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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. |
4K VIDEO: Full-day timelapse of this chase, 4-way view
I managed to get one day of Great Plains chasing in this year on the first chase of the 2018 season. I had originally intended to leave on Tuesday morning the 1st and cover the triple point in Kansas, but I stayed up too late on Monday night and could not fall asleep in the short window I had left. Facing the dangerous prospect of a 7-hour drive followed by another 7 hours of chasing all on 30+ hours without sleep, I had no choice but to scrub the departure on the 1st. I believe I would have seen the Tescott, Kansas EF3 had I been able to go - meaning this is the first tornado I've missed due to sleep deprivation concerns. I could have easily managed that kind of awake interval when I was younger, but as I get older, it's become a danger that I'm not willing to risk.
Finally rested up with an extra day, I departed for Oklahoma at 5AM on Wednesday with a general target from Woodward to Elk City, Oklahoma, to be refined later in the day. I arrived in Oklahoma City after 1PM and made my final forecast. I chose Clinton, Oklahoma, as it appeared that the environment to the south would become the most favorable through late evening.
At Clinton, I stocked the hail cooler with dry ice and mounted the hail shields as targetable storms developed to my west and southwest. I went over to look at the storm near Foss Lake, and finding it junk, dropped down to the better-organized storm at Hobart. I lost my Verizon internet data 5 miles south of I-40 and didn't get it back until near the end of the chase at Chickasha, with my old satellite-based standby ThreatNet turning out to be vital once again for radar data.
I turned east through the forward flank of the Hobart storm to try and cut ahead of the meso at Mountain View, but it beat me across the road. I ended up in the RFD here, then used Highway 9 and 146 at Fort Cobb Lake to finally get back ahead of the storm - now undercut with a merged RFD and FFD.
I went all the way east to Minco and dropped south to the next storm at Pocasset, which slowly began wrapping up as it approached. I tried to jump down to Chickasha to get on the H.E. Bailey Turnpike to stay with it, but the blinding RFD precip beat me into town. I was on the turnpike just southeast of the tornadic circulation at Amber, but never could get out of the rain to see anything.
After this, I went to the north OKC tower farm for upward lightning, but there was none due to the lack of a well-developed trailing stratiform region. Only a few anvil crawlers peeked through on the back side of the line:
That was the only time I used my cameras during this day - a sign of a less-than-stellar chase. I ended the chase here at 10:00PM and headed up to Claremore for the night. I arrived home the following afternoon.
NEXT PLAINS CHASE: Day 3: Severe storms from Parsons, KS to Springfield, MO >
Storm chasing forecast update #6
Models do not show a favorable pattern worthy of storm chase expeditions for as far out as they can be trusted (10 days or so). A persistent Hudson Bay vortex (eastern Canada) is keeping eastern troughing/central US ridging entrenched through the period, not allowing western troughs to develop and/or eject into the Plains. As a result, prospects for trip #2 are very low for the next 2 weeks.
The following table charts the probabilities for a Plains storm chase expedition taking place for the date ranges shown:
| 2018 Plains Storm Expeditions - Probabilities as of May 12 |
| May 12-15 | 0% | |
| May 16-20 | 2% | |
| May 21-31 | 10% | |
|
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