What Is Your Best Tornado Stint?

[Tony Laubach]

Coming off a pretty epic series of chases, I was pondering where this latest stint of tornado chases ranked within some of my better stints. Me, being a numbers guy, is all about stuff like this, fun stats and rankings, etc. Got me thinking about it and I thought I'd pose the question here for a fun discussion.

From May 14-23, I had a total of 6 chasing days, five of which yielded tornadoes, many of those quality intercepts. From the 14th through the 18th, I went 4 for 5. A ho-hum chase on the 19th, followed by two days travel back home (20th, 21st) yielded one down day at home (22nd) before an epic Colorado chase closed out the stint.

May 14 (Southwest Nebraska): Three landspouts intercepted, including a fairly photogenic, fully condensed spout near Hershey. Adding to the quality of today was the fact that I was NOT originally going to chase this as I was planning to position for the May 15 setup over in Illinois, but saw enough the morning of to sacrifice the easier drive to play this event.

May 16 (Southeast Missouri): Another three-tornado day, including the high-contrast, close intercept of the Blodgett EF-3. I had an unobstructed viewed of this tornado at its peak strength, then had an elevated position over the interstate as the tornado crossed over I-55 a mile to my south. This would arguably yield one of my top 5 best ever tornado photographs. Not to mention I had this tornado live on AccuWeather for most of it's life and did very good post-tornado coverage immediately after before scoring the Benton tornado to close out the day.

May 17 (Central Oklahoma): Snagged the Paul's Valley tornado stat-padder. I was just inside town and fortunately was able to get enough of a view to notch the belt. I had no intention to chase today as I was in OKC to snag up my chase partner from the airport later that evening. I arrived to my hotel at 3p, just in time to watch the cell go up southwest of OKC, and I got on it, saw the tornado, and followed it just a bit further east before heading back to beat my buddy to OKC airport. More of a fun story than anything else, but it counts!

May 18 (Western Kansas): Six tornadoes, a photogenic wedge, my top tornado intercept at Grinnell, and a couple stat padders to boot. I was animate on not chasing Oklahoma's higher end setup on a weekend in May. Too much PTSD still lingers after El Reno. I was going to Kansas no matter the setup. Our target from OKC that morning was Great Bend, and we arrived to the same dreary, cool, dampness that seemed to overtake most of the target areas. We stopped in Great Bend long enough for food and fuel and we drove west where the tornadoes were (Bennett, CO had been ongoing) and said we'd go west til we found sun. That led us to Scott City and the rest is history. We intercepted multiple tornadoes on the lead supercell, including the longer-track EF-2 wedge west of US-83. We ducked to the southern cell briefly and got a couple tornadoes near Scott Lake Park before re-catching the original cell and had a front row seat as Grinnell crossed I-70 less than 200 yards in front of us. We assisted a semi-driver who was tossed immediately after as well. We chose the secondary target from the get-go and it, in my opinion, was the storm of the day.

May 23 (Northeast Colorado): Three tornadoes, including the incredibly photogenic Akron tornado. After the ho-hum Red River chase on the 19th followed by a two-day drive back to Colorado, I had a backyard chase to close out this stint. Unlike Akron 2023, I shared this one with hundreds of my closest friends. While not in the best position as I was trying to stay comfortably ahead of the monster core of a south-moving cell, I still managed some great imagery and views of all three tornadoes this storm as confirmed to have produced. Best part, I was home before the sun set.

So final numbers on the 2025 stint... on five chases, I saw a total of 16 tornadoes, more than half I would deem 'high quality', including a top 5 tornado photograph (Blodgett), my new single best tornado intercept (Grinnell) on a highly less-crowded secondary target play, my most photogenic wedge (the Sunray Scott Lake) that same day, ending on a top 5 Colorado tornado day.

