State of the Chase Season 2025

[Jeff House]

Stormtrack remains my number one spot for pattern discussion through Day 1 Target Area forecasting - even nowcasting in the morning. Switch to Discord in the field. Moderators may want to move this paragraph and the n-2 post somewhere else though.

Next @Mikayla Norris your state of the chase season could get good on the Front Range in June. Despite above normal heights flow is still forecast. Just get a southern stream system to sneak through (been going on all season) and good things could happen.

In fact such a thing could happen after Memorial Day toward the very end of May (or that following weekend). While the 06z GFS looks like hopium, the others are coping OK. Hints of another closed low are evident on several Ensemble members. Get that to line up with a retreating boundary, and it's game on Panhandle up to Colorado. I like early June.

CAVEAT: I also can't get out there for this sequence to be totally up front and honest. Related, soon it'll time for Target Area thread days.

 

[Corey Elsby]

Gotta say that I really like S'ern Kansas for Sunday. However, OK could also be great bss the NAM soundings as well as any potential OFB from Saturday if storms develop then too.

 

[Jason N]

Related, soon it'll time for Target Area thread days.

I agree Jeff. You might as well make a thread now for the 18th and 19th for KS/OK/TX , lol

 

[Warren Faidley]

Saturday will likely be a staging day for Sunday and Monday. Still not sure RH will be in place for Saturday, but a sneak attack near Woodward is possible. Somewhat cautious about the Red River options on Sun / Mon, as I believe those storms could end up near OKC later in the day / evening. Several major metropolitan areas will be at substantial risk if the cells remain separated / tornadiac as they move NE. I would not be surprised to see a moderate risk outlook sooner than later.

I mentioned this on social media, but after this series of events, RH **could** once again be smashed to the GOA. The GFS is advertising this and so is the ECMWF, but not as harsh. We **could** be looking at another 4-7 day dry out.

 

[William Monfredo]

After a relatively benign first half of May, the month’s springing back to life, especially over the next handful of days.
While I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the unprecedentedly fine weather that came with the blocking pattern and beyond here, I’m ready for the season to head up the charts with a bullet.

And while I don’t predict what the SPC will do, it’s an informative exercise for some. For grins, I checked the inter-web and noticed that Day 3 Moderate Risks (that were mentioned or alluded to) have occurred about 20 times in the last two decades. So, kinda rare.

Sunday / Monday appear to have locations of not-so-common areas of overlapping high-instability, directional shear, and speed shear. I like it and will check it out personally in the field, as isolated cells are on the table to find. As to that predicted CAPE, it doesn’t surprise me that WSFOs are forecasting not only tornadoes, but hailstones up to giant-sized as well…read softballs.

 

[Kem Poyner]

I will be leaving Phoenix Early Saturday morning to drive to either Amarillo or OKC to spend Saturday night. It's a hell of a drive for one day. I have done it many times but now I'm 65. I will have a partner to share the drive so I'm not worried. I spent the last year designing a hail guard to deploy when needed. Never got around to making it...softball sized hail!!!?? My bad.

 

[John Farley]

I'm heading out tomorrow, too, but pre-positioning farther north (Guymon or Dalhart) to be in position to chase where I can hopefully avoid the OKC craziness. Last year I violated my "don't chase within 50 miles of OKC" rule and ended up in the 5-mile linear parking lot south of Hinton. Not making that mistake again, though in my defense it WAS the only good storm within range of where I was at the time. Dryline placement the next couple days still seems a little uncertain, but I am hoping for the more westerly possibilities.

Speaking of long drives, here is something I was thinking about the last couple days. When I lived in and chased from the St. Louis area, up to around 2012, it seemed like the good plains setups were always too far west, making for a really long drive - sometimes long enough that I blew off what would have been good opportunities. Now that I live west of the plains, (CO/NM), it seems like the setups are often too far east. I was chalking this up to psychology, but then remembered there is research showing that with climate change the alley has shifted east (today is probably a great example), so maybe what I am sensing is more than just psychology.

