Tony's Blogbach, Between the Isobars

Opted to play what I guess we can call the secondary target for Friday’s grand finale… despite a higher (possible upgrade) tornado risk across the Midwest, I opted to make the haul to Wichita from Des Moines and set up for the dry line play somewhere near the KS/OK border.  I have a slew of both meteorological and logistical reasons for selecting this target, but given all I have seen thus far, it’ll definitely play as the day’s secondary target.

Two big questions for the southern target include how long storms can remain discrete and IF any storms can fire further south along the dryline.  The crashing cold front, which was a primary factor for choosing a further south run could serve as the bulldozer to undercut storms and sending everything into an outflow dominated linear mess.  There are plenty of signals for storm development across far northern Oklahoma and southern Kansas, so we’ll see exactly how far south along the dryline these storms can form.  Plenty of ingredients to support significant severe weather, including tornadoes, so I don’t think I’ll have a stormless bust down this way.

Further north, primarily north of I-80 into eastern Iowa, northwest Illinois, and Wisconsin, areas in proximity to the low will probably spin down a few significant tornadoes, which is why there is a higher probability set there by SPC.  Again, the big question remains how discrete those storms will be.  I think that tornado threat will be much earlier in the day than anything we see south, but for how long remains a big question.  Lots of forcing yields lots of storms, and they’ll be moving fairly quickly through less-than-favorable terrain.  I think the sweet spot will be eastern Iowa into northwest Illinois; that area and it’s potential is one of the reasons I wonder if I made the right call coming down south.  But, like I said, it wasn’t all meteorology why I came south, so we’ll see.

We’re 24 hours away at least from showtime down here, so my main focus is to rest and recharge a bit after spending most of the last five days on the road.  Fortunately I played yesterday in Iowa well and gave myself a good head start down here, so not only did I make a short drive out of today, but I can take my time getting moving tomorrow unless something urgently calls me from a few more hours away.  That said, one more busy day tomorrow, then things will calm down at least through the middle of next week.

Busy day yesterday in southern Minnesota, which included my first two Minnesota tornadoes since the Wadena event in 2010.  The image above was the second tornado east of Truman, which briefly fully condensed to the ground.  This was the longer-lived of the two, not terribly strong, but certainly a looker.  The first one was from the same parent storms a few minutes prior with a brief, non-fully-condensed touchdown, with several minutes between the two ground contacts.  It’s not entirely out of the question this was one tornado, just had a multi-minute gap between contact, but we’ll see what the surveys say.  I haven’t gone through my video in a ton of detail to accurately determine that myself.  But I was close to both, within a mile, and had a great view the entire time.  I’ll yap a bit about the chaser traffic in a later blog, but I had a social media post get a little attention and I want to talk a bit about how I’ve changed my chasing around these situations.

Today, I wake up in Cedar Falls, Iowa; landed her last night shortly before 11pm and got my first night of uninterrupted sleep in a while.  I’ve been dealing with some physical ailments early on this trip which alleviated a bit yesterday and allowed me to sleep through the night finally.  Still a bit groggy as I sit down to write this, but it’s probably because I could use a couple more nights of that to get me back at 100%.

Fortunately I am closer to my target than I thought I would be last night.  Not because I had the target elsewhere, but because I ended up geographically closer to said target than I thought having not looked at a map.  I don’t get up to this part of Iowa very often.  Trying to even think if I have ever been through Waterloo.  Probably, just not recently.  That said, it’s another boundary play, and that’s really going to determine exactly where I set up.  My hope is that its south of the WI/IL border, although a quick look at Google Maps satellite implies decent terrain to chase across far southwestern Wisconsin.  Just gotta get away from the Mississippi River area where trees are a bit more obvious.  Again, not having chased up here a whole lot, I’m a bit unfamiliar with the area.