So where does this latest stint rank in terms of my best stints? For my purposes, here is how I define an "awesome stint of tornado chases". They must fall within a window of no more than 13 days, have a minimum of three successful tornado intercept days within that window, and have at least a 50% tornado success ratio on those chases. The chases do not need to occur on consecutive calendar days, but I won't include streaks that include more than 3 consecutive down/home days (travel days do not count as down days for me). Obviously such a ranking is subjective on the particular person, so I will leave it up to you how you wish to define your stints, but feel free to steal my requirements. I will say that this needs to have a focus on successful TORNADO chase days; you can include the chases that would be sprinkles on your donut for awesome structure, great hail, etc as tie-breakers, but this is geared for TORNADO chase days, not generic chase days.

MY QUALIFIED 'STINTS' IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER

2007: April 21-24 (3 out of 3)
2008: May 22-29 (3 out of 6)
2010: May 14-24 (5 out of 6)
2011: May 21-25 (5 out of 5)
2016: May 21-25 (4 out of 5)
2023: June 21-23 (3 out of 3)
2025: May 14-23 (5 out of 7)

This year's stint I would put at number 2 for the reasons I listed above. So many high-quality tornado intercepts, plus the highlights of some of my best photography, top intercepts, and putting the Blodgett tornado on live TV.

To answer my own question, I would have to put the 2016 stint as #1 overall. All four of those days included quality tornadoes, including a top 3 chase in Dodge City on May 24th (that also included my 300th career tornado) and the long-lived Chapman EF-4 the following day. May 21st featured Leoti's stat-padders plus amazing structure and good lightning, and we got several highly visible tornadoes the following day in the Texas Panhandle. All told, we collected imagery of 20 tornadoes over those four days. That will be a tough stint to top.










#3 goes to 2010, which was highlighted by Bowdle on the 22nd and Meadow on the 24th. Both days included some high-quality tornadoes plus amazing intercepts. Add to this these were some of our best TWISTEX chases, including the one-of-a-kind tower probe deployment in Bowdle. May 24 saw nine tornadoes in what was easily the most unusual storm environment I had ever been in. The other days featured a plethora of smaller, brief stat-padders. The Campo hailer on the 15th adds a little sprinkle in there as well.



My #4 stint would have to be the 2011, which was the only time in my career I've seen tornadoes five days in-a-row. It would be higher on the list, but only the 23rd and 24th had quality tornadoes. May 23 had a very photogenic, almost landspout tornado, one of the more stunning funnels I had seen and we were right under it (a funny note on this one, my video was edited with Reed's acting like he was seeing it in Season 5 of Storm Chasers - he wasn't even there that day). May 24 was the Canton Lake intercept, an incredible tornado day. We followed that up with a tornado near Fariview, my 200th career tornado. The other three days saw mediocre tornadoes and/or limited views.



#5 goes to the 2008 stint, that week in May. Obviously there was a bit of a gap between the tornadoes of May 23 and the tornadoes of May 29, but it fits the 50% rule and does so with several significant tornado intercepts during that stretch of time. This was also my first big stretch with Tim and company with TWISTEX, so this was a whole new experience as a whole for me.



So there ya go... some fodder for discussion as we all await the next 'stint' of storm chasing to roll in... I'm eager to hear your stories!

 

[John Farley]

I can honestly say that I have never had a true stint. Partly because I do not chase nearly as many days or for as many at a time as Tony does, but also because I seem to find ways to screw up on days just before or after my best days. For example, the day after Rozel (2013), which I consider my best day ever, I was within a few miles of a cell near South Haven, KS the whole time it was producing a tornado, but somehow managed to be in a position where I could not see it. Another big day for me was Dodge City (20`6), and I did see another tornado on that trip a couple days earlier near Howardwick, TX, but due to a poor road choice, my only pictures of it were through rain and through my windshield while I was trying to reposition on I-40. The next day, I was on the storm that produced the Turkey, TX tornado, but stopped chasing before dark as I am not a night chaser and had already encountered flooded roads that day. I have had other years, such as 2011 and 2014 where I had multiple excellent days, but spread out over the season, not in a short stint.

