State of the Chase Season 2025

[Jeff House]

This week could be better for chasers than one might infer from SPC outlooks. Both can be right, given SPC is for public awareness. Chaser interests can be met on a mesoscale / local level. It's a beautiful thing.

Outflow boundaries are going to have a bigger than expected impact on the SVR weather potential for at least the next week +. Models have backed off displacing RH out west, so it's likely there will be several classic DL events in the offering. If the forecast keeps supporting western TX and E. NM initiation for multiple days, I might have to try and deploy sooner than later. No RH crashing fronts are forecast to ruin the show as often happens this time of year.

Days with modest upper-level flow, I'd absolutely target the outflow intersection with DL. This is not the setup for a big DL push. Just that locally enhanced SRH right at the intersection. Tuesday could work. Wednesday has less forcing, but we'll see.

Then Thursday and Friday might have rising heights one of those days, but modest southwest flow aloft returns, along with evening LLJ response. Cap could be a battle, but one of those days could be a hidden gem. SPC covers the weekend into Monday over in the MIdwest in their Day 4-8 discussion.

Little part of me wishes I had set the table better for this week. Unfortunately it's too late to get the cards to fall on the home front. Maybe next week!

 

[JamesCaruso]

Yeah unfortunately the coming weekend is out for me, poor planning on my part, I was too willing to accept optional personal commitments, at the time thinking “it’s not even May yet”…

That said, with this current week a no-go because of work, and then my son’s award ceremony on Tuesday 4/29, would this weekend alone be good enough to justify the time, trouble and cost, even if I could have squeezed it in? Most likely not…

I’m going to forget about the upcoming pattern and start looking ahead to 4/30… I could do a one-week trip beginning then, but have to get back for personal stuff on 5/7… Then I have time for another 10-day trip beginning less than a week later, the day after Mother’s Day; then it’s back home for my son’s college graduation, and after that the two of us head out for our “core” 16-day trip on 5/23. It’s a “Swiss cheese calendar” to be sure, but I’m fortunate to have anything at all beyond the two weeks I have been limited to for most of my 25 year chasing career…

These are not all “chase vacations”; they are just windows of time that I can work remotely and chase when applicable. The bar will be high to bother making the trips, especially that shortest one the first week of May, and I’ll have to be selective even when I’m out there to conserve PTO. But I want to bias toward going out there “just in case,” rather than looking for the perfect pattern.

 

[Brett Roberts]

Just for posterity, here's the end result of this past weekend's (4/18-4/20) rain dump. Predictably, the cold front surged southeast Friday and nixed that day's marginal chase op, then focused the most prolific rainfall in the jungles SE of I-44. Still, this was another pretty good dump for much of OK outside the panhandle, as well as the southeastern 1/3 or so of KS.



Combined with the early April rain event, most of OK and N TX are now in the general realm of normal precip for the past 30 days -- so I'd expect green-up, evapotranspiration, and afternoon latent heat flux to be respectable there over the next several weeks. There's still a lot of work to do for most of NE, KS, E CO, and the Panhandles, though.

Back to the actual weather: the next 7-10 days look uncannily like late May or early June in some respects. Multiple marginal/mesoscale days are apparent in W TX this week with 0-6 km bulk shear struggling to reach 35-40 kt, except in any pockets of stronger low-level southeasterlies. After that, I agree that some day(s) from April 26-29 should offer the real payoff -- if there's going to be any -- for this prolonged period of moisture return and mean western troughing.

One thought about the longer range: I don't subscribe to the broad brush idea that an active early season means a doomed peak/late season. However, anecdotally, the years I can recall having long stretches in April with a sloshing dryline and anemic southwest flow like we're about to see have tended to go quiet later on (2009, 2012). Combined with seasonal analogs and S2S model output looking sketchy for May, I'd personally lean aggressive in choosing whether (or how much) to chase this upcoming period. But, on the optimistic side, we could very well end April with short-term drought largely mitigated on the southern Plains... and that would be an undeniable advantage come May and June over a year like 2012.

 

[Matthew Crowther]

Pulling the trigger, leaving tomorrow. Wed. and Thu. are two stealth days in the good chase territory from SW Kansas to the TX Panhandle. Friday is probably down. Then, starting maybe on Saturday and for sure on Sunday and Monday, the stronger flow should start impinging on the Plains as the western trough moves out. There is a fair amount of spread regarding the details, but somewhere should have tornado potential.

 

[Matthew Crowther]

A trend I just noticed on he latest Op and Ens runs- On Sunday, the upper trough is too far west for enough forcing for daylight storms, then it ejects with poor timing, resulting in the storms shifting way east, and worse, it comes out with a positive tilt. Probably fretting too much but still...

 

[Brett Roberts]

A trend I just noticed on he latest Op and Ens runs- On Sunday, the upper trough is too far west for enough forcing for daylight storms, then it ejects with poor timing, resulting in the storms shifting way east, and worse, it comes out with a positive tilt. Probably fretting too much but still...

I have similar concerns. The margin for error with details like timing is always smaller this early in the season. A few days ago, this upcoming major W US trough appeared on most guidance to get "stuck" roughly around the Great Basin and sit there for several days before shearing out over the Rockies. Guidance then shifted much more optimistic over the last 48 hours, but even a partial trend back in the "stuck" direction could result in a scenario like you described. The ongoing sporadic missed balloon launches at NWSFOs only serve to make apparent trends in medium range guidance more difficult to trust or interpret.

