What's Luck Got to Do With It?

[William Monfredo]

As I was sorting, my nostalgia landed on this older photo. With no watch, warning, or chasing, just the forecast of thunderstorms, this weak tornado touched down in front of me while I was driving in southwest Arkansas one June. I had left the Crater of Diamonds State Park an hour before, and the tornado moved toward me and to the right and then shot a lightning bolt out from the funnel at close range. Ever feel lucky?

 

[Mike Thornton]

In early July of 2020, I was traveling to Yellowstone National Park with no intentions of chasing storms and came upon a monster supercell near Rapid City, South Dakota. I have chased hundreds of supercells over the years and this one will forever stand out to me because one, I didn't purposely come upon it and two, it's still to this day, the most beautiful supercell I've ever seen.

This same supercell dropped a Tornado in Wyoming before crossing into South Dakota. By the time I had taken this picture, it was dropping baseball size hail near Rapid City, South Dakota. I remember making it to my hotel in Deadwood and just being shocked that I had come across a supercell by accident and even submitted my photo to the NWS in Rapid City, South Dakota. They ended up using it for there report. Super cool stuff.

 

[Tony Laubach]

I think luck plays a bigger part in the storm chasing equation than most people realize... I could spin yarn over stories of luck for hours and hours, but on the topic of luckiest tornado...


This won't go into the record books for anything at all... a rather benign, weak as hell tornado in far eastern Colorado in May of 2019. It was on this day...



Needless to say, there were a LOT of chasers out for this, and I mean a lot. Most of them I passed moments before I drove up to the tornado you see above. And that tornado you see above was the only time you see this tornado because I was LITERALLY the ONLY one to see it in real life, despite miles of chaser conga lines driving the opposite direction back toward I-70 in the 30 minutes prior to this thing.

This day was a bust for me, and I think for a lot despite what the SPC reports show. But a cluster of storms in eastern Colorado within the moderate area failed to do much of anything. I was in Burlington and chatting with my then Chief Meteorologist in Wichita about abandoning the Colorado play to basically start heading home, but do so to get ahead of what was expected to be a hefty MCS across southwest Kansas.

From Burlington, I was debating on the route to get down to Garden City, either via I-70 out of Oakley, or cut down 385. I decided since there were still storms to my west, I'd take the US-385 route. I got down to Cheyenne Wells, and the town was filled with chasers, many of whom were abandoning the setup all together. I stopped briefly in town, saw DOWs, chase tours, dozens of chaser vehicles, all streaming north, while I was the lone guy going south.

According to my dash cam and GPS, I passed the last DOW about 8 minutes earlier. The end of the congo lone shortly thereafter. I was on the phone, casually discussing the evening plans with my Mets back at base, and had a dense little rain shaft down to my south. As I got a little further along, I noticed a darker streak within the band. Still not thinking much of it, I continued along, and as I got closer, I noticed that darker band had rising motion on the edges, and I said out loud over the phone, "Holy shit, I got a tornado."

Nothing on radar showing anything imminent, no warning. It was just there, churning away in the field about a mile to my south. I had to verbally convince my chief that I was indeed looking at a legit tornado. It was moving northeast, I was moving south, and neither of us were stopping. I got within 1/4 mile of it when it finally crossed US-385, and while it looked impressive, you could tell this thing didn't have enough spunk to blow over a cardboard cutout of a cow. It harmlessly passed over some farm stuff and moved off before it disappeared into the rain.

I quickly cut the video together, and obviously immediately posted a still of it cause I'm sure a lot of folks 20 minutes to my north were still getting gas. Needless to say, despite nearly the entire army of chasers just minutes up the road, I was the ONLY one who saw this. And it was pure luck in my routing, the timing, and the circumstances of this day being so high end and yet, only produced this one within the main area. You can see the comments from a lot of chasers out who had just passed through this area moments earlier.

It was fun... certainly a bragging right to see a tornado all by yourself in this era where there are so many people out. It's one of the few tornadoes I documented that only I documented. Again, it was a nothing-nader, but was easily my dumbest luck tornado of my career.