Five Years of Chasing, a Retrospective
I just finished my fifth year of storm chasing in 2018. Sometimes it’s hard to believe it’s been that long, while at other times it feels like it’s been much longer. Although I did dabble in some attempts of storm chasing in earlier years, it was in 2014 that I had a breakout first year in the field. It wasn’t all easy though and there were plenty of challenges and lessons learned in that first year of chasing. Here, I will take a look back at humble beginnings, highlights from each year and some stats to bring it all together.
Before we dive in, what does storm chasing mean to me? Well, the main objective is to see a tornado, up close, but some of the most satisfying storm chases don’t feature a tornado at all. Whether it’s noteworthy storm structure, one-of-a-kind photo opportunities or the thrill of literally getting in a car and driving hundreds of miles to chase a powerful supercell thunderstorm over remote parts of North America, I’m just happy to be able to enjoy the ability to chase storms, period.
The date was October 3rd, 2013, when I left for an overnight drive (about 16 hours) from Connecticut to Iowa. For several days, I had been watching the potential for a tornado outbreak in the Missouri Valley region on October 4th. I had never storm chased west of the Appalachians to that point, but I was ready. Or at least I thought I was.
I arrived in Iowa by lunchtime, but never made it far enough west to catch any tornadoes. It wasn’t as much of a disappointment as it was a learning experience. One thing was certain after the weekend trip. I was developing a strong desire to storm chase. That is what I wanted to do. The Plains/Midwest, a large chunk of what’s considered to be “tornado alley” in the United States, was where I wanted to be. Sure, witnessing storms along the East Coast could be fun, but they weren’t the same as the types of intense storms that roamed the open Plains.
A little over a month later from my first attempt at tornado alley storm chasing, I ventured west again for a historic tornado outbreak on November 17th in the Illinois/Indiana vicinity. This was another challenging storm chase, as I found myself in the midst of a tornado outbreak, but could not catch a tornado. Maybe it was the fast storm motions. Perhaps it was the traffic that got in the way. A lack of experience is another factor. Undoubtedly, it only made me even more eager to storm chase.
There wasn’t much more storm chasing until that following spring. The year of 2014 was going to be something new. Starting in late April, I found myself storm chasing with at least some regularity right through early summer. I explored many new states, finally saw a tornado in person and most importantly, I learned. I learned a lot about storm chasing, including the difference between being safe and reckless out in the field. Despite all that I had read in textbooks, learned in classrooms and saw in videos, being out in the field, actually storm chasing, was where I learned the most about storm chasing.
April 27th, 2014 was one of the biggest learning experiences in my first year of storm chasing. That morning, as I got ready to depart from Oklahoma City for a potential tornado outbreak to the east, I was faced with a decision to make. I could either storm chase the northern target in western Missouri, an area with relatively good visibility and favorable road networks, or choose central Arkansas, a heavily wooded area with windy roads. I chose the latter.
After wandering back and forth around storms in Arkansas during the afternoon, it was shortly before sunset that an impressive supercell began to show up on Little Rock’s radar, not too far west of the city. This wasn’t just any supercell, but it was an intense mesocyclone with a distinct debris ball on radar. This storm was producing a strong tornado and it was heading right for the community of Mayflower.
Only a couple of miles ahead of the storm, I turned off I-40 at the Mayflower exit, right in the storm’s path. In the moment, I couldn’t tell you exactly what I was thinking or if I had an actual plan. I was hoping for a tornado, but this was far from an ideal setup to see a tornado for the first time. I saw a wall cloud and the blur of a rain-wrapped tornado over the trees in front of me. I had barely been watching the storm for a couple of minutes before I realized I had to turn around and get out of Mayflower, as quickly as possible. I turned back to the north and as I approached the I-40 on-ramp, the swaying street lights went out; the sky went black.
As quickly as the tornado formed, I bailed on the storm chase. Not because I wanted to, but because I had to. Less than three minutes later, the tornado caused EF-4 damage, destroying large buildings, shredding trees and flipping tractor trailers, in the very area that I found myself watching the sky in awe. To this day, each time I drive on I-40 past the tornado scar in Mayflower, I recall the moments that I was, briefly, face-to-face with a violent tornado that I could barely see. The first tornado I witnessed in my life remains one of the strongest I’ve seen in my career.
