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Monday, March 27, 2017

Plains forecast update for March 27

By DAN ROBINSON

Editor/Photographer

From Dan: How the crime of copyright infringement took $1 million from me and shut down my operation.

In September of 2025, my work is generating the most income it ever has in my career. Yet, I'm being forced to shut down 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.

The month of March is part of the spring severe weather season, and I am always on alert for opportunities. Although I travel frequently in the Midwest this time of year, I've never actually embarked on a Great Plains storm chase expedition during the month of March. I usually don't plan on it, for two main reasons. One, March setups are less climatologically favored for good tornado days - most have multiple failure modes (things that can go wrong) compared to peak-season. Two, and more importantly for me, with a limited number of Plains trips (roughly 10 or so) in my budget each year, I'm very hesitant to use those days early on during a time when few setups work out well. Event dollars go much further in the tornado department in late April through early June, and without unlimited days at my disposal, I must pick and choose. I never rule out a March Plains storm chase expedition (look up March 13, 1990 for one reason why), but my bar is *very* high for a March day to steal away a peak season-earmarked day.

And so, it is mainly for these reasons that I didn't go for Oklahoma on Sunday the 26th and won't either for the Texas panhandle tomorrow the 28th. Both are respectable setups, with many of the right ingredients in place - but both with big caveats. Sunday's problem was insufficient moisture, Tuesday's looks to be early-day convection fouling much of the target area. Not to mention, tomorrow's target distance is a big one. At more than 11 hours away, it would require two of my budgeted Plains days and at least one overnight stay. Again, I'm not against a March chase if the setup is right, but in my opinion this doesn't appear to be that at this stage. It could change for the better in 24 hours, but I *have* to make the call now - and that call is "no".

Beyond that, going into April, things certainly look very active. A long parade of shortwave troughs is shown crossing the southern Great Plains every 2-3 days:

Any and all of these could be players for a Plains trip. That being said, I don't typically like patterns like this as they aren't necessarily a good thing for us non-unlimited-funds storm chasers. Right now, none of the days really stand out as exceptional, and they are all "one hit wonders" with 1 to 3-day gaps in between each. It will be difficult to choose which, if any, of these to use chase funds on. With all of the in-between down days, covering them all could use up more than half of my season budget! We will just have to take each one on a case-by-case basis as they come, making any decision to go at the last possible minute. And so that's the plan for now. I'm elevating storm chase expedition probabilities to 50% starting this weekend, and start evaluating individual setups as they get closer. Stay tuned!

2017 Plains Storm Expeditions - Probabilities as of March 27

March 27-April 1

April 2-7

50%