The "Check Swing" chase

[Dan Robinson]

In baseball, a "check swing" is when a batter indecisive about an incoming pitch has to start the motion of a swing before deciding whether or not to follow through.

In storm chasing, there are instances when available data is still unclear about an upcoming day's potential, but the clock is ticking on your latest possible departure time. Eventually, this period of indecision can reach the critical point when further delaying departure will leave insufficient time to travel to the target (considering the drive time and in the case of a long-distance trip, the time needed to sleep). Further delaying the decision past that critical point is effectively a no-go call, as you won't reach the target in time. In those cases, you have no choice but to begin the drive to the target until there is enough information to make a go/no-go decision. If it's a "go", you continue on to the target. If it's a "no-go", you turn around and go home. I've called these "check swing" chase trips.

I usually have several check swing chases each year that range from 1 to 2 hours before turning around. My longest one was last May, when I drove four hours toward Oklahoma for the event on the 11th before being discouraged by the lagging upper support, likely HP storms and instability-threatening clouds. That particular decision turned out to be the wrong one, as the Oklahoma setup ended up producing (analogous to a "called strike" in baseball terms).

How many of these have you had to do? What is your longest one? Do you have another name for the start-the-drive-then-turn-around trip?

 

[Randy Jennings]

Great thread @Dan Robinson . I live in the DFW area, and most of my chases are out and back the same day (hence why I rarely chase more than TX and OK). I face this go/no-go decision almost every chase. It is a hard decision when different models are telling different stories, a given model isn't showing run to run consistency, and/or models aren't verifying well with current observations. This is especially happens a lot in the early season. However, once I commit, I commit and have never turned around. I find that I enjoy the trip even if it isn't the greatest chase ever and as one of the characters in the Supercell movie said "every time you chase the sky shows you something you haven't seen before". You miss 100% of the events you don't chase.

Sometimes I get busy at work and sometimes I drag my feet too long and leave late. Sometimes this makes me miss the main event, or I have to settle for a secondary target vs the prime one. I will say that sometimes the secondary target turns out being better. I will also say that if convection happens before I get there, it sure makes confirming the target easier. My home base location also means I often have the advantage of the storm moving generally toward me and me moving generally toward the storm when convection does form. If I lived west of where the dryline usually sets up, I would likely never catch up when I was late to the game. Sometimes when I leave on a chase early I will setup to far west and will have to play catchup.

Early season marginal chases are good tune ups to check out your equipment and get back in the swing of chasing too - another reason I have never turned around.

 

[Warren Faidley]

I've done this for hurricane chases several times. Driving from Tucson to Ft. Stockton, TX or Van Horn, TX to be in pre-day range for a Gulf-falling hurricane within a days drive.

 

[Brett Roberts]

I leave home undecided at least several times a year, but in practice, it's extraordinarily rare for me to turn around more than 30 min from home. In essence, I "check swing" and then allow the sunk cost fallacy to propel me onward to the target >80% of the time. Over the past decade, a shockingly large percentage of my tornado days came from exactly this scenario. So, I think I've conditioned myself to simply accept this weird self-deception as part of my chasing style.

As I say often, I feel we've been in a Plains climate regime for at least a decade where you simply have to swing at lots of pitches to hit anything good. This must be torture for out-of-alley chasers like you, @Dan Robinson, to very rarely have a strong "go" signal with >24 hour lead time. A stretch of years more like 2003, 2004, or 2007, with most quality tornadoes concentrated on obvious synoptic days with long lead time and MDT outlooks days in advance, would be a welcome change for you... and for me to re-calibrate my go/no-go standards down to a healthier threshold.