 

[Dan Robinson]

My three "career" seasons were 2013, 2016 (for much of the same reasons as Tony's) and 2024. Those three years saw my highest total number of tornadoes and/or photogenic/historic tornadoes of any other years. Even during my best years though, there were plenty of big fails in the middle of the successes. Like John, I busted on 5/19 in 2013. In 2016 I missed photogenic tornadoes 45 minutes from home. In 2024, I missed Duke 5/23.

2013:
- 5/18 Rozel/Sanford*
- 5/28 Bennington I*
- 5/31 El Reno
- 7/1 St. Francisville/Bellmont

2016:
- 5/22 Spearman
- 5/24 Dodge City*
- 5/25 Bennington II*
- 6/22 Pontiac

2024:
- 4/26 Waverly/Minden*
- 5/6 Barnsdall
- 5/21 Red Oak/Greenfield
- 5/24 Windthorst
- 7/9 Mount Vernon*

* Chase days on my personal all-time top ten list

To narrow those down into consecutive multi-day highs, the 2016 5/22-5/25 one will be hard to top, with 5/24-25 being a dream two-day sequence that had everything you could ever want as a chaser.

 

[Todd Lemery]

2016
May 21st Leoti. My favorite storm all time
May 22nd Spearman
May 23rd Turkey. This one happened when darkness fell. I don’t chase at night so the only reason I saw it was because after watching the storm try for a couple of hours, along with about two hundred other chasers, I left when it got dark only to have to turn around and go back the way I came after coming up on a blocked off road. The tornado by then had dropped and was in the windshield.
May 24th Dodge City
May 25th Chapman. I wasn’t able to chase this storm. This is the storm where we drove right past it’s future path because my brother had to get home for the next day only to find out later the reason he “had” to get home was to water his grass. I’ll never let him forget that.

 

[JamesCaruso]

My experience is more like John’s:

I can honestly say that I have never had a true stint. Partly because I do not chase nearly as many days or for as many at a time as Tony does, but also because I seem to find ways to screw up on days just before or after my best days.

Ditto for being limited in chasing, even after 25+ years, because it’s generally a chase vacation of 2 weeks or less, and some years it just wasn’t a good pattern. I’ll have to go back and check some of the big days noted above to see if I was even out here. I do know that a good many of them I missed simply because I screwed up - including right before or after my best days, just like John said. For example, I was at Dodge City 2016, but missed Chapman the day after. I’ll blame complacency - thinking I couldn’t possibly see anything as good as I had the day before, and assuming it wasn’t worth deviating from my Wichita target to go after a cell that was then 85 miles away. Come to think of it, I’m probably pretty much a failure as a chaser, as I have far fewer “big days” than many of you. The ones that stick out are Dodge City 2016, Campo 2010, Canton OK 2011, Selden KS 2021, Silverton TX 2024 (maybe the last two mentioned just because they are recent, and I’m probably forgetting some older ones). For any of the personal big days I mentioned, I think those were my only tornado days on those trips. I don’t think I have had a trip with more than one tornado day since 2008. The trip I remember being the most active overall was the last two weeks of 2013, but I screwed up every single day, topping it off by leaving the morning of 5/31/13 and passing up the opportunity to stay an extra day for El Reno.

 

[Brett Roberts]

Mine isn't a close contest, and it's also a boring answer that's already shown up multiple times above: 22-25 May 2016 (Clarendon/Howardwick, Woodward, Dodge City, Chapman).

Remarkably, outside that stretch of four consecutive days, I've never had two consecutive "quality tornado" days after 20 years. In fact, I believe my only other consecutive days if you lowered the bar to include any tornadoes would be 24-25 April 2025 (South Plains, Littlefield) where the second day was very bird fart-y.

