My work is, at this very moment you are reading this, generating the most income it ever has in my career. Yet, I was forced to shut down the professional side of my successul operation, against my will, due to one cause alone: 95% of that revenue is being stolen by piracy and copyright infringement. I've lost more than $1 million to copyright infringement in the last 15 years, and it's finally brought an end to my professional storm chasing operation. Do not be misled by the lies of infringers, anti-copyright activists and organized piracy cartels. This page is a detailed, evidenced account of my battle I had to undertake to just barely stay in business, and eventually could not overcome. It's a problem faced by all of my colleagues and most other creators in the field.
Models continue to show a somewhat active pattern across the southern Plains and Mid-South as moisture and fast upper-level flow are colocated. But, the timing, configuration and location of those overlaps leave much to be desired, in my opinion. Case in point is this wave shown ejecting over the Plains on Wednesday:
GFS 500mb forecast for 7pm Wednesday evening
This shortwave is shown coming in late and far to the north of the deeper moisture, with the best shear over meager moisture up in the northern Plains. Following this, some better synergy of these factors is shown in Oklahoma on Thursday and Saturday, with more setups possible in the ArkLaTex region in the days after. None of these have me very interested in terms of a trip. The leftovers of Thursday's wave will sweep through the Midwest on Friday as a cold frontal event, not much to look at right now, but at least enough to offer a local chase.
Beyond that, the jet remains active over the CONUS with random northward moisture surges, indicating some action to continue into next week and beyond. But model agreement and consistency isn't very good on that period, so it's a toss-up right now on anything beyond the weekend.
To summarize, I'm not very optimistic for a Plains trip-worthy setup at any point in the near future.
The following table plots the probabilities* of a Great Plains chase expedition taking place for the date ranges shown:
2026 Plains Chase Expeditions - Probabilities as of April 20*
April 20-24
35%
April 25-30
45%
*Base/normal-season probability values are shown. Subtract 30 to 35 percentage points for effectivecopyright-infringement imposed probability values.
My work is, at this very moment you are reading this, generating the most income it ever has in my career. Yet, I was forced to shut down the professional side of my successul operation, against my will, due to one cause alone: 95% of that revenue is being stolen by piracy and copyright infringement. I've lost more than $1 million to copyright infringement in the last 15 years, and it's finally brought an end to my professional storm chasing operation. Do not be misled by the lies of infringers, anti-copyright activists and organized piracy cartels. This page is a detailed, evidenced account of my battle I had to undertake to just barely stay in business, and eventually could not overcome. It's a problem faced by all of my colleagues and most other creators in the field.
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From Dan: Please Read
To my regular readers, I offer my apologies for this heavy-handed notice. Unfortunately it has become necessary, so please bear with me!
Please don't copy/upload this site's content to social media or other web sites. Those copies have been a critical problem for me, seriously harming this site and my photography/storm chasing operation by diverting traffic, viewers, engagement and income. "Credit" and "exposure" does not benefit this site or my operation, rather they threaten my ability to cover my operating expenses. Please read my full explanation for this notice here.
Before continuing, check each box to agree to and acknowledge these two statements:
Click this button to finalize this acknowledgement:
This chase was a routine television assignment in my role as a cameraman. As a result, many of these don't have a dedicated chase log.
This chase was only recorded in my mileage reports, no detailed log was written for it.
