The Boards.ie American Midwest Tornado Chasing trip

321654

Count me in.

TheGreenGiant

when is this taking place?

M.T. Cranium

You should if you can plan one ... I live over here so I might be able to get involved at least in the forecasting (plenty of experience).

May in Kansas-Nebraska, or June in the Dakotas are the best bets for seeing them and being in the kind of open country where you won't get into dangerous situations with heavy traffic or trees in the way.

Flights in and out of DFW, Denver, Chicago, or Winnipeg Canada would give you the best staging. Air Transat, a Canadian charter company, has flights to Calgary that can be quite inexpensive especially when booked well in advance, but they are a good airline nevertheless. A bonus there is that you would fly over Greenland and the Canadian arctic, seeing all those sights out the window (if it's clear enough).

I've been in plenty of severe weather in my lifetime over this way, but I have never seen a tornado (quite), although one went through my home town in the middle of the night once and gave me a nasty scare, half an hour of continuous lightning and thunder, 100 mph wind gusts, I was ready to go to the cellar but it never got any worse than that.

Your chances of seeing a tornado in a two week chase would be pretty high, they are not that difficult to forecast a day or two in advance (within 50-100 miles) and then you just need the internet connection to zero in on them.

maquiladora

That's something I've wanted to do for years. I'd love to take a trip like that in a year or two. A lot of those tours available are quite expensive, would be great fun to rent a few cars just do it ourselves... :pac:

TheGreenGiant

well i was actually planning on doing that next year in the summer at some stage. When i eventually finish college i would love to spend the whole tornado season over there, especially when by that stage i will have the software and knowledge i gained from college, and eading my own material. Need to buy a good video camera and all that, but its what got me interested in weather since i was 3 lol

mumhaabu

Saw two tornadoes in my life one was in Western Pennsylvania and the other was a mini tornado that popped up during extreme thunder showers near Rathmore in Co. Kerry about two years ago, was driving on both occasions and both tornadoes were several miles away. The Pennsylvania tornado frightened my driver who immediately accelerated to nearly 100mph until we were clear.

Pal

Nuts.
These things can kill you.

Count me out.

Ricky91t

Lol "Rental company damage statement:We were just driving to the beach and the tree just fell out of the sky!" :pac:

Sounds like fun!:D

Pal

guarantee you won't be laughing when a tree falls on your head

Ricky91t

Pal wrote: »

guarantee you won't be laughing when a tree falls on your head

Hence the fact i'm not going!
Whats the point of chasing something that could easily kill you,just for fun :P

maquiladora

Watching the new season of Storm Chasers on Discovery is giving me this itch again....:pac:

blackgold>>

I'd love to do it.:D

M.T. Cranium

Let me give you some idea on the costs of such a trip.

First of all, if you chose late May or early June for two weeks, you could probably get a flight for about $600 (US), but you might have to pay considerably more especially if you didn't book soon.

Car rental would be around $1,000 for the whole thing including insurance, some of which you might recover at the end.

Gasoline is a question mark, it has come down considerably in price, but could go up again. At the present rates, and assuming that you cover 3,000 miles chasing, you'd be looking at about ten fill-ups of $30 or $40 each, so say $400 to be on the safe side.

Accommodation in standard motels (nothing very luxurious) would be around $70 a night, which you might be able to split two or three ways.

Food would cost you about $20 a day.

Some of these costs are shared and some are per person. You would probably end up spending the better part of $3,000 (US), which is why tours charge a little less than this for six-person van tours.

There are ways of cutting the costs down for hardy storm chasers. It's warm enough in that part of the world to consider camping some nights, and campgrounds do generally have showers and good facilities, and, if you're camping you can usually make up cheaper meals than you'll buy at fast food restaurants. Camping only costs about $10 a head, so there's some saving. Nobody would want to camp every night on a storm chase, for one thing you tend to be stuck in the tail end of heavy storms on successful chase days, and that's when you most want to be inside a building.