 

[Jason N]

I was already wondering about the possibility of SPC bumping up to 30% for the 19th... there are a few things that will surely be answered when the models get a little closer in, but the timing/location of the mid-level jet max and corresponding shrtwv, juxtaposed to some of the Sub LLJ features and capping on the Skew-T I think will work themselves out, and of course how the SFC environment looks each day from left over boundary's and where the best backed wind fields will be at the time. but the Synoptic setup looks pretty good for this period.

so back on Wed, I mentioned the above...

Well Warren? .. I think the details will get sorted out but I'm glad the SPC made the upgrade. the concentration is small geographically which could really cramp in chasers, and right now the models seem to want to cap some of the coverage further south of the warm front, so OFB's , confluent lines in front of the DL, or some other vorticity will be the thing to watch on the 19th. Beyond this post, I think a Target area post is now warranted for KS/OK/TX for the 18th / 19th.

 

[Matthew Crowther]

OK, after today, things look like a three-day shutdown (excluding the MS valley/Mid-South), then resumption on Friday. However, overall, there will be general ridging over the Rockies, and it may be June before we see another western trough and a more synoptically evident severe pattern for the plains.

 

[Brett Nickeson]

Two days of action then two weeks of quiet sure seems to be the norm in the plains this year. The moisture getting scoured out after every trough is getting a little old. Like Matt said, nothing over the next two weeks looks synoptically ideal.

 

[Warren Faidley]

Well..... that was fun. Three tornadoes and a couple of EMS deployments. Looking forward, we have truly entered the "sneak attack" period of the season. Models show a ton of RH moving into E. NM and W. TX starting Saturday through the end of the month. It's going to be almost impossible to plan anything solid beyond 48 hours. Upper air will be a witches brew of weak to moderate, SW-NW-Zonal flow. Hopefully we will end up with a sloshing dryline set-up for a portion of this time frame.

 

[JamesCaruso]

Well Phase 1 of my 2025 season is over. I was supposed to land in OKC last Wednesday night May 14. Just to base from there, working remotely until the weekend system. Ordinarily while based in the Plains I would not drive all the way to Illinois to chase. But I got stuck in Chicago overnight on the 14th and used it as an opportunity to chase in IL on Thursday May 15 and Friday May 16. My chase partner changed his plans to meet me in STL instead of OKC. I did a half hearted chase in IL on Thursday but was mostly focused on getting down to STL to meet up with him. Then we chased in IL on Friday and flew from STL to DFW on Saturday morning. Chased in OK Saturday, Sunday and Monday. Working remotely from Dallas today and flying home tonight. My son’s graduation is on Thursday. Perfectly timed for a down period. Now I just have to hope the action returns for my son and I to come out starting next weekend. We’ll stay home with the rest of the family for the holiday weekend if it doesn’t look good enough to come out, but will fly back out next Monday (Memorial Day) regardless.

All five chase days were failures. Three of the five were particularly frustrating. Failure modes were a mix of personal and atmospheric:
- I’ll disregard Thursday 5/15 since I was mostly focused on getting to STL, but I did disregard a cell, cutting through a sudden RFD surge, only to find that it was TOR warned after I was too far west of it to bother trying to catch back up on a storm moving 45 mph.
- Friday 5/16 I purposely avoided the forests of southeastern MO and southern IL, choosing to stay above the Carbondale IL latitude. Also avoided STL metro. In other words, I had closed myself off to the two main tornado areas. Turns out the MO tornados were all in decent terrain south of Cape Girardeau. Knowing we had to get back to STL that night probably biased our decision-making. Also was about ready to give up early and so was too late to catch the Marion tornado because we were on the northeast flank of the storm and simply could not get into position given 50+ mph storm motions.
- Saturday 5/17 - targeted the Woodward area, where of course nothing happened. I was worried about flying into DFW and getting up that far on the same day. Everything went so smoothly - too smoothly in fact. If we had been later, we might have seen the tornado south of OKC. I didn’t want to chase anywhere near OKC metro or follow storms east of I-35, but I’m sure we would have gone for it if we were in the area at the time.
- Sunday 5/18 - a frustrating day for many, but I blame myself for not going after the then-severe storms in the TX panhandle sooner, missing the Arnett tornados by maybe 30 minutes. The LP structure after that was just about the only good visuals on this short trip. I was ready to flip out when that monster finally went after dark in Southwest KS.
- Monday 5/19 - chose a southern target around Comanche OK given the need to get to DFW. No further explanation necessary.