Despite having a meteorology degree, a few storm chases under my belt and a reasonable understanding of how to read radar, I was nowhere near fully prepared for that storm chase in Mayflower. Still, I wanted to learn more and get better. The rest of the spring featured me chasing storms in various conditions all across the Plains, Mississippi Valley and Mid-South. May and the first two weeks of June were uncharacteristically quiet in terms of severe thunderstorm activity in tornado alley.
Was this it? Aside from briefly seeing two tornadoes in late April, the prime tornado season was a dud. On top of this, I found myself, for the first time, stuck in mud on a farm road near the Nebraska/Kansas border one fateful day in early June. I had virtually no cell service, no tow trucks were willing to bail me out and it took several hours before I was finally able to maneuver out of the situation, thanks to the heat of the sun slowly drying the mud. Despite botching that day’s storm chase, the event under-performed like many others in previous days and weeks, meaning that I really hadn’t missed out on much of anything at all.
It wasn’t just a lack of experience that caused me to miss out on the best storms of the spring to that point, but many seasoned chasers alike commented on the unusually tame nature of the Plains that spring. However, if April 27th was a day to kick-start my storm chasing career, it was June 16-18 that propelled me out of the beginner stage and into something more experienced.
I left Omaha, Nebraska early in the afternoon on June 16th and headed northwest toward an area of organizing thunderstorm activity. Having learned lessons in recent chases, I cautiously approached the storms and waited for the hail core (intense part of a thunderstorm that can produce destructive hail) to pass before I got a closer look.
Near Stanton, I pulled off the side of a rural road to watch a lowering wall cloud with occasional funnel clouds. Before long, a tornado formed and I watched it grow in size and strength a mile or two in the distance. I wasn’t particularly close, but I didn’t feel like I had to be in the moment. This was the first time I safely watched a tornado form and unlike the night in Mayflower, I had a more favorable road network this time to follow the storm.
I inched closer and drove through Stanton as the tornado continued to wreak havoc on the area. At one point, I pulled off the road again, briefly, to watch the rain and debris-wrapped circulation churn to the northeast. It wasn’t long before the tornado roped out and its funnel lifted into the clouds.
Off the road again, as I watched one tornado dissipate, another tornado could be seen a few miles to the east. Immediately south of that tornado, at least one other funnel cloud was forming. I got back on the road and drove east, but through a parade of storm chasers, it was difficult to gain ground on the storm. Still, for a few minutes, I watched “twin” EF-4 tornadoes, side-by-side, rip through Pilger. Little did I realize at the time that I was watching something rare, a sight that many veteran storm chasers up until that point had probably never seen.
The next day featured another threat of tornadoes in the same general part of northeastern Nebraska. Instead of being a daytime event, June 17th didn’t really get going until closer to sunset. A slow-moving tornado formed near Coleridge and this time, my goal was to get as close to the tornado as possible. I parked off the road in front of the storm’s apparent path and watched it churn over open countryside for nearly an hour. The storm slowed down and meandered over farmland. After the first tornado became rain-wrapped and dissipated into the increasing darkness of night, at least two other nighttime tornadoes were illuminated by flashes of lightning. It was an eerie sight, to be close to a nearly stationary supercell producing tornado after tornado. For the second day in a row, I had witnessed three tornadoes in the span of less than an hour. Could there be more tornadoes for a third day in a row?
For the first time, I ventured into South Dakota on June 18th. The atmosphere was primed again for tornadoes, but the first tornadic supercell near Wessington Springs did not excite me, given the fact that the storm was rain-wrapped and difficult to see unless you were nearly directly under it.
I waited and it wasn’t long before a pair of funnel clouds formed immediately to my east. Only a few minutes later, I found myself chasing a single tornado, as it moved north through the Alpena area. I chased this storm for over 20 minutes, watching it evolve into a violent, EF-4, tornado. In the moment, everything else dropped out of thought. I was one with nature, up close and personal with a tornado for the third day in a row. Even five years later, this is a feat that I have not been able to repeat.
