Alan Sealls Storm Chasing

Don’t try this at home…

For the first time in my life I had a chance to “storm chase” in June of 2011. I had wanted to do this for years but my job doesn’t give me the flexibility to head out to the plains when the big storms are likely. When there’s bad weather I go to work. What is “storm chasing” for many people is for me “storm waiting” and “storm spotting”. My goal was to put myself in a relatively safe position to see all the features of severe storms that are hard to view here in the southeast where we have lots of pine trees, low clouds, and low visibility. This was not about the thrill of chasing. For me it was a photography expedition and a research mission. For everything I’ve learned in school, from books, and at conferences, the best way to really grasp something is to experience it. …and I did!

I chose June since I had a weather conference in Oklahoma City, and because summer severe storms move a lot slower than those in the spring. Spring thunderstorms in the plains can move at 50, 60 or even 70mph. You really do have to chase those to keep up with them and that’s not the safest thing to do. The storms I encountered were moving from 20 to 40mph which gave me more time to observe and photograph but also more time to plan an escape route if the motion or strength changed.

This was a solo undertaking. I invited my wife but she, like most people, could not travel the way I needed to travel. Day to day I didn’t know where I would end up after the sun went down so I didn’t always get the best of motels. Going after storms is like fishing. It requires a lot of patience, time, and luck. Some days you get absolutely nothing. Storm chasing also requires anyone who goes along has the same tolerance and respect for risk as the leader. Some of us live on the edge and that’s not me. When to get out of the path of a storm and which way to do so is not something that should be debated!

For a meteorologist it’s not too hard to figure out spots where storms should erupt. It’s easier than ever with forecast discussions and real-time updates from the Storm Prediction Center and local National Weather Service offices, added to the fact that we can read these and see radar on smart phones. In fact, there are a lot of weather apps for phones that not only show you radar, satellite, and lightning, but they use GPS to show exactly where you are on the same map. This technology is incredible compared to what we had a decade ago.

Caution: There are many places in the open plains where there is no cell phone signal and that’s where it takes the skill of a meteorologist to use observations to ensure you are not putting yourself in danger. Storms are not fully predictable and thinking technology will be available and 100% accurate is risky. The ever-present danger in storm chasing is lightning. Your eyes are critical to watch motion and development of clouds. Your ears give you the cue that distant lightning is producing thunder. Even your nose can clue you in to wind direction if you happen to be anywhere near a cattle farm! Your skin lets you know when humidity or temperature rise or fall.

My daily travel routine was to check the weather charts to see where, within driving distance, the biggest storms were likely to form. I drove an average of 400 miles each day for five days. My Journey took me from Oklahoma to Kansas to Colorado to Kansas to Nebraska to Kansas and then back to Oklahoma. Most of the driving was on US Highways or on Interstates. I was happy to find many of the state highways and even county roads allowed swift travel on smooth pavement. Often times my intentional detours put me on a gravel road but whenever I pulled off the main route I checked a map or my navigation system to make sure it was a public road and not a dead end. Gravel roads can become mud after rain so I didn’t let myself get caught in that situation. I never drove more than 90 minutes without stopping for a break to stretch and let my mind re-focus. Since I was taking pictures this happened naturally.

The first thing that struck me on day one was how windy the central plains are, even when there is no storm. There are lots of wind turbine farms in Oklahoma and Kansas.

Day 1
It was hot in Oklahoma. For most of the afternoon the temperature was over 102 degrees. From Oklahoma City I made my way into Kansas and watched a dust storm near the community of Kismet. Thunderstorms never formed there so I travelled eastward toward Greensburg, Kansas, on US-54 and intercepted a severe storm near Mullinville. It was producing a lot of hail so anywhere near the outflow winds the temperature had cooled to the middle 60s. Using my radar app to check the strength of the storm I made a calculated decision to drive through the hail to get to the “quiet” backside of the supercell. The hail was tremendously loud but it was no larger than a dime. Had it been much bigger I would have had dents and had it been really big I could have lost the windshield. On the west side of the storm I awaited a rainbow as the sun sank low but one never appeared. With the winds gusty and fluctuating on the backside of the storm I felt the temperature rise and fall probably 20 degrees in less than 10 seconds. Amazing. Dodge City was my overnight stay.

