(Transcript) Flashback: An In-Depth Discussion with Storm Chaser Skip Talbot

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[00:00:00] Gabriel: Hey, everyone. You may have noticed that this is a flashback episode. Over the years, the number of people that listen to Chaser Chat has grown significantly, and I wanted to highlight some of the older podcasts so that all of you new folks have a chance to listen. There may be some dated references, advertisements, etc., so just ignore those, and I hope you enjoy the episode.

[00:00:22] Gabriel: Hey folks, this is Gabriel. I want to apologize really quickly for the first four minutes of audio on this podcast. It’s just my audio. Skip’s audio is perfectly fine, but there was an issue with my microphone. I got it corrected around the four minute mark, so just soldier through it for the first four minutes or so, and everything will be cool after that.

[00:00:40] Thank you very much, and I hope you enjoy the podcast. 

[00:00:42] Gabriel: Howdy folks, and welcome back to another episode of Chaser Chat. I’m your host, Gabriel Harber. And I just want to remind all of you that you can subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Apple 

[00:00:54] google Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or pretty much anywhere else that you listen to podcasts.

[00:01:00] This is going to be our second interview episode, and I’m super excited for the guest we have today. He’s someone who, without his guidance, probably unknowingly for the most part, since it’s pretty much been me watching his YouTube videos over and over again, I would not be even sitting here doing this podcast.

[00:01:16] I want to introduce Skip Talbot. How’s it going, man? 

[00:01:18] Skip: Hey, thanks for having me, Gabriel. 

[00:01:20] Gabriel: Yeah, it’s very good to have you here and as I mentioned, you have a YouTube channel which is just replete with information that both the novice storm chaser and the seasoned veteran can profit from alike. And before we jump into any of the more nitty gritty detail oriented stuff, I was hoping that maybe you could just give us a little background on yourself. How did you first become interested in storm chasing? What led you down the path of becoming a content creator, both on YouTube and also on your website with the photography that you put out. Just share with us a little bit about yourself.

[00:01:50] Skip: Yeah, I grew up in Bolingbrook, Illinois, and the next town over, Plainfield, was hit by an F5 in 1990. And I was seven years old at the time, and that was the spark that got me interested in tornadoes. This atomic bomb like force came out of the clouds from nowhere and destroyed this town and it just had all these mythical qualities about it. And since then I’ve been absolutely obsessed with, and to the point of compulsion to go out and witness this force myself.

[00:02:21] So that’s what got me interested in tornadoes was that young encounter with Plainfield. I know a lot of chasers have a similar story about an early encounter. But yeah, it wasn’t until I saw the movie Twister when I was 13 that I was introduced to storm chasing as a concept. And after that point I started ravishly learning about chasing and what it’s really like and the real people who go out and do it and such that by the time I was in college, I felt that I was ready to attempt it myself. So actually stumbling out there by myself for those first few initial attempts. And then so yeah, it’s, I’m now in my thirties and I’ve been chasing since 2003. And so I’m now at the point where I’ve taken what started as a glorified hobby and it’s now actually merging with my career as a software developer, what I actually went to school for. And I’m using some of my programming skills on research projects, actually, that I’m now joining scientists out there tracking down these tornadoes and then studying them out in the field. So yeah, it’s come full circle as a childhood obsession to something that you know, I was doing for fun as a hobby and now it’s actually part of my career.

[00:03:31] Gabriel: Very cool stuff and before we talk a little bit about some of those projects particularly the one that you’re working on now give us a quick plug about where people can find your content or the bulk of your content at least if they’re interested in seeing More about what you do 

[00:03:46] Skip: Yeah, it’s it’s always been fun and, and a hobby of mine to share what I get out in the field. So if you want to see some of my latest catches and what I’ve been documenting you head over to YouTube, youtube.com/skiptalbot all one word should bring you up to my YouTube channel. And you can see a lot of my video projects there. I also have website, skip cc, and that has. My personal web page and chase logs and maps and photographs and all that kind of stuff. So yeah, that’s where you can find my web presence. And it’s always just been about sharing what I’ve gotten out of the chase.

[00:04:18] Gabriel: and one of the really cool things is the last interview episode we had about a month ago was with Dr. Jeff Frame. And he encouraged everyone, if they wanted to learn how to storm chase, to just pick up a textbook on forecasting severe weather, educate themselves, learn how to use the various models. And I have to say that pound for pound, honestly, the best resource that I’ve found out there, and I’ve read a few textbooks now, I’ve talked to a lot of people, I’ve read a bunch of stuff on websites, are your videos particularly your playlist of educational videos. I really feel like if a person were to take the time to sit down, slowly go through that material, and take a few notes here and there I think they would really walk away with the ability, at the very least, to have a puncher’s chance of going out and being safe, number one, but also having a chance at finding a tornado. 