This 3-day stretch salvaged what was on track to be a miserable first year of chasing. Persistence pays off and this is a theme that has stuck with me to this day. Anyone who storm chases with consistency will tell you that some periods are more active than others. Sure, the tornado season in the United States usually peaks between May and June, with literally hundreds of tornadoes on average over the span, but not every spring is as active as a storm chaser would hope. Some years feature more tornadoes over the more forested areas of Dixie Alley (Arkansas/Louisiana/Mississippi/Alabama/Tennessee) and other years see unfavorable jet stream patterns fail to produce many tornadoes over the heart of tornado alley, from Texas to Nebraska. In some years, there are many tornadoes, but most of them are low-contrast and difficult to safely witness.
In a way, I am glad that my storm chasing career started with some of these unique challenges. Even though I had a historic stretch of storm chasing in mid-June of 2016, I chased most of the spring without seeing much at all. Mayflower featured a tornado, technically, but instead of chasing the storm, it ended up chasing me. I was forced to learn, sometimes by flirting with disaster, but also with watching storm after storm develop. Without a guide or partner to lead the way on most storm chases, I learned by doing; by trial and error. I would spend mornings reviewing weather data and figured out where I needed to go in the afternoon for the potential to see storms. As storms did develop, I watched the skies, was aware of my surroundings and analyzed the atmospheric environments that supported, or prevented, storm development. I drove hundreds of miles a day and even though I had not traveled much prior to 2014, this nearly constant driving felt natural. If anything, I enjoyed it, because at the end of the day, I would do almost anything to see a storm.
My second year of chasing in 2015 was in some ways similar to 2014. Once again, the spring was relatively void of photogenic tornadoes, aside from a few notable exceptions. One of the highlights of the year was catching my first tornado in Oklahoma near Tipton. With shades of Mayflower in my mind, when I saw a debris ball on radar, I approached this storm cautiously. This ended up being a good thing, as at one point near the tornado, the dirt road I was chasing on was washed out and I was forced to completely change course. In the process, a stray hailstone shattered my windshield. To this day, that marks the only direct storm-related damage I’ve had done to my car, not counting a few hail dents here and there. Dents don’t stop the car from driving, but a busted windshield can stop you in your tracks.
I chased more consistently in 2015 than 2014, but everything was poised to change in the summer, as I had a job offer as a meteorologist at The Weather Channel in Atlanta, Georgia. I took the job, a position that I held onto for just about a full year before I decided that storm chasing was more important in 2016. Interestingly enough, living in Georgia was a factor in allowing me to catch tornadoes in Mississippi and Alabama on February 2nd, 2016, just a day before my 29th birthday.
As spring arrived, I embarked on what would be my most active chase year to-date. I left The Weather Channel to chase my dreams, wherever they would take me. I chased just about everything and I mean that in a literal sense. Similar to the previous two years, however, May was challenging for storm chasing. Persistence paid off, as the best chase day of my career took place on May 24th near Dodge City, Kansas. I witnessed as least seven tornadoes during this chase, including at least two instances of twin tornadoes and my closest-ever encounter with a tornado. Being only a few hundred yards from a slow-moving tornado was breathtaking, but I would have gotten even closer if it wasn’t for a police-induced road block preventing chasers from getting any closer. A long-tracking tornado on May 25th near Chapman, Kansas followed up the Dodge City event. It was all thanks, in part, to Ian Livingston, who joined me on a nearly two week long “chasecation” across the Plains to close out May 2016.
Tornadoes Near Dodge City: May 24, 2016
Saline-Dickinson County Kansas Tornado: May 25 2016
The chase year was far from over, however, after Ian left. I saw other tornadoes in June, August and September. It was also that summer that I officially moved to Oklahoma, permanently, making it easier to chase with more regularity. No longer did I need to plan long trips from Connecticut (2014-15) or Georgia (2015-16) to the Plains. When the year was done, I had chased over 90 individual days and racked up more than 98,000 miles on my car in 2016 alone.
Storm chasing got off to a fast start in 2017 with four tornadoes in three states by April 2nd, but unlike the previous year, all of May was a dud month. I had another late May chase trip planned with my friend Jackie Lucente, something we had tried in 2014 and 2015 without much luck. We managed one decent storm chase in Kansas, otherwise the trip was filled with plenty of antics unrelated to weather.