One thought I have is that the 21-25 May 2016 stretch might've somehow been underappreciated at the time, as great as it seemed even then. I recall sitting out the Leoti day because of very marginal mid-level flow and the promise of better days upcoming. You could've very easily stayed in WWR or DDC for that 5-day stretch and seen great stuff every day leaving at 4pm, at least until Chapman at the end of the sequence. That type of sequence in arguably the best chasing area on the planet (when factoring in terrain and roads) pretty much sets the bar that all other chasecation prospects will be put up against for a very long time. I think it's telling how many chasers continue to report it as their best day(s) a decade later without much hesitation. I think I'd still put 16-18 June 2014 as the best three-day sequence on record, but it was substantially more difficult to forecast and farther outside most people's core geographical and seasonal bullseye.

 

[Brett Roberts]

I can honestly say that I have never had a true stint. Partly because I do not chase nearly as many days or for as many at a time as Tony does, but also because I seem to find ways to screw up on days just before or after my best days. For example, the day after Rozel, which I consider my best day ever, I was within a few miles of a cell near South Haven, KS the whole time it was producing a tornado, but somehow managed to be in a position where I could not see it.

Outside the extreme outlier of late May 2016, I've had this same experience and have specifically thought about it numerous times. It's a bit uncanny how many times a euphoric win has been undercut or even overshadowed by an immediate defeat within 24-48 hours. Rozel is a great example, where I proceeded to miss at least 3 historic, violent tornadoes within an hour of home over the two subsequent days. Another example is bagging Pilger at what I blithely considered the redemptive end of an otherwise horrific season... only to drive home without seriously analyzing the next two days and watch them go huge in exactly the same area, with Coleridge actually outshining Pilger for the type of experience I'm after.

Digging deep into the archives, I saw a large tornado on the 23 May 2008 W KS outbreak after having blown the prior day by staying south down the dryline... and then didn't make it south in time for the absolutely flukey OFB tornadofest in C OK on 24 May, again within a couple hours of home.

 

[JamesCaruso]

One thought I have is that the 21-25 May 2016 stretch might've somehow been underappreciated at the time, as great as it seemed even then. I recall sitting out the Leoti day because of very marginal mid-level flow and the promise of better days upcoming. You could've very easily stayed in WWR or DDC for that 5-day stretch and seen great stuff every day leaving at 4pm, at least until Chapman at the end of the sequence. That type of sequence in arguably the best chasing area on the planet (when factoring in terrain and roads) pretty much sets the bar that all other chasecation prospects will be put up against for a very long time. I think it's telling how many chasers continue to report it as their best day(s) a decade later without much hesitation. I think I'd still put 16-18 June 2014 as the best three-day sequence on record, but it was substantially more difficult to forecast and farther outside most people's core geographical and seasonal bullseye

This makes me feel even worse for being able to report Dodge City as my only success during that stretch. I seem to recall feeling pretty discouraged during that trip, until Dodge City day. I’ll have to go back to my journals and figure out what I was doing on Leoti day and the other days … (I know what happened on Chapman day, I am still haunted by that…)

Outside the extreme outlier of late May 2016, I've had this same experience and have specifically thought about it numerous times. It's a bit uncanny how many times a euphoric win has been undercut or even overshadowed by an immediate defeat within 24-48 hours. Rozel is a great example, where I proceeded to miss at least 3 historic, violent tornadoes within an hour of home over the two subsequent days. Another example is bagging Pilger at what I blithely considered the redemptive end of an otherwise horrific season... only to drive home without seriously analyzing the next two days and watch them go huge in exactly the same area, with Coleridge actually outshining Pilger for the type of experience I'm after.

In my post I attributed this to complacency. Maybe this is a common thing. We all weigh the cost/benefit of individual chase opportunities - i.e., is it worth driving 4-5 hours for a very low probability event when the parameters suck? It’s only by taking every opportunity that you get those magic moments. But when you just had a magic moment the day before, you can’t help but think “No way that’s going to happen again the day after!” Now, statistically of course, the probability on a given day is not changed by what happened the day before. But we’re talking about events that have a low probability to begin with. It’s a different risk/reward calculation when you were just rewarded the day before. It’s like gambling, winning a jackpot, and deciding to pocket the winnings and go home rather than gamble again the next day, You know you are more likely to lose than win. If you are still looking for a win, you might go for it all-in on the next day. But if you just had a win last night, you pocket the money and go home.

