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Annual March 1 post
It's that time of year again! We've made it through another meteorological winter, can you believe it?! This has been one of the most active winters of my career, with already close to 9,000 miles logged since January 1. In addition to all of the winter storms, as you've likely been experiencing in the US, it's been particularly brutal and cold the rest of the time. I think I speak for most in that I'm more happy than usual that we're headed into the season of green trees and grass, warm air, longer days and most importantly to storm chasers, storms!
So anxious for spring I am that I'm foregoing publishing the last two months of winter storm logs to the blog feed to make way for this traditional March 1 post. Those two months' logs are however public and available on the January and February recap pages (and there are a couple of lightning events in there). Those are also linked, as usual, on the 2025 chase logs page, where I will continue to catalog all of this upcoming season's chases.
So what's on tap for this year's spring season? Much the same as last year: I really don't have any new strategies or plans for this spring. Lord willing, chase operations will cover Midwest supercell/tornado/lightning setups (within a couple hours of home) as well as worthwhile Great Plains tornado days (as PTO and funding permit). As for equipment, I have pretty much all of my gear filled out and ready to go. I'll continue to focus on high speed camera shots of lightning (mostly at the 6,002fps setting). I plan on doing more drone shooting of storms - it has really become my primary camera over the past year (you just can't beat aerial views of pretty much anything). As for the car - the one item that I'd like to do with my hail shields is to finish some kind of mechanized second-stage guard deployment system that can be activated from inside. That however is a fairly low priority item, as it's likely going to be expensive and the current setup performed decently enough last year as-is. That said, I will contiune brainstorming on some possible designs for that.
That covers the rundown of planned chase operations this year. Now let's get into the weather!
We won't have to wait for the season's first big storm system. A potent upper trough will bring a possibly significant supercell/tornado event to the lower/middle Mississippi valley region on Tuesday into Wednesday night, mostly in Arkansas, Mississippi and Louisiana but possibly extending some distance to the north. That could mean the first supercell chase day of the spring for us near here.
GFS 500mb forecast for Tuesday evening, March 4
Beyond that, the upper pattern is shown remaining active with multiple upper troughs shown traversing the country through the middle of the month as Gulf moisture intermittently surges north. While we can't get into any specifics past 7 days, some of these upcoming setups look very big and could even involve the first Plains trip of the season. We'll need to keep an eye on them as we move forward.
That's all for now. As always, a big thank-you for continuing to stop by on this site in our era of social media and algorithm dominance. Although I say it often, I do genuinely appreciate your readership. Stay tuned for what this season has in store!
The following table charts the probabilities for a Plains storm chase expedition taking place for the date ranges shown:
| 2024 Plains Chase Expeditions - Probabilities as of March 1 |
| March 1-7 | 0% | |
| March 7-14 | 20% | |
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