Day 2
Destination Denver (or really Fort Collins), where a colleague runs a weather research lab. Westward travel on US-50 to Lamar, Colorado, was a good drive since the sun was behind me. I tried to plan my routes so that I could limit the morning and afternoon sun in my eyes. From Lamar I went north on US-287 to Kit Carson for lunch. Everything was calm and smooth until a roadwork delay near Hugo, Colorado, that put me behind by 45 minutes. I was not in too much of a rush and that delay actually helped me catch a severe storm crossing I-70 east of Limon, Colorado. The leading edge had already crossed the Interstate but I could see the green tint typical of storms with a lot of hail. The severe storm was very photogenic on the leading edge. I exited the Interstate to get in front of it but the roads dead-ended so I could only watch it move away. I wasn't alone. One of the Denver TV stations had a crew on the same road and there was also a chaser and a Skywarn spotter. We all tend to think alike. I got into Fort Collins near sunset and spent the evening with my colleague, Dr. Walt Lyons, an expert in lightning and many other aspects of meteorology.

Day 3
I slept late and took my time heading out of the Denver area to Kansas. It was a typical bright beautiful Colorado morning with low humidity. I marveled at the snow on the peaks of the Rockies. By late morning storms had already started forming just south of Denver International Airport so I set up on a quiet gravel road to get good photos of a crisp cauliflower-like cumulonimbus cloud in the distance to the east. That was the direction I was going so on my journey back to Limon, I was following storms that produced blankets of hail as they also moved eastward. I didn’t want to drive into the storm so I exited I-70 and did a zig-zag first south, then east toward Aroya, Colorado. This paid off. Not only did I catch the aftermath of a hailstorm but I was able to find a safe roadside perch about a mile from a severe storm and watch a wall cloud form, followed by a brief rope funnel that never touched down. A storm spotter pulled up alongside me and we chatted. Heading east on US-40, I followed this storm and it (or another one) redeveloped and put me in a hailstorm. I managed to find shelter from the hail under the canopy of a closed gas station. There was one man already under there in a pickup truck. When I jumped out of my car to take pictures he smiled, waved, and offered me his hard hat. Good sense of humor. I was safe from hail but I got soaked since the rain and hail were blowing sideways. I had dry clothes in the car so I was able to change as I headed back to Goodland, Kansas, for the night. On the way I did catch my rainbow somewhere near Bristol, Colorado.

Day 4
This was the day with a setup for more intense storms to form over northern Kansas and southern Nebraska. I left Garden City going north on US-83, unsure where the best place would be to target. I did notice a feature (old outflow boundary) in southern Nebraska on the radar that was just north of a warm front and by midday I figured once the warm front moved north and met it, storms would erupt. I was right. As I got into Oberlin, Kansas, I chuckled as I saw one of the armored “tornado intercept vehicles" racing westward along US-36. It was probably heading to storms that had already formed north of Denver. I stayed on my course and wound up in McCook, Nebraska, 45 minutes later around lunchtime. That’s where I expected storms to form but just like water boiling in a pot it would take a while to happen. I had lunch then went to a few stores to browse and get some snacks. I checked the updates on radar and satellite then went to the city park and relaxed for a couple of hours. By late afternoon clouds started growing fast so I headed north on US-83 toward Maywood, Nebraska. I was driving parallel to the storms which had become Severe and got good pictures of rain shafts and wall clouds.

