In The Vortex

Category: Storm Chasing

  • 05/10/2010 HIGH RISK Chase Forecast

    Today is one of those days when it’s hard to be excited about chasing. Storm Prediction Center has issued a high risk for a large portion of Oklahoma and southern Kansas, and more than one long track, violent tornado is a distinct possibility. Hail could be larger than baseballs.

    While I’m certainly excited by what Mother Nature may have to offer for viewing, I’m equally apprehensive about the fact that someone is likely to lose life and property today. If you live in these areas, be certain to have your weather radios and to be paying attention to live news sources, because once storms fire, things are going to be happening quickly and storms will be moving fast. Have your plan now, because warning times are going to be short and you may not have much time to react.

    I’m heading out to Oklahoma today to chase this set up, of course. But I expect it will be difficult to due to fast storm motion and what is sure to be a very large amount of storm chasers on the road.

    Shortly after noon, I will be live streaming video for the remainder of the day on the LIVE ChaseCam page.

  • 04/22/2010 Chase Recap

    I didn’t even have time to get a forecast post up yesterday.  I was mostly covering severe weather in our viewing area for the TV station, so I wasn’t able to head to the more obvious tornado target in the eastern Texas Panhandle where so many other chasers scored multiple tornadoes.

    The only confirmed tornado on any of the stuff in our viewing area happened out north of Matador and Paducah.  I thought sure we were going to have one there north of Matador, but it waited another 20 miles or so before producing.  I missed it though as I headed back to cover more developing activity by Lubbock.

    All was not lost however as I got some nice lightning lit shots of a supercell out by Spur that looks like it came REALLY close to producing a tornado.  The structure of the storm was outstanding and in one photo it appears we probably had a funnel cloud there as well.  The cold front line of storms caught up with it after that and that was about it!

    You can click on these and get a slightly bigger version.