2025-06-05 ~ More than a Bust.
The moment we realized I picked the wrong target area for June 5th, 2025.
A quote that I’ve heard time and time again from NHL Reporter and Insider Elliotte Friedman from his ‘32 Thoughts’ Podcast is, “Never make a decision when you are emotional.” I don’t think I’m going to be making a decision here, but we’ll see what comes out of this therapy time as I put it down on paper.
Today will be a day that’ll be reflected upon for years to come in the world of storm chasing. Numerous tornadoes of all sorts of shapes and sizes found their way to the ground atop of the Texas Caprock west of Lubbock. Where were we? 200 miles north in Southwestern, Kansas.
To say I’m crushed is an understatement. There are multiple reasons that feed into it that go beyond the surface level of botching the forecast but it is probably prudent to walk through my thought process going into today first.
Starting yesterday, it was clear that two target areas were shaping up for tornadoes. One would be along the NM/TX border, while the other appeared to shape up in Southwestern Kansas. After chasing New Mexico, we’d get to Amarillo shortly before midnight where I took a quick look at the parameter space. I took a liking to the northern target rather quickly, as it had stronger upper level flow, great moisture for that area, and great low level instability. Boundaries were definitely going to take shape in both targets, but their positions wouldn’t be fully known until well into the following morning. What concerned me about the southern target initially were the PWAT (precipitable water) values. What I had seen before with high PWATs is extremely wet RFDs that obscured tornadoes, especially when there wasn’t super strong flow aloft to vent the precipitation away from the updraft base. After having several days earlier in the trip (and in previous years) where I never saw tornadoes thanks to really wet RFDs, I wanted to avoid that as much as possible.
While chasing New Mexico the previous day, to my north in Colorado, a nice photogenic rope tornado occurred. Peaking at the environment while chasing, I saw the classic ‘cheat code’ bullseye overlap of 0-3 km CAPE and Surface Vorticity. As I woke up in Amarillo this morning (the 5th of June, 2025), I got some coffee and breakfast and completed a forecast. I dove into observations and models and began to confirm in my head that I liked the northern play. A couple of boundaries were established up in SE Colorado with great moisture already in place up that way. To further confirm that it was the play to be made, I saw the ‘cheat code’ bullseye again on the Mesoanalysis tool. Then finally, was the 14Z Nadocast run… just verifying everything in my head that made me OH SO CONFIDENT in my forecast.
I had made up my mind, north was the play.
To my south as I packed the car, the southern outflow boundary from the overnight MCS had finally stalled, setting up a rapidly improving environment per the Midland 12Z balloon sounding. Even so, my mind was made up at this point. I had already convinced myself north was the play so I wrote it off. Not long after, the Storm Prediction Center, an agency with some of the best meteorologists in the world, upped their risk percentage for the Texas Target. Even then, I kept going north as I was still in a mindset of, “I’ll never see those tornadoes, the RFDs will be too wet.”
The first warning sign that things were going wrong was some morning storms north of Amarillo. Looking back at it now, I should have turned around right then and there. This ‘crapvection’ was eating into the warm sector for the later day's storms. CAMs (Convective-Allowing Model) had not had these storms occurring when I made my forecast. But yet, I didn’t pay much attention to them as I continued north. Anywho… the rest of the details aren’t really that important as that really should’ve been the sign for us to turn around. We saw two tornadoes today, which is cool, but very forgettable ones when you have what happened in the southern target.
Every storm chaser busts forecasts. Nobody ever hits 100%. Even so, this one was a major punch in the gut for multiple reasons.
Firstly, I’m making these decisions not only for myself, but also my brother. Earlier this season, I had a number of great tornado encounters. Now was the time to give him some really good tornadoes as well. I can handle making bad decisions for myself… but when other people are involved it is a much more difficult pill to swallow. Another aspect is that I’m making a YouTube production from our adventures in the Plains. Not only do you need an engaging narrative for a YouTube production, but also a really strong premise. In the tornado space, there’s no stronger premise than incredible tornado encounters. Something that I have to keep in mind is that June First is my livelihood now. While story-wise, there is something in fumbling the forecast and ending the production on a sad note, there is no doubt that it would’ve been much more successful with a fantastic epic final finale that the production can be marketed around (from an overall concept to thumbnail/title).