Well so much for the idea of working remotely to extend my chasing window. Due to a combination of personal, family and professional obligations, and uncooperative weather, I am now left with just the typical two weeks that I would normally have, from Memorial Day through June 7, probably half of which is already not looking good.

 

[Warren Faidley]

Well Phase 1 of my 2025 season is over. I was supposed to land in OKC last Wednesday night May 14. Just to base from there, working remotely until the weekend system. Ordinarily while based in the Plains I would not drive all the way to Illinois to chase. But I got stuck in Chicago overnight on the 14th and used it as an opportunity to chase in IL on Thursday May 15 and Friday May 16. My chase partner changed his plans to meet me in STL instead of OKC. I did a half hearted chase in IL on Thursday but was mostly focused on getting down to STL to meet up with him. Then we chased in IL on Friday and flew from STL to DFW on Saturday morning. Chased in OK Saturday, Sunday and Monday. Working remotely from Dallas today and flying home tonight. My son’s graduation is on Thursday. Perfectly timed for a down period. Now I just have to hope the action returns for my son and I to come out starting next weekend. We’ll stay home with the rest of the family for the holiday weekend if it doesn’t look good enough to come out, but will fly back out next Monday (Memorial Day) regardless.

These were not slam dunk chase days. Very fast moving storms with a moderate failure rate. Many occurred after dark. Always easy to fall into the second-guessing trap after seeing all the footage and reports. There are hundreds of chasers and only a handful were in the right place at the right time, often by shear luck of events. After years of doing this, more often than not, it was a weather failure rather than a chasing failure.

 

[Sean Ramsey]

Well Phase 1 of my 2025 season is over. I was supposed to land in OKC last Wednesday night May 14. Just to base from there, working remotely until the weekend system. Ordinarily while based in the Plains I would not drive all the way to Illinois to chase. But I got stuck in Chicago overnight on the 14th and used it as an opportunity to chase in IL on Thursday May 15 and Friday May 16. My chase partner changed his plans to meet me in STL instead of OKC. I did a half hearted chase in IL on Thursday but was mostly focused on getting down to STL to meet up with him. Then we chased in IL on Friday and flew from STL to DFW on Saturday morning. Chased in OK Saturday, Sunday and Monday. Working remotely from Dallas today and flying home tonight. My son’s graduation is on Thursday. Perfectly timed for a down period. Now I just have to hope the action returns for my son and I to come out starting next weekend. We’ll stay home with the rest of the family for the holiday weekend if it doesn’t look good enough to come out, but will fly back out next Monday (Memorial Day) regardless.

If there's one thing I've learned and still struggle with after all these years, it's that if there's any sort of time or logistics boundary, the chances of missing something go up tremendously. Whether it's flights, distance from home, next day's target, non-preferable chase territory, avoiding chaser convergence, etc. anything that can slightly hold a person back or modify a "go all in" chase most likely will turn out in an unfavorable way. Add in the limited time window like you have and those probabilities go up even higher.

I've missed quite a bit over the years due to these factors. I've scored quite a bit too, but only because I'm already here on the plains and have more opportunities to overcome the misses. I've had to train myself to want to stay out until at least sunset (even chase at night these days), chase in the jungles, stay in hotels when I'm four hours away from home instead of driving back, make the two extra hour drive south that takes me eight hours away instead of playing the northern storms to shorten the drive, etc. I do a pretty good job these days but those time and logistics boundaries are ever present.

 

[Jason N]

yeah, it appears that in the longer range after about the 23rd, the next 10+days, big ridge sets up, closing off and real larger outbreak potential, but honestly, after these last two "outbreaks" I'd prefer consistent DL days all along it, but in the meantime, the next 10+ days turn into as Warren puts it, "sneek attack "days within the 60HR window, but it appears that into the second weak of June and beyond, the 5 wave starts to shift, and brings in some additional potential across the mid and upper plains, and moisture returns look more stable possibly so, perhaps mid-June could be somewhat more active.