2019 was an excellent touring season for us here at Extreme Tornado Tours and included some of the more memorable storm chasing we have done to date, including a close-range intercept of an EF3 monster tornado in the Texas Panhandle, to a pancake stacked mothership supercell of the ages in western Kansas. Overall, we chased down over 20 tornadoes and countless supercells, navigated our way near intense hail cores and lightning barrages all while keeping our guests safe and on the right storms.
The tours kicked off with a bang for our guests heading into the jungles of Louisiana into Mississippi tracking down a beastly tornado wrapped up in rain. We stayed just ahead on the interstate as we watched trees snap in half behind us as outflow began to push forward at 70MPH. The first tour culminated in a gorgeous supercell lit by the sunset, ironically near Sunset, Texas.
Tour 2 had its share of severe weather, and Tour 3 started off the tour right with a massive UFO-shaped supercell near Vega, Texas. We watched in awe as it slowly spun, it’s rain-free base inching along, allowing us to chase the storm effortlessly. Days later, we would have one of our most memorable tornado experiences to date in 2019 near the Red River on the Texas side, as a dark grey cone tornado uprooted trees before dissipating into a wall of rain, leaving the guests on a high for the rest of the tour.
Things heated up near Lubbock, Texas on the next tour, as the group chased through the Palo Duro Canyon, the second deepest canyon in the United States next to the Grand Canyon, as a strong tornado made its appearance from a wall of rain and grey. We explored the Kemah area in Texas by the Gulf of Mexico and ended up back north near Amarillo chasing down supercells before finally having dinner at the world-renowned Big Texan Steakhouse.
Tour 5 was full of surprises with nearly every day being a chase day due to the ever-digging trough and included up close and personal interaction with a wedge near Canadian, Texas. Tour 5 also saw a “high risk” day from the SPC that had the potential to be a terrible situation for residents in Oklahoma, and luckily only produced a few tornadoes one of which the guests chased near the town of Mangum, Oklahoma, an EF2.
Tour 6 would experience some of the most insane shelf structure we had ever seen near Artesia, New Mexico, brilliantly lit from within by a teal hue as the remaining rays of the sun from the days end reflected through ice particles aloft, high above our head.
Our final tour, Tour 7, packed a serious punch with the guests seeing twin tornadoes in western Kansas literally just hours after leaving the host hotel in Denver on their very first day. What appeared to be a marginal day of chasing turned into one for the history books, as a cyclic supercell dropped multiple tornadoes while maintaining some of the best storm structure we have ever seen.
After such a banner year we are now as excited as ever to continue on with our storm chasing tours in 2020. We have some new things in store for our guests to make their experience even more safe and enjoyable on our tornado tours, and we hope that you can BE THERE to chase with us!