[00:05:02] Skip: Thanks, thanks. Yeah storm chasing to me has always been more or less a trial and error exercise, and it’s also about taking what your predecessors, what the pioneers who have come before you have done, incorporating that and extending it. So my own presentations and videos, those are, more or less an extension of what others have done before me. The, a lot of the content that I’m coming from comes from the StormTrack form that I encourage everyone to check out stormtrack. org. That it was essays from the pioneers like Chuck Doswell and Al Mohler and Rich Thompson and Roger Edwards and Tim Marshall, it’s basically people sharing what they’ve learned out in the field themselves. And that, to me, is crucial in educating chasers to get out there. Meteorology is just one facet. In fact, if you’re super book smart about forecasting and storms. You can actually be a really terrible storm chaser. And it’s a whole other aspect that you need to learn about basically what’s an art and a sport. And if you just have that one science component, there’s so much that’s missing. So you can get that the hard way through trial and error, which is what a lot of us do and still do, but I also feel like it’s super important to share what we learn with others so that we don’t go out there and make the same mistakes. And so much of chasing again, it’s just the community coming together to share its knowledge. And I feel compelled to give back since it was so many who’ve come before me that are going out there and putting out there what they’ve learned. So yeah, it’s just a new format, a new medium and a new way to learn and educate.

[00:06:37] Gabriel: One of the, the really interesting things to me about the content that you make is that it’s really oriented around safety. And like you said it’s real art, it’s a real art form and you can have some real negative consequences if you don’t understand. You can know everything in the world about forecasting, meteorology, taking all the courses and everything. But if you don’t understand a lot of the stuff of being out in the field, you could really find yourself in a bad spot. Tell me, when you are out there chasing, is safety generally your number one priority? 

[00:07:04] Skip : Yeah, it really is, and it’s a balance, of course. We want to be We want this amazing storm chasing experience is what I would call it. A lot of chasers are going out for just that shot, that view. But to me, it’s being immersed in the storm itself and, but not to the point where it’s becoming dangerous. So I feel like there’s a just right balance where we can get the full experience and enjoyment out of the chase, and yet at the same time remain at a very relatively safe point where, we’re not in danger of our personal well being, so yeah, there’s always a little bit of inherent risk in chasing, but to me, it is very much the priority to to be minimizing that such that we can enjoy the chase and in relative safety.

[00:07:51] Gabriel: So moving on to some of the projects then that you’re working on now, You told me a little bit about the something called Research Photogrammetry, and I, I didn’t know that’s what it was called, because I’m a newbie to the whole weather scene anyways. But I do remember seeing a few videos, in particular one of them on your channel where you talked about it. It’s titled Frontline Stormspotting for those who want to go watch it. And another one on Pecos Henk’s channel. Channel, which is called Wild Tornadoes, close intercepted by scientific research team in Tipton, Kansas. So tell me a little bit about this project. How’d you get hooked up with all these cool people and what are you folks doing out there? 

[00:08:27] Skip: Yeah I, all of this stuff ties together. I don’t know how far back you want to go. 

[00:08:31] Gabriel: As far back as you want to go my friend. 

[00:08:33] Skip: Okay, great. I’ll just start from the beginning and we’ll tie it all together then. You asked about storm chasing safety and that being a primary focus of mine. And that really got its origins from the El Reno event, May 31, 2013. I’m sure most of your listeners are familiar with this. But for those that aren’t that was the devastating and tragic tornado that hit near El Reno, Oklahoma. It was the first to kill storm chasers. When it killed Tim and Paul Samaras and Carl Young and a couple of storm chasers that were out that day as well. And so after that event that really is what drove me home to this, I, to this urge that, storm chasing can be incredibly dangerous and we’re making some really bad mistakes out there and we have to learn from these because we had a very close encounter ourselves that day. We were on 15th street, just South of El Reno, and we found ourselves in the path of that tornado. The core. Of that circulation passed right over 15th. There was a fatality on the same road that we were on. We were about 90 seconds from impact on that tornado. Not even realizing it at the time. And chasers behind us in the same line of cars had all of their glass blown out. It was after that event that basically storm chasing lost its innocence; that I realized that people are going to die again if we don’t figure out what went wrong in El Reno, and learn from our mistakes. So that became a real passion of mine. And I’ve spent hundreds and now maybe even thousands of hours studying that event, analyzing what went wrong and basically how we can fix that going forward.

[00:10:11] So one of the one of the things that came out of that effort was a collaborative effort by different researchers and storm chasers called the El Reno Survey. Anton Simon Dr. atmospheric research scientists out of New York organized this group effort where he gathered almost a hundred different storm chasers video and painstakingly synchronized it using lightning flashes to create this four dimensional database and image of the El Reno storm. And that is then used in a very open format for research scientists to do further additional research. And we’ve seen a lot of great research come out of it already. Studies about bottom up tornado genesis and giant hail and sub vortices and correlations with other big violent HP tornadoes. So yeah, we’ve had a lot of positive contributions and work that has come out of this and what we’re doing now is an extension of that project. We’ve discovered that we can take all of these storm chaser videos and we can synchronize them almost exactly such that we’re getting this multiperspective view of the tornado. And what we’re doing now is we have three teams out in the field and we’re basically doing the same thing as we are coordinating our efforts to get syncronized shots of tornadoes and then we’re taking these different angles of these different views and we’re putting them together to make three dimensional and four dimensional models of these tornadoes that we can use to analyze things like the low level wind field and debris tracking right at the surface. One of the main limitations with tornado research right now is that a lot of it is done with mobile radars and the beam on those mobile radars is scanning the tornadoes aloft. We still don’t know exactly what’s happening right at the surface, right at ground level, where these tornadoes are doing the most damage, where they actually interact with people. So that’s one of our goals is to use video to get down at the lowest levels where those tornadoes are. Radars can’t. And so that’s what we’ve been doing since the El Reno survey project is for the last several seasons. Dr. Anton and Tracy Simon my chase partner Jennifer and I, and then most recently Pecos Hank Shima has joined us. And and we’re out there trying to get coordinated multi perspective views of these tornadoes, what we call photogrammetry. 

