What’s a good starting location for a chase day relative to the area of tornadoes

[Kristian K]

Hello, I am new here and wanted to get into the hobby of storm chasing, I’ve never seen a tornado ever in my life and wanting to know a good starting location in area that has a risk for tornadoes on a that day.

My thoughts of starting within the most western side of the risk area since that’s when the first cells of the day start forming.

If you have other thoughts where I could start the chase day, let me know.

 

[Mike Smith]

Welcome Kristian,

Because we often cannot tell precisely where the supercells will form, I generally go to a place with Wi-Fi (often for lunch, buy something from the place where you use the internet) in a location with good roads in multiple directions. That way, once we are an hour or two away from initiation and have higher confidence in the scenario, I can take those roads to get where I need to be.

Good luck and stay safe when chasing!

 

[Dan Robinson]

Welcome to Stormtrack Kristian!

The tornado risk areas outlined by the SPC aren't all that good for telling chasers where to go. In the Great Plains you will usually want to be on the dryline in places where isolated tornadic supercells are more likely, which include things like dryline bulges, dryline-outflow boundary intersections and places along the dryline that are under faster upper level winds. Those favorable locations can be anywhere in a big SPC tornado risk, or even just outside of where the biggest risk is. For instance, the SPC might paint the biggest tornado risk where after-dark squall-line embedded tornadic storms are expected. The places you'd go for daytime, isolated tornadic storms might not be where the highest risk is shown. In general, the western edge of the risk is where the dryline is, but it's easy to end up *behind* the dryline just going to the western side of the risk area.

On most chase days, you can get a general idea of the chase area from the SPC outlooks, but to narrow down where to target you'll need to be looking at satellite, surface obs and radar to locate the dryline and any boundaries. Models can also give you some idea of what might happen and what storms might do.

Gabe Garfield has a lot of videos on his Youtube channel about forecasting tornadoes that are pretty good for a newcomer to start learning the ropes: Gabe Garfield

 

[Jason Boggs]

I usually like being 20-40 miles east of the dryline. This allows the storms to move my direction while maturing. It's also easier to TRY to pick the right storm which is easier said than done.

 

[Bob Schafer]

I usually like being 20-40 miles east of the dryline. This allows the storms to move my direction while maturing. It's also easier to TRY to pick the right storm which is easier said than done.

Yeah, but with the caveat that a lot of storm motions are not NE, especially later in the season when an often seen upper NW flow makes them move SE or even S. I recommend learning about forecasting storm motions.

 

[Dan Robinson]

Another point: on days with fast storm motions, you'll want to be a little farther east of the dryline and stay well ahead of storms until they are ready to start producing tornadoes. This is tricky and sometimes a luck of the draw if a storm decides to produce when you ultimately move in to intercept. When I started out chasing the Plains, I was finding myself well behind those fast moving storms early, it's not possible to catch up when you're behind storms moving northeast at 50mph plus.

 

[Kristian K]

Another point: on days with fast storm motions, you'll want to be a little farther east of the dryline and stay well ahead of storms until they are ready to start producing tornadoes. This is tricky and sometimes a luck of the draw if a storm decides to produce when you ultimately move in to intercept. When I started out chasing the Plains, I was finding myself well behind those fast moving storms early, it's not possible to catch up when you're behind storms moving northeast at 50mph plus.

So if the storms are moving at 50mph, and it mature in an hour and a half, will that mean to position about 75 miles east of the dry line?

 

[Dan Robinson]

Every chase is different. I don't really have a hard distance rule. If you know storm motions are going to be fast, you just don't want to be right where the cumulus field is going up and the first radar blips are forming. It's easier to stay ahead of a fast-moving storm than it is to stay right there with it. The road network is also a factor. If you have a northeast-oriented 4-lane highway like the Kansas Turnpike, it's easier.