Another way to save is to come for one week and target only one or two events, cutting down on car rental and gasoline (and total expenses).

The later in the spring you might plan to come, the further north you would want to stage your chase. Texas and Oklahoma may be prime in May, but the Dakotas are prime by late June, so the zone is constantly shifting north.

I may try for a storm chase in 2010. I've done one already in western Canada which also has some pretty good thunderstorms, and found it relatively easy to do logistically as long as you can find internet access around noon to 3 pm as the storms are developing, from that point on, even on a severe budget you can chase using visual clues as the storms develop. Some chasers have on-board radar navigation or at least laptop internet access that may fade in and out rather regularly.

Basic safety rules are fairly obvious. Most tornadoes move along with the upper level winds and their motion can be predicted in advance. Once you have one under chase, you obviously need to be on a paved road that offers side roads for either closer inspection or escape, you don't want to rely on the option of turning around if you get too close because you might not be able to see very well in driving rain, and gusts behind you may have brought down power lines as storm chasers have found in the past, then you're trapped between two severe cells usually in a landscape offering no shelter except for shallow ditches and your vehicle.

Some idea of the difference between safe and unsafe storms will come after a bit of experience. An unsafe storm is the kind that is large in scale, has a large surrounding structure with heavy rain, occurs near the end of daylight, and takes you into wooded or hilly terrain (bad sighting and tracking). A safe storm is one that has displayed regular motion for a while, is fairly isolated on radar, and is positioned well with respect to the road system you plan to use, spotted before about 4 or 5 pm so you have three or four hours of daylight left to use. Some storms are in between these two types and so there is always some danger and risk involved in storm chasing. It helps also to have a dedicated driver who is communicating well with a dedicated navigator; having your driver as navigator and storm chaser is a sure way to get into trouble.

I think if people on this site are interested in a storm chase, realistically you should start thinking about 2010, it's getting a bit late now for effective planning. Also, I would have more chance of getting into the action in 2010 than this year, I have already planned a month's holiday in August so there's no time or money for a storm chase in 2009 in my budget. I may chase one severe storm on that August holiday if the weather provides one (in southern Alberta) but that's not 100% likely, and it would be a pretty short chase.

Here's a picture of a severe storm cell in that region, taken in August 2007. It will probably look very similar to what you're used to seeing in Ireland in the summer. No tornado was reported with this storm, just large hail and very heavy rain.

maquiladora

Great info once again MT.

M.T. Cranium

The severe storm season is off to a rather slow start in 2009. Although April and May are the two biggest severe storm months, March can sometimes be quite active, and it did produce the single largest tornado outbreak in the past century, on March 18th of 1925. Strong tornadoes devastated a large swath of southern Illinois (IL), Indiana and western Ohio on that date, and killed over 700 people in various towns in the path of the storms.

The second strongest historical outbreak is probably the mega-tornado outbreak of April 3-4, 1974, which produced many strong tornadoes throughout the Midwest. If you search for lists of tornado death tolls you'll find March well represented. However, late April to June is really the chase season, for a number of reasons. First of all, it's warmer and days are longer. Secondly, the tornadoes that tend to develop in the later spring and early summer weather patterns are not as shielded by rain and low cloud. They are easier to find and record on video. And that makes them safer to chase.

One way to get involved in storm chasing is to follow a "virtual chase" in which the severe weather outbreak is predicted, then followed in detail, as if you were actually there chasing. This is a good way to test your understanding and your ability to plan the chase even though you are actually safe at home.

Seems like there might be a severe storm outbreak around Tuesday of next week, so I may post a "virtual storm chase" thread and invite you to join in using the radar and satellite resources and model map guidance, etc. So watch for that to start up around Monday.

forkassed

Thanks M.T

Do you have any links to good storm chasing websites?

I was just thinking while watching the storm chasers on discovery the other night about this.

Alot of the storm chasers travel in convoys so if you were'nt that experienced at reading the weather or didnt have internet access you could just latch on to one of these convoys and follow them for a few days.