[00:12:30] Gabriel: That is absolutely fascinating, and I have two things that I wanted to to touch on, just from hearing you go through all that. The first one is, during your El Reno analysis video, which I’m not ashamed to say I’ve probably watched about ten times now, just because for someone like myself, for I think the term they use is weather weenie. For someone like myself, that’s just absolutely riveting stuff to to see it happening in real time. One of the things that strikes me the most about that video is when you are recording and you have this really cool graphic that shows actually, the outer regions of the tornado, what the actual boundaries of it are, and then you’re showing at the bottom, how far away from the tornado you actually are at any given time. And there’s one point, I believe, where you mentioned that you were moving away from the tornado and the tornado was still gaining ground on you. And you mentioned basically how uncomfortable that made you. And I can see why that would have been such an eyeopening experience.

[00:13:21] Skip: Yeah, yeah, that tornado expanded so rapidly. It basically doubled its size in about a minute and it would, it got up to about a forward speed of about 55. There was a time where we were moving directly away from it and it was gaining on us. And it was the left turn that tornado did that basically saved us. It took us out of the path, but tragically it put others in the path. And so yeah it was a huge wake up call and a huge learning lesson for us. And to be honest we had no idea how much trouble we were in at the time. We realized it was tense and unnerving and we were in a dangerous situation. We had no idea to what magnitude it actually was. 

[00:13:59] Gabriel: So really harrowing then for you to actually go back and watch that footage and realize exactly how close you were to being the one who actually got overtaken by the tornado.

[00:14:09] Skip: Yeah it really is because I could see myself making some of the same maneuvers that other people did. And and maybe it would have been us that was hit instead. So to me, it was the goal to figuring out that situation and trying to avoid it as best as we can, because as far as I can tell, El Reno is not some magic, super legendary special case that we’re never going to see again. It’s absolutely going to happen again. And if we don’t fix what we’re doing out there, we’re going to see more fatalities. 

[00:14:37] Gabriel: And that’s a really good point. I’m glad you brought that up, because it was something that I wanted to mention. Is that I know when you put out that video, at least from some of the YouTube comments I saw, and still see sometimes on places like Twitter, people feel like it can be almost like you’re nitpicking, or you’re trying to call other people out for some of the decisions that they make, but that’s not at all what I took from it. In fact, you mentioned it multiple times in the video, and like you just said now, you could see yourself making those same mistakes, that this sort of post event analysis is not meant to put anyone on blast or anything like that. It’s really meant to be an educational tool that can help others so that they don’t, including yourself, so that they don’t make the same mistakes in the future.

[00:15:15] Skip: So, we’ve identified a problem that is endemic in storm chasing and that’s this kind of knee jerk reaction. It’s almost like a panic response. Where people are fleeing southbound to clear air and crossing the path of the tornado in doing so. It’s almost like a like they’re racing a freight train across its tracks as the crossing guards are coming down. And so we’ve identified this as a problem and we’re trying to help chasers realize what they’re doing. Looking at visual structure identification to identify which way the tornado and tornado producing region is moving and then taking a moment and identifying a safer escape route option than across its path. And that seems to be the critical mistake that chasers are making and what we’re trying to fix and learn from, because I still see chasers making it. There there was a bad accident last year out by Lawrence, Kansas. 

[00:16:06] Gabriel: Oh, yeah. 

[00:16:06] Skip: And as far as I can tell, that was basically the same thing. Again, that went wrong on that storm was chasers taking a route southbound across the path of an HP tornado and they didn’t, they couldn’t race it across its path in time and they were run over by it. It’s gonna happen again and again unless we really work hard to help chasers avoid making those mistakes. 

[00:16:27] Gabriel: And just to speak to that a little bit, because you did make a second video that I think is just as high quality as the original El Reno analysis video about that Lawrence slash Lone Star tornado event and the chasing tour that was impacted by it and specifically if you go on YouTube and you look up video from the Joplin tornado, and I didn’t realize it until you actually mentioned this and put it in your video that the really close call that was caught on video on Rangeline Road during the Joplin event was the same group and that absolutely blew my mind that you know that sort of, now I don’t want to again I don’t want to put anyone blast and say that you know that anyone would make that sort of that maneuver but It’s very disconcerting that it would happen in a commercial tour with people like that. So I do really I’m really thankful, I guess I should say, that it wasn’t the Joplin event where those folks who were vacationing were impacted. 

