Why did I miss the tornado?

[JamesCaruso]

@Warren Faidley good post, interesting perspective on changes in chasing over the last 10 years, perhaps worthy of its own thread

 

[JamesCaruso]

...

...@JamesCaruso, it sounds like you've had a pretty rough time of it in recent years. While I generally enjoyed my chase experiences for the first 2/3 of this decade, I've been right there with you since 2017. The thing I keep coming back to is how seemingly improbable a priori some of these nightmare personal stretches are, including my current stretch. Thinking back to the sequence of dozens (hundreds?) of unfortunate events, instances of bad luck, and poor decisions that have put me in as big a hole as I'm in for this most recent three-year stretch, it practically begs for a superstitious explanation. When you try as hard and as often as we do, one would assume random chance would get you better outcomes than this. Is our decision-making really that bad? The psychology of chase decision-making is a fascinating topic that could probably fill dissertations, if it were of any commercial or societal value!

Brett, thanks for the kind words of encouragement and commiseration. Not to go OT but I, too, am very interested in the psychology of chase decision-making, including viewing it as a microcosm of life and translating approaches and lessons-learned to other areas of life. Right now I am reading a book called "Thinking in Bets: Making Decisions When You Don't Have All The Facts," by Annie Duke. As I read it and think through its application, storm chasing often comes to mind. What's particularly of interest is the role of luck and uncertainty. Interesting to think of the extent to which chasing outcomes can be chalked up to luck and uncertainty. Interesting to think of whether the "chaos" of meteorology means that there is truly "luck" involved, or if that's really "uncertainty." I'm not through the book yet but I believe "uncertainty" includes missing information that is both unknown and unknowable. We can improve our knowledge to reduce the unknown, but not the unknowable. The book also gets into the role of beliefs, biases, and "resulting," which is judging decisions based on the outcome, which causes us to beat ourselves up for no reason when we make a decision based on probabilities and the less-likely - but non-zero probability - outcome occurs. When I finish the book, I was thinking I might expand on these concepts and write a post with some insights from the book and how they relate to chasing.

 

[Todd Lemery]

This is in response to @JamesCaruso in the thread YOUR top ten chase days [thread now moved here and antecedent comment is above]. James got me to thinking about why I missed certain chase days. The one thing that I noticed about my misses is that a lot of them could have been different if I just would have put in more effort. I’ve talked myself out of driving an extra couple of hours more than once knowing, but convincing myself otherwise, that the prospects for tornadoes would be just as good.

I missed the Moore tornadoes and El Reno because I was chasing secondary targets that would give me an easier drive back home the following day. I justify it in mind that there really isn’t a big difference in odds between the targets even though I knew better. Inevitably, I end up reading the storm reports about the tornadoes from the comfort of quiet skies and a bowl of guilt flakes. Deep down I know that I was just too lazy to drive the extra mile.

I’m curious if anyone else has thought about why they’ve missed out on different storms. It’s a lot more fun explaining how you beat the crowds and nailed the storm of the year with almost nobody around than to explain how come you were one of the three storm chasers in the world who were watching a glorified rain shower while everyone else was shooting the best storm pics of their lives.

What’s the big reason why you missed out?

 

[Scott Sims]

It seems to change why i missed out each time for me, sometimes new mistakes and sometimes learning the wrong lesson from previous mistakes(also known as every setup is different)...

The Moore(2013) F5 i missed while watching a barely tornado down on the storm in Bray, OK.
I honestly thought the atmosphere was better down there that day as it seemed in my mind that the southern convection would limit the storms to the north, but also had no desire to be waiting for a storm in OKC metro, so that could have shaded my decision.

I did make El Reno, partly because of the being just two weeks after Moore, i decided to ingore the OKC metro fear. Mostly it was because that boundary and pool of CAPE made for a very concentrated two or three county highest probability target in my mind. It seemed if you werent going to be in Calumet(give or take a county), you weren't going to see the show. Plus it was the end of a really long week of setups, and I had driven all the way past Tulsa the night before thinking I was going to head home. That forecast made me backtrack across the state in the wrong direction and sit in that heat all afternoon waiting. So, if i was going to be out there still, I was bound and determined to be in THE BEST spot climatically, regardless of OKC metro troubles or distance. Glad I was persistent enough to be there, but it was terrifying.

I missed Bowdle (2010) while sitting just a county or so south in Redfield because, if I remember right, I thought the front forcing was going to mess that first cell up, and that the open warm sector was about to pop... oops. I mananged to get up there in time to see the elephant trunk after the wedge and the spinups around Roscoe and Ipswitch.