After about 45 minutes I checked my phone and noted a Tornado Warning had been issued just a little to the southwest of where I was. It was the same storm I was photographing. I needed to get west and then south of the storm but there were no major roads that went west. I did see a lot of gravel roads but that meant trying to race the storm on roads that might not be in the best of shape. Nope. I chose to go south and then west on the main highways but a funny thing happened. After driving south and stopping a few times for photographs, the next thing I know the entire National Severe Storms Laboratory storm chase convoy shows up behind me and stops to set up their equipment. I knew I was in the right spot. Sure enough I begin to see the broad rotation in what was now a southeastward moving mesocyclone (wall cloud). The motion of the storm was now bringing it toward me. It was fascinating and almost mesmerizing but I kept a constant watch on my escape route on US-83. The storm cell was only moving about 20mph so I was able to study it. There appeared to be a second wall cloud just west of the one I was watching but neither produced a tornado that I could view.

I did see brief spin-up dirt clouds from what could have been microbursts or gustnadoes. The parent thunderstorm crossed US-83 north of McCook as I listened to the tornado sirens near McCook. By this time there were several other storm chasers and Skywarn storm spotters. Of the couple dozen vehicles on that stretch of road, most of us were there for the storm. The convoy and other chasers eventually departed and went east behind the storm. I had had enough for the day so I headed into McCook to spend the night. At the motel I checked into the clerk asked if I wanted a lower floor. She said all the other guests were a little nervous after the Tornado Warnings and wanted ground level rooms. I had a pretty good idea that the tornado threat was ending so I took the 2nd floor, with a view, of course. A few more severe storms passed north of McCook so I went back out to get some lightning shots after dark. I almost didn’t get dinner that night because many restaurants had closed when the tornado sirens sounded earlier.

In watching the local TV stations later at the motel I realized that very few people could figure out which counties were under watches or warnings based on the small maps in the screen corner since so many counties were displayed. In the plains so many counties are square and don't have unique shapes so it's even more difficult to pick out your county unless you really know geography. It reminded me that people who travel probably have no clue what county they are in and that's why cities make better landmarks for locating storms.

Day 5
I awoke to a severe thunderstorm watch. As I showered and thought about the safety rules meteorologists preach about taking shelter in a bathtub I realized that the tub I was in was fiberglass and not very durable. Back on the road, my mission took me back toward Salina, Kansas. I travelled from McCook to Oberlin, Kansas, to Norton, Kansas, through Hill City, Kansas, to I-70 east. Once I got to Hays, Kansas, a severe storm had formed right behind me over Hill City that prompted a tornado Warning. It had the classic structure of a supercell cumulonimbus. I debated going back but I decided to continue eastward to Salina where more storms were likely that afternoon. Sure enough, more storms formed on another boundary. These moved slowly northeastward toward Junction City as a cluster but didn’t show any signs of producing tornadoes. They did produce small hail. I was able to position myself ahead of one of them that moved through Abilene, Kansas. By the time it got there I was under a fairly safe shelter where I could get good pictures while staying dry. The end of that day produced a large display of mammatus clouds. Just at the point where the setting sun appeared briefly to produce color in the mammatus clouds I pulled over to the side of the road to take pictures. I’m always cautious for snakes but that wasn’t the problem. After walking 20 yards from the car in tall grass I realized that what I thought were gnats were actually mosquitoes and they were vicious. That quickly ended my day.

Each day was a new adventure with sights and sounds and smells unique to the central plains. I learned a lot. With few distractions, I enjoyed nature and got to be a tourist, passing through many small communities. I also got to watch many of my colleagues on TV who I see at annual weather conferences. Given the time, timing, risk and effort it takes to chase storms this is not going to be a regular thing for me. If everything falls into place I may go again.

So what about the pictures? I shoot for the enjoyment of capturing art but also for the educational value for me and for others. Many of the pictures may end up in science magazines or weather textbooks.

My advice- Storm chasing is not for the average person because of the danger of the weather, and the risk of accidents by distracted drivers. It takes a lot of patience and planning. There are companies that offer storm chase tours and a few even "guarantee" that you'll see a tornado. If you decide to do it have respect for nature, traffic laws, and private property. Keep in the back of your mind that you may witness a tragedy and be forced into action to warn a community, help or rescue injured people, and maybe even save a life.

See the still photos on my FaceBook page and be a Fan www.facebook.com/WKRG.Alan.Sealls