[00:17:19] Skip: Yeah, and I think what we find is that this is a very common problem in storm chasing. So many people are taking dangerous escape routes like this, myself included. I’ve had a number of times I’ve gone back and looked at the routes I’ve taken and how dangerous they were. It’s one thing if the tornado is small and it’s slow moving, you can race across its path, no problem. When you start to get into these storms that are just absolutely giant high precipitation supercells, with mesocyclones that are spanning anywhere from five to ten miles in diameter, and you’ve got these multi mile wide tornadoes underneath that are fast moving and difficult to see that’s when chasers are getting into a lot of trouble. That’s when what is a mistake that they could get away with in the past, it’s finally coming out and biting them. So yeah, we want to, we want to point this out so that people can correct their mistakes so that there aren’t more fatalities in the future. The aim is not to be accusatory and to criticize people and to cast blame. It’s to identify instead where we’re going wrong. And fix what we’re doing here. Yeah.

[00:18:23] Gabriel: Very good, very good. And we’ll move in a different direction now from the the events that have happened to what could actually be done in the future to help make chasing more safe and also help us understand tornadoes more. And that’s of course the project you were talking at a few, talking about a few moments ago. That sounds like it would be a really cool idea for an app. Has that something you guys have thought about at all? Where chasers could, turn on an app, share the location, and then use the the video functionality through the app to actually take video of the tornado or the storm?

[00:18:51] Skip: Yeah, that’s a really good idea. It’s it’s just a matter of getting a great group of people together and implementing it. But I could definitely see that being of use. Maybe an extension of or a future type effort along the lines of, say, Spotter Network, where instead of just doing a text message latitude, longitude based reporting type blurb, it’s instead a brief little video clip that is geotagged and instantly available to everyone. So yeah, I definitely could see storm reporting and storm chaser safety going that route in the future. 

[00:19:24] Gabriel: So, now let’s move over to some of your personal experiences, not stuff that you’ve documented, but or not enough stuff that you’ve necessarily documented a post hoc, but stuff that you’ve actually been a part of in the moment, what is your most noteworthy or memorable experience while chasing? Doesn’t have to be the biggest or the strongest tornado you’ve ever witnessed, just the most memorable.

[00:19:44] Skip: Oh, man. There are so many little moments and experiences out there that I could talk about. It’s tough to narrow them down to a top or a favorite. 

[00:19:54] Gabriel: Yeah, give us a couple then.

[00:19:55] Skip: Yeah, I thought I instead, I would talk about a more recent one.

[00:19:58] Gabriel: Okay. 

[00:19:59] Skip: And ’cause it ties into everything too, that we’ve been doing here. So I thought I would talk about Tipton last year, which was the same day that that tour got rolled near Lawrence, Kansas. It was May 28th, 2019, and it really stands out to me as nearly the perfect chase for us. And that’s what makes it so memorable and outstanding. And it started with the forecast. It was we had identified an area that looked great, tornado wise, and for our research purposes, ’cause again, it was the three teams and us collaborating to, to get a photogrammetry shot rather than just another personal storm chasing venture. But yeah, there was a big moderate risk and it was out in Northeast Kansas and towards the Kansas City area. And we looked at that and we said, "There’s a number of problems with the big storm prediction center, moderate risk area. It looked like there were going to be HP storms over there. There was some problems with upper level venting of the winds. There was a lot of water in the columns, so we’d have some really rainy downdrafts". And and yeah, really high dew points and low LCLs and all of that was suggesting these were going to be very messy, rainy, difficult to chase storms, maybe in a more populated area. And then all of the storm chasers were going to be over there, because it looked like that was going to be the hot spot, according to the Storm Prediction Center. Instead, we found another area that looked really good. Something unusual was happening that caught our eye. And the surface moisture, the dews, were wrapping around the back side of the surface low. Usually on the back side of that surface low, it’s an area of stable air and cold air advection, ’cause you have that cold front coming in from the Northwest. They’re undercutting your storms, but we saw a very different environment taking shape where the, instead we had moisture wrapping around to the West side of the low, and it was an environment characterized by very steep, low level lapse rates. We had a lot of instability right in the lowest layers of the atmosphere and a lot of moisture and a lot of lift and vorticity right on that low. So we said, "Hey this spot here up in north central Kansas, it screams tornadoes. The environment looks very favorable. And yet it was outside of the risk area". It was barely in the 2 percent on SPCs outlook area, So he said, no, we’re not going to do the higher probs. We like this spot. Let’s stick to it and play here instead. And then it was a matter of patience. We drove to Beloit, Kansas and surface winds were out of the Northeast and the surface observations were something like 79 over 72 or something ridiculous like that. So it was warm. We had extremely moist air with a northeast wind, which is highly unusual. Usually when you’ve got that north wind, you’re on the cold side of the boundary. But instead we had a very rich air mass there. And that northeast wind makes for extreme directional wind shear. So usually you have one, but not the other. Some instability, but not the shear. And this was a rare instance where we had both in this one spot. For some reason it had been overlooked in the big grand scheme of things by some of the other forecasters, but we had, we picked up the signal and we honed in on the spot and then it was a matter of all of the teams coming together and clicking and that’s really what made this such an exceptional chase is it took all three teams contributing their share in order for this chase to have happened if we didn’t have everyone, we would have not had this chase the way it was. And we have a rather diverse background. Dr Anton and Tracy Simon. They’re coming from a more academic understanding of meteorology. They have a lot more of the, I would say conventional or yeah just a more proper understanding of the meteorology behind events. And it took their identification of this, of this environment. And then I’m coming from more of a conventional storm chaser background where I’m self taught, a parameter geek and a techno geek. And I’m looking at, I’m honing in on specific values and things in the setup that I really like, highlighting specific areas, and then Pecos Hank joined us, and he is just an absolute rock star when it comes to chasing and intercepting tornadoes. It’s not just the forecast, it’s about honing in on it as an art and a sport, really, to be able to get these shots at close range and positioning yourself on these storms. I like it I like to think of it a lot like surfing, whereas your forecast is basically telling you where, what beach to go to, where the waves are going to be big. And then I’m looking at these parameters and saying, what kind of properties are these waves going to have and how maybe should we ride them? And then Pecos Hank, he’s the rock star that knows how to get up on the board and actually ride these waves to the best of their abilities. So I think it takes all three of these teams coming together to work this event as best as it absolutely can. And everybody at some point stepped up and really paved the way for us to get in there and do this. At one point I was leading us in on the storm and we had another storm go up right overhead. It looked great, and I thought about, Hey, we have this storm right here. Let’s chase it. And see we’ll get a big tornado out of this one instead. And it was Anton who said, no, let’s keep going. Let’s let this go. Let’s head down into the tail end charlie storm. I think that’s our better play and is absolutely the right call. The North storm wound up not producing and falling apart quite quickly. A number of other chasers got suckered in on it and they missed the show to the South. And then once we were on that Southern storm Hank really stepped up and he said we should take this road and this is where we should position ourselves. And he let us right in for the most amazingly dramatic close tornado intercept I’ve had in the past few years. So again, it was the teams working together. It was nailing the forecast, but then the actual catch was super memorable. We were just presented with this absolutely bewildering array of vortices and funnel clouds and tornadoes. There were three concurrent circulations. At one point we had a horizontal vortices and all kinds of unusual configurations I hadn’t seen before. And then finally the storm geared up and produced one really large and significant long track tornado. crossed the road right in front of us. We had all three teams arrayed on the road for our photogrammetry shot. And so everyone was able to nail that shot. And again, it was all of us just coming together and it was super dramatic and intense intercept with this tornado. Basically we were positioned at a farm watching the storm approach and we actually had to move to get out of the way. The tornado wound up hitting that farm. Luckily it missed the house and there were no injuries or casualties reported in the area on that. But but yeah, super dramatic. We were within probably a half mile of the tornado as it crossed and we got some great shots of it. And and yeah, that’s going to be one of my best and most memorable chases just for how well rounded it was and everything we saw and did that day. 

