Here’s a new experiment for our channel and I hope we can continue to evolve and develop this content type. Today, we’re doing a start-to-finish storm chase case with some thoughts on forecasting, strategy, and storm anatomy throughout. The hope is these become an all-encompassing source of learning as we move forward.

So with this case, we’re taking a look at one of Sanner’s only supercell storm days of 2019 but also a good marginal looking supercell day that garnered a slight risk of severe storms and marginal risk of tornadoes from the SPC. Days like this, where there’s just enough for supercells, are incredibly fun to chase when they work out because typically the storms are more isolated in nature and they can tend to be beautiful and slow moving.

The target today is either the mountains of SC New Mexico or a developing confluence line in eastern New Mexico.

A few key takeways you should take from this chase case are:

1-Never sleep on supercell days. Even when they seem otherwise marginal, if you are a fan of storm structure and photos of storm structure, these marginal supercell days can really be great. This is especially true as you get into May and June and onto the High Plains.

2-Another is that wall clouds don’t mean tornadoes are imminent, especially when they aren’t persistent and rotating. Lowerings under supercells are common, but its the persistence and rotation that set the tornadic ones apart (but even those aren’t guarantees!).

3-The last one is to always keep your options option with targeting as much as possible. This is an interesting topic and we’ve touched on it in our Storm Chase Forecasting series (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLg23mPRzqQAq8Q9d8Z3Ovh3skGwEnCJdA), but hedging to keep as much of a target region open as long as possible is a really smart move unless the target is super obvious.

Hey did you like this? Should we do more? Let us know in the comments and of course, be sure to subscribe!