The Perfect Chase Day

[Adam Lucio]

What is/was your perfect chase day, or what is your ideal perfect chase day?

May 18th 2013 is a great example of one of mine.

It all started with tripoding the entire life cycle of the long lived Rozel EF-4 from a single location. A little further than I prefer to be, but it IS nice to just sit back and not have to move once in awhile. It also makes for great time lapsing.


That alone is enough to make it a career day, but then the beautifully contrasted Stanford tornadoes happened, which we were able to view from much closer.


While repositioning on the tornado as it began to rope out and kick back west across the highway, we drove directly under the funnel as the dirt whirled up only yards away in the field, proving a wee bit of adrenaline excitement.


We then watched the tornadoe's final moments in a nearby field under a brilliant sunset mammatus display.


To me this is the perfect chase day. Great, photogenic tornadoes over mostly open country. I was able to get a variety of shots from medium distance, still tripod life cycle "classic" stuff as well as have some up close and personal experiences for a bit more excitement thrown into the mix. I'm not a one or the other type person. I enjoy both angles of the pursuit, so to get them both in one chase, and have the results be high quality is just about as good as it gets.

Edit: whoa, those pics came out quite large, sorry about that. Sorta

 

[Ben Holcomb]

November 7, 2011 was pretty ideal. Leave work after a morning meeting, drive 2 hours southwest and chase tornadoes all the way home, eat steak in OKC and feel an earthquake. Also included: Tornado in a windfarm and honking in Connor McCrory's tornado video

 

[JustinPhillips]

Mine was June 20 of this year near Wadena, Minnesota. Got on the most photogenic supercell of my career. It was a slow mover in open country for hours with hardly anyone on it. The memories from that 4 hours will last forever. It was tor warned for most of its lifetime and came pretty close to producing a few times. But even so, just to have it to myself for hours without needing to move much, was a blast. Got so many incredible images that day.

 

[Dan Robinson]

Rozel/Sanford was gold - about as good as it gets. Bennington, though, was my personal favorite - my "dream" chase come true. Huge, roaring tornado just sitting there. Most of the time you'd expect to just get a fleeting experience out of a tornado like that - but with Bennington, you could just stand there and take it in for as long as you wanted. I had plenty of time to shoot lots of photos, lots of video and just stand there and watch in awe.





A runner-up for me was the September 25, 2012 Okawville, Illinois tornado, 20 minutes from home. It doesn't get much better than that. I made coffee and put it in my travel mug before I left on the chase, and it was still hot when I got home. Chases like this are one of the primary reasons I moved to the Midwest.

 

[Jason Boggs]

Definitely the most perfect chase day for me in 15 years of chasing......Campo, CO May 31st 2010




What made it perfect:

Slight risk day with 2% tornado risk (I love these type of days)
Roads were not jammed with chasers
I had a good friend with me
It was in SE CO with great terrain and visibility
It was basically an LP storm with great structure and a very visible tornado
I was in prefect position to document the tornado as it was on the ground for at least 20 minutes

 

[JustinPhillips]

Both your images are sick Jason, but the top one, HOLY S*IT

 

[Mike Marz]

My perfect chase day so far was the day of my only "big" tornado of my life so far. June 17th, 2014. It was perfect because the day before I left work to go towards Nebraska, only to realize I left too late. I started to get a massive headache, as I had to glance back and forth at the events of the 16th happening on a live stream, on my phone, while driving back home. I was actually physically dying of a headache from the stress of busting. As I sat home watching all the footage on the night of the 16th I thought I would never chase again I was so pissed. Luckily I got over it pretty quickly and left work even earlier on the 17th. I guess Coleridge was even more perfect for me because it came right after the agony of the 16th. Watch video > But my absolutely perfect chase, which hasn't happened yet, will involve a dryline, and being on the storm from initiation. Also, on my perfect chase in the future I will have a real camera.

 

[Jason Boggs]

Both your images are sick Jason, but the top one, HOLY S*IT

Thank you sir! It was definitely a day I will never forget!

 

[Ben Holcomb]

I also have to say Bowdle (I know, DRINK) was a pretty perfect chase before that whole stuck-in-a-pissed-off-farmers-field incident.

 

[Jason Boggs]

That's one storm I wish I would have been on. Nice image Ben!

