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A
radar echo of a supercell north of Petersburg, TX. 5/25/99
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Ups
and Downs
This year, my chase vacation was filled with tornado
chances, if not tornado successes. In case I needed it (I hope not!),
the atmosphere humbled me on several occasions. I need no reminders that
I am not among the elite storm chasers ... my luck and skill puts me well
below the level of the real expert chasers (Gene Moore [who gets my vote
for #1 chaser in the country!], Bill Reid, Erik Rasmussen, Al Pietrycha,
Tim Marshall, Gene Rhoden, etc.), but Vickie and I managed to catch two
tornadic events, anyway ... as well as missing some others. We had a lot
of fun chasing storms together and I enjoyed my outdoor
photography on several days when there wasn't much happening. My biggest
disappointment, apart from missing three tornado events I probably should
have gotten, is another year with relatively few lightning photography
opportunities.
Kansas chasing was better this year (less construction!) and I finally
ended both my Kansas and Nebraska tornado jinxes ... my first decent tornado
intercepts in both Kansas and Nebraska. There is still a lot of construction
going on in Kansas and Colorado construction continues near Springfield,
not all that far from where Al and I first encountered it two years ago!
Ugh.
"Chaser convergence" is occasionally getting rather
out of hand, although it's clear that nothing can be done about it. In
a couple of cases, there probably were 30-40 vehicles dashing about. It
was pretty bad on the 03 May day, where about 30 chasers (including me!)
played leapfrog along I-44 for most of the tornado's track. Other chasers
were everywhere.
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One
of the DoWs blocking I-44 on 3 May 1999
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The
DoWs attract a considerable set of tag-alongs and have produced some rather
dangerous situations by the way they park their vehicles (and the retinue
exacerbates this by adding a string of vehicles parked behind them!).
We saw one chaser who lost it on a dirt road and had crashed through a
fence into a field. It seems that many new chasers are not behaving very
responsibly, as they are not pulling their vehicles off the road and are
engaging in various forms of erratic behavior. It's still possible on
some occasions to have a storm to oneself, although there may yet be unseen
chasers nearby. I have no problem with most of the old veterans, who tend
to behave well and keep a low profile. At least some of the new crowd,
even including professional video and film production crews, do not seem
so inclined to be responsible. Ahh, the lure of money and excitement attracts
an interesting bunch. I'm not yet ready to quit chasing, but some
of the things I have seen in recent years are pretty discouraging,
and makes me not feel very proud to be a storm chaser. What makes it bad
is that I feel some measure of responsibility for what has happened ..
sigh.
Technology continues to make chasing easier. It seems
the DoWs and the VORTEX-99 crews were in the right place at about the
right time on many occasions this year. Old-fashioned chasers, like me,
who have suffered for years by being deaf, dumb, and blind after making
the initial forecast, are at a considerable disadvantage compared to those
who have ready access to surface data, as well as radar and satellite
imagery. I may have to upgrade my technology. I must admit that feeling
of being "dazed and confused" on a chase day, and then missing events
that I could easily have captured, is not a good feeling and something
I think I want to minimize, somehow. The days of "going visual" are about
over. The percentages of tornadic intercepts have been going up and I
guess I'm going to have to catch up.
Some
Impressions
There is a lot of real estate in west central and northwestern SD with
a very low population density! At least this year, the grasslands in this
area are quite green and even attractive, in an empty-spaces way. This
impression of emptiness probably includes areas of western ND and most
of eastern MT. I suspect the reported tornado frequencies there are very
serious underestimates. This adds to my awareness that big chunks of western
TX, eastern CO, and eastern NM are quite underrepresented in the tornado
frequency maps. Agricultural regions in other nearby regions (western
KS and NE) tend to have enough farmsteads that tornado reporting is at
least possible, but where it's tens of miles between houses, much less
towns, virtually all tornadoes are likely to go unreported (and probably
their intensity will be underestimated, even if they are reported ...
there's nothing to gauge intensity by in these empty spaces), except where
seen by chasers. Talking with the few folks we found suggests that they
have seen and even been affected by many tornadoes that may well never
have been reported.
Northern NE is not what I expected it to be (a sandy
wasteland with scrub brush, at most). The Sandhills are quite attractive,
with lots of wetlands within the sandy hills and loads of migratory birds
and other wildlife. The ride across northern NE on US20 is terrific. There
is some tourism evident in the area, especially in the VTN area, but this
region strikes me as a mostly undiscovered treasure.
Ed. Note: This
is an edited version of Doswell's 1999 storm chasing vacation. To see
more log entries and spectacular images you can go to his web
page.
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