[00:26:53] Gabriel: That is so cool to hear. That’s that’s like a movie waiting to happen, or at least a Discovery Channel weekly one hour show type deal.

[00:27:00] Skip: Yeah. 

[00:27:01] Gabriel: I could absolutely see something like that. And I’ve got the I’ve got Pecos Hank’s channel pulled up here on YouTube real quick because I just wanted to reiterate the point you made about him being like a rock star when it comes to getting close. For those who haven’t checked it out, there’s a Video that he took about two, three months ago called Close Tornado Tears Through Town. I think it’s in Maydale or Maddow, Oklahoma. And, I was just absolutely blown away at how he positioned and basically caught that couldn’t have been more than a hundred, a couple hundred yards away from it as it crossed the road in front of him. 

[00:27:29] Skip: Yeah, absolutely. One of the, what’s gonna be one of the shots of the year, no doubt, was that footage from April, and yeah, I think that would even be like a career shot for most chasers, but for Pecos Hank, it’s just another feather in his cap.

[00:27:42] Gabriel: Just another day at the office, yeah. Yeah. It’s a pretty cool guy. I’m really cool to hear that you guys are working together now, too, that’s I have to give a little fanboy crush here and say that for the past five or six years, you two were my favorite. I couldn’t differentiate between just my one and one as my favorite chasers to follow on YouTube.

[00:27:57] Skip: Yeah, it’s just been an honor and a pleasure to work with this team, myself, even. We saw the work Pecos Hank was doing, and we, I said to Anton, I said, We have to get this guy on our team. He’s gonna compliment what we do so well. And so we’re super super happy and honored to have him and join us with his incredible skills and Anton with his incredible expertise over the years and experience just all of it clicks so well. So yeah we basically have the dream team here and and basically the storm chasing Avengers I’ve seen on YouTube people commenting, so I’m just happy to be a part of it myself. 

[00:28:33] Gabriel: One of the things that you talked about just a moment ago was how you decided to steer clear of the moderate risk area and you were barely in the 2 percent hatch zone. I’m guessing that also kept you away from the major chaser convergence on that day. And I know I’ve heard you talk about that before as well. In fact, I believe you’ve mentioned that you basically stay away from chasing Central Oklahoma now because of that fact, if that’s not if that’s correct. 

