5/15 - 6pm MDT - New Mexico!

Storm Chasing Adventure Tours is in Carlsbad, New Mexico for the evening as we're still waiting for the severe weather threat to ramp up during the middle part of the week. We visited Roswell, New Mexico this afternoon and the associated alien museums and gift shops before heading to Carlsbad where we'll view the bats flying out of Carlsbad Caverns this evening near sunset.

12z GFS dewpoints at 7pm CDT Wed

Tomorrow should be another "touristy" day before we begin seriously looking at the risk for a severe weather event across much of Texas and Oklahoma on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. The latest models have moisture streaming back into the region nicely, but we're keeping a close eye on it. You can see the dewpoints rising near the Oklahoma/Texas border on the right-hand image from the GFS model. Should moisture return as advertised, things should shape up nicely for mid to late week. Three or more good days of chasing in a row? That sounds good to me!

5/14 - 2pm CDT - Gearing Up for Another Week of Storm Chasing

We're in Amarillo, TX today to prepare for another week of storm chasing with a new set of tour guests. The van has been washed and the oil changed, and all the guides and drivers are fully rested for what Mother Nature will bring in the coming days. While getting things done in Amarillo today, we passed by a bunch of semi tractor-trailers at a truck stop in town carrying blades for the giant power-producing wind turbines in farms around the Plains. Look how huge one of these blades is!

Next week's severe weather risk areas are still a bit fuzzy as we'll be under a ridge here in the Plains for at least the next few days. Once a trough begins moving through on Tuesday into Wednesday, we should see severe weather chances begin to increase. Wednesday, Thursday, and possibly even Friday are all looking like good chase days due to upper-air support and moisture streaming back into the region. Even the Storm Prediction Center is mum on details about next week because of all the uncertainty regarding where exactly this will set up:

LOW LEVEL MOISTURE SHOULD GRADUALLY RETURN ACROSS TX INTO OK AND PERHAPS EVEN KS BY MID-LATE WEEK AS LARGE SCALE HIGH LEVEL FLOW RELUCTANTLY FORCES RIDGE TO NUDGE SLIGHTLY DOWNSTREAM ACROSS THE SRN PLAINS. WITH TIME CONVECTION SHOULD DEVELOP WITHIN INCREASING WARM ADVECTION REGIME ATOP RETREATING SFC ANTICYCLONE. WHILE A FEW SEVERE TSTMS MAY ULTIMATELY EVOLVE WITHIN THIS PATTERN THERE IS SOME RELUCTANCE TO INTRODUCE A MORE ORGANIZED THREAT DUE TO TIMING ISSUES OF RIDGE DISPLACEMENT WHICH SHOULD ALLOW GREATER MOISTURE/INSTABILITY TO DEVELOP ACROSS THIS REGION.

5/11 - 11:30pm CDT - Video of TIV 2 and TVN Dominator

Even though we didn't see any severe weather today, we were able to hang out in Pratt, Kansas for a little while to see the Tornado Intercept Vehicle 2 (TIV 2) and Tornadovideos.net's Dominator vehicle, both from Discovery Channel's Storm Chasers TV show. It was a rare find for us because it's not common to see both the TIV and Dominator in the same place at the same time. Discovery Channel crews were actively filming the show while we were there, and some of our group may even show up in the 'behind the scenes' episode that airs at the end of each show season. Check out the video below for a look at what we saw!

5/13 - 12:15am - National Weather Center / Amarillo

We visited the National Weather Center in Norman, Oklahoma this morning. This facility located on the University of Oklahoma's campus is home to the Storm Prediction Center, National Severe Storms Laboratory, and other branches of the National Weather Service.


We're making our way back to Amarillo, Texas so that our current tour guests will be able to fly out tomorrow morning. There are no storms to chase today because of the aforementioned low risk of severe weather across the Plains for the next few days. Luckily, things will be picking up around the middle of next week!