Similar to yesterday, where I was going into largely uncharted chase territory, I spent some time in the morning studying routes and river crossings.  It’s actually HOW I navigated across a river crossing south of Amboy, Minnesota yesterday where I got ahead enough of the chaser congo line to avoid being stuck in that traffic for more than a couple minutes.  I knew about the one county road between the two east/west state/US highways that everything funneled into that one road to cross the river.  Fortunately when I hit that point, I was already looking to move on to a different storm, so that was my ONLY traffic issue of note yesterday.  But it would saved me had I been in a more urgent situation.  It’s one of the tips that I think a lot of new chasers don’t realize, particularly in areas you’re unfamiliar with, is to try to know the routes and large scale escapes.  It’s a situational awareness, knowing the towns in the area I was sparked that memory that ‘oh yeah’, I have a river crossing to contend with and I need to make that move a little earlier so I don’t get squeezed. Today, other than the Mississippi River, you’re generally pretty open between US-151 to the north and US-20 to the south.  One note is that Google Maps shows US-20 closed west of Stockton, IL.  There are a couple nearby roads to detour around there, but in the heat of the chase, that could prove gnarly.  Again, just having the Illinois towns of Elizabeth and Woodbine in my head will spark that reminder that the closure is right up the road and I need to account for that in my next moves.

So yeah, my morning thoughts as I pull myself together and get ready for today.  Tomorrow looks like it could be the same general region, although a bit more messy of a setup.  Thursday at the moment, I am treating as a down day ahead of Friday, which will likely be the LAST of this particular trip.  I’ll be westbound for home this weekend.  See my chase planner there on the right for rough plans heading into early next week.  Beyond that, looks like at least one, maybe two systems in the train, the first being late next week and the next one possibly shortly thereafter.  WAAAY to far out to even begin to assess those, but I would imagine with the active pattern in place, after a short break early next week, I will be back at it!

See ya on the road!

The weekend setups became a wash for me, despite Saturday giving some play to pretty every place I targeted at one point or another.  The issue for me was that despite an early alarm that would’ve allowed me to hit any target, including the further east target, I had a low-end kitty cat emergency that I had to tend to, which by the time it wrapped up and I returned the kitty home, it was already after noon, and thus pretty well ended any hope I had to get on anything reasonable.  The good news, the kitty is at home on antibiotics and doing well, so was a good early catch that was well warranted and hopefully saved her from something worse had it been waited on.

Also fortunate, despite an impressive wind event in far eastern Colorado (my Goodland target) and the surprising MCV-driven tornado watch (my eastern target), nothing of major importance was missed.  There was a brief little birdfart nado near the KS/NE line southeast of Hastings, and a good little dust storm along I-70 near Burlington, so not a total miss, but I can exhale a bit as I was a little perturbed when the day I had written off tried to perform.  Regardless, we’re moving right along.

Today is a largely underwhelming day, so it’ll be focused on a drive to the Des Moines area, setting up for what oughta be a very busy week.  Four of the five weekdays ahead look like pretty high-ceiling chase days, with Thursday (a low-end risk) perhaps a down day ahead of Friday.  Monday, and Wednesday look solid, and Tuesday right now looks to be the big day of the bunch.  All days have high ceilings, but plenty of caveats that could fail each setup, so no slam dunks, but it’ll keep us busy none-the-less.

Monday right now, likely a southern Minnesota play based on front position and terrain.  Southeast Minnesota into Wisconsin start to get terrain-tricky, so my hope is that some of the CAMs are correct and give credit to a western play, which would be more favorable for terrain.  Tuesday shifts a bit south, eastern IA into western IL (again).  Wednesday and Friday could be similar areas, although I am not writing off either for something further south, but ideally, we’d remain in the same general vicinity for the week, which would cut down on the day-to-day miles as I am rolling this trip solo.  So that would be helpful to me.

After that, should be a bit of a down stretch, hopefully allowing me the weekend to return home and BE home for some home-projects that are slated for Monday the 20th.  Another system may eject out early next week, but hopefully stays at bay long enough to give me Monday at home haha If ya listening, Ma-Nature 😉

So that’s all I got here this Sunday AM.  Wheels up to Des Moines and we’ll see what the week ahead has in store for us!

Quick evening note; will travel my way out I-70 tomorrow, leaving a bit earlier in the morning than I would for a typical ‘travel day’ just in case a storm can get going in central Kansas in the afternoon; not expecting a ton out of it, but given the Sunday setup, this sets me up well.   Initially thought about cruising into Burlington mid-afternoon to see if the storms in Colorado would be worth anything, and I am just not convinced they’ll amount to enough to dedicate missing any central Kansas potential, nor sacrificing a full day’s drive out east.  Some CAMs are trying to spark a couple storms in central Kansas tomorrow, and it’s a halfway decent environment if a storm can get going.  So that said, an early departure from home to head out east, and maybe we’ll land in Hays for a late lunch and see where things are.

