In Part One of my interview with veteran storm chaser Shane Adams, Shane recalled his formative years as a chaser in a simpler time when laptops, mobile data, and the media hadn’t transformed the landscape of storm chasing.
Part Two begins with several questions that deal with more pragmatic matters of forecasting and target selection. From there, Shane recalls his experience with the deadly May 4, 2007, Greensburg supercell. It’s a unique perspective on the storm in its post-Greensburg phase as it continued to spin off massive, violent wedges, and Shane’s account includes a haunting encounter with Macksville police officer Tim Buckman shortly before he was fatally injured by one of the tornadoes.
Finally, Shane reflects on the top three chases of his career and tells why he considers them so.
Question: I just finished listening to an interview with David Hoadley on the High Instability podcast, and I was struck by the similarity between some of what he had to say and your own comments [in response to my last question in Part One]. Realistically, chasing continues to evolve; yet I resonate with your gratitude for having come up in a simpler time when there was nothing to detract from the supreme value of the storm and the sky. I’d imagine—correct me if I’m wrong—that today you use at least a laptop and GR3 on your chases. But I get that you’re a minimalist at heart. Let’s talk about what a chase looks like for you these days. First, what is your process for forecasting? What things do you look for in picking your target?
Shane: These days, I use the same computer models all other chasers use. Within that, of course, there are several different sources. Personally, I use the College of Dupage computer model website. The reason why is, most model pages use CONUS maps. I don’t like CONUS maps because they make individual states and regions too small for detailed analysis in my opinion. CoD uses regional maps, which are much easier to analyze down to the mesoscale and even microscale level. It’s important for me to be able to recognize a specific area within a state while looking at model data, so I can overlay in my head the actual spot where I believe all the ingredients will come together. Looking at a CONUS map, I might be able to say, “Yeah, southwest Oklahoma looks good,” but I can’t tell exactly where in southwest Oklahoma I need to be. The difference between a career day and a bust can be as little as twenty or thirty miles, something that is impossible to pinpoint using CONUS maps. So definitely College of Dupage is my forecasting lifeblood. When their site is down, I am not happy LOL.
As far as a target is concerned, again, I’m pretty much like everyone else. You want the basic four of course: moisture, instability, wind shear, and a source of lift. I tend to gravitate toward instability, with slightly less attention to wind shear. I’ve not had much luck chasing highly dynamic systems with low instability, so those are a big turnoff for me when looking at a forecast. Also, those type setups typically have very fast storm motions, making chasing more difficult. With more focus on instability and less on wind shear, I try to find an area with the most explosive potential for upward motion in a place where storm speeds won’t be as fast (lack of intense shear). Of course this dream scenario rarely unfolds in reality as often as I’d like, but in any chase setup, I will always first target the area of greatest instability and fine-tune from there based on other parameters.
Q: If you were to head out into the field without the benefit of Internet, equipped only with your morning forecast and the knowledge you’ve gained over the years, how would situational awareness inform your decisions as the afternoon progressed? In other words, how might simply looking at the sky or observing changing conditions tell you that you’re in the right spot—or, conversely, that you need to move?
S: One built-in advantage of cutting your chasing teeth in central Oklahoma is, 99 percent of the time the dryline is west of you. This means that you wake up in the warm sector on most days and simply have to drive west until the clouds thin out.
Drylines are marked visually by a sharp decrease in cloud coverage, vertical height, and base level. Bases will rise, tops will flatten, and the overall number of clouds will decrease as you approach the dryline. This was one of the first lessons I learned; the scenario was nearly automatic each time I chased because I never woke up on the dry side of the dryline.
Warm fronts are perhaps even more pronounced visually, as north of them on many chase days, there will be a solid overcast of low clouds. These clouds begin to thin as you near the warm front, and then as you move south there are fewer and fewer clouds until you’re in clear sunshine—plus whatever early-bird towers are trying to build in the warm sector.
