2013: The year in review

East of Lawton, OK, driving north towards wall cloud.  A sign of how my season would go...

In 2013 I either chased the wrong storm, the wrong day, had vehicle issues, or made tactical errors. The end result, despite seeing a few good storms, was a complete tornado shutout.  The highlights and lowlights:

• 8 chase days
• Best chase: April 17th, Monster supercell over Lawton, OK.  This did produce at least one confirmed tornado, but we were not in the right place to see it
• Worst chase: May 19th.  Missed brief rope tornado new Viola, KS, and I still don't know how we didn't see it.  We were watching the wall cloud/funnel and it was very briefly obscured by a rain curtain, during which time it did this:



Image courtesy of Randy Denzer/David Douglas






• Worst chase, part 2:  After missing the above tornado, we couldn't keep up with the cell, which produced an EF2 on the southwest side of Wichita.  We dallied way too long in southern KS then, while a long-track EF4 struck the town of Shawnee, OK to our south.
• Worst No-Chase.  After missing the tornadoes on May 19th, we drove through Norman and all the way back to Austin, as we could not stay for the May 20th setup.  
• Worst Chase, runner up: May 29th.  Made it to Abilene in the Subaru, but the tires were apparently screwed up, and I could go no faster than about 55.  I decided to rent a car at the Abilene airport, and continued north.  This 1075 mile chase netted me two tickets (one speeding in the rental, one registration expired while in the Subaru).  Chased early crapvection, then one decent cell into southwest OK.  I gave up on that cell and headed back to Abilene as I had to get the rental back to the airport before they closed for the day.  Of course, shortly after I turned, it produced a brief, weak tornado near Vinson, OK.  Limped back home in the right lane of the interstate in the wounded Subaru.
• Worst No-Chase, runner up: May 31.  

Two monster wall clouds for comparison, one over open country and the other over a medium-sized city:

Pearsall, TX: March 31, 2013

Lawton, OK: April 17, 2013

Shot of the year:

Pearsall, TX: March 31, 2013

Actually had some better shots of an incredible, stacked-plat LP near Evant TX from May 15th, but apparently I deleted that video by accident.  Yep, it was that kind of year...