Anyone interested in storm chasing?

[Darts401]

Anyone else on here interested in doing or is doing storm chasing? I am probably going to do storm  chasing once I get a car. If you do storm chasing, I want to hear how you got into it. Thanks!

[Albatross]

Yes! Since I was a kid and saw Twister. I use to build cameras out of lego blocks and run around like I was filming a tornado/storm. It would certainly be cool to chase a storm one day, and I plan to.

[Darts401]

11 hours ago, Albatross said:

Yes! Since I was a kid and saw Twister. I use to build cameras out of lego blocks and run around like I was filming a tornado/storm. It would certainly be cool to chase a storm one day, and I plan to.

Awesome! When I turn 16 I'm going to go to tornado alley, probably Nebraska and do storm chasing with a few friends.

[aisle9]

I've been chasing storms semi-regularly since 2011, although I suspect I won't be doing much more going forward as I move to an area where chaseable supercells just don't happen. It's fun, more or less. Ask me anything you'd like to know and I'll do my best to give you an answer.

[Darts401]

4 minutes ago, aisle9 said:

I've been chasing storms semi-regularly since 2011, although I suspect I won't be doing much more going forward as I move to an area where chaseable supercells just don't happen. It's fun, more or less. Ask me anything you'd like to know and I'll do my best to give you an answer.

Cool thanks! I have one question at the moment, how exactly do some of them get internet in their cars?

[aisle9]

6 minutes ago, Darts401 said:

Cool thanks! I have one question at the moment, how exactly do some of them get internet in their cars?

http://www.verizonwireless.com/internet-devices/jetpack-mifi-6620l/

Some guys tether off their phones instead, but generally speaking you want your phone free to, you know, make phone calls. I personally don't use a jetpack, instead using my phone to keep Radarscope up and borrowing wifi from any of the eight zillion McDonald's locations in America when I need to check maps or forecast data.

 

Protip: don't waste time on any other carrier if you plan to be in the plains. Verizon's the only one that has reliable 3G/4G coverage in Bumfart, KS.

[Darts401]

Would verizon be good in Nebraska? I plan to start out there.

[aisle9]

1 minute ago, Darts401 said:

Would verizon be good in Nebraska? I plan to start out there.

I just edited a bunch onto my earlier reply (sorry), but yeah, Verizon is pretty good in Nebraska. NE's got some unique challenges to it. It's not the hardest Tornado Alley state to chase in (looking at you, Oklahoma), but the road network is intermittent, especially the further south and west you go, and the off-the-grid roads that do exist tend to be anywhere between rough and barely traversable in good weather, let alone during an HP.

[Darts401]

1 minute ago, aisle9 said:

I just edited a bunch onto my earlier reply (sorry), but yeah, Verizon is pretty good in Nebraska. NE's got some unique challenges to it. It's not the hardest Tornado Alley state to chase in (looking at you, Oklahoma), but the road network is intermittent, especially the further south and west you go, and the off-the-grid roads that do exist tend to be anywhere between rough and barely traversable in good weather, let alone during an HP.

I remember hearing stuff about a tornado in the us killing about 150 people, it was sad, I watched a clip recently of a meteorologist from the weather channel crying from what happened while he was on air, just don't remember where it was. 

[aisle9]

1 minute ago, Darts401 said:

I remember hearing stuff about a tornado in the us killing about 150 people, it was sad, I watched a clip recently of a meteorologist from the weather channel crying from what happened while he was on air, just don't remember where it was. 

Joplin, MO. That was a mile-wide EF5 that struck a populated area, an extreme rarity. It also damaged (and ultimately destroyed) a hospital. I've never seen anything remotely close to that, nor do I ever want to.

[Darts401]

I had an EF3 go through my hometown when I was 4 years old, and it was at night about a quater mile away.

[Darts401]

maybe 1/2 a mile.

[aisle9]

Just now, Darts401 said:

I had an EF3 go through my hometown when I was 4 years old, and it was at night about a quater mile away.

Isn't that a fun feeling? I was on the storm of a lifetime last year, which went on to drop six amazingly beautiful tornadoes, most of them in open fields in the middle of nowhere. Unfortunately, I had to drive back home (at 100+mph, don't do that) because there was an EF3 ten miles north of my house and one right turn away from heading straight for it.

 

Storms tend to turn right at some point between going severe and beginning tornadogenesis. That's important information to have, especially if you're watching a developing storm from its right-hand flank.

[Darts401]

I also had an EF-2 (I think) go through near place I was living at when I was 9 or 10, we had to go to the first floor of the apartment building

[Darts401]

The EF-3 that went through my hometown was actually a EF-2

[Darts401]

Then 3rd grade I had a tornado warning but one didn't touch ground as far as I know, Michigan doesn't get many tornadoes.

[Darts401]

This says Texas gets the most, didn't know that.

[aisle9]

Just now, Darts401 said:

Then 3rd grade I had a tornado warning but one didn't touch ground as far as I know, Michigan doesn't get many tornadoes.

Nope. The climatological ingredients for regular supercells just aren't there, but they do happen. 

 

2 minutes ago, Darts401 said:

 

This says Texas gets the most, didn't know that.

That map is contradictory with every NWS employees have ever told me, which is surprising. Colorado actually gets the most, courtesy of cheap, easy landspouts that pop up almost every day between May 15th through July 1st, tear up a fence, a shed or knock down a cornfield (just enough to warrant a damage survey and classification as an EF0), then lift and vanish two minutes later.

 

Same reason Florida has so many. True supercells are relatively rare in Florida. When you combine the vorticity that comes from the sea and land breeze fronts colliding with a relatively strong updraft, you'll occasionally get something that spins up a landspout.