[00:28:57] Skip: Yeah, storm chasing has gotten to the point where the hordes are a real concern and they are something that you must factor into your chase now. After El Reno, I decided that Oklahoma counties down there in Canadian County, Oklahoma, they’re just way too dangerous to try chasing in anymore. There, what happens is the local media will go wall to wall with coverage and most of the locals will actually take to their vehicles and try to evacuate. So the roads turn into gridlock and then you have hundreds if not thousands of storm chasers of very widely varying degrees of experience going out. You have, of course, all of the pros at OU right there, but then you have a whole bunch of amateur locals who have very limited experience and they’re basically opportunistic. They’re taking advantage of the tornado warning being at their doorstep. So yeah, it’s just way too dangerous to chase in such an environment down there. And so I won’t even try now chasing near the OKC area. But yeah, if we can identify a secondary target that looks good that is away from the main bulk of the storm chasing hoard, we will take it absolutely because there are on the big days the storm chasing crowd can be a problem and often we’ve found that it’s the secondary target that yields some of the most photogenic tornadoes. It’s often the setups that are working with more subtle and ingredients that are on the fringes that wind up producing the most photogenic tornadoes. It’s the big high risk moderate risk type events that are making these tornadoes big, nasty, ugly, grungy, gray tornadoes, and those are the ones we want to avoid. So we actually want a more of a prettier shot, and so that’s what we’re looking for. Something out on the edge, something on the fringe, away from everybody else.

[00:30:37] Gabriel: And I’ve watched enough of your videos now to know that a lot of times zero to three kilometer CAPE probably plays into that choosing of alternative targets.

[00:30:45] Skip: Yeah, there’s a number of things I really look for my secret weapons for chasing and I think I think it’s common knowledge now in the early 2000s, it was a new thing that we were discovering the level, the large role that low level instability was playing in a lot of these tornado subs to work by John Davies and others identifying these environments where there’s really pronounced low level instability and that seems to be a huge player in a lot of these events. So much so that I found that if you don’t have that low level cape, you’re probably not even getting a tornado. 

[00:31:17] Gabriel: It’s helped me a ton to, to not go out and spend the gas money and take, the days off of work and normal life and everything, when I don’t see the, some of the factors that you’ve pointed to as like cheat codes. So I do really appreciate you putting those out there for everyone. It’s not, you could keep those close to the chest if you wanted to, but it’s really cool that you put it out there. 

[00:31:35] Skip: Yeah, that’s how I learned to be a chaser, is people sharing with me what they know, and so I feel compelled to do the same.

[00:31:42] Gabriel: Chaser Convergence is probably one of the bigger evolutions you’ve seen over the two decades you’ve been chasing. Is there anything else you’ve noticed that has really came along to the point where it’s almost unrecognizable or just entirely different than how it was when you first started in the early 2000s?

[00:31:56] Skip: Yes and no. What we’ve seen is of course, a large increase in the technology that’s available. It’s really opened the door to a lot of people and to a lot of forms of chasing. I would say I’ve heard tales from the pioneering legends that people just didn’t drive up to Nebraska for a chase, it was just insane to even think about driving that far, let alone the Dakotas because you didn’t know what you were expecting to see out there or what you were going to get. It was a huge gamble. And more often than not, they just waited for local dryline plays in Oklahoma and the panhandles. So what we’re seeing is, yeah we now have the tools and technology available to do more more chasing and different kinds of chasing and environments we didn’t play before. And it’s opened the door to to beginners and aspiring chasers much more than ever. So yeah, I think that’s the biggest thing that’s changed is we’ve seen a lot of these venues open and there’s been a lot of lamenting about that is, oh, it’s storm chasing has become too easy or there’s too many people. And what I see instead is that compared to a few decades ago. Yeah, if you’re still just chasing in your backyard and in Oklahoma waiting for a synoptically obvious setup, then yeah, that might be the case. But if you want to play a more, a more subtle setup and really get a beautiful tornado out of subtle ingredients up in the Dakotas in late June, yeah, you’re still gonna find yourself out on the road by yourself with nobody around and then you can still get that really classic experience. It’s just a matter of making the most with the tools and the knowledge that we have. And that’s what chasing has always been and always will be. So in that regard, it doesn’t change. It’s always been the same. It’s the actual internals of that is it’s, was what’s changing, could still go out there and chase on the edge chase on the pioneering edge, I guess you would call it of what you can do and accomplish out there. 

[00:33:46] Gabriel: Really interesting stuff. What is the closest call or stickiest situation that you’ve ever found yourself in? I know we’ve talked a lot about close calls on this on this podcast so far, but you personally, what’s the time when you felt like in the field you were in the most danger? 

[00:34:00] Skip: Yeah, at the time I’ve had some moments that spooked me. When I was chasing with the TIV crew and Sean Casey, we got run over by a weak tornado and that was alarming because we were in the follow vehicle. We weren’t supposed to be in the tornado like the TIV is. And I’ve had another number of other close calls or moments where we were spooked cause we were in the path but really it was El Reno. And it was our close call with that tornado, which again, we realized we were in trouble at the time and we had to get out of there, but it was realizing how much we were in trouble afterwards. And that’s basically changed me as a storm chaser. Since then it’s really altered the way I think about storms and how I operate around them. And and I know it’s been a pivotal event for a lot of chasers, but it’s really set me on the current course that I am and the people I work with and the storms I chase and how I look at everything in terms of storm chasing. It was the pivotal event.

[00:34:52] Gabriel: What’s a hidden gem area in the country to chase? A place that a lot of people might not actually consider to be a really high value target, so to speak, but that you absolutely love it when you find one of these subtle setups and you can head out in that area. 

