Storm Chasing.

So today I drove from Colby, Kansas down to Scott City, Garden City, and Dodge City, as the National Weather Service was predicting a line of storms with very strong winds to pass through this area and march across Kansas.

I noticed a lot of storm chasers opted for northwest Oklahoma, below my target chase area. They intercepted a few tornadoes. I intercepted a lot of wind. The maximum gust I clocked was 79 MPH. I thought the car was going to blow off the road. It didn’t.

There were a bunch of storm chasers in my target area near Meade, Kansas. We all ended up chasing a storm cell along US Highway 160 east to Harper and then up to Wichita. I didn’t spot a tornado but I encountered hail, and at one point I thought I was going to lose the windshield. I did not.

By the time I turned onto K-42 in Harper, the rain was coming down impressively. I practically floated the car around the west side of Wichita before getting settled at a Wingate Hotel near the airport.

Tomorrow I head west, probably toward northwest Kansas/southwest Nebraska. The Nebraska panhandle doesn’t really look to be in the mix, but the northeast corner of Colorado might definitely be in play. I’ll be working with data coming out of Goodland, Kansas.

In the meanwhile, I just ended an excellent dining experience at a place called Sickie’s Garage Burgers and Brews. I didn’t realize they were a chain; they reminded me of Quaker Steak and Lube back east. The bartenders were Pat and Q and they were a hoot.

Today I drove from Los Lunas, New Mexico to Colby, Kansas. At about 475 miles on Interstate 25 I was ready for a change of pace and turned northeast at Trinidad, Colorado. This mixed up the view a little bit and gave me a chance to enjoy the beauty of the older U.S. highways. It was a lovely day for a drive.

I wasn’t really expecting today to be a chase day; the plan was always to get into position for chases Sunday through the end of the my chase-cation. I have achieved that objective.

I stopped by “Twisters Bar and Grill” here in Colby for a beer and some supper. The bartender was very kind and we had a good conversation about storms and what it’s like to live in Colby, Kansas. I feel very comfortable in this city, though I have no idea why. Perhaps it’s familiarity; I believe I’ve been here for the past three chase trips.

After Twisters I stopped at Walmart and bought some Rain-X to apply to the windshield. Having the rain whisked away by Rain-X is super helpful when you’re chasing a storm.

I’m headed to bed. There’s a line of thunderstorms passing through tonight but they’re mostly disorganized and don’t really carry a severe threat. Tomorrow looks very promising to the southeast of here, and I want to save my strength for that chase. It may be intense.

Here’s some shots from my drive today.

I don’t leave for my storm chasing trip until Friday afternoon, but Mother Nature decided I needed some teasing action this afternoon and evening.

There has been no mention of any rain or storms in the Tucson forecast for the past month. I was surprised to receive lightning alerts from the home weather station right before supper. We haven’t had any rain, but the lightning show continues this evening, right up until I’m writing this a little after 9:00 PM/2100 MST. Photos taken with my iPhone 13 Pro, no tripod, from the roof of the house.

I’ve always been fascinated by clouds. I remember taking photos of clouds back in the days of film and an Instamatic and when getting the photos back from processing my mother asking, “Why did you take so many photos of clouds?”

“I like them”.

She wrote on the back, “John’s pretty clouds. July 1981” (or whatever the date was). The photos are probably still in a scrapbook back east.

I wasn’t really engaged in my high school freshman Earth Science class. But that was over 40 years ago and I’ve grown a lot since then. As I ramp up to my storm chasing trip next week I’ve been reviewing various videos the like about storm clouds, specifically Shelf and Wall Clouds.

Here’s one of the videos I’ve watched as part of my studies and preparedness for the trip. As a private pilot I just know to stay away from these clouds in a small airplane. As a storm chaser, I’m looking for the ones that are going to produce the best photographic results. Hat tip to Raychel at TornadoTitans.com for this great explanation.

Earlier this month I purchased a Raspberry Pi to set up a small computer in my home office, namely for checking the weather and watching storm chaser streams on YouTube. I should have purchased a Raspberry Pi 5 with a bit more punch, as the Raspberry Pi 4 I purchased is very nice and capable, but it was a little slow for my needs.