I missed the Dodge City(2016) tornadofest, but got a great but not epic show a couple counties north near Scott City. That one was I couldn't wait around while first cell is already popping on a huge day mentality. I was also worried the open warm sector was going to have convection interferance issues. So, partly learned from the Bowdle mistake above, i went to check out that first big storm popping before the sector went crazy. I'm not entirely bothered by this one, as I saw four tornadoes and one of my best. 12 would have been more fun, but hey, not my worst bust and I'm pretty sure only a handful of folks were up there with me, instead of the full horde.


I missed the first 45 minutes of Chapman/Bennington II(2016) because I felt burned by the 'first storm on the boundary' mentality of the Dodge City/Scott City decision the day before. So, I bought into the HRRR showing a beast down by Independence, KS. It was only because the updraft of that orphan HRRR cell died quickly and the wedge stuck around for so long, that I did get up to Chapman in time to see the last half of the show.

 

[Dean Baron]

I missed the Deer Trail, CO tornado in 2010 because I didn't want to drive the extra hour to the storm. I had already driven from Minneapolis to northeast CO but turned around when my storm went to crap instead of pushing south the extra hour, which would have put me on the storm in time to see the tornado. I've missed other good storms/tornadoes for similar reasons but can't think of the specifics off the top of my head.

I missed the McCook tornadoes back in May because I felt work was too busy to take time off to go chasing. In hindsight I wish I would have gone because work is important but so is doing what you love.

The biggest miss I had was the Litchfield, MN tornado in 2016. It wasn't a prolific tornado but it was the way I missed that kills me. I stopped to grab gas about 5 miles east of where the tornado touched down. The tornado hadn't touched down yet but by the structure of the storm you could tell it was close, even from my position. I filled up on gas and went to start the car to get closer to the storm. Somehow I managed to get the car into valet mode when I got out to get gas. This mode prevented me from turning the car on and it took me 20 minutes of frantically looking through the manual and online to figure out what was going on. By the time I figured it out the storm was well to my north and I had to play catch up just to get back on it. In the process of all of this the tornado happened near Litchfield, maybe 5 miles to my west. Despite being close enough to see the tornado, the trees surrounding my location prevented me from seeing it and I wasn't able to catch up to the storm in time to see the other tornadoes the storm produced. One of the dumbest and most frustrating situations I've had in chasing.

Edit: I should probably also throw in the Wayne, Nebraska tornado on 10/4/13. I managed to get a distant glimpse of it but it could have been much better. I got on the storm after it produced an initial brief/weak tornado prior to the Wayne tornado. It was in between these cycles that I got on the storm. At the time, it wasn't clear where the new action would be and the storm didn't look all that great visually so I wasn't sure the best way to approach it. I incorrectly stuck to the south end of the storm and continued west on highway 275, where I quickly ran into single lane construction traffic. Not long after I got through this traffic I realized I needed to get back east to get to highway 15 north towards Wayne, which meant sitting in the single lane traffic a second time. I honestly can't remember at this point if I chose to sit in the traffic again or take my chances on the crappy dirt roads to avoid the construction zone. Either way, I was way behind where I needed to be in order to get a good view of the tornado. The hills of northeast Nebraska didn't help my cause at all either. Like I said, I did get a very brief and distant view of the wedge, but at the time I didn't even realize I was seeing the tornado. Only looking back at the short video I took did I realize I did actually briefly see it. The part that stings the most is if I had taken highway 15 towards Wayne from the start I would have avoided this situation entirely. Having said that, this was the first time I had come across fresh, significant tornado damage.

 

[Warren Faidley]

This is a great question and I think I have the answer.

Why miss a tornado.....?

1: Technology overload. Although technology is great, it can also have a negative effect on success. It can make you a "lazy" forecaster. It can also generate overconfidence, causing delays in departing = missing the storm. In the "day" before laptop data and onboard radar, I would spend hours pouring over NWS data and drawing / revising complex maps every hour. We had one shot at picking a location. The concomitant patience often resulted in targeting the right storm or region. Now days, it's too easy to read a few forecasts, look at upper air data and take a peak at surface conditions while driving. This is especially true on those days when there are multiple targets over a very large area.

2: Crowds. This is both a conscious and subconscious issue that "could" determine where you chase. Unfortunately, many of the obvious target, "big" days now involve massive traffic jams. I can think of many exciting ways to kick the bucket, but being trapped on a crowded road as a mile-wide EF5 bears down is not one of them. Now that multiple chasers / public have died and been seriously injured , the reality cannot be ignored. Anyone who has watched spotter ID's in conjunction with nearby death shear knows this will eventually happen. It could have certainly happened in El Reno. This is NOT going to go way.

