STORM TRACK: May 31, 1979 (Volume 2 Issue 4)

I have just returned from another three week storm chase from New Mexico to Colorado and Texas to Nebraska. I drove 10,722 miles and photographed one small tornado southwest of Vernon, Texas, a funnel cloud in eastern Colorado and a dramatic rotating wall cloud in southwest, Texas. By comparison with other years, those last three weeks of May were very lean. The problem was a series of cut-off 500 mb lows that dominated throughout this time period and kept the main storm dynamics well north of the central and southern plains, during what should have been the peak of the storm season. Many of the tornadoes that occurred were short, quick and difficult to forecast. I was fortunate to have seen what I did.

Like myself, some of you also didn't see what you came looking for, but let's consider ourselves fortunate that we were able to go at all. With fuel shortages casting long shadows over future chase years, I consider any time spent in that historic land as memorable. There is the land of the Arikara, Comanche, Pawnee and Sioux; a land full of sacrifice, pioneer tales and legends of men we'll never know. A land of arroyos, buttes, canyons and the wide open spaces that stretch the eye and the mind. To chase storms is to be at one with the land and the sky; to "read" the clouds is to touch a part of the infinite; and to exult in the majesty of a great storm is to expand one's vision and never again to think only of small things. Even in a "lean" year, there are rewards.