Editor's note: The following is first-hand account of contributor Seth Price's storm chasing activities. Readers should never attempt to replicate this without the proper training and equipment.

Our morning forecast meeting on May 28 was not a particularly exciting one. I met up with my long-time storm chasing partner, NBC news meteorologist Kathryn Prociv, in the lobby and breakfast area of a hotel in Lubbock, Texas, under cloudy, rainy skies. Early clouds and the rain are a problem for storm chasing, as they limit the daytime heating required to produce severe storms.

The first order of business was to read and discuss the predictions from the U.S. Storm Prediction Center (SPC) and comb through the computer models, surface observations, satellite imagery and balloon sounding data. Our hope was that there would be some subtle feature that the models were not able to detect.

The SPC was not calling for much severe weather. They had issued a slight risk for severe weather, the second-lowest threat level of five. They also issued a 2% tornado threat ring, meaning there was a 2% chance of a tornado within 25 miles of each point in this ring. Later, the SPC removed the 2% ring, meaning there was less than a 2% chance for tornado everywhere in the country.

Our prospects were bleak.

The SPC’s severe weather and tornado risk images. Source: SPC

A surprisingly relaxing storm chasing day

We knew we needed to get out from under the clouds. According to the visible satellite image, that meant driving north. We watched the clouds slowly erode away to sunny skies near Amarillo, Texas, where we enjoyed a sit-down meal, which for storm chasers can be quite rare.

We continued north to Guymon, Oklahoma, and waited for at local city park for storms to fire. We took a leisurely stroll around a small pond while getting updates on our phones. One feature that stood out in these reports was a mesoscale convective vortex (MCV). On the surface observations chart, the MCV showed up as winds seeming to converge in the Oklahoma panhandle, coming from all directions. It’s a broad, wide weather feature our team kept tabs on for the next three hours.

The first storm of the day….and its problems

The first storm of the day fired to our east, and was moving incredibly slowly eastward. The storm showed some promising signs, as it was rotating both visibly and on radar, and had separate updraft and downdraft regions.

The downdraft region is on the right, and the updraft is on the left, where there is little rain.

However, a few things were wrong with the storm. First, ahead of the storm was much drier air. Once the storm ingested this drier air, it would likely weaken. Second, the storm already had a high base, indicating it did not have enough moisture. Any tornado that would try to form would have a long way to travel to reach the ground.

Our first storm of the day….high-based, with low tornado potential.

Even so, the storm was fun to watch. It produced plenty of lightning and the thunder rolled over the plains like a distant battle. Given that this storm was high based and moving into drier air, it was time to leave. A few new storm cells were firing farther west. We opted to drive west, while several other storm chaser friends decided to go south of the new cells.

Tornadogenesis!

There is some folklore around storms that says when the clouds form sharp angles, the storm is getting organized and will likely become severe. There is some truth to this, and our second storm of the day showed a nice, sharp angled wall cloud and a long, angled inflow stinger. Unlike the last storm, this one was moving into more humid conditions and had a base that was much lower.

Notice the long, sharp inflow stinger sticking out to the left of this image.

As the wall cloud began to rotate faster, the first funnel formed and descended toward the ground. I found the a place to pull over safely, completely off the pavement and facing our escape route. Unfortunately, there were power lines in the photos, but the storm will not wait for us to get a perfectly framed picture, and we will take the opportunities we get.

The funnel begins reaching towards the ground.

The condensation funnel reached the ground, kicking up dust in an empty field. This tornado remained on the ground for several minutes before lifting.

Tornado!

Once the tornado was on the ground, there was no need to look at weather models. Instead, the focus shifted to radar imagery. “Now-casting” is a type of forecasting that is used to evaluate current threats and examine escape routes. It’s more about looking at visual clues around the storm and radar imagery.

Behind us, a marginally severe squall line was still approaching, and so we needed to get southwest to stay ahead of the line. The tornado was beginning to rope out and dissipate as well, so it was time to move.

Roping out. The outflow pushes the funnel, stretching it thin, but then disrupting its rotation.

