State of the Chase Season 2025

[William Monfredo]

Well I’m finally pulling the trigger.

"You don't always get what you go after, but you do get what you wouldn't have got if you hadn't gone after what you didn't get." - Blaze Foley.

 

[Warren Faidley]

Now that I'm "out here," I have no choice but to concentrate on the weather. I believe the local NWS offices have the best handle on *possibilities* over the next 10 days. The bottom line is few offices are trusting the models beyond Thursday. I don't recall the last time I can remember so much uncertainty in the extended. For example, DDC did not even write a "Long Term" discussion in the AM (5-12) outlook. The SPC has only outlooked areas that are not typically May chase regions, although I'm glad chasers in those areas might have opportunities. I keep getting the feeling everything is going to suddenly shift to a more *climatically* logical season, but not yet.

 

[Jason N]

I think its now a foregone conclusion that there will be chase days from the 15th to the 20th. Yes, they may be spread out in terms of geographic coverage away from the traditional locations from the 15th to 17th.. but one day in particular has persistently shown through multiple model runs and days, is the 18th. It has for some reason stuck to not only the area but timing with the longer wave and mid-level wind field orientations for the last 3-5 days, which is out on the far end of laughable trustworthiness, but I can only tell you what I've seen... There has also been a positive trend in the days past the 18th extending into the 20th across those climo hot spots as Warren mentioned.

 

[Sean Ramsey]

I'm with you guys. If the GFS supercell composite is to be believed there should be something to chase from the 14th onward through the end of May, although some days look more robust than others. Just having signs of a heartbeat in what is prime chase season is a good thing at this point. This season is moving quickly and we're close to a month left the traditional end of season. Seems to move quicker each year.

 

[Brett Roberts]

Medium-range guidance has been a nauseating roller coaster ride lately. But from the perspective of where the ride is this morning, the period from 5/18 - 5/20 may have a fairly high ceiling... with some of it potentially W of I-35 in the SP. My biggest fear currently is that the first wave ejecting across the Plains midweek ends up amplifying earlier and deeper over the Midwest than most current solutions depict, since that's been the recent tendency. If that happens, the tantalizing weekend trough could get bottled up longer back over CA/NV and dramatically tamp down the excitement for Sun-Tue... which, again, has been a seasonal tendency.

This amplified pattern with short wavelengths, combined with reduced radiosonde launches over the northern Plains and Rockies, is making it exceptionally hard to trust even high-level facets of the guidance beyond 4-5 days or so. I'm trying to throttle my expectations of medium-range NWP performance back about 15 years, to when we all knew not to put too much stock in even the synoptic pattern beyond D6-7. The 12z ECMWF just posting now shows a stretch of 5-6 days running all the way through next week with moderate to strong SW flow, daily respectable to strong LLJs, and rich moisture on the SP that's almost too good to be true... and indeed, I'd expect significant twists and turns over the next few days.

 

[Jason N]

oombined with reduced radiosonde launches over the northern Plains and Rockies,

I think that's a solid point and one that doesn't get a lot of play about upstream data influencing and effecting model output. A good friend of mine used to fly on Ms. Piggy when they were doing Pacific runs during the winter months, and I remember how the extra releases of soundings would be of some additional benefit over geographically data sparse regions leading to down range model benefits. it will be a good thing when radio-occultation data starts filling in those gaps I think, and maybe some of these wide swings in synoptic / long range guidance might smooth out

 

[Warren Faidley]

The AMA afternoon discussion is pretty much in line with my earlier comments. "CONFIDENCE IN THE WEATHER PATTERN SIGNIFICANTLY DECREASES THIS WEEKEND AND INTO EARLY NEXT WEEK." (end). For the Central and Southern Plains, it's going to be a big roll of the dice depending on a lot of variables.

 

[Matthew Crowther]

While many details need to be sorted out, various models and ensemble members are pretty much in agreement regarding the second trough in the Rockies. At this juncture, I would be quite surprised if we don't see at least a couple of pretty good days in the central and southern Plains from Sunday to Tuesday.