 

[Sean Ramsey]

For me, nothing is worse than a cap bust so many of my "Check-Swings" are related to whether storms are going to fire off or not. Living in Oklahoma allows for a lot of out and backs as Randy mentioned, but I've hesitated on more than a few days to the point I've missed some good storms simply because I didn't believe there would either be convection or it would initiate so late it wouldn't be worth the drive. The worst is when the hi-res models don't break out storms on more than a couple of runs when the cap is fairly strong, especially when I'm early into a drive to a far away target. If it's a long drive (like 6 hours or more) I really start to reconsider, and have found myself turning around three hours in a couple of times.

If I'm already out chase-cation style, I never hesitate because I have nowhere else to go and nothing else to do. But when I'm at home and have to decide it can be tough, and I find myself batting about .500 in being happy I didn't go and regretting my decisions to stay or turn around.

 

[Todd Lemery]

I’ll do the “check swing” a few times a year and am fine with that. That’s way better than when I took off for a seven hour drive to the perfect spot in Iowa and got myself a big swift cap hit between the legs and had to make the seven hour drive back that night. Not even a sprinkle….

 

[James Wilson]

I have never turned around, I always face the pitcher and hope for the best. Hell you never know he could balk and you get a free base just by being there. Getting hit is not an option however. With that said I have gone and struck out many times but at least I took a swing.

 

[Dan Robinson]

I'm definitely doing more of these over time. Off hand, I can't think of any examples where I turned around before arriving at a target during my first 10 years of chasing.

In recent years, it's a byproduct of both living outside of the Plains and being increasingly picky on setups. Some of that is due to the practical limitations that I've always had, IE only having a finite amount of chase funds and PTO days. The other is that I've reached a point in my chase career that I feel like I've seen and done everything there is to see and do. That could be another thread subject in itself. I've captured every tornado and lightning shot I've always dreamed of, and far more. I still love storms of course, but the motivation to go all-out for them isn't there to the degree it was in my 20s. Coupled with that, I'm more able to accept, without much distress, missing things as the result of a no-go decision. Those misses doesn't bother me as much as I get older, especially when I look back at all I've been privileged to see.

 

[Mark Gressman Jr]

I like the analogy here Dan, good idea for a thread. I haven't been in the position to make this decision yet, but I'm hoping that'll change this June. I've spent the last couple years slowly learning the science, and living on the east coast coupled with a hectic work schedule hasn't given me too many opportunities.

The few chases I've been on were close to home, and I knew before heading out that I was almost guaranteed something sub severe. Still, I wanted to get out and try my hand at navigating, and structure identification just for the practice. I did miss a golden opportunity to possibly see an embedded sup put down a short lived tube 2 hours away, but I had just finished a 12 hour overnight shift, and didn't think the setup was worth the effort..... lesson learned there, lol!

 

[gdlewen]

I like the analogy here Dan, good idea for a thread. I haven't been in the position to make this decision yet, but I'm hoping that'll change this June. I've spent the last couple years slowly learning the science, and living on the east coast coupled with a hectic work schedule hasn't given me too many opportunities.

The few chases I've been on were close to home, and I knew before heading out that I was almost guaranteed something sub severe. Still, I wanted to get out and try my hand at navigating, and structure identification just for the practice. I did miss a golden opportunity to possibly see an embedded sup put down a short lived tube 2 hours away, but I had just finished a 12 hour overnight shift, and didn't think the setup was worth the effort..... lesson learned there, lol!

@Mark Gressman Jr I feel I know your pain all too well. Living in Mercer County (7A off the NJTP for you East Coast Folk who use the "New Jersey Turnpike Exit Coordinate System"), chasing was more like scouting sites with views in different directions and then going to them when storms approach. The idea of a "checked swing" implies you have time to change your mind, but with roughly 30-60 minutes transit time from the Delaware River to the coast the bigger deal is having time to get to one of those "pre-scouted sites". Maybe in South Jersey things are better but the farther north you go the worse it is. (It's not the Plains, that's for sure.)

As for OK chasing, "Caught Looking" is a better baseball metaphor for my Plains chasing experiences. I'm getting better at assessing conditions the day before an event, but have some painful memories of missed storms because I didn't know what to look for.