Great Plains Storm Chase 2021
After a couple rough years where I really questioned even why I was driving all these miles, 2021 shaped up to be a really good storm chasing year.
Here’s my storm time lapse highlights:
On May 21, I filed grades for all but one of my classes and hit the road. The trip out from NYC is probably the worst part of this chase, since the drive is really boring but you can still see all the storms you’re missing on twitter. But I got a new RAV4 hybrid this year (more on that later) and it has some really great self-driving features that made the trip a lot easier. I met my friend Pamela at the Kansas City airport on Sunday May 23 and we headed west into Kansas. Storms were forecast out west, but they and ended up firing too far for us to get to, so we headed south to Dodge City to get in position for the next day.
Monday May 24
This was the first real chase day and it was a good one. Via Zoom I went to a department meeting and then taught my last class of the semester from a gas station parking lot in Garden City, KS. Storms initiated pretty early and since I had to wait until class was over we couldn't get to the main storm up north in time (which went on to produce later in the day) so we went west and watched a storm that sat on the CO border for several hours, talked to a local farmer, and hung out. Most other chasers were up north so we pretty much had it all to ourselves. Eventually a piece of that storm broke off and moved slowly east we wandered around in front of it north of Lakin, and eventually it got a tornado warning and a whole lot more chasers including some friends who I hadn't seen yet on the trip, which was nice. It was a pretty awesome storm with a crazy structure, and we got in close to see pretty strong swirling horizontal rotation. We waited too long to get a hotel room so we had to head back up north a couple hours northeast to Hays, stopping to watch the phenomenal sunset. And then we drove in the dark right through tiny Rozel where I saw my first massive tornado 8 years ago. Pictures below, click on any to enlarge.
Tuesday May 25
This was a very light weather day, and after having driven many miles, I was happy to have an easy day. We drove south out of Dodge to see if afternoon storms would fire, and they didn’t so we found the “Clark State Fishing Lake and Wildlife Area” that really didn’t look like something you’d expect to see in Kansas.
Wednesday May 26
This was forecast to be the biggest day of the trip—the Storm Prediction Center even issued a rare “Particularly Dangerous Situation” tornado watch. But high clouds came in and kept the surface temps low, so while the atmosphere was totally primed, there was never any initiation. Of course there was a photogenic tornado way up north where we couldn’t get to it, and we busted with hundreds of other chasers, seeing only a beautiful low precipitation storm at sunset (see time lapse above).
Thursday May 27
We headed south, but once again the storms didn't really cooperate, but we watched a nice lightning show from south of Sweetwater Texas
Friday May 28
This ended up being a fantastic chase day in Roswell New Mexico. We watched a tornado-warned storm from a distance in front, then when it was severe we rode it out in Roswell, and then followed it east and caught just a stunningly beautiful sunset on the back side of the storm.
Saturday May 29
I hit the 5000 mile service interval on my new car, and since we passed a Toyota dealer in Roswell I showed up to see if they could take care of me, and they did very quickly on a Saturday on a holiday weekend. But by the time we got going we were a bit too late to get to the target in Colorado which went onto produce a large tornado in remote terrain. We took a drive and ended up back in Roswell and watched a supercell out to the West, had a nice barbecue dinner, and then watched the sunset.
Sunday May 30
We started out at the UFO museum, and then ended up with a fantastic chase day without having to drive much beyond Roswell. We got on several rapidly forming and morphing super cells. They were splitting and moving fast so we were constantly on the move. On our way to Carlsbad we got on one last storm for the night, figuring it would be interesting at sunset, but it too took off. We heard a bizarre booming around the storms that was not thunder. Later we found out that these were “hail cannons” set up in the pecan orchard. Fortunately the storms missed the orchards since it’s not likely that these cannons will do much—the hail grows tens of thousands of feet up in the storm system
Monday May 31
With the storm-killing “death ridge” ready to set up in the plains, this was our last real chase day and it was a great one. Heading down from Carlsbad, my initial target was Pecos, TX. But as we were pulling into town, a storm started firing out east so we headed out. But when we got there the sky didn’t look favorable and a storm started firing down near Balmorhea. So we turned around, quickly gassed up and blasted south. The storm initially looked to be moving northeast, but then got a severe warning and started moving east. This is very difficult chase terrain, but heading east on I-10 there was a south road (67), but the storm overran it and so we blasted on to the next road-385. Heading south we just made it, punching through the front of the accelerating storm. Fortunately Pamela was driving, so I could navigate and watch the sky, and I spotted a likely tornado off to our east. We stopped for a few seconds but then I saw another circulation developing off to our west and we had to get out of there. As we got to the south side of the storm I saw another funnel (probably the previously developing circulation). We got clear and were able to watch a beautiful, large tornado (it was spotted by other chasers from 20 miles away) moving slowly west away from us. As we got hit with the outflow--having no east road options--we had to follow 385 southwest away from the storm. We were then able to head east on 90, and finally got out in front of the storm by the next road-349, where we headed north. I’m pretty sure looking back west I saw a couple more funnels, but we couldn’t document them. The storm continued with a tornado warning all the way to Mexico, while we headed to San Angelo for a celebratory steak dinner. As far as I know, we were the only chasers on this road who got this vantage point on the tornado, and I was very happy when the weather service asked to use my photos on their post storm summary.
The Trip Home
On June 1, I dropped off Pamela at the Dallas airport, and went to my first movie since the start of the pandemic. The next day I started heading east, and had lunch with my long-time friend Lee Ellen near Texarkana, and then went to Memphis, where I had never been. I wandered around the crowded streets (it was bike night), and this was the first big crowd I had been in since COVID started. I went to Graceland the next morning, stopped at a truck stop east of Nashville to attend my school’s online graduation, and continued onto Pigeon Forge, which was jammed with tourists. The next morning I headed through the park over to Asheville to hang out with my sister and her husband, and we did a great mountain bike ride, and got a couple very good meals. On June 6, I headed north towards home, figuring I’d stop for the night somewhere. But I got an early start and things were moving well so I just kept going and did the 700 miles home. Driving through West Virginia I noticed some very large bugs hitting the windshield and stopped to see the cicadas. It’s hard to describe how incredibly loud this is:
I stopped for dinner in Phillipsburg, NJ, and back on the highway I noticed a hot air balloon, right in the same area where my friend and I survived a very rough hot air balloon crash ourselves some years ago.
Last year, there really wasn’t much weather going on, but it was great just to get out. This year really felt like a proper chase year, even after 7444 miles:
I’ve been chasing regularly in the plains now for more than 12 years, and this year—despite the inevitable busts, frustration, and fatigue—it was one of the best trips in years. We had five good chase days capped off by a large tornado exactly where we want to see it—far from people and property. For next year I’m planning to build a hail guard so I don’t have to run so fast away from these beautiful monsters.