I’m considereing booking one of these vacations for next Spring. Anyone had any experience doing so? How does one increase the odds of viewing one or more tornadoes? Certainly the dates one books are important, but what about the “tour operators?” Certainly some must be better than others. Couldn’t you simply follow one of these operators in you own vehicle and eliminate paying them to take you?
So maybe I shouldn’t be responding.
However, I’ve lived in the midwest all my life. I can’t think of anything other than how disappointing this trip would be.
The shows you see are heavily edited; You will wind up driving A LOT just to see some thunderstorms and the chance that you will see a tornado is probably a lot lower than you would be led to believe.
I don’t know…maybe you’ll see one…maybe two. But more than likely you will drive 8 hrs a day driving across dusty open plains and small midwest towns packed in a van. I expect you’ll be bored most of the time.
I storm chase with some friends every spring, for about 11 years now. I don’t have any personal experience with any of the chase tours, but there are a lot out there. Many of them can be crap, people over-promising and trying to get rich quick.
Here is a thread from a storm chase forum I frequent, which tries to answer your question: http://www.stormtrack.org/forum/showthread.php?t=18245
The thread is over two years old, but the information in it is still valid for the most part as far as I know.
Most chase tours don’t promise tornadoes, as even on good/active weather days they can be difficult to nail down. However, I personally don’t chase for just tornadoes. Storms in general on the High Plains are sheer beauty (even non-severe ones). Not to mention the daily “forecast puzzle” of how to proceed. The Plains are a huge area (the “potential chase area” can be the entire area from west of the Mississippi to the Rockies, and from north of I-10 in Texas to the Canadian border, with the only large-scale exceptions being eastern OK, most of AR, parts of eastern TX, most of LA, and MO south of I-70), and there are almost always storms somewhere to go after, especially considering most tours are somewhere in the 7-14 day timeframe. Even on weather down days, the chase tours know a lot about local tourist type places, so you won’t be bored. There will be a lot of driving (we typically can log 4-5k miles over 7-10 days, depending on how geographically constrained we want to be). Most of the tour websites should be able to answer any question of yours, and if not I should be able to help as well, PM if I don’t stop back in here.
I live a bit west of Norman, OK, and all that Viscera says I totally agree with (for the most part). Imho, just hanging out in a hotel in OKC/Norman area and watching the weather radar early-evenings for ‘developments’ will get you headed in right direction, and most of the news-channels track (live and/or online) notable weather-patterns, to the city-block when needed. All relevant weather info is available online (for free) and just knowing what to look for will be enough to allow you to get in the way of ‘cells’ that may go tornadic. That is if Nature cooperates with you and gives the right conditions when you are visiting, of course. Plus, it can be hard to actually see funnels if its night or low clouds are present (which is VERY common), though low wall clouds rolling along are pretty cool in their own respect.