterday afternoon (which busted with only elevated storms forming) and as I got right along the warm front on I-90 I encountered a vicious southerly crosswind that nearly pushed me off the road. It's not like some recent seasons where there's a dull ridge pattern with no baroclinic instability in the CONUS through most of May. However, it's still not enough to produce. I mean, according to the 18Z GFS at FH0 there's a belt of 50-80 KT southwesterly flow at 500mb across most of KS, NE and IA right now. Some recent Mays we've been lucky to exceed 30 KT. Should be great, right?...

 

[JamesCaruso]

I'm trying to decide whether or not to drive all the way down to NM/TX from Idaho for that (currently) marginal setup. 2, maybe 3 marginal days. When you have that far to go it's tough to make the call 2 days out not knowing if the ingredients will come together better, or fall apart completely.

I'm more optimistic about Memorial Day weekend at the moment, but that's still a ways out and obviously a lot can and likely will change between now and then.

Personally I wouldn’t do it. I land in Denver later this morning, and I’m not sure I would even bother making the drive from there, if I didn’t have my son with me and the desire to give him a tour of our beloved chase territory… But when weighing the continuum of opportunity against driving distance, everyone has their own personal cost/benefit calculation… SPC Day 3 has the area only in a General, with a Marginal east of there in terrain that isn’t nearly as good. Let’s hope it changes…

 

[Matt Hunt]

Personally I wouldn’t do it. I land in Denver later this morning, and I’m not sure I would even bother making the drive from there, if I didn’t have my son with me and the desire to give him a tour of our beloved chase territory… But when weighing the continuum of opportunity against driving distance, everyone has their own personal cost/benefit calculation… SPC Day 3 has the area only in a General, with a Marginal east of there in terrain that isn’t nearly as good. Let’s hope it changes…

I'm leaning toward some sightseeing elsewhere this week and hopefully things will actually line up over the weekend and into next week. The potential is there at least for an active week as models are depicting pretty persistent troughing throughout the week. But we'll see what the NAM has to say today. I could leave tomorrow morning at the latest.