Last weekend I changed direction a little bit and repurposed the Raspberry Pi 4 into a weather station, showing stats from the weather station we have on the roof. I used the software called WeatherFlow_PiConsole available here on GitHub (yay open source!).

I’m quite happy with the result.

While I can’t provide everyone that stops by the blog with a weather station like this, you can see the stats from our weather station on Weather Underground on their WunderMap.

Here’s a couple of time lapse videos from the storms passing through Tucson today. First up, is the arrival of heavy rain mixed with light hail.

Here’s the second storm to pass through today. This video is hosted on YouTube because it’s a bit longer. Notice the change in wind direction and the clouds near the end. Cool stuff.

These videos were made with a GoPro Hero 5 in time lapse video mode.

In keeping with my looking forward to storm chasing season coming soon, Earl and I watched “Twister” tonight. I think this is my favorite movie of all time.

My husband has been toying with the idea of meeting me in Oklahoma City during my chase week this coming May, and then driving back to Tucson with me, perhaps going the long way if the weather forecast calls for some chase opportunities.

I assured him I wouldn’t get him so close as to be in the “cow zone”.

It’s rained most of the day here in the Sonoran Desert. At times the rain has been pounding on the roof quite hard; the forecast calls for more rain through Wednesday. It is that time of the year, after all.

While my husband watches the football playoffs, I’ve been studying up on aviation and weather. I’ve been organizing my flight bag a bit. For the past couple of years I’ve been trying to go “completely electronic” with organizing my weather, notes, and other flight bag goodies in the cockpit. I started off with paper on the my kneeboard and during the last flight I migrated back to that, using my EFB, or Electronic Flight Back, for approach charts and as a reference. My EFB lives on an iPad mini 5, which is still quite capable but the Apple Pencil, which is a generation 1 of the plethora of pencils Apple now offers with specific iPads, can be spotty. Pen and paper are more reliable in that regard.

I’ve also been studying up on the weather, watching videos from various sources on using the various tools, improving my forecasting skills and the like. I found this video from MeteoTechWX, a storm chasing channel on YouTube. I really liked the vibe of this team and look forward to watching more of their videos this week.

Amongst all the other things I talk about on Ye Ol’ Ancient Blog, I’ll be mentioning my Storm Chasing toolbox as it gets assembled for chase season coming up this spring. The Accounting Department (otherwise known as the love of my life, my husband), has blessed a solo storm chasing trip again this year. I haven’t figured out the timing yet, as it’s a bit too early in the year to pinpoint that timing down, but the smart people out there are saying this year could be above average for severe storms and I find that quite exciting. Unless, of course, I’m flying an airplane. Then I want Mother Nature to be as calm as a cucumber.

It’s a shame the New York State curriculum for Earth Science back in 1982 made for a duller than a dishrag experience when I was a freshman in high school. This stuff is super interesting to me.

Dr. Reed Timmer, storm chasing guy of Team Dominator, has predicted a total of 1,207 tornadoes in 2024. This is based on data aggregated from years with similar weather patterns (El Niño, oceanic water temperatures, etc) over the past 50 years. It looks like New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas, and Florida are going to see an above average count of tornadoes this year.

I have been on the fence about going on another storm chasing week during the peak season this spring. While I did see one tornado last year and experienced some impressive lightning storms, Mother Nature was in a mood for the week I was out on the Plains and I found 2023’s trip disappointing. My chase in 2022 was fun, though, and on both occasions I got to meet some other storm chasers and see some great landscape. It’s just that last year I had to do a LOT of driving day to day because of Mother Nature’s hissy fit last year.

It looks like this year could be more promising if I time it right and incorporate the lessons I’ve learned over the last few years into my approach for this coming year.

I know I have the support of my husband if I decide to go. I’ll be watching the weather patterns closely over the next few months and plan out a more spontaneous approach (ha!) to the trip in 2024.

I snapped a photo of clouds directly overhead while out for a walk. They a bit menacing, but they looked worse than they turned out to be, as we only had a few spits of rain.

The clouds made for interesting viewing, though.