Today was a down day/travel day as we await a potentially high-end tornado threat tomorrow. We will be ready for storms in the Texas Panhandle tomorrow as early as late morning on a day that could feature 3-4 rounds of severe weather across some of the same areas through the evening.
Yesterday’s chase in northern Oklahoma did not yield any tornadoes, but there was a fairly sharp, long-lived shelf cloud that spawned out of a cluster of storms near Alva. After tracking this area of storms into the early evening, we bailed to Woodward for the night and caught a nice sunset on our way.
Time to empty the camera cards, charge the batteries, study the road maps, and make sure we’re on our top game for tomorrow.
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Operational Meteorologist at WeatherBug (Earth Networks). See full bio.
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Been following this site for a while. Probably my favorite way to grab a quick glance at storm charts and info when I’m out on the northern high plains. Easier than paging through everything on the spc page with the limited service up here. Thanks for keeping that tornado tracking page going.
Reason I’m commenting is I was lurking through the twitter verse today and saw this post on Ian’s page. https://twitter.com/islivingston/status/1130633768044310528
And I finally found the guy that almost caused a significant traffic accident on a severe storm up in here Wyoming south of Newcastle on highway 85 in 2015. It occurred while cutting through a hail core on a south to north west supercell. He burned north towards Newcastle, then flipped a U Turn behind me. Proceeded to break the speed limit on the highway, caught up with me, passed me, then pulled over on the shoulder quite a ways ahead. As I was driving by him, he pulled directly into my vehicle. I slammed on my brakes and swerved, luckily without getting too dangerously far into the oncoming lane (and no oncoming traffic thankfully). This was a dangerous situation to begin with and Daniel Shaw’s reckless and moronic driving only made it worse. It could have been fatal had I not been nervously watching his vehicle to begin with. When it comes to obvious storm chasing vehicles, I always keep a wary on on them, especially when events are unfolding. It’s no joke that some storm chasers are actually more dangerous than storms.
I figured this was typical storm chaser BS as I can’t count how many traffic violations I’ve seen storm chasers and tour vans commit up here, but there is more. While I was shooting time lapse in a pullout to a two track fence off the highway near the WY/SD border not far from Edgemont, Daniel Shaw apparently thought it would be wise to pull in and talk with me. I don’t accept apologies from morons who not 30 minutes earlier almost killed me, and I said in less friendly words that he should probably get away with me. His mistake was stopping to try and talk to me AFTER he committed several traffic violations. Not just one little mistake, but several major highway violations. I would have never seen his face if he hadn’t stopped. But you can’t forget a face like his. Plus his vehicle is pretty obvious to pick out…nothing screams I’M A STORM CHASER quite like those types of vehicles.
Not enough people are publicly called out for being dangerous drivers during severe weather events. And since I don’t use social media, I can’t really do much about it other than post this and hope it embarrasses him enough to keep his cool during severe weather and not drive like a brainless, attention seeking dweeb. I find it hilarious that Daniel Shaw was tweeting about how bad traffic is when he is – or at the very least was – a dangerous and reckless driver himself. I’d be surprised if he’s not still driving like that. Perhaps he’s better off stuck behind all of that traffic instead of doing u turns, speeding, and pulling out into vehicles on highways in the middle of severe weather.
Best of luck on the rest of your chasecation. Not even sure if anyone will read this comment. Perhaps there is a storm forum with a list of stupid drivers I can put his name on? There has to be a list of shame somewhere by now?