3: Location, location. location. If you live in the Alley, like OKC you have a home turf advantage. This includes the occasional sneak attack storm. Chasers living outside the region have a great disadvantage as they have to schedule their vacations around a specific period.

4: No fly zones. I no longer chase anywhere near the OKC metro. Nor do I chase HP's. Chasers who do this will likely see less tornadoes.

So there are multiple reasons to seemingly miss specific events. Don't worry about it. Chase for fun and avoid the crowds. I would also suggest not measuring your success (or not) by a tornado count. Of all the tornadoes listed in the decade thread, I would say 90% were obvious targets if you looked over the data carefully and had the motivation to pursue them.

 

[Sean Ramsey]

I miss epic moments mostly due to the urge to get home after a certain point, and I literally had to make a personal commitment around 2015 to chase until dark because I was missing out on really good stuff. Living in OK affords me the opportunity to be home for most chases, but this can be a double edged sword in many ways. Part of it is laziness, part is being tired after being in the car for 8 hours or more straight, part of it is an internal doubt that anything cool is going to happen and I act on it.

Every once in a while I miss a good tornado because of poor decision making...Mangum this year comes to mind, as well as Elmer a few years ago. But, most of what I miss is self inflicted because I like the comforts of home...probably a little more than I should when it comes to chasing.

 

[Paul Lemery]

I moved to Kanas from Wisconsin in part to be closer to the action. On May 28, I missed the Linwood, KS EF4 even though I was home 20 minutes away from its start. I had come home from work and my 18 year old son had driven 12 hours and surprised me with dinner. It was a great dinner, but was pretty painful to watch on TV. However it was not as painful as missing Chapman because one of our chase partners needed to fly home to water his grass.

 

[Rick Schmidt]

Paul: If I were you I would get together with the other members of your group and vote the 'grass waterer' out.

 

[Dan Robinson]

Most of my big misses in the past decade happened because I downplayed the potential and chose not to chase (Pilger, Moore, Katie/Wynnewood). Some of that is due to me not having unlimited resources and days off to chase and therefore having to be selective. Other days, I just picked the wrong target when more than one of seemingly equal potential was available. The latter reason plagued my 2019 Plains trips (aside from May 17). I missed Tescott in 2018 for a personal safety check against driving sleep-deprived. I couldn't get to sleep early enough the night before and was facing a 16+ hour day (drive plus chase) to make it there.

On most of my "chose the wrong target" days in recent years, I felt my decision making was sound even after a post mortem evaluation. I have reached a point in my chasing where I'm fairly committed to the fundamentals - they've resulted in a good deal of success, in most seasons anyway. Those setups that deviate from the norm or have a more challenging configuration are more the luck of the draw - the next similar setup could easily see the inverse outcome happen if one or two subtle ingredients is different. I'm not saying there is nothing to be learned from them, but I feel like radically deviating from the fundamentals because of some outliers is likely to burn me in the future.

 

[Brett Roberts]

I miss epic moments mostly due to the urge to get home after a certain point, and I literally had to make a personal commitment around 2015 to chase until dark because I was missing out on really good stuff. Living in OK affords me the opportunity to be home for most chases, but this can be a double edged sword in many ways. Part of it is laziness, part is being tired after being in the car for 8 hours or more straight, part of it is an internal doubt that anything cool is going to happen and I act on it.

This is a subtle but interesting point for those of us living in the Alley. Sometimes, in the midst of an active late-season period with many days of opportunity, I start feeling sorry for myself relative to chasecationers. Of course, it's irrational, because I could hypothetically just choose to allocate my chase days into going after everything for a 2-3 week block instead of being choosy throughout the year. Regardless, some chasecationers would probably find the experience of chasing as a local interesting, if they've never done it. Unless you're 5+ hours from home at the end of the day, there's this kind of default assumption that you might as well go home instead of getting a room, even if it's late. That, in turn, can sometimes lead you to make a stupid decision to call the chase off early on marginal-looking setups. On the rare occasions that I'm chasing 8+ hours away and it's already established that I'll need to get a room after the chase, it's amazing how freeing that feels, in terms of removing pressure to call things off as early as possible.

 

[Warren Faidley]

One thing I left off the list was motivation. With so many tornadoes to see on social media (live and afterwards) along with no real way to market pics and footage, you really have to be motivated to spend time and money going after slight risks. The "reward" factor has dropped substantially over the last 10 years. I think chasers who enjoy the "overall" essence of chasing, e.g., travel, hobby photography, meeting friends and just being "out there," have a much better time than those who "must" see a twister.