Plus, we are on an absolutely staggering run of mis-timed events for the S Plains going back all the way to March of last year. Yet again, we saw multiple damaging tornadic supercells swarm N TX and OK as soon as it got dark this past Saturday night. I've lost count of how many events have followed that exact script the past 13 months, but it's more than half a dozen. At this point, I'm really just hoping we can at least squeeze one solid day out of the whole period, even if it turns out to be a weakly forced setup on Thursday or Saturday.

 

[JamesCaruso]

Perfect example of the frustration of long-distance chasers… If I somehow could get out of my Sunday personal commitment, would it be worth flying out to chase only Sunday/Monday if I have to be back home by Tuesday evening? That decision does not have to be made just yet, but the bar is pretty high to do something like that and there is always more that can go wrong than can go right, as now appears to be trending with this weekend…

There is a full hour less daylight this time of year than at this same point in May, so that introduces yet another negative when timing is in question…

 

[Kem Poyner]

I am heading out to chase on Sunday morning. I am driving out from Phoenix. My chase partner just backed out so I will be by myself. I've done it alone many times. Being alone makes it kind of a spiritual experience. Especially is your lucky enough to be the only one on that storm which was easy 25 years ago.

 

[Jeff House]

Yeah I pretty much plan on missing some good days early in the season. This is one of those periods. Could be 3-4 gems but over a 10-day period instead of say a week. Risks Brett mention are noted, and one could argue this is the 10-day period to go if one has ten days.

Unfortunately my chase partner and I are both limited to about a week for Plains trips from Tenn. We are watching early next week if the trough can hold together over the MIdwest, rather than just fill and weaken. A couple days in Hoosier Alley are doable this time of year. Otherwise we really have more time later in the season.

Best wishes for all. Sounds like some travelers are ready to roll! If all goes well it'll start with some classic High Plains DL days and or upslope; then, get a couple central Plains days. Finally we are eying the Midwest last if the trough holds together.

 

[Warren Faidley]

CFS not digging the middle of May after multiple runs.

 

[Warren Faidley]

I would definitely chase from today through the end of the month if I could. Models are in good agreement of removing SW flow at the end of April. I'm hoping this is just a hiccup and not a trend taking us back to drought mode.

 

[Mitch Drabenstott]

Decent agreement on the ensembles for a central-western ridge building towards the middle of next week. Seems like this could lead to a fairly quiet first week of May…hopefully not much longer than that as I’m chasing from the 8th to the 15th.

 

[Jeff House]

Many good years had a quiet period about a third of the way into May. Weekly 500 mb charts match the dreaded blue screens (boxes) of death on the dashboard. No real concern. I'd rather it make sense than be wires crossed. Appears that after the trough pulls out next week an expected quiet few days happens.

Then the 500 mb charts kind of match the boxes for later in May. No big crazy sequence, but days happen. Highest (worst) height anomalies are well north. Situation would allow more STJ action. Texas heights are shown near normal. Southern (low) Plains chasing is awful that late in the season, usually HP driven by 70+ Tds. Now if we can repeat the Caprock week, or some upslope into Colorado, game on!

 

[TonyB]

Thanks for the info on the seasons! That definitely helps to clarify things a bit! And yes, I'm in Colorado Springs. Due to my job in the Air Force, it isn't easy for me to take off work on short notice, though my current schedule means I'm off work between 1400 and 1500 local time most days. The problem I anticipate running into is similar to an issue I faced when I lived in SW OK as well. Living west of the main initiation zone for the day means that I am already behind on the chase as soon as I leave the house. Living in Altus, I missed several tornado opportunities because I wasn't always able to leave work early enough to get east of the storms before they fired and got going. For example, of the 5 tornadoes I saw last season, all of them were west of Altus. 3 in the TX panhandle, 1 in north TX just south of Vernon, and 1 only a few miles west of Altus. In all of those cases, I was able to approach the storms from the east and didn't have to play catch up the entire time. I'm really hoping I can find ways to mitigate that issue while I'm living here. Something tells me there won't be very many tornadic supercells moving east off of Pikes Peaks

Being a western chaser is both a blessing and a curse.

Its a curse since every chase is this constant battle about how far we chase the storms moving east vs how long it will take us to drive back. Ive had to call off good late evening and night chases because the storms were taking me too far east for me to get home in time.

Other than that, its really a blessing because as the season progresses, the target areas move further west and north, and the drives get easier. If you are like me, you are feinding so bad for a chase that you will drive from CO to AL and back in the beginning of the season, but as that enthusiasm wanes, each trip after gets short and shorter. Plus the terrain for each subsequent trip gets better as well since the areas become more flat, barren, and unpopulated. Also, living close the rockies year round is pretty dope.


Us western chasers can have the longest chase season of the chaser community since the late-season less synoptically evident chases move closer to us. Makes it possible to catch those random late season WY, CO, SD events that you may only show up in forecasts the day before.

 

[Warren Faidley]

Many good years had a quiet period about a third of the way into May. Weekly 500 mb charts match the dreaded blue screens (boxes) of death on the dashboard. No real concern. I'd rather it make sense than be wires crossed. Appears that after the trough pulls out next week an expected quiet few days happens.

Then the 500 mb charts kind of match the boxes for later in May. No big crazy sequence, but days happen. Highest (worst) height anomalies are well north. Situation would allow more STJ action. Texas heights are shown near normal. Southern (low) Plains chasing is awful that late in the season, usually HP driven by 70+ Tds. Now if we can repeat the Caprock week, or some upslope into Colorado, game on!

Yes, 100%. There is generally a week break sometime in the mid-April to May 7th. period. Not based on science, but from my own deployment dates over the last 37 years. As I noted before, the western propagation of RH this early into the main season is always a good sign. My Magic 8-Ball app says "YES" when asked if I will be deploying during the first week in May.