June made up for things on the 12th of the month with a pair of High Plains tornadoes in Colorado and Nebraska. The summer was fairly quiet and I took the time to settle down a bit, focusing more on work. Aside from a brief tornado in civil twilight in Oklahoma in October, the year ended on a quiet note.
High Plains Tornadoes: June 12, 2017
What would 2018 have in store? A shift in careers allowed me to chase virtually all spring, even though the prime chase season was a historic snooze-fest, unless you were lucky enough to be in Wyoming on one fateful day and another in eastern Colorado. At one point, I went 32 consecutive storm chases without a tornado between late 2017 and the spring of 2018. My tornado-drought came excruciatingly close to ending on June 11th, but despite watching a discrete supercell spawn a funnel cloud just outside of Omaha, Nebraska, I did not witness the tornado that the storm briefly produced.
Could I go an entire year without seeing a tornado in my fifth year of chasing? It seemed like a possibility, despite being more experienced than previous years and having the ability to chase nearly any event that I wanted. All of that changed on June 19th when I, somewhat anticlimactically, saw a tornado in the distance in eastern Colorado. Despite being relatively far from the tornado and only seeing it for a minute or two, the overall chase was one of the more exciting ones of 2018. During what was probably the best chase of my year on July 9th, I briefly saw a tornado in Montana. What made that chase most memorable was the fact that I chased a long-lived supercell all the way from Saskatchewan, Canada to Williston, North Dakota. The next day did not produce any tornadoes, but I had some more photo opportunities in the northern Plains.
Despite having my second most active storm chase year in terms of total storm chases (56) and second most miles driven in a single year (just over 66,000), I only saw two tornadoes in 2018. Of those two tornadoes, I didn’t see either one for more than a couple of minutes, nor were they high-contrast from my vantage point. Even with that said, it was a very satisfying storm chase year, with plenty of photogenic storms witnessed all over the United States, as well as Canada.
The next few months will be a waiting game before the heart of storm season arrives for 2019. Who knows what it will have in store. Following up a year in which I converted less than 4% of my chase days into actual tornado chases, it’s hard to believe it could be any less successful. Even if tornadoes are tough to come by, I will continue to storm chase and find beauty in nature, whether it’s in the open Plains, the forests of Dixie Alley or in my own backyard.
Below are some stats and graphs, since I like that sort of thing.
I will chase storms any time of the year, but I am most active during the months of May and June. I’ve actually had far more storm chases in July than April. Part of that is my willingness to storm chase northern parts of tornado alley and even into Canada. On the flip side, April has also been fairly quiet in terms of tornadoes in recent years. Additionally, prior to moving out to Oklahoma in 2016, I did not really start my chase season until late April.
Another way to visualize chases is to take a look at a graph showing running totals of chases to-date. Aside from the outlier season of 2017, I usually did not chase much during the winter or early spring. Also, 2016 stands out as having the most chases in a single year, by far, as I continued to consistently chase through most of the summer. There’s a fairly close cluster for 2015, 2017 and 2018, with 2014 being notably lower, thanks largely in part to living in Connecticut and only being able to take a few chase trips spread out over the spring and summer.
In terms of tornadoes, this is a small sample size over five years, so the graph is a bit choppy. Again, 2016 stands out like a sore thumb, as it featured the most tornadoes I’ve witnessed in a year, by far. In fact, in each of the other four years, I saw 10 or less tornadoes, which was less than half of what I saw in 2016. Finally, note that 2018 was, by far, the slowest chase season in terms of tornadoes witnessed, in the past five years.
Below is a map of all of the tornadoes I have witnessed over the past five years. The vast majority of the tornadoes have been in the Plains and Mississippi Valley regions. States with the most tornadoes include Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas, with a cluster in Nebraska, of which most occurred between June 16-17, 2014.
One final map is a composite of all parts of the country I’ve visited via car between 2014 and 2018. Most of my travels have revolved around storm chasing across the Plains. Darker shadings indicate areas that I’ve visited in the most years, with the darkest color being an area I’ve been to in all five years. Areas I have not yet visited are in white. This includes all travel, including vacations and other trips that are not weather related.