 

[Ben Holcomb]

Like 90% of my 'misses' can be blamed on 2 things: Responsibility or Distractions. Responsibility in either work or other commitments or problems in the past with reliable transportation (try getting a rental car in OKC after a big hail storm...) or how to get there in time, needing a second driver because I need to sleep from time to time, etc.

Distractions are things like June 12, 2017 having the transmission go out so I needed to pick people up from the airport, drop my car off at the transmission shop, get a rental, take someone to the hospital, pick him back up, drop the person I picked up from the airport with another chaser.... yea. Chapman day I had 2 flat tires to take care of from DDC day and was distracted by an issue that arose with someone who was with me. It was 4pm and we were in Derby, KS when I had fixed tires and a chance to start looking at stuff and at that point, Wichita seemed alright and we had bubbling convection.. oops.

The last 10% seems to be laziness or fucking up. Couple of days I could have scored big but sat home and was lazy or didn't even realize there was a setup. And Laziness comes in when it looks like 4-5 hours away, maybe some veer backing around 700mb, moisture issues, timing, blah blah blah and I end up not going and it over produces. I'm still about 95% right on a lot of those days I choose to skip.

 

[Jeff Duda]

Prior to 2019, my number one reason for missing tornadoes, by far, was ultimately financial. I was in college from 2003-2016 (grad school from 2009-2016), and despite having a partner during most of that time, I struggled to make ends meet financially almost constantly. As Brett alluded to above with the freedom of knowing you can bunk down in a location near where the chase ended...I never really felt that kind of freedom. Gas was cheap enough to justify driving home if I was less than 300-400 miles from home at the end of a chase. Therefore, I had a tendency to avoid regions that were "outside my leash area", so to speak (generally a 300-400-mile-radius circle around Norman), even if the environment was better for supercells/tornadoes than my area. That, or I would tend to give up on chases a bit early so that I could get home at 2 AM rather than 4 AM. Occasionally I would push these limits, and I would always pay for it, oftentimes with little extra to show for it. Also, I pretty much never chased in the same region two days in a row, so that increased my tendency to always drive back home after a chase.

Number two reason: after 13 April 2012 I became fearful of leaving Norman to chase anywhere *but upstream of Norman* on any day in which Norman was in any substantial threat of severe weather, which restricted the domain I felt comfortable chasing. I called it The Rule. The Rule ended up being in effect on quite a few chases that I might have otherwise preferred an alternate target (e.g., NW OK or SC KS instead of SW OK). And thus I missed a few events because of that, too.

Things changed for me starting in 2018, which turned out to be a bit of a lucky transition year. I had started a new job and had little PTO, but I never really saw an event where I wanted to chase more than a few hours from my new home in Denver anyway. Otherwise a new restriction would have likely played more of a role:

In 2019 my biggest restriction has become responsibility. I adopted a dog in late 2017 and am his sole keeper. I generally do not have any friends who live nearby and don't know any neighbors well enough, so I cannot leave him by himself for more than 8-12 hours, which has become a new "leash" for me. If I know a big chase day is coming in advance I will try to find him a sitter or board him, but that only happened once in 2019, and it was a huge bust (the entire setup busted, really).

This may all be about to change in the next year or so, though. I found myself in a new long-term relationship this year, and the gf and I are pretty much planning on moving in next summer after our current leases expire. That won't help me for the 2020 chase season, but after 2020 I'll have someone else who can look after my dog while I'm gone on longer trips. I have also started saving up a lot of PTO and my financial situation is gradually improving.

By 2021 or so I will be fairly unrestricted as to when or where I can chase.

 

[Michael Towers]

I just reviewed my history and wow, I’ve missed a bunch. I’ve actually missed more than I’ve seen, thanks OP for bringing me down that memory lane. How much greater would my chasing experience to date be if I had succeeded on those failed opportunities? It really does hurt to think about it, especially given how close I came on many events. Some of the reasons are correctable mistakes on my part, some are a result of erring on the side of caution (no regrets there) and some are just a natural consequence of executing a chase (e.g. tornado happens when repositioning). A common reason is just not giving myself enough time to reach the target. Navigation mistakes have cost me and so has poor data analysis and forecasting. There have been times when I had to drive home the next day and I didn’t want to turn 600 miles into 800 miles. Other times I’ve had tunnel vision and stayed on a storm too long and missed epic tornadoes on nearby storms. Missed a bunch of nighttime stuff because usually I’m not comfortable enough with the situation or I don’t think the payoff is worth it. Indecision has cost me as has being too aggressive on fast moving storms. But by far the biggest reason I’ve missed the most tornadoes is…because it’s Iowa.