From a chase perspective, it was a rather lackluster couple days out this last stint; a lot of excitement going in yielded little for me. Thursday’s setup in northwest Texas went down about exactly as it was forecast, mostly after dark, despite some afternoon storms attempting to go up a couple hours before sunset. They never really took off til after dark. I did get into some hail near Memphis, Texas on one of those cells, but with a setup looming the next day, I opted to turn tail and get some miles in, heading to the OKC area for the overnight. Meanwhile, about an hour after I left, a second round of storms did produce a couple brief tornadoes between Memphis and Wellington, Texas. The following day was a total bust for me, opting for northeast Kansas with good parameters along a warm front. This was an easy choice for me as it saved me from the gross terrain that is northeast Oklahoma. I arrived in plenty of time, even with a stop in Wichita to see some former co-workers and my previous station. Things got a bit optimistic when SPC jumped on our warm front idea, tossing up a 10% tornado prob in their early afternoon outlook, but it didn’t pan out. And I mean did NOT pan out at all. Storms fired along and behind the cold front, which prevented anything from taking off, to the point that I spent about three hours following NON-severe storms. I barely hit any rain, calling the chase outside Manhatten, Kansas before returning to Salina. Hindsight showed I should’ve just sucked it up and played northeast Oklahoma, but alas, I had enough faith in the Kansas target to justify the idea. Sometimes that works, this time it REALLY did NOT. I drove home yesterday.
The big stories from those two days weren’t what I failed to chase… but the several big, and unfortunately fatal tornadoes; a couple of those instances happening in unexpected places. None bigger than the incredible tornadoes in southwest Michigan on Friday. These happening well outside any real significant tornado risk area. While they were under a general 2% up there, it was going to take the perfect combo of things to even get storms of severity up there, not to mention significant tornado producing ones, and yet, one supercell managed to form, find and root on the warm front, and produce what will likely be an upper EF-3, possibly even EF-4 tornado. The video out of these tornadoes up there is nothing short of jaw-dropping, particularly the shots taken as the tornado passed over a FROZEN lake, actually ripping the ice from the surface as it leveled homes along the water front. While this has the headliner of the week, two tornadoes in Oklahoma also took lives. The Thursday tornado in northern Oklahoma, while in an area outlooked for tornadoes, came as kind of a surprise for the intensity and cyclic nature of the storm; producing multiple tornadoes in Oklahoma up into southern Kansas. That tornado unfortunately killed a mother and daughter in their car near Fairview. Another deadly tornado occurred near Tulsa on Friday’s event. Not a great start to the year in that regard.
I got home early yesterday evening, opting to make the drive back after landing close enough after Friday’s bust to justify not spending two days cooped up in a hotel somewhere ahead of the next system which should kick off a couple chase days starting on Tuesday. A home reset is always welcome, and it means I am already 90% packed and ready to hit the road should I get the green light tomorrow. That being said, that’s what I am waiting for, so already being preloaded means I can wait to see what the ultimate decision is and assuming it to be green, off I’ll go. Preliminary target looks like northern Illinois on Tuesday, with a shift south, maybe into the northeast Arkansas area on Wednesday. After that system clears out, the severe weather will take some time off, so we’ll get a breather to recover from all this. A wild start already to 2026.
