StormChasingUSA.com blog

June 17th was not really a chase day as we had to drive all the way back to Denver. Eastern Colorado did however seem to be some promising for storms and SPC put a 2% on it. Later on they moved that towards southern Kansas and after some actual forecasting we never chased it as […]

Yesterday was supposed to be the Big Day of this tour, i.e. the one with the best parameters, and it did not result in any tornado. After two weeks of disappointments and storms that starts to die or congeal after 1-2 hours, allowing for very little actual storm watching, I have to confess I was […]

This was the big day of the tour. Finally, there was a trough coming in to provide some much needed upper air support, and we were to be positioned in South Dakota. The 5% tornado risk of the day pretty much outlined one of my favorite places in the USA in terms of natural beauty: […]

Today was supposed to be a down day/travel day to put ourselves into position for Sunday, which seems to be the most promising day since I started chasing with Weather Adventures. There was a setup in Minnesota/Iowa but it was too far away and iffy. There was however a marginal setup in the northern direction […]

Today was the best chase day since I started chasing with Weather Adventures. The setup was quite obvious in SW South Dakota with good instability and moisture but only a small pocket of shear, SPC had a super small 5% risk over the area. We drove from our hotel in Spearman, SD, to Rapid City […]

It has now been 10 days since I saw my last tornado on this chasecation. Although that was an all time top-5 chase day for me, the lack of good storms are starting to get frustrating. I know I share this feeling with everyone chasing, except maybe for the ones who saw the Laramie, WY, […]

Today was a day with slim chances of getting something good. SPC had put a slight risk (and 2% tornado risk) over western Nebraska, parts of Colorado and Wyoming. We chose to go to western Nebraska. What happened today was not so much what happened in Nebraska, where we went, but what happened in Wyoming. […]

This was probably one of the most relaxing and, in terms of surroundings, beautiful day ever. We started at our hotel in Denver and went up north towards Montana. We got almost to the border when a storm fired over Montana. We followed it east from the other side of the state border, in Wyoming, […]

After our photo session in the dark, photographing stars, we went back to the same national park (Black Canyon of Gunnison) the next day. It was cool to see everything in the light again and what we did not see last night was how amazing the view was! Amazing and frightening!  Black Canyon is home to […]

As we came in at 2 a.m. after our last chase day it was nice to really be able to sleep in on Day 7, which was my transition day between Silver Lining Tours and Weather Adventures. I will write a complete review of Silver Lining Tours later on but I had a good time […]

When Roger Hill told us about the parameters of our last day he had a hard time hiding his excitement. The setup was just magnificent for a big event! The morning of our chase day I had a beautiful walk by the South Platte river (North Platte, Nebraska) with intense southern winds and I was […]

For the second night this tour we stayed in Heritage Inn in Garden City, KS, which is a great hotel that also have quite an impressive water park (!). Last time we never had time to visit but today was just going to be a travel day as the storms were either in Montana/North Dakota […]

Compared to Day 3, this was a day of quite low expectations. Our plan was to go to the Mesas around NE New Mexico, SE Colorado and OK panhandle to possibly watch some nice structured LP supercells. In the morning, the parameters actually changed for the better. We had even better shear than yesterday and […]

Today was the with the most promising parameters with very good CAPE, great shear and good moisture as well. The bullseye target that almost every storm chaser went to was western Oklahoma. I was very eager to see my first Oklahoma tornado (33 tornadoes but 0 in Oklahoma) and it really felt like we would […]

This was the typical Day Before the Big Day with a setup that was better than the previous day. Roger’s bet was on eastern Colorado but our major concern was if the thick stratus would erode enough to create convection and instability. I was sitting in Roger’s van today and was able to hear a […]