My targets usually put me near either a dryline or warm front, so my biggest visual clues are simply watching how clouds behave.
Q: Storms are firing and you’ve got multiple options. Without using radar, how would you determine which storm you’ll go after?
S: Usually when faced with having to choose from multiple storms, it’s right after initiation, and every storm has the same potential to become tornadic. Because of this, I almost always opt for the storm I have the best position or approach angle on. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.
In other situations where you’re a good distance from the storms and they’re in different directions from you, you have to analyze the situation more closely based on storm history and the immediate environment. If, for instance, I’m thirty miles south of the triple point, and I have a storm north of me right on the triple point and another one forty miles south of me, then I have to consider certain things and do a quick pro/con list for each storm in my head: the north storm is closer, but it’s moving away … the south storm is farther away, but it’s moving towards me … but the north storm will have better helicity sitting right on the warm front, so there’s a better chance it could produce a tornado … but it could also cross the warm front into the cool side and become elevated before I get to it … so the south storm seems like the way to go … but I’m going to have to punch through the entire core to get a view … these are not easy decisions, and they must be made quickly. I’ve been right, I’ve been wrong, but the worst situation is when you’re indecisive and end up missing both because you took too long to commit to one or the other. I’m much better off just sticking to my target, driving there, and letting the situation unfold … instead of just driving to a general area and waiting until after initiation to pick a storm.
Q: You were among those who chased the Greensburg storm. Describe your experience.
S: In all reality, we busted on this day. By dusk, we were well north of the Greensburg storm as it developed, and had already thrown in the towel and stopped for food. Because I chase to get good tornado video, I always quit after dark unless I’m already on a tornadic storm. So we’d been sitting in the Great Bend Pizza Hut drowning our sorrows with a large Meat Lover’s and Bud Light.
On a whim, Mick Ptak, the friend I was chasing with, had decided to bring his laptop inside “just in case” to watch the radar. We’d never done this before, so the fact that he’d chosen this night was, in hindsight, very lucky and ironic; if he hadn’t done so, we’d have sat there eating and missed the entire event. Or even worse, been in the path of more deadly storms well after dark.
Somewhere during beer number two, we both glanced over at the radar. Mick had been running a velocity loop, and the couplet we were looking at was off the charts, like nothing we’d ever seen before. We immediately went into chase mode, with Mickey grabbing all the gear while I ran to the counter to pay for the meal. I asked if the tab was below $20, and when the person said that it was, I just threw a twenty at them and ran out the door.
We raced south while listening to live reports coming over NOAA radio. It was obvious something terrible had happened in Greensburg, although neither of us at the time had any idea of the magnitude.
We got to Pratt, which is about thirty miles east of Greensburg, and turned west. We stopped near Haviland, where we began our actual “chase” of the Greensburg storm. I remember scores of emergency vehicles screaming by us for several minutes, all headed west from Pratt. The scanner was alive with constant chatter regarding the disaster that had just happened. We were using the velocity loop on radar as our main source of info, because the lightning wasn’t helping out as much as we needed. The first of three giant tornadoes we would observe that night loomed to our northwest, buried in darkness and probably precipitation. We were sure we were looking at a tornado, but it was so big and so hard to see, it was impossible to make it out clearly (it would be partially revealed in a capture from my video). The inflow was so incredible, I had to wedge myself against the open car door space while leaning against the door to keep it from closing on me. We moved back east and then north once the storm started moving further away.
Watching the radar, we were noticing alarmingly large spaces between mesocyclone occlusions. Not only were these couplets incredibly powerful, they were also unbelievably huge. It made sense that the “handoff” distance between mesos would be greater than normal as well, because the mesos themselves were so unusually large. Normally, five miles southeast of an ongoing meso/tornado is a reasonably safe distance, but not tonight. We kept a minimum of about seven to eight miles between us and the tornadoes for fear of being run over by the next cycle jumping toward us. Unfortunately, later that night, a local LEO would become an example of how these large-span meso jumps can be lethal.