[00:35:05] Skip: Yeah, I’m not telling, so that no, It’s, and call me biased, it’s central Illinois, And the reason for that is several: there is, first of all Illinois by far has the best roads of any conventional storm chasing state. And the reason for that is much of the mile by mile farm road grid is paved. So you can basically cherry pick what roads you want to drive on and what position you want to be on with the storm. And because we’ve got this mile by mile grid, and so you can just basically go anywhere. And then there’s all these crisscrossing interstates so you can get anywhere really fast and then you can really position yourself wherever you want on these storms. The terrain is also very nice. Most of the I 55, I 57, I 39 corridor is flat, treeless farmland with a mile by mile paved grid. So to me, that makes it absolutely the world’s best terrain and network for chasing. What we don’t get so much are the big, beautiful dry line storms. It’s once in a blue moon, we’ll get something like a dry line out, out this far. So to, to get those kinds of slow moving, gorgeous classic dry line supercells, like you get out west. We don’t get that too often here, but we still do get amazing supercells and incredibly large and violent tornadoes. They’re maybe not as common, but when we do get them, it is an absolutely amazing place to chase.

[00:36:35] Gabriel: It’s really interesting that you said that as well, because Jeff Frame, our first interview on this podcast, also an Illinois native, Said the exact same thing. Said the road grid, the access to highways, the paved roads, even the cell phone service, which you can’t rely on when you’re out in a lot of these places like the Dakotas or, the wilderness of Colorado. You you have that in, in pretty much everywhere you go in Central Illinois. That’s, it’s pretty cool to hear back to back from two really respectable opinions that Central Illinois is the place to be. 

[00:37:04] Skip: Yeah, there’s a couple of problem spots. Western Illinois it actually has a big Verizon hole. And one of the largest in the country, because some local mom and pop carrier is hoarding it. And and yeah, there’s a couple of gnarly spots with the terrain. It starts getting dicey south of I 70, and northwest Illinois is a little bad. But but yeah, other than that, there are some really great spots. And I don’t think a lot of planes, chasers in the conventional areas are making the haul out. Out that far too often, they don’t realize the potential of the spot. It’s great. There’s, in fact, there’s so much road here available that I’m basically convinced that storm chaser convergence and congestion is, it’s not really a problem here. We have the capacity to hold several hundred chasers if it ever came to that. But but yeah, there’s just not as many chasers out here anyway. So it’s, winds up being a great place. 

[00:37:53] Gabriel: And the last thing that I wanted to to hit here, it’s something that I plan on finishing out every interview with folks. It’s a little game. I’m ripping it off blatantly from Tornado Titans because they made a video about this that I thought was really cool. So imagine that you could only use five different severe weather parameters to forecast your chase location. Nothing that’s like an all in one parameter like a Skew T or a hodograph. What would be your five most important parameters that you would use to actually pinpoint your location and figure out where you wanted to go chase? 

[00:38:24] Skip: yeah, five, if I could only use five and five is a lot, actually, I can probably do almost all of my chasing with five. So the big two to me are 500 millibar winds and the surface dews. And with just those two, I can get into a lot of trouble with storm chasing. So I probably know where most of the ingredients are, 500 millibar winds and surface dews to me are like, the bread and the meat of your sandwich. Okay. What kind of shear you’re dealing with, where areas of lift are going to be, you can probably pull out where the boundaries are where, what your trough is doing. You’ve got all four ingredients that you need for a severe weather event being identified with just those two plots. And then after that, if I get to pick three, it’s going to be my Secret Tornado Weapons, and they’re not secrets really, but they are what I found to be most succinct in identifying tornado environments and also basically discriminating tornado and non tornado environments is how I would best describe them. So those three are lid strength, zero to three kilometer mixed layer cape, and effective storm relative helicity. And to me, these are the. The special chef’s ingredients on that sandwich on this forecast sandwich that, that bring it to a new level that make this a special tornado sandwich that now I’ve got this complete forecast that I can really get into a lot of trouble with now tracking down tornadoes. So yeah, lid strength is one of, one of the parameters that I rely on most and that I don’t find a lot of other chasers looking at. I take some flack even for it. People don’t like that I stress lid strength so much. What it is it’s a measure of the capping inversion of this, of the storm setup. And basically it’s measuring the width of the inversion. If you were to look at it on the Skew T sounding, and I found that is a very telling indicator for a tornadic versus non tornadic environment. Basically, it’s showing how much of an impediment the cap is going to be to a strong surface based updraft. People look at other things. I’ve heard them say, no, it’s not lid strength. It’s the LFC minus LCL difference. And to me, it’s. You’re looking at two sides of the same coin right there. You’re looking at the height of the inversion versus the width. They’re often directly correlated. And people look at convective inhibition instead. To me it’s the width that has been the most telling. I think I think a low level updraft can power through a tall skinny cap much more easily than it can a short fat cap. So to me, that, that is a very important parameter. I will use that when I pick my target out. If I don’t see a lid strength of less than three or so I’m pretty sure we’re not going to get a tornado.

[00:41:13] Gabriel: And that’s less than three degrees Celsius?

[00:41:15] Skip: Yeah, it’s measured in Celsius. The only spot I’ve seen to get a good look at it is Earl Barker’s website, and his site is a mess, and the plot itself is confusing but I’ve learned to read it, and to me it’s one of the best parameters out there. So Earl Barker has this little treasure, and if we lose it, I’m going to be at a loss. So I need to figure out how to make my own plots. Using the GRIB data. 

