Storm Chasing: Tornado Alley

Chapter 1: Introduction

There are very few places on the planet that are more important to storm chasers than Tornado Alley, Tornado Alley is an area of the United States that is known best for having the highest frequency of tornadoes every year out of anywhere else in the world.

This area extends from Southern North Dakota, all the way down to Southern Texas, And from Eastern Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, And New Mexico, over to Western Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas, and Louisiana.

Every year thousands of storm chasers from around the world flock to this area for the month of May with high hopes of being able to photograph and take videos of these beasts of mother nature, it's very common to run into herds of storm chasers on a high-risk day, which brings added dangers to the roads while thousands of storm chasers are lined up on the sides of highways watching and waiting for a storm to produce a tornado, Some of these storm chasers come all the way from places like Australia, Europe, Canada, and even China or Japan.

April 27th, 2019 is the day I started my journey, I began by leaving my house and my family in Manitoba, Canada and hitting the open road southbound towards the Canada/USA border. This day was basically just a travel day, used to get closer to the action for the following day, I managed to travel a total of 713 miles making it all the way to Omaha, NE before stopping to get some sleep.

The following day was the first official "Chase Day" of the trip, I woke up bright and early, stopped for gas and began making my way towards Garden City, KS. By the time I reached Garden City storms were already well into their development, so I got into position on the nearest storm that I could get to in time with little expectations that it would produce a tornado, I was just happy to finally be witnessing a storm after many months of not being able to chase.

But as it turns out, Luck was on my side for this chase, Just as the sun began to set the storm started to rotate, I continued to follow alongside this storm until after it began to get dark, and just as the darkness set in this storm produced a tornado near the town of Ness City, It was nearly pitch black outside, but the frequent lightning made this tornado visible as it tore through open fields like a monster creeping through the night, every flash of lightning showed me a new glimpse of this beast.

I was off to a great start, the First chase of the trip equalled the first tornado of the trip! Once I lost sight of the tornado in the dark, I travelled to Dodge City, KS. to grab some victory steak dinner, and find a hotel to sleep in!

The following few days were much less successful, doomed by high precipitation storms, as well as storms developing in highly treed areas giving me very poor visibilities of any tornadoes that occurred, this pattern continued for multiple days, causing my frustration levels to rise, and minimizing my hopes that it would be a successful trip. Until... 

Chapter 2: Tahoka, Texas

May 5th, 2019.

This day started off much like the previous few days, I woke up in Lubbock, Texas. Grabbed some breakfast, while looking at the weather models for the day, chose my target location, and began my journey.

The target I picked for this day was the town of Ralls, TX. which is only about 30 miles from where I began my day in Lubbock. About one hour after reaching Ralls, storms started developing to my Northwest, almost straight north of Lubbock. So I quickly grabbed some gas and began driving back towards Lubbock, by the time I got there, there were two almost identical storms on the radar, One to my North and one to my South, I pulled over and began to assess the situation.

These storms were practically identical in all aspects, so I pretty much had a 50/50 chance of choosing the right one, if there was going to be a right one. While sitting there deciding which storm I should choose, I glanced at the map and noticed that the Southern cell was heading straight for a town ironically named "Ropesville" this was the sign I used to decide which storm to go for, the reason for that is because there is a common term for Tornados as they begin to weaken called "Roping out".