On radar, our cell was out by itself, initially. The tornado was reported by numerous storm chasers, but the radar imagery also indicates a tornado is possible. The Amarillo National Weather Service issued a tornado warning for this storm very quickly.

Author’s image, modified from the RadarScope app.

The accompanying top image is a base level scan of reflectivity. Notice the appendage sticking out from the blob - this is a hook echo, though not a textbook one. Think of the appendage as fingers wrapping around the center of circulation.

The bottom image shows a relative velocity chart - red reflections are moving away from the radar, and green toward it. Where red and green are close together, there might be rotation. The red dots are other storm chasers, and the blue crosshairs are my team, safely out of the damage path.

The escape

While the tornado had dissipated, there was still a lingering threat that this storm could produce another one. Furthermore, there was still a strong squall line to our northwest, moving toward us. The squall line was beginning to weaken, but it was not to be ignored.

A few minutes after the tornado dissipated, the squall line began to interact with the tornadic storm, and both began to weaken. The red box is the Tornado Warning, issued by the National Weather Service, and all of the small tornado icons are tornado reports. They likely report the same tornado, as most of them are estimated distances from other storm chasers scattered along the nearby roads. The blue crosshairs are our location, and US-54 runs between Stratford and Dalhart.

We chose to park near the silos as we could tell from the radar imagery that the squall line was weakening, and the hail threat was dropping. The tornado threat in this squall line was also very low, so rather than trying to outrun the line, we decided to huddle down and let it pass overhead.

Interestingly, this storm demonstrated excellent emergency management procedures from local first responders. Parked near the silos, we were joined by an ambulance and a police car. I realized the town of Stratford probably had one ambulance. If they were in town and got damaged during the storm, there would be no way to transport people to the nearest hospital. Instead, the town pulled emergency vehicles out of the path of the storm. Thankfully, their services were unneeded in this storm and there were no reported injuries or damage.

The leading edge of the squall line as it passed over.

Thankfully, the radar was correct. Other than a little pea-sized hail and some heavy rains, the squall line was all bark and no bite.

Sunlight under the squall line as it passes. Notice the blowing dust near the bottom of this image.

Once the squall line passed, we continued southwest, finding a hotel in Dalhart. Unlike many storm chasers who went to celebrate at the local watering hole, we went back to our post-storm chase routines: Kathryn for an early bedtime, and me for a quick walk around town to watch the lightning in the distance.

Lessons learned

The first lesson learned is to remember the purpose of the SPC; it is not geared toward storm chasers, but rather the general public and what threats are present or emerging. Even though we caught a perfect tornado in a zone where they had lowered the risk level, their predictions were correct. There were only two tornadoes in a very large area, so the actual tornado coverage was very low.

Second, never underestimate a stray boundary. The outflow boundary from the overnight storms and the ongoing storms in the southern Texas Panhandle interacted with the system to the north. Along these lines, Kathryn recalled several other instances of unexpected tornado outbreaks that occurred due to a boundary interaction with an MCV. One in particular was back in August 2016, which spawned quite a few tornadoes across Indiana.

It would have been easy to sleep in, spend the day at the hotel pool, eating takeout and reading a good book, but that is not why we travel to the Great Plains each spring. Even though the odds were stacked against us seeing a storm, we forecasted and looked for the more subtle features that showed up in the surface and satellite data but were hidden from some of the computer models.

[Discover more about meteorological tools and weather instruments on GlobalSpec]

Final thoughts

Five Virginia Tech graduates and a storm. Author’s image

Thankfully, this storm did not hurt anyone or cause any significant property or crop damage. Most storm chasers hope for this scenario - no storm impact on human life - but we have no control over it. If needed, we would have assisted those impacted.

That day, we drove just over 400 miles, which is an average day. Perhaps the strangest parts of the day were chasing a lower risk than usual, and having a big lull in the middle of the day where we could leisurely watch storms develop while walking around a beautiful park.

We met up with the rest of our friends the following morning and compared notes and pictures. A few days later, we all packed up, had our sad goodbyes and parted ways for the year, already thinking forward to next year’s storm chase season.