Looks like things will kick off for me tomorrow… I sat out yesterday and today, and while I am not formally planning to chase tomorrow as I am playing it as a positioning day, there are some potential storm interactions I could have in far eastern Colorado tomorrow afternoon, so I’m not writing off tomorrow yet, but it’ll likely be a ‘just cause I’m there’ type of thing.

As I eluded to in my previous entry, nothing in the coming days looks ‘HISTORIC’, or end of the world.  As is typical with these things, there is a lot of click-bait and crazy eye popping headlines.  Sure, it’s going to be active with severe weather possible to likely every day through mid-week (possibly beyond), but right now, I don’t have a day that I would be sounding alarm bells for.  If you know me, or have followed me for a while, you know I’m not a hype-man, I’m not going to get all goo-goo over setups days in advanced just to stir up engagement.  It’s never been my style.  I think I kinda try and stay in my lane, focus on the CHASING aspect, not so much forecast and Meteorologist and stuff.  A lot chasers have expanded into forecasts, and warnings on a national level, and some do it very well (coughLuciocough), but so many others, not so much.  Me, if you go to my social media, it is VERY chase-focused, and occasionally I will poop out some forecast-type stuff, but it’s all focused on chasing.  There are plenty of good places people can go to get good weather information, particularly for their local regions.  We got a guy here who lives up the street from me, Kody, who has an EXCELLENT Facebook page with great forecast info for northern Colorado and Idaho, and I advise folks all the time to find a trusted source like that in their local areas as they have good insight with no BS.  Me, if you’re following me, you’re following me for chasing, the pictures, and occasionally my 2-cents on the forecast ahead.  And yes, I will provide some hyper-local info on pending setups to areas I am tied to (Ohio, southern Illinois, Kansas, and of course, Northern Colorado).  Anyway, tangent over…

As for tomorrow, I’m watching two areas… the on-my-way pickoff across eastern Colorado; low potential, probably a low-end hailer near the CO/KS border along I-70.  And the more effort-heavy areas across southeast Nebraska/northeast Kansas.  Right now, CAMs are not terribly high on that area, and it’s a big investment to make that haul, so I need to see something a bit more promising for me to pull that trigger.  I won’t sleep completely on it as these surface low setups, while not terribly optimistic in the models, can be sneaky, and can be good, so it’s not a 100% write-off at this point, but I will need to see something a bit more optimistic before I commit to that.  Given my preliminary target for Sunday, my first REAL chase day is gonna be southern Kansas/northern Oklahoma, the southeast Nebraska target would make for an easy get, basically a straight south drop on US-81.  So it doesn’t hurt me for the day that counts, so I’ll keep tabs on it through the day and decide if it’s worth a 7am alarm on a Saturday for, or if I just play lazy and try and catch something out on I-70 tomorrow, which also would be an easy get for Sunday.

As for the weekday setups, I think they progressively get more… better(?)… as the week goes on… Tuesday and Wednesday, depending on your model of preference, seem to be the pinnacle of this stint, with solid days surrounding that.  How long into next week I am out remains to be seen, but right now, it certainly looks like I’ll be out through Wednesday at least, and we’ll see what persists after that.  Again, not going to blow smoke up anyone’s butt about how ‘end of the world’ any of these setups are cause there really isn’t a lot of smoke to blow.  All setups have high ceilings, and I could cherry-pick all the good things I want from them and ignore all the negatives to pump it up, but alas, just know if you’re in a risk area this week, that you’re in a risk area this week haha Regardless, I will be out, and I will see where I think the best chase setups will be within those larger setups.  I am definitely leaning north on all the days, but we’ll see what shakes out.

Lastly, my new vlog has posted today!  Head over to my YouTube channel and you can watch the full Vlog from the April 10, 2005 Cold Core tornado chase in northwest Kansas.  This day yielded my first favorite tornado photo, which you can see above!  It was a fun chase that began late the night before as me and a friend outran an eastern Colorado blizzard to arrive at a I-70 hotel at 5:30am and slept in sleeping bags on the floor of the hotel room.  Hahaha  Click here to go watch it!  I have my chase log posted here as well, you can also go check that out!  The Vlog is posted at the top of the chase log, too! 😀