Who is chasing with minimal technology?

[Ethan Schisler]

I just use my Iphone 7+ with radarscope and mapping applications on it. While not a completely technology free way to chase, I'm probably one of the fewer chasers that doesn't have a laptop mount in my car and a bunch of annoying stuff plastered to the windshield (no offense to anyone that does lol). I used to be a laptop chaser for a long time, but I gave it up after getting my newer car in early 2016 and deciding that I'd rather focus on the storms than wrangle with technology all day long, which if I wanted to do that, I could just stay home and be a normal day LOL. I have a weather radio that I like to use as well, never can beat that. But otherwise, that's about all I bring with me. Sometimes my chase partners might bring a laptop with them, but as far as me goes, being solo, I don't. And I like to keep it that way for simplicity reasons.

 

[Bill Hark]

Interesting question. I started chasing on my own in 1998 and didn't get my own laptop until a few years later. I still remember stopping by a NWS office to get some data (armed with some cokes as a bribe) or maybe scrambling to find a library with internet access. I'd go to my target and scan the skies. Those days are over. I won't go back as my success rate is much better. That being said, I do find my early experience to be very valuable. I learned how to read the storm and know when to disregard my radar. It's too easy to focus on the radar during the chase and miss those visual cues that indicate maybe the radar image is old, missing some data or the storm is too far away from the radar site. Nowadays, my biggest issue is data overload. There is always one more run of a model or one more observation to look at before making a decision. One could never leave the hotel because of the volume of data to peruse.

 

[Dan Robinson]

I agree with Bill in that the laptop data - namely it along with ThreatNet - has made the difference between busting and great scores many times since I started using it in 2004. Nowadays though, data overload is a real thing, as Shane points out. Some days you just have to go back to basics: satellite and surface obs. Many days in the Plains, those *alone* tell you exactly what will happen, and oftentimes the CAMs are still out in left field and at risk of leading you astray. May 24 and 25 of last year, the satellite imagery told the entire story of where to go very clearly. The HRRR and 4km WRF were useless those days and even a handicap, firing big storms and helicity tracks away from the obvious areas on the surface chart and satellite. On the 25th, it was obvious enough that I never looked at a single model image.

When things start getting messy, having realtime radar in the car is a huge help instead of flying liteally blind in a FFD core with cell mergers everywhere and not knowing what is going on. Twitter has become another one of my tech mainstays, as anything that is happening getting posted there in realtime, often with pictures of what a given storm is looking like.

 

[Paul Lemery]

I used to not use any technology at all (it wasn't available) and I would never go back. Cellular technology has made chasing much more successful and safer in my opinion. Having real time weather data has been a boon to chasers. Too many times I would be stuck to a non-producing storm while the real action was not far away. If that didn't happen, I would get run over by a shift in storm direction or growth I didn't see coming. Nothing is more frustrating to me than to hear of the swarm of tornadoes you missed on the nightly news. It would be a fun challenge, but until I get tired of seeing tornadoes I'm not going back.

 

[JamesCaruso]

Interesting perspectives by Shane, Ethan, Bill and Dan on limiting the amount of data consumed. I feel similarly, as noted in my earlier post here, in which I brought up the question of whether I would even want to chase anymore if the weather enterprise got to the point where the time, place and track of tornados could be predicted exactly. It's also interesting that we all have our personal "breakeven points" for the balance of technology vs desire to succeed/fail based on our own merits. I think we all do this at least partly for the challenge, not just to "see tornados." Safety, of course, is a good reason to have radar technology, especially at night when trying to get home or to a hotel and storms are expanding everywhere...

Interesting also to see Shane's comments on paper maps. I used to have a stack of those state atlas / gazetteer books that I was happy to stop lugging to the Plains with me. I kept them as a redundancy until I got comfortable that I could sufficiently depend on Google Maps on my iPad, which somehow seems to still work even without a good cell signal (still can't figure out how or why!) Seeing exactly where I am on the small county roads is infinitely easier than trying to figure out if I'm on the "right" unmarked road relative to a paper map, and it's a safety issue too when needing to make sure I'm not on a road that dead-ends within a grid of dirt roads...


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[Ken Reynolds]

My chase equipment, aside from my car, obviously, consists of my iPhone 7 Plus with RadarScope and Google Maps being the only two apps I use while chasing, though they are used quite sparingly; and my ham radio go bag. My main radio (until I decide to break-down and spend the money to install a proper mobile radio setup) is a Yaesu dual-band (2m/70cm) handheld that is mounted on an arm that is bolted to the passenger's seat and connected to a dual-band mag-mount antenna.

The go bag contains my backup radio, which is a BTech tri-band (2m/1.25m/70cm) handheld radio with Nagoya 15" whip antenna, extra batteries for both radios, manuals for both radios, the Storm Chasing Handbook and Weather Map Handbook, a small backpacker's first aid kit, utility gloves, and a compass.

Once I get on a healthy storm, I abandon RadarScope and rely solely on visual cues for chasing and use Google Maps only for referencing road options. If the storm I'm chasing dies, and I cannot see any other storms in the sky, then I will consult RadarScope again to see if there is any other action elsewhere.