 

[Dave C]

I can't claim to have a stint of tornadoes ever either, except yes, another vote for 2016. There was enough opportunity for most everyone to have a great season that year. Like others, 2016 was easily my best year in my approximately 1.5 decades of chasing. My chase goals have always been experiental and photography/timelapse based and many days I could not care less if I see a grungy tornado vs. something else more photogenic such as great stucture or lightning, so that probably limits my chances of having a tornado stint. Also, despite the flexibility to chase many days each season, over the years have I have started choosing very carefully which days to go out, as I don't enjoy non-photogenic things, chaser hordes, difficult terrain, or super long drives unless there are multiple days of good chasing to make the distance and time worth it. My current chase vehicle also doesn't go in hail, which is limiting mostly only for seeing certain tornadoes up close. I used to chase much more often my first few years, and was not choosy but that has changed dramatically. I still make dumb choices in forecasts or the field that one would think I learned from years back, or don't chase days I should/could. I think with my current situation and all factors considered, I may be unlikely to ever have a tornado stint again, so 2016 will have to do:

May 7: Yuma and Wray tornadoes
May 21: Leoti tornado and maybe the best structure I've seen.
May 22: Lakin-> Friend, KS rain wrapped wedge and fantastic structure (same day as Spearman)
May 24: Akron tornado (same day as Dodge City :/ )

Aug 1: Grand Canyon lightning festival - multiple bolts inside the canyon at dark, which is quite rare. Not a tornado, but emphasizes how great the overall weather pattern was in 2016 over CONUS.

A half dozen other tornado or structure days I missed or chased somewhere else (missed Chapman AND Dodge, ughh), but there are so many days that had also had local lightning or ok structure. It was just a prolific year and very active weather pattern everywhere it seems. Quite the contrast to the last couple years where you can easily see nothing at all in a season if you are choosy or have limited time.

 

[Jeremy Perez]

This got me wondering how I'd even define a stint. Maybe 3+ days within a week-ish time frame? I've had a few back-to-back pairs of tornado days and then seasons where I've chased two or three separate trips with multiple widely spaced tornado days. But I think 2025 is the only year I'd qualify as having a stint.

I wound up with seven tornado days this year on two separate chase trips. The second trip, The eight days from April 24-May 1 yielded 5 tornado days:

April 24: Matador, TX — 2 Tornadoes [1 photogenic]
April 25: Sudan, TX — 2 Tornadoes complete with terrible positioning/timing
April 27: Cherry County, NE — 3 Tornadoes [1 photogenic]
April 28: Bellevue, KS — 1 Hybrid Tornado
May 1: Killeen, TX — 2 Tornadoes; I've heard the lift/recondense of one of them made 3, but not sure? [2 photogenic]

 

[John Farley]

Thinking about this a little more, when I first responded to this thread there are a couple of things that I overlooked. Still would say I have never had a real stint, but somehow I overlooked 2019 when I did get two photogenic tornadoes within 10 days of each other, although on different trips.

McCook, NE, May 17:



I actually saw three that day, but this one was by far the most photogenic. And on May 26, Mount Dora, NM, southwest of Clayton, NM:



Second thing I somehow overlooked: If a stint can include other interesting weather observations besides tornadoes, I actually had one earlier this month, with four thundersnow encounters in 8 days near Santa Fe, NM, including a couple with snow and hail coming down at the same time. Real hail, not graupel, although there was some of that, too. Did not think of that, despite its recency, because I was thinking in terms of tornado stints, but I do enjoy thundersnow and chase it quite a bit, and never seen that much before in such a short time.