 

[Warren Faidley]

The NCEP Ensembles paint a screwball picture after the potentially chaseable system passes early next week -- transforming the season into a zonal or maybe NW flow pattern into the extended, as suggested by the GFS and ECMWF-AIFS.

 

[Andrew Pritchard]

I'm having the same trouble, or, luxury (?), Dan. I'm locked-in on enjoy Midwest opportunities Thursday-Friday regardless of how they trend in the final days to get the stretch open, but beyond that I'm just not sure. I'm tempted with the same "when it's May, you chase" pull when seeing flow over the dryline. There are even some moments where the advertised look this weekend into early next week reminds me of some memorable stretches from the last 20-25 years on the Plains - but with the lack of crashing cold fronts and big lows/troughs swinging through you get this corridor from the Plains to the Midwest that has daily opportunities with flow + juice and potential mesoscale enhancements to the local environment.

EDIT: was responding to a Dan Robinson post from early Monday morning and didn't realize there was an entire page of discussion afterward!

 

[Mitch Drabenstott]

Decided not to extend my trip…Fri-Sun would be the days I could do it and Sunday looks like the only slam dunk out of all those days. It’s not worth spending hundreds to change flights, book hotels, etc. to chase one good looking day. We had to resort to chasing Alabama on Saturday and somehow lucked out into a tornadic supercell so I will take that. Plus we have a plains chase day tomorrow in Nebraska.

Attention now turns to June 19-21 when I’ll be in Denver and I’d like to chase at least one of those days.

 

[Jeff House]

SPC has it covered through Tuesday May 20. Thursday and Friday have 15%. Text covers the weekend into Tuesday.

Saturday could be a recharge day; or if a miracle occurs, late isolated cells. Sunday and Monday look like a good Plains pattern. LLJ responds at proper diurnal timing beneath SW flow. Tuesday could get messy (cooler mid-levels) but still be rollin' in the Midwest. Those outer days are subject to mesoscale events so no 15% is prudent. At the same time, we're looking at a favorable synoptic pattern in the second half of May (though barley past the half-way mark).

Early June weekly products show a near seasonable pattern. AN heights show up out West which isn't ideal at face value. However it would still allow NW flow. Fortunately few products show a Central US ridge. CFS* is still on the West trough hopium, but the Euro and Cad weeklies are more normal heights. MJO isn't much help at the moment. I believe the pattern will slow down for early June but still offer mesoscale days.

*CFS dashboard has come off peaks for early June. Some of the highlighted days are just big CAPE. Others one can infer fronts (per QPF).

 

[Todd Lemery]

The state of my chase season is that I’ll be heading to Green Bay Friday the 16th for another of our kids graduations until the following Tuesday. I now realize that if you have four kids spaced out just right you can have a graduation every May for eight years straight. It looks like I’ll miss some good days, but all hope isn’t lost. Starting later next week there will be some opportunities for some fun chases. The CAPE values will be lower, which I can deal with and the storms that can fire will be closer to the slower moving variety that I really love. I’ll take what I can get and be happy about it.

 

[Zack Ruddle]

SPC just upgraded much of WI to Enhanced Risk on the day 3 outlook (May 15th), citing a potential corridor for supercells, very large hail, and tornadoes by late afternoon.

Assuming the models pan out I'll likely be targeting La Crosse to start and move east toward Madison.

 

[Bobby Little]

The state of my chase season is that I’ll be heading to Green Bay Friday the 16th for another of our kids graduations until the following Tuesday. I now realize that if you have four kids spaced out just right you can have a graduation every May for eight years straight. It looks like I’ll miss some good days, but all hope isn’t lost. Starting later next week there will be some opportunities for some fun chases. The CAPE values will be lower, which I can deal with and the storms that can fire will be closer to the slower moving variety that I really love. I’ll take what I can get and be happy about it.

Todd, cant you hit that graduation a day early? SPC showing enhanced through woods of Wisconsin