As we continued north, we met a car coming south, frantically flashing its lights. At this point, with this storm and what it had already done, we weren’t taking any chances, so we turned around and headed back south. No sooner had we done so than Mick said, “There’s a huge wedge back there!” I stopped the car and we jumped out. I hadn’t yet seen it, but I could tell by Mick’s reaction that it was big. A few more seconds passed by, then a big flash of lightning lit up one of the largest tornadoes I’ve ever seen. “Whoah, I see it!” We held our ground and watched this huge wedge tornado through intermittent lightning flashes for a couple of minutes, then continued further north.
We stopped a few miles south of Byers, and a police car pulled up beside us. We didn’t know it at the time, but the driver was Officer Tim Buckman of the Macksville police department, a neighboring town to Byers about ten miles north and slightly west. We told him about the large tornado we’d been seeing off and on for the previous ten or so minutes, and he was already aware of it. He continued on ahead of us, and we followed him into town. Once we arrived in Byers, we saw Officer Buckman pulled over at the fire station, talking to a few firemen/spotters. As a courtesy, we stopped and asked him if he minded if we continued on ahead to chase the tornado. He said we could, but it was “at your own risk.” We told him we understood, thanked him, and drove north of town about a mile, where we stopped.
We continued to get glimpses of the tornado, and after a while, Officer Buckman drove past us. He went about a mile or so north, then turned west. The tornado was well off to our northwest, and the area he was driving into would’ve been a prime spot for the next tornado if the storm recycled. I remember thinking, as I videotaped his flashing red and blues moving slowly off toward the large tornado in the distance, “I wouldn’t go that way.”
As Tim Buckman’s emergency lights faded off into the darkness to our north-northwest, we became focused on a new area that was north of us, but closer than the previous tornado had been. Matching up what we were seeing to the radar, we were convinced this new area was the next probable tornado, southeast of the now dissipating tornado near Macksville, some ten miles to our north-northwest. We stayed put where we were, partly because we were almost out of gas at this point, but mostly because we were too spooked to get any closer. After a few more minutes, another large tornado became partially visible with lightning strikes. The eastern edge was buried in rain, but the west side of this monster loomed quite clear, a solid wall of black. We sat and watched this tornado, which was south of St. John, for maybe five minutes until we could no longer make it out. After that, we decided we’d call it a night, because we had another chase looming the next day, and we’d need some rest (though we hardly got any).
I don’t know why we even thought we could, but we drove back to Pratt, and managed to get a room at the first hotel we stopped at. I spent all night going over my video, finding bits and pieces of tornadoes within the lightning strikes. I wrote a report on Stormtrack while the local television news was showing us the first shots of the Greensburg monster we’d seen—incredible. The sirens never stopped all that night, with constant emergency vehicles driving to Greensburg and driving back from there with injured. It was a very dark and brooding night, probably the most unsettling night of my chase career. Since then, I’m much more wary about after-dark chasing. I was never very interested in nocturnal chasing, because night-time video is rarely worth the effort in my opinion. However, the significance of this event made the endeavor very worthwhile, and in the process, we managed to get video of tornadoes that nobody else did. What at first seemed like a curse actually became a blessing of sorts; we’d missed the marquee tornado of not only the event, but the entire year—but we’d managed to pick the storm up where almost everyone else had lost it, getting trapped by the devastation in Greensburg. The result was observation and video documentation of large tornadoes that no other human eyes ever found.
A few days later, unfortunately, we learned that a Macksville police officer had been killed by a tornado east of there. As it turned out, the officer killed was the one we’d spoken to that night during the Macksville tornado. He had made his way through rural areas just southeast of his hometown to get back to the highway east of Macksville so he could observe the large tornado threatening his community. Tragically, the last tornado we saw, from the same spot where we last saw officer Buckman driving northwest towards the Macksville tornado, formed south of his position, and struck him as he moved east on highway 50, critically injuring him. He would succumb to his injuries a few days later. We were likely the last ones to ever see him before this tragic event.