[00:41:39] Gabriel: You also you plug his data into your website, right? On his his NAM? 

[00:41:43] Skip: Yeah, if you go to my website at skip. cc I have a viewer for different forecast model sites, and it’s just because I browse several different models on several different sites, and I found Earl’s site to be very difficult to use, so I wound up making my own viewer just for Earl’s data. And it allows me to see all these parameters very quickly. And to me, it’s the ability to efficiently digest the most pertinent data that can make you a it really helps make you a good chaser. Then you’re not getting bogged down looking at a million things and getting lost and drowning in all of this data overload. Yeah, I can get a quick glance at the setup and these parameters and he’s also got great plots for zero to three kilometer CAPE on there, which is also incredibly important for a tornado. And and then the effective storm relative helicity plot on SPC’s mesoanalysis page, I found those to be really helpful in honing in on a tornado target too. But they’ve also got a great plot of the zero to three kilometer CAPE hiding on that site under the multi parameter fields. And yeah, that’s using the RAP bottle and it’s a little bit coarser, but I still find it, it really does a great job handling the environment as it goes down. So yeah, it’s those five things with those five things. I’m probably like 90 to 95 percent of the way there on, on a tornado forecast. Yeah. 

[00:43:02] Gabriel: Then this might, the answer to this last question might be already something you’ve talked about with the Lid Strength Index, but do you think that there is a really overrated or misunderstood severe weather parameter that the chasing community could really benefit from having a little bit more knowledge about?

[00:43:17] Skip: Sure, there’s probably a bunch that you could probably look at. The one, and this is talked a lot about by the old school pros, but to me, it’s the composite parameters, like the significant tornado parameter or any of the other ones like EHI, for example. And the problem is this, it kind of highlights where these ingredients for tornadic supercells are all coming together, but it doesn’t necessarily show you where the storms are actually going to be. So you might have this big STP bullseye. But it’s not, that’s not exactly where you’re going to get initiation instead you’re having storms coming off the boundary or an upper level feature and instead they’re going to track somewhere else and not across these bullseyes. And the other thing is the actual values of these parameters is not necessarily a good indicator for how good the environment actually is for a storm. Let’s say if your storm is actually not in a discrete surface based mode, then a lot of these parameters are meaningless. But also you get these amazing photogenic and violent tornadoes even when STP is relatively modest. So there’s a lot more to the situation, there’s a lot of subtle low level features like a boundary or a mesoscale interaction or, and it’s a lot of things coming together, but I think some newer chasers might be relying on some of these all in one parameters. And instead, I still look at STP and EHI, but instead of looking at specific values and where the bullseyes are, instead, I like to look at how are these parameters trending? Is the environment becoming more or less favorable for tornadoes. Is STTP going up? Is it going down? And I’m also looking at more or less the gradients on a lot of these parameters. John Davies in his forecasting classes says chase the gradient, not the bullseye, and that’s where you have different things coming together, and it’s often where your boundary is acting. And I even see it reflected a lot in the SPC outlooks, to be honest. If you look, you’ll often see the tornado reports, those little red dots on the LSR maps. They’re often on the edge or outside the big circle tornado probabilities. And I think a lot of that is because, it’s, these storms are tending to ride the gradient edges of where all of this stuff is coming together, not necessarily directly across the center of the tornado environment. So yeah it’s it’s not relying on on a composite parameter or any one parameter in particular. It’s looking collectively at how they’re trending, what kind of consistency we have run to run and where they’re all coming together and and, yeah, and how that is affecting the environment as a whole.

[00:45:49] Gabriel: Yeah, I see a lot of people posting that stuff on Twitter. Again, like you said, not necessarily bad parameter to use, but it does seem like there’s a lot of people that put a, maybe too much stock into that without considering some of the other necessary ingredients and whether or not they’re actually in that same place.

[00:46:04] Skip: Yeah, totally.

[00:46:05] Gabriel: Before we take off then, do you have any last thoughts that you would like to share? Anything you’d like to say to the listeners? 

[00:46:11] Skip: Oh, yeah. I don’t have any really I think I pretty much rambled enough as it is. I’m just looking at some of the current pattern here and it looks like we’ve got an active summer here for a while. Or is that the chicklets? Yeah. I’m just, yeah, I’m looking at a strong mid level flow for July up in the northern plains and Midwest. So I’m hoping to get out there more because I feel like people think this season was terrible and awful and it might be the case that it’s just now finally getting going.

[00:46:41] Gabriel: I think a lot of people are hoping that your words ring true because there’s been a lot of disappointed folks so far this season. 

[00:46:48] Skip: Yeah, I’m one of them. I really did not get a good tornado shot this year and I’ve missed several now, so I’m hoping it still happens, but we’ll see.

[00:46:57] Gabriel: All right then, before we get going, can you share with people where they can find your work again, so if they want to immediately get done with this and rush over to check it out. 

[00:47:04] Skip: Yeah, check out my YouTube channel at just look up Skip Talbot on YouTube, and you can also go to my website, skip. cc, and there’s links and pictures there as well. Yep. 

[00:47:14] Gabriel: Awesome. Skip Talbot, thank you so much for joining us today. Appreciate it. 

[00:47:18] Skip: Yeah, thanks, Gabriel. Thanks for having me.

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