2012 Chase Images and Links

My 2012 chase season was short on tornadoes, but there were enough diamonds in the rough to keep the season from being a real dog. The Great Plains region was battling a drought, and really good moisture was a rare commodity. This resulted in storms with bases on the high side, which, of course, tends to diminish tornado prospects.

I was in chase mode from about April 23 to June 23, with a week off in early June. During this time there was no large scale tornado outbreak. There were only a handful of storms with long-lived tornadoes and/or several tornadoes. I caught about a half dozen fairly weak tornadoes, and for one reason or another did not catch the sporadic REALLY tornadic cells. The three big misses which bug me the most are May 19, May 25, and June 22. On May 19th I could have gotten into position to see the mega “non-supercell” tornado event around Kingman, KS, but I decided to play NW OK instead. On May 25 we were stuck in OKC between tours during the nice tornadic supercell near LaGrange, KS. On June 22nd I had the right forecast — the northwestern NE Panhandle, and a brilliant long-lived supercell and tornado tracked just north of there in extreme sw SD. I was impatient, though. I abandoned the target area, and tracked down a nice supercell along I-80 instead.

I try not to dwell too much on the misses, though, as those are always going to happen when you are out there chasing for two months. As you will see in the images below, there were plenty of success stories.

This page provides links to each specific chase, and is a place to quickly view some of my better images during 2012. Keep scrolling down, down, down to see more and more good stuff! You can click on the thumbnails for larger versions of an image. Click on the date/title to go to the associated chase account and more images.

April 23 — northeastern NM mush and night sky