5/11 - 9:45am CDT - Southern Kansas Today

Our prospects for storm chasing this afternoon in Southern Kansas are not as good as previously thought. A line of storms that formed last night in the Texas Panhandle is drifting through west Kansas and Oklahoma right now. This is never a good thing because those morning storms can easily inhibit instability and make the potential for discreet super cells lower. BUT, once these storms depart the area and we get the sunshine back we'll begin to rebuild the atmospheric potential for severe weather this afternoon. The sooner the storms leave, the better things will be this afternoon. Because of these developments, the Storm Prediction Center has downgraded their Moderate Risk from last night to a Slight Risk this morning.


We'll see how it all goes today. East surface winds, a dryline push, and good wind speeds at 500mb (but a bit too southerly for comfort) are all in our favor for today despite the morning storms. I'm confident that severe weather will happen today in Kansas/Oklahoma, but the setup has become much more complex and the potential for good discreet supercells has decreased.

Storms will most likely start after 2pm CDT this afternoon. Be sure to follow me on Facebook and Twitter for the latest updates!

5/11 - 1:30am CDT - We Saw The TIV in Pratt, Kansas!

We rolled into Pratt, Kansas, where we're staying overnight to position for tomorrow's chase, to quite a show this evening. The Tornado Intercept Vehicle 2 (TIV2) and TVN's Dominator vehicle were both in town waiting for tomorrow's chase and shooting video for the Discovery Channel's Storm Chasers TV show. We got up close and personal with the TIV as its driver Marcus Gutierrez gave us a tour of its features in a parking lot near our hotel. It's a magnificent vehicle even though it's prone to mechanical problems and glitches. Check out the Flickr player below for photos of our tour:

It still looks like we'll be in Central Kansas, our current location, or Western Oklahoma tomorrow (well, later today) for what could be a substantial tornado outbreak. The Storm Prediction Center has issued a Moderate Risk with a 10% tornado risk for this area and as long as everything sets up according to plan, it should be a good chase. I'll have more details early tomorrow morning after a quick sleep tonight!

5/10 - 11:30am CDT - We Were Next to a Tornado Last Night!?

We're a little shocked and humbled this morning in South Dakota. Last night when we arrived at our hotel in Murdo, SD, veteran storm photographer Daniel Shaw rushed out to meet us saying he had to show us some photos. What he showed us was a set of pictures containing a rope tornado illuminated by lightning that was on the ground just yards from his position late last night. The tornado actually crossed the road 15 to 20 yards ahead of him and he was understandably shaken up. The kicker in all of this is that we were only a couple hundred yards behind Daniel when this happened near Philip, SD last night. He knew full well that we were right behind him based on our live updating position on the Spotter Network and that's why he came out to meet us. Our leader Todd and I remarked during the chase that we could see a wall cloud during the lightning flashes, but there was no sign of a tornado. We then stopped to get out of our van and were met with winds of 60 mph and higher from the west, which seemed very odd. The abrupt stop to that wind just seconds later added to the mystery. But we now have our answer... those winds were from the outer circulation of a tornado!


The strange thing in all of this is that the velocity couplet, or focus of rotation in the storm, was about three miles east of the road we were on, yet the tornado crossed the road heading the in the complete opposite direction, east to west, of the storm motion. Weird right? It seems there was a second updraft base with rotation that formed on the western edge of the storm and produced this tornado. There's also the possibility that it reached all the way down and over from the updraft base that was on the eastern half of the storm. This storm also wasn't terribly impressive on radar, meaning we we didn't think it would produce a tornado, but the ingredients were certainly there for a brief spin-up. We'll probably never know exactly how this happened, but it underscores the importance of staying vigilant even when you think you're in a safe position (we were based on radar) near a supercell.

We're traveling down to Kansas from South Dakota today in preparation for tomorrow's chase in Oklahoma or Southern Kansas. The Storm Prediction Center has a Moderate Risk (!) out for the region tomorrow and I think that's a good call based on the strong upper-level winds that are forecast to make their way through the area tomorrow. The storms that form will only move about 25 mph or less tomorrow, so chasing them will be relatively simple. Last year we chased two major High Risk outbreaks in Oklahoma and the supercells moved to the northeast at 55-65 mph, which made for a horrendously rushed chases.