Well tornado season is pretty much done except for occasional action way up north. It sucks. Most years I’m ready for season to be over, but not so much this year. I’m pretty disappointed in how I performed. I continued my slump that started last year. I used to get 20 tornadoes a season on a decent year. Now I’m struggling to even get a tornado. I used to chase a lot more and work a lot harder at it than I do now. My decrease in effort coincides pretty well with my drop in results. I will get it back on track next season though. I really regretted not chasing more this year, especially since most of the best storms happened on low profile days when I wasn’t out. It was definitely a disappointing season for me. For the first time in a few years I’m really motivated to get after it next season though. I’ll make chasing a higher priority again and work harder at it.
Its about time to start watching the Atlantic for hurricane season. Long range forecasts for this hurricane season are pretty bullish. The forecast was bullish in 2006 too though and we didn’t get a damn thing. I think you can put very little weight in those seasonal forecasts so I don’t know what to expect. We’ll have to wait and see.
Hurricane forecasting is a totally different animal from tornado forecasting. It is tough to explain if you don’t know a little bit about meteorology. Hurricane chasing is very different from tornado chasing too. With hurricanes its all about being prepared. Heading to the coast for a major hurricane is basically like going on a 3-4 day camping trip in the middle of nowhere, that gets interupted halfway through with hellish weather. There are mass evacuations with a lot of highways switching over to contraflow in the days leading up to the event. That is where highways do lane reversals and have outbound traffic on both sides of the highway. You have to plan around that when figuring out how to get to the coast. Its easy enough if you plan ahead and just take smaller highways. One of the biggest challenges is supplies. There are hundreds of thousands of people being displaced by a major hurricane. Gas supplies get wiped out right away. When I chased hurricane Rita there was no place that had gas once you got south of Dallas. I went to Beaumont, Texas so I had to make it from Dallas to the coast and back north of Dallas without ever getting gas. I had a full tank and 60 gallons worth of gas cans on my roof. That is about what you need. I could ramble for a long time on all the shit you have to get ready before chasing a major hurricane, but I’ll spare you. Basically it isn’t something to be taken lightly. I am going to do everything I can to go if we get a category 3 or higher US landfalling storm this year. Its a lot of fun, but a distant second to tornado chasing IMO. There is no storm structure or lightning. Its just wind and rain. Don’t get me wrong. Its a spactacle. Sustained winds of a 150mph are nothing to be trifled with. It will tear some shit up, but it can’t compare to the beauty you get with a good tornadic supercell. Half the thrill of hurricane chasing is experiencing the chaos and destruction that go along with it. I saw thousands of people who had run out of gas camped in the ditches along the highway on my way down for hurricane Rita. It was insane. Then once you get to the area that is about to get hit it is totally deserted. There was literally nobody around. Its bizarre driving around a major town thats been abandoned. Once a city like that has been evacuated and the storm is coming in, there is no 911. You are on your own. It is a sobering feeling when the wind starts to pick up. Its not like with a tornadic storm where you can drive away from. You are locked in at that point. Regardless of what goes wrong, all you can do is hunker down and hope for the best. I loved chasing Rita, but it was pretty intense and even borderline terrifying at times. I lost a couple windows before the worst part of the storm, so there was a few minutes of WTF do I do now. It was an awesome experience and I had a great time overall.
Anyway, enough rambling. I will start to work on my hurricane forecasting in the next few days and I’ll keep my blog updated as needed with tropical outlooks.