Introduction to Storm Chasing
What is Storm chasing, or Tornado chasing? What happens during a Storm chasing tour? Are you guaranteed to see tornadoes? This introduction hopefully will be able to answer these questions and a few more.
Storm Chasing is still a fairly young tourist industry but it is growing and today there are numerous tour operators to choose from. Many tour guides have many years of storm chasing by themselves, most are meteorologists
Storm Chasing in practise is a matter of predicting in which area of the US that has the highest likelihood to produce severe (tornadic) storms. This is done by observing meteorological data.
When an area has been chosen for the day's chase, the tour sets off to get there in time. Usually severe storms gets interesting in the afternoon so typically you have a few hours after breakfast to get in place.
Chase day
A chase day is a day when you find an interesting storm and try to position, and reposition, yourselves to see as much of it as possible. When in an area of interest the guides use radar images and experience to judge which cloud that is most likely to develop into a severe storm.
Depending on the nature of the storm the tour guide could choose to stay far away from the storm (to see the structure of the super cell) or go close (to try to find tornadoes). Sometimes the tour guide takes you straight under the storm for the tourists to experience some heavy hail, winds and rain.
During a chase day you will experience a lot of stepping in and out of the vehicle. The tour guide will try to stay ahead of the storm and thus reposition the vehicles so that the group is positioned in the way of the storm but leave as soon as the storm is passing by.
Bust day
Sometimes it seems likely that an area will produce supercells and tornandoes in early weather analysis but when you arrive to the area of interest, you wait. And wait...Some days, you just might not see anything but blue skies and those are called bust days. You obviously do not want too many of these!
Travel day
Due to the changing weather and the movement of the air masses, one can follow a front for a few days. However, some days you need to completely reposition yourselves in order to get to a more promising location. These days are referred to as Travel days. During a travel day you might travel through several states and spend many long hours in the vehicle.
What will I see during my Storm chasing tour?
During a storm chase you are likely to experience a wide range of amazing and very odd weather phenomena. Examples are as tornadoes, super cells, wall clouds, mammatus clouds, lenticular clouds, huge hail and very strong winds. You will also experience amazing lightning storms, intense rain and some amazing sunsets.
One could also argue that you will see a good portion of the "Original USA" - the Midwest. A very flat and rural area with many crop fields, small towns and a lot of friendly people. Spending a Tuesday night in a local restaurant in Beatrice, Nebraska, might be very exotic for a non-US citizen!
Is there a guarantee to see tornadoes?
Tornadoes are usually the Number one weather phenomena that people desire to see during the storm chasing tour but how likely are you to see a tornado? This question is of course difficult to answer since weather is so unpredictable. One answer, however, could be fairly absolute - There are no guarantees regarding tornadoes, only likelyhoods!
Of course you are more likely to see a tornado the longer the tour, since every day is a new chance! If you are lucky a weather system with the right attributes will pass over the Midwest. However, sometimes the weather is just plain...nice...and you will have a 10-day road trip seeing absolutely nothing! Other times you might see 5 tornadoes in one day. All in all, for any given 10 day tour you might have a 50-60% chance to see a tornado.
Eating and sleeping
It of course differs between different tour operators but most tour operators tend to eat at road side restaurants such as Denny's, Applebees etc. Many also choose a low-budget alternative for lodging such as Super8 Motels. Most nights are spent in more or less remote areas and one is not likely to spend much time in large cities.
Is it safe to go storm chasing?
One would imagine perhaps that spending time in the vicinity of powerful tornadoes might be dangerous. So, is it dangerous? The answer is yes and no. If you go with an experienced tour guide and use your safety belt and "don't do anything stupid" it is not dangerous.
Tornadoes are usually not the dangerous part of the tour. They are quite rare and are typically only harmful in a small area. Lightning and hail however could be more of a danger. Lightning could kill or severely hurt you and if you are suprised by a hail storm that produces baseball sized hail and you are far away from the car, you could get hurt.
Getting hurt even by lightning or hail is very uncommon and by taking normal precautions almost negligable. You might on the other hand consider the fact that you might be driving 7 hours per day, sometimes under bad weather conditions, so car accidents could be a risk to calculate for.