Your best local Chase of 2007

[Stephen Levine]

What was your best local chase this year? By this I mean, staying within 30 miles or so of home base, and perhaps going visual?

One of my best local chases occurred in July, when I took off after a young and developing thunderstorm that had passed across my neighborhood north of Dallas, and continued to grow.

This particular chase netted spectacular lightning- quite upclose and personal -as well as dime hail and a NWS "severe" warning on the storm,quite unpredicted for the day.

For me the sudden adrenaline rush of a local chase is particularly fulfilling.
Would love to read of yours.

For a complete summary, including pictures and the Zen lesson that applies to pursuing goals in life, feel free to visit my website www.birthingyourdream.com.

 

[Shane Adams]

What was your best local chase this year? By this I mean, staying within 30 miles or so of home base

(Really laughing)

Out of 237 career chases, my shortest chase is 31 miles...and that was in 1999.

 

[Justin Turcotte]

August 26. Can't beat a line of supercells forming 60 miles west of town. Intercepted about 35 miles west of my house. I took some nice stills of the middle cell and then core punched the sup to my south that would eventually drop the Northwood, ND F4. Northwood is only 35 miles from my house. I was parked on the edge of Northwood about 15 minutes before the beast rolled through. I left before there were problems. I saw a funnel which may have been the precurser for the big tornado but didn't stick around to find out. That was a wise desicion. Seems like every year up here there are several solid backyard chases. Oftentimes these occur with SPC Slight Risk as well as the occasional SEE TEXT. There is usually some fly in the ointment with the better synoptic set-ups but those weak shortwaves have a knack of making summer real fun around my place.

 

[Doug_Kiesling]

Wow, 30 miles is kind of tough, maybe 70 miles or an hour from home would work. But for me, mine had to be when I was gearing up to go head out for a weak setup that was rolling through Minnesota on 08/01 and ended up blowing off the weather and catching one of the top 10 events of the year, the 35W Bridge Aftermath before they locked down the area.

 

[Tony Laubach]

Oddly enough, my best 2007 LOCAL chase occured within about 30 miles of my apartment, but the chase itself was over 500 miles because I was racing down from South Dakota the day after I chased Montana..

http://www.tornadoeskick.com/logs070514.html

Without question, it was my best local chase of the year. Had I been at my Lakewood apartment and chased from there, I would've driven 33 miles to Ft. Lupton where I intercepted this cell. Instead, I was driving from my hotel room near Rapid City, SD. It was the biggest hailstorm I got under this year (certainly not the biggest hail) and a reported tornado in Ft. Lupton as we arrived. We were so deep in core that unless we were within a first-down's distance of it, we never would've seen it. Great flooding and floating hail-pancakes wrapped up this chase between myself and a bunch of my buds!

http://www.tornadoeskick.com/logs070514.html

 

[Terry Tyler]

i would have to say 5/12/07...

there was a crazy storm that come in, and it was severe warned...pounding rain, and 40-60MPH winds that shut down hwy 45 near saltillo, MS...

heres a picture of the storm...it was pretty crazy...

in this picture, i am just W of the 45/78 cloverleaf looking WNW on a SW moving storm...i had just come out of the core, looking for those damaging winds and hail but i never did find any...

the storm dissipated shortly after it crossed 45...

one thing i really liked about this storm was the large amound of CG lightning it was setting down...i was a little worried about getting out and taking pictures cause it was just so active...i remember going over an overpass, and looking to my left and i saw a lightning bolt hit in a field behind a gas station...i saw where it hit the ground, and it was behind a tree, so i could actually see the tree in front of the bolt...thats how close it was...

this here is a picture i took from inside of that core about 20 mins earlier...

 

[Mike Hollingshead]

This was about 1 mile from my apartment. I blew off the line till the last second, when I figured I was hungry for junk food and that I could at least go get some food as it hit. Luckily I had my video camera in my car already. I never get things right around here that are worth a darn. I chased it into IA a good bit further than 30 miles, but the best was only a mile away as it started.


http://extremeinstability.com/07-9-18.htm

That was from my apartment window on another day this year, taken with a 10mm lens.

 

[Dan Robinson]

All of my better local chases this year have been winter-weather related. I've had to drive at least 7 hours to see any decent convective-related stuff.

 

[Josh Richardson]

Best local chase of the year was about 45 miles from my house: I believe 7/16 and chased a lone supercell from Charles City to Waterloo IA before it started to line out a bit. Didnt tornado but I got some softball sized hail out of that one.

 

[Craig Maire II]

Thread: Your best local Chase of 2007

I too was chasing the same storm as Josh on 07/16/07 and it produced the largest hail that I have ever seen!

 

[Charles Kuster]

Until this year I had never been on a chase less than 200 miles (it is 100 miles just to Denver). However, on August 17th of this year, I was doing some work on my computer while watching the Weather Channel. The local forecast came on and I saw the color red over Lake County! Since I had never seen such high reflectivity over my county I ran out the door and drove towards the storm. When I got about 2 miles northeast of town I ran into heavy rain and hail. The roads were covered in several inches of hail and had essentially turned into rivers. I pulled over and jumped out of the car only to discover that this hail was penny size! I called the National Weather Service with my report and then took a few pictures. This was the biggest hail recorded in Lake County so far and the first reported severe thunderstorm.

 

[Adam Lucio]

http://www.stormtrack.org/forum/showthread.php?t=13430

Local chases in Chicago are a royal pain in the @$$...If you think dealing with yahoos in the plains is bad then try chasing in city traffic and soon you'll be praying for yahoo chase traffic in Kansas.

 

[davecarlsen]

I had been golfing all day, and was on my way to help a friend move into her house, when I decided to check out the storms off to my west, just in case.

Good thing I did. Canada's first documented F5 and an F3, on the ground at the same time. Pretty sweet.

 

[Brian Stertz]

Quiet year in KC.....Feb. 28th would have been better had I decided to go for the gusto on the Linn Co. tornadic beauty. Even if it was a night situation, the hook was wide open so would have made for some pretty good glimpses. Andy Fischer got some very nice views of the wedgy-stove pipe. Nice work this spring Andy. Website link is below:

http://www.tornadohead.com/022807chase.htm

 

[jason kissam]

my best local chase was on 8/22 and 8/23/07 went from monument co to calhan co a bit more then 30 miles but worth it

start of the chase


turned around and saw this coming down.


the above turned into this


as the storm moved out