 

[Jeremy Perez]

I'm going to go with Rozel/Sanford too. It's hard to imagine having it so good again. Hanging out along the dryline, watching towers try to get it done, and then targeting, and easily pacing the storm that got it done. I was privileged to see the Rozel tornado from its slow & steady start to its picturesque, roping end twenty-plus minutes later. Then to cruise to the next storm east and have the Sanford tornado whirl and dance, easily visible even from the southwest before becoming a disembodied bait worm drifting to the west. And it was such a low-key chase without being under the gun from the storms of interest, or other developing convection. If I have it so good again, it will be miraculous.

 

[Shane Adams]

This is always a tough one to answer, but out of every chase day I've had and everything I consider makes a chase great, I'd probably have to go with June 12, 2004. Four high contrast, dramatic tornadoes. On any other day, the Rock tornado would've been headline news......


Mulvane #1



Mulvane #2



Rock



Atlanta

 

[Sean Ramsey]

Third vote for Rozel. I was almost impatient enough to think about driving north to Ness City, but stuck it out and it paid off. I stayed in the same spot for most of the Rozel portion, then moved north and the show just kept going. Everything was so visible and even though were a number of chasers it wasn't clogged or crowded, and it was a pretty laid back chase. Couldn't ask for better.

 

[Adam Reagan]

For me it's the Rozel/Sanford day. Not just for the tornadoes I saw that day, but with who I saw those tornadoes with. It came on my first real chase in 2013 which was sweet.

[Broken External Image]:https://fbcdn-sphotos-e-a.akamaihd...._=1428652252_daf3056f428dbfd30608b7f038583a8b
[Broken External Image]:https://scontent-a-atl.xx.fbcdn.net...=88437003151e4a8873a8878d02a94912&oe=55259E69

 

[Marcus Diaz]

Beware: my post will have a touch of humble bragging. Deal with it

So my perfect chase day is one I constantly talk about. And its been my avatar since right after it happened. So here's the story. Back in late May 2010, I was doing pretty well. New job that let me chase when I asked, and I was racking up some nice tubes in the panhandle area. The day prior, me and some chaser friends scored 5 tornadoes off of one cyclic supercell near Texline, TX. The panhandle had good parameters for supercells the next day, May 24. While a majority of chasers were coming off the Bowdle high and revving up for another round of nice tornadoes in SD...I was busy at my job turning wrenches. During the afternoon under clear muggy skies, the dryline lit up with a nice supercell rolling through AMA around 3pm and marched towards Pampa, sparking a tornado warning. I was eager to get out, hoping the stalled dryline would fire again in the late evening. I left work at 5 trying to race towards Pampa after that storm, but alas it got messy and linear in the eastern panhandle. I met with a group of local chasers near Miami, TX just sitting there to see if the dryline would fire again. Steve Miller (TX) would yell out "TOWERS!!!" as we all looked to the west. The faint outlines of towers were exploding once again to the west in front of a glaring sun. We didn't waste time, and everyone went their separate ways. Steve and I raced north on a FM road out of Miami, while everyone else went back SW to Pampa on the main highway. Following Steve at (allegedly) somewhat high speeds, we finally caught the storms out in no-man's land.

We kept going north, dropping into the Canadian River valley and back up again. Back west on another highway and a few dirt roads later, we were east of Spearman, TX. Suddenly, a spectacle, a very much golden surprise...a funnel reaches down to the west of Spearman:

By this time Steve is racing through town, while I'm holding back. I make my way back through Spearman, drive to the eastern edge of town, then back north on a county road. I stop when I have a clear shot to the west. What unfolds still makes the hairs on my neck stand up thinking about it. A beautiful rope tube grows into an even more beautiful hollow stovepipe tornado. I'll never forget my surroundings at that exact moment. The wind was calm, birds were chirping, there was a mixed rumble of soft thunder and water wells in the distance. Rain barely patting my head as I took literally only 4 pictures in 2 minutes. The rest of the time? I was watching in awe, jaw dropped, camera gripped by my side. I was just taking it in. I had to, because there's no way I'd ever be able to again. Not a single vehicle around me, not a single soul was seeing the angle I was seeing. Steve was just to the south of it looking north so even he didn't get this angle.

A few minutes after that tornado lifted, I kept up with the meso that was spitting these funnels like crazy. It finally touched one more tube down for a few seconds before the base literally evaporated into nothing. It was truly, in my opinion, THE perfect chase.