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Friday, June 16, 2017

Detailed June 12 and 13 Plains trip logs, season epilogue

By DAN ROBINSON

Editor/Photographer

After June 1 most years, the clock is usually ticking on the Great Plains peak severe weather season for supercells and tornadoes - in many years, it's all but finished by then. But some years, the Plains is able to squeak out one or two more systems in mid-June. Similar to Junes in 2004, 2005 and 2014, that has happened this year with a "finale" afforded by one more upper trough passing through the central USA. Now that the June 12-13 system has passed, models show we are headed solidly into the typical summer pattern for this region: an upper ridge with seasonably hot temperatures over the Plains, and little to no upper support for severe storms. This means that the 2017 Great Plains tornado season is a wrap, and this will be the "epilogue" post for the 2017 spring Plains storm season blog.

As part of the final post for the season, here are links to the completed final chase reports for the June 12 and 13 storm chase days during Great Plains trip #2 for the year. These chase logs contain a detailed account, video, dashcam, photos and GPS logs from each day.

June 12: Tornadoes in three states: Colorado, Wyoming and Nebraska >

June 13: Marginal severe storms in central Nebraska >

And, just in case you missed it, here are the chase logs for Trip #1, including the McLean, TX tornado event.

Final thoughts and stats on the 2017 season

My final verdict for the 2017 season is that it was an "above average" good one! While much of the season was slow with few good events, the biggest days made themselves obvious enough in forecasts to allow making the trips, and they did not disappoint. I am very happy with this season's catches, and all things considered, the trips went smoothly with blessings of safety and chase successes. Even without tornadoes, that's always something to be thankful for.

Great Plains storm chase expeditions: 2
Plains trips: 5
Great Plains tornadoes: 6
States covered: 7

As always, thank you for following along during this season. I appreciate your readership in this era of social media, and we'll look forward to doing it again in the spring of 2018!