Storm Chase of April 13th, 2012
The April 13th storm chase was kind of a spur of the moment thing. If I remember correctly, the tornado probabilities were not that high, the next day looked better, and I had work later that day. However, some isolated supercells began to fire up not that far southwest of Norman, so I decided to…
Storm Chase of 7 November, 2011
Alyson and I left Norman at around 10 AM, heading to our initial target area of Vernon, TX. One of my biggest concerns for this day was the timing of thunderstorm initiation. It the storms didn’t fire up early enough, it would be dark before we saw anything. Luckily, this did not happen. By the…
Joplin, Missouri EF-5 Tornado Damage.
This wasn’t actually a storm chase. Alyson and I were on our way to Elgin, IL for my brother’s wedding, and we stopped in Joplin along the way. The destruction we saw there was incredible; unimaginable. And this was three or four weeks after the tornado had gone through. Below are some of the pictures…
Storm Chase of 24 May, 2011
So I started my chase day a little after that PDS Tornado Watch was issued. I jumped in my car and left Norman, heading towards Chickasha. Storms had already started firing in the west before I left, and I decided to continue further west from Chickasha to Anadarko. When I got there, I pulled into…
Storm Chase of 23 May, 2011
Today was what as know to storm chasers as “the day before the day.” It had all the parameters for a pretty decent severe weather outbreak, and indeed, plenty of supercells did fire off. However, the main show will ultimately be tomorrow, in which a major tornado outbreak is possible. Overall, I would rate today…
Storm Chase of 11 May, 2011
I’ll start by saying that I didn’t necessarily have the highest confidence in going into Wednesday. The forecast models just had not been doing a good job of predicting what might happen that day. Indeed, the forecast models had been having trouble that whole week it had seemed like. They had been initializing wrong, and…
Storm Chase of 26 April, 2011
I started out the day targeting Paris, TX. My original intention was to get to Paris, adjust in any direction that I needed to, and just wait for the storms to come to me. I did get a bit of a late start; I didn’t get on the road until about 12:30. I flew south…
Storm Chase of 27 February, 2011
Unlike previous storm chases where I chased by myself, this time I had my lovely girlfriend Alyson with me. I did the driving, she did the navigating, photographing, and other computer stuff. We started the day early, waking up at 7 AM. Our initial target area was Ponca City, OK. After breakfast and loading up…
Storm Chase of June 23, 2010
This day was back when I first started storm chasing. I got in my car and drove somewhere not too far from home, and set up shop in a parking lot. There, I recorded some pretty awesome and close lightning. One it particular (I wasn’t able to record it,) was VERY close; under 50 meters…
Storm Chase of 19 May, 2010
This was my first storm chase in Oklahoma, and it just happened to be a High Risk day. I had driven down to Norman earlier that week to meet with an adviser at OU, as well as find an apartment for myself. Fortunately for me, that particular May had been pretty active. On May 10th,…