Forecasting Tools Page 1
Storm chasing is not like "Twister". You don't see 5 major tornadoes in one day, you probably don't have a generous aunt who lives in prime chase country, and you don't compete against "bad guys" driving matching black vans. Storm chasing involves hours of forecasting, driving, waiting, waiting, driving, and forecasting. If Nature cooperates, several long days of this could result in witnessing one of the most beautiful (yet potentially devastating), awe-inspiring sites this planet has to offer.
Watching a cumulus cloud grow out of blue sky is one thing, but watching that cloud grow to be 11 miles tall is something else. Single clouds of this size are typically what we call supercells... a single rotating entity that is selfsustaining and capable of producing (among other things) flash floods, frequent lightning, large hail, and tornadoes. This type of storm is what storm chasers seek; it's a lot of action packed into an isolated spot. An advantage of this small size is that it's "easy" to nagivate around it to find the best viewing angle, or angle of attack (assuming the desired roads exist). The disadvantage of hunting a supercell is that the prime viewing area occupies only a few square miles. Kansas and Oklahoma ALONE cover an area of 150,500 square miles. That doesn't count other supercell breeding grounds like Texas, Nebraska, and Colorado. The odds of success are incredibly small.
That's where accurate severe weather forecasting comes in. By analyzing the current state of the atmosphere and by carefully checking what models expect the future state of the atmosphere to be, we can create our own forecasts, ranging from 5 minutes ("Nowcasting") to several days ("Wishcasting").
How do we do it? What's important to look at when it comes to the development of supercells? Nobody knows for sure. But here we present a VERY brief overview of what we consider to be important tools, indices, and signs.
A basic list of tools you'll want are: satellite loops, observed and forecast soundings, surface maps, upper-air maps, and rapidly-updating radar loops once things get going. We're not going to list the websites we use to get this data in this article. You probably already have your favorite sites, but if you don't you can find them on our links page.