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Severe Weather Threat May 16-18, 2026

US_Highway15 said:
Once again, glad I retired from chasing after I graduated college last year, especially after the awful chasing convergence that was the Iowa Moderate Risk bust.
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I chased a polar vortex 4 months ago and experienced wind chills of -57F to -60F. I drove 900 miles from near Wichita, KS to Langdon, ND which is 15 miles away from the Canada border.
 
TheSuckZone said:
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At some point I can see storm chasing becoming so legit it becomes a UNESCO intangible cultural heritage for the US Midwest, given its a unique practice tied to that region's unique climate created by its geography (of constant, regular photogenic tornadoes).
 
Tanner said:
Such a crapshoot this severe weather stuff is. It can be very frustrating to see these forecasts underperform time after time. However, we can't lose sight of the fact that there will eventually be more opportunities, even if they wait until next year for the plains.
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I think some of the underperformances are caused by changes that aren’t going to reverse anytime soon.
 
Something I feel like has to change with storm chasing and who actually gets to be on the road.

Not to be that guy, but I feel like there has to be some kind of licensing involved to be a storm chaser. Then again, how do you even force such a thing, especially with so many on the road?

I don't know, I just think storm chasing is becoming so much more dangerous year after year, because of the people specifically on the road.
 
DanLarsen34 said:
Do you mind elaborating on this further? I’m not sure what you mean.
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The continued drying of the American south west has led to stronger EMLs which have ruined the more conditional days that used to produce widely scattered supercells. In the past those conditional days produced some of the more photogenic tornadoes, and we just do not get as many of those days now. Additionally, several the bigger set ups have been ruined by excess moisture, which I think is probably tied to a warming gulf (and oceans in general). I don’t really see anything that makes me think either of those issues are going to improve in the near term, in fact, I think it’s more more likely that they get worse.
 
US_Highway15 said:
Something I feel like has to change with storm chasing and who actually gets to be on the road.

Not to be that guy, but I feel like there has to be some kind of licensing involved to be a storm chaser. Then again, how do you even force such a thing, especially with so many on the road?

I don't know, I just think storm chasing is becoming so much more dangerous year after year, because of the people specifically on the road.
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I don’t really think you can legislate it out of existence. Realistically, it’s probably going to take a really, really ugly outcome that force some of the younger/less experienced folks to re evaluate (or their parents to re evaluate for them).
 
The issue is that the hobby was once, but is no longer a small, niche community almost entirely comprised of people who put in time to educate themselves about the subject matter, and learn the skills needed to be involved in a responsible and respectable capacity.

This is going to sound rude and insensitive, but I’m going through be blunt. In the past few years, the hobby and community has been inundated by a tsunami of spazzy, immature YouTube clickbait/livestreamer/chasing sim game addicted kids who are all pretty much one big collective Dunning-Krueger case study. You know the type I’m talking about. They know next to nothing, their obsession supersedes their actual skill/knowledge base by miles, and they have a baseless confidence that will put them behind the wheel for a chase as soon as they have a license despite their ignorance and inexperience. They have no fear or respect for these storms, and no respect or regard for the people who have been on the roads for many years.

I once made the mistake of chasing with one of these people years ago and I didn’t realize how incompetent he was until we were out on the plains. It was both terrifying and embarrassing, and I bailed before he had a chance to get us both killed. These people are EVERYWHERE now, and that is the problem in a nutshell.
 
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Muwx said:
The continued drying of the American south west has led to stronger EMLs which have ruined the more conditional days that used to produce widely scattered supercells. In the past those conditional days produced some of the more photogenic tornadoes, and we just do not get as many of those days now. Additionally, several the bigger set ups have been ruined by excess moisture, which I think is probably tied to a warming gulf (and oceans in general). I don’t really see anything that makes me think either of those issues are going to improve in the near term, in fact, I think it’s more more likely that they get worse.
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I think this day would've been an enhanced if the models weren't nightmarishly bad tbh. A lot of the warning signs were already there for this setup.
 
This is an incredibly controversial take but I think the SPC outlook for today was flawed from the start. I don't know how anyone got the idea that things would remain discrete. In fact, I'm shocked it remained semi-discrete at best for more than an hour. Models showed very strong forcing with almost completely parallel storm motion to the front's boundary. Nothing will remain discrete with that configuration.
 
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