The Secondary Target...what's your take?

[Jason Boggs]

Watching @Shane Adams show, the Dead Chasers Society about secondary target areas gave me some curiosity on what others may think about this. Personally, I choose secondary targets a lot more than I used to. Of course on a marginal day, or even a high end slight or moderate, I tend to sometimes get into the thick of things in the risk area. But, on higher end moderate days or high risk days where the world is about to end, I usually try to choose targets away from the main show. You may ask....why would you do this? Here is the reasoning behind it.

Why I choose a secondary target on BIG days...

• Not always, but generally there is less traffic to deal with. Heavy traffic on a big day could spell disaster if caught in it while trying to make a hasty retreat on that escape route. I'm not trying to get myself away from traffic entirely, but I'm just getting away from the zoo that can sometimes be seen on big days.
• A secondary target often has more isolated convection, especially down the dryline in a more capped environment.
• Of course with more isolated storms, the chance at a photogenic storm/tornado is pretty good.
• Being away from larger traffic areas and potentially more convection takes away added stress, at least for me anyway.
• I like the added enjoyment at finding a secondary target and being successful. For me, it's not just about the storms...half of the enjoyment is the forecast to lead me to the prize. If I can find a good storm/tornado that every Bob, Sue, Tom and Harry didn't see, it makes it that much better.

 

[Dan Robinson]

In the past 2 years, I've started choosing secondary targets in the Midwest (if they exist) on Great Plains days that I might have otherwise gone out for. Part of this is because I've developed a little bit of a home bias, but it's also because I've missed plenty of tornadoes within 2 hours of my apartment on days I cap busted in Kansas or Nebraska.

I spend a lot of time looking at past events to help sharpen my own forecasting knowledge and storm evolution/pattern recognition, and it's remarkable how many big Plains days have several tornado reports over here as well. This is mainly because the warm front on many Plains days extends into the Midwest - as long as there is a broad enough swath of 30-40kts flow this far east, there will often be tornadic supercells on the front in Missouri, Iowa, Illinois and Arkansas. I personally find seeing a tornado near home as being very satisfying, and I've become more willing to accept missing some events in the Plains for the chance to score locally. I've started to get to the point that I'll only go to the Plains when I can rule out supercell chances here, which is only on those days with a narrow instability axis out west, or a longwave trough that completely misses us with any flow here.

Now when I do travel to the Plains, I have tended to go for the primary target, or at least what I think will be the primary target (sometimes I'm wrong). But come to think of it, many days there really isn't that primary-secondary target hierarchy, or at least not one that is evident beforehand (May 18/19, 2013 for example). You end up with two to four storms that are essentially equal in their 'target appeal'. I think what ends up being the 'secondary target' that most think of is either Colorado upslope or the cold core environment at/near the surface low center. I'm not sure I'm to the point I'd go that far for a secondary target coming from St. Louis, when we get our share of those many times per year.