M.T. Cranium

Well, there appears to be a pretty good severe storm outbreak developing for Tuesday-Wednesday. Actually there's a few F0-1 tornadoes today in Indiana and Kentucky, but that system will weaken tomorrow and move into the Atlantic, while another stronger storm develops in Wyoming and moves to the Great Lakes region on Wednesday.

So I will start a "virtual storm chase" thread in about half an hour to give boards.ie members a chance to get their heads into the idea of a storm chase.

Meanwhile, to answer the question above, Net-weather has some good storm chase threads from the 2008 season, would suggest you have a look at those.

Then check in to the "virtual storm chase no. 1" thread later tonight or Monday, and see what's happening there.

digme

Did anyone ever actually go over and chase storms?
Even lighting?

M.T. Cranium

I think one or two Irish weather watchers have been over with the Net-weather storm chasers in past two years. Otherwise, no I don't think Boards.ie weather people have organized any trips. Maybe 2011? The trick is to get close, but not too close.

maquiladora

Seriously thinking about going on one of the tours next year or maybe the year after.

M.T. Cranium

Today will be interesting for severe storms in Kansas and Nebraska. There is a slug of unusually hot air moving out of the desert regions into eastern Colorado and western Kansas, the models are showing thickness values reaching 597 dm by 00z (which is 7 pm CDT in that region or 6 pm MDT closer to the Rockies). Now if you follow the weather you'll know that 564-570 dm thickness is considered tropical in western Europe and 582 dm shows up fairly regularly in Texas and nearby states but these values today are exceptional and may be associated with record high temperatures around 40-45 C in the warm sector of a developing low in northeast Colorado. Meanwhile the severe storms will develop (have already started) ahead of the warm front through Nebraska and central Kansas. I will post a radar later on when this gets highly active (time in that region is 6 hours behind yours).

I'm not sure if I've ever seen thicknesses reach 597 dm before, can only recall seeing the 588 contour but today's charts have almost all of Colorado and New Mexico inside the 594 dm contour. Remarkable stuff, suggests that the storms could achieve monster heights once they start developing, like 60 to 70k ft.

M.T. Cranium

In case I forget later, here's the radar which should begin to get very active soon.

http://radar.weather.gov/radar.php?rid=ftg

This is basically the northeast quadrant of Colorado with bits of Wyoming and Nebraska added on. The hot and (for this region) humid air mass has moved north of the I-70 to about Fort Morgan to Sterling (towns that are on this radar map), temps are 90-95 F south of that and about 80 F north of that zone with surface easterly winds there. You may notice lines of cumulus forming east of the Rockies (which run north-south to the west of Denver and Colorado Springs). Those are convergence lines between slightly different parcels of air but assisted by topography (it gets into high rolling foothills in some parts of this region, but flat plains in northeast Colorado).

I expect this radar image to light up big-time very soon (about 22z to 23z) and then you can use the navigation arrows on the link to hit the radars to the east where this activity will continue to fire most of the night (remember it's only 3:15 p.m. in the local Mountain time zone in Colorado).

Su Campu

Amazing, early morning soundings are already showing MLCAPE of almost 3000J/kg, would that be exceptional for a morning sounding even for there MT?

M.T. Cranium

I saw some values of about 6,500 later on ... these are fairly typical over here, or I should say down south because I doubt the cape ever exceeds 50 here with the steady drizzle. Well not quite true, once we had an actual thunderstorm here with about half a dozen lightning strikes and a few tiny hail pellets.

If anyone's up really late or early watching this, suggest you navigate to the radars north, northeast and east of the one shown above, using the direction arrows on the link. There are tornados in western Nebraska at the moment and since this is turning into a meso-scale convective cluster the intensity should peak later (about 03-06z).

Rougies

http://www.chasertv.com/

Mike Phelps.

Now.

M.T. Cranium

This link shows you all the parameters ... and you can boot up other regions for other situations.

http://w1.spc.woc.noaa.gov/exper/mesoanalysis/new/viewsector.php?sector=14