Q: Granted this may be a hard question to answer, but what has been your most outstanding chase, and what made it so?
S: I measure greatness in a chase by multiple factors: number of tornadoes seen, quality of tornado video, historical significance of the event, and overall aesthetic/sensory/spiritual experience. Even with that, I cannot choose just one day. So using the formula I described just now, I’ll try to narrow it down to just one event that fits each category.
Number of tornadoes seen: Even though it’s tied for second all-time for the most tornadoes I’ve seen in one day, I would have to give the nod for most tornadoes to May 29, 2004. Great video, but what stands out most about this day for me is the sheer number of visible tornadoes. Every size and shape imaginable, with the most incredible display of tornadic behavior I’ve ever witnessed: Multiple tornadoes merry-go-rounding about the parent mesocyclone. Tornadoes zigging, zagging, and doing full circles. Absolutely incredible!
Quality of tornado video: This category belongs to June 12, 2004. The infamous “glowing” Mulvane tornado steals the show from this event, but all the tornadoes that day were very photogenic, and I was able to capture incredible video of them all. This day is the bar for what I expect to bring home on video every time out. Mulvane was the first tornado I ever heard the roar from.
Historical significance: If we’d actually seen the Greensburg, Kansas, tornado that night, this would’ve likely been my number-one. However, May 3, 1999, remains at the top of this category. Many firsts happened for me that day: first F5 tornado, first 3+ tornado day, first double-digit tornado day (ten tornadoes), first up-close tornado encounter (less than a half-mile), and unfortunately, my first killer tornado.
I almost doubled my career total on this day. I had been chasing a little under three years at the time, and though I’d seen some tornadoes, I had never seen a day even close to this. Despite the dark cloud that hung over this event because of the of the human tragedy it brought, yet for me as a chaser, the sheer magnitude of what we’d seen and captured on video was almost overwhelming. That whole week was surreal: getting calls for interviews, having television crews at our apartment taping shows, the whole nine yards. The week after May 3, 1999, was as close as I would ever come to money and fame as a chaser. I appeared on television in both America and Germany (the German show actually aired first, so my TV debut was international LOL), and made $2,100 from video sales. There were no brokers in 1999. I had to fight those bloodthirsty wolves on my own, and in the end, despite the fact that I won the war, I decided the battle scars just weren’t worth $2,100. My television and video sales career began and ended that week.
Overall aesthetic/sensory/spiritual experience: Hands-down, this category goes to October 24, 2010. This was a day that brought back that old “chase first, forecast second” philosophy from my early years, but only because of my laziness. The only reason we even left the house that day is because Bridget Geaughan, my girlfriend/chase partner since 2008, was watching a storm explode just east of our apartment. We’d spent the previous two days busting on setups that, in my opinion, had looked better than this day. I wasn’t about to waste my Sunday on a third consecutive goose chase. However, Bridget pushed for us to chase and I caved.
Once we got out on the road after the initial storm she’d seen, it was obvious we’d never catch it. By now I was fully into chase mode, and I figured our only hope was to start heading southeast, cross the dryline, and hope like hell something new formed to our southwest. The plan worked to perfection, and we encountered the tornado of our lives in Rice, Texas. This chase has been well-documented in chasing circles, mostly because Bridget live streamed almost the entire lifecycle of the tornado. I’ll never forget looking up at the top of the funnel as it was in a near-steady-state, watching how the base seemed to get pulled into it like a bathtub drain. It was a view I’d not had before and haven’t seen since, but one I could get used to. Probably a once-in-a-decade type experience, maybe once in a lifetime.
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Thanks, Shane, for an informative, thoughtful, moving, and overall terrific interview! To those of you who’ve read this far: check out Shane’s blog, Passion Twist. It’s aptly named–filled with insightful, detailed, and well-written chase logs; packed with photos; and stamped with Shane’s unquenchable love for chasing storms.