While I obviously don’t like missing great tornadoes, the fact that I failed my brother AND botched a production that I’ve sunk capital and opportunity cost has really dragged me into a new low that I haven’t had in some time.
To get back to the quote at the beginning of the blog; “Never make a decision when you are emotional.” I haven’t exactly had a great past couple of months. The stress of managing my own LLC has turned out to weigh so much more on my psyche than I originally had thought.
For 9 months now, I’ve been running June First on a full-time basis. It was something that had been in the works for years now as I had dreamed of making it my career. I’m now living said dream and it has been an incredible journey thus far. From getting to experience more significant weather in the flesh, to deep diving into video projects with my full focus has been everything. All the grinding to get it to a point where it could be possible was paying off. With these upsides though have been a number of drawbacks that some of which I foresaw, whereas others I did not. Unfortunately they are starting to weigh on me more and more heavily with time.
The first of which was the obvious one as I started doing this full time; the financial side of things are never consistent. Coming from a corporate 9-5 engineering job, I knew exactly what was coming in on a monthly basis. That made my personal budgeting straightforward and easy to roadmap out financial goals. Now on the flipside, it's completely the opposite. Income varies greatly on a month-to-month basis. That’s completely understandable and can be maintainable. I feel as though I had been managing this well, even with all of the tracking of business expenses and allocating for taxes. While I’ve been making my bills, there’s definitely been a growing anxiety surrounding personal finance that makes me feel as though that I’m slipping behind rather than getting ahead. I’ve worked hard to get June First to a point where it is providing a living that would allow the company to grow while also providing a personal compensation that allows for a comfortable life. I don’t want to be ‘rich’ (for lack of a better term), but I also have goals of owning a house one day and raising a family, etc. Currently, I’m at a point of maintenance (despite recently having my first month that exceeded my compensation in my 9-5 job) rather than building towards my personal goals. It could be a matter of just needing to grind things out a little longer, changing up some tactics, or even reaching out for some other video sponsorship opportunities, but the fluidity of finances in a one-member owner/operator LLC has been a source of anxiety in my personal life much more than I could’ve anticipated. Other things in a similar vein (like sourcing my own health insurance and paying quarterly taxes) have also really been an additional source of anxiety. God forbid if I were to screw anything up with those on my own and find myself in an unnecessary world of hurt just for trying to do what I love for a living. This may be a very First World problem to have, but that doesn’t mean the anxiety doesn’t still exist.
The other downside that I’ve run into while doing this full-time is the isolation. My old engineering job required collaboration, so meetings and working with others was constant. Now, if I’m not recording a narration, I’ll go complete work days without saying a word. I’ve lived in Greater NYC for a while now and there is no shortage of people here. Frankly, the noise pollution gets to me sometimes. Even if I go out for a walk or bring my laptop to a coffee shop, there isn’t really that collaborative aspect to my work. I love having the creative freedom to see a project through without any corrective notes or outside opinions, but there is still something I really miss about working in a collaborative environment.
To zoom out a bit, I’ve also further begun to realize how much of this may be consuming too much of my life. I love being a part of the weathersphere, but it's a field that demands constant attention that can really impact other aspects of your life.
I have big aspirations for June First, which may be a call back to another blog where I talked about my issue of setting my bar too high too quickly, but I have projects and ideas in mind that are beyond my current capabilities both financially and commitment-wise. There is a pressure to upload to YouTube consistently (at minimum once a month, I’d say) that I’ve shied away from taking on much larger projects as it would definitely result in a loss of income and momentum of company growth for a result that may not be warranted purely from a business perspective.
All of this is to say that this chase trip was supposed to be a great way to get out and do what I love; experience the best storms on Earth. But now having flopped so catastrophically on this last chase, it has seemingly killed my mental momentum to get reinvigorated with my June First work. I love creating and breaking down the science of the sky, but these additional pressures of being self-employed may in fact be killing my love for what I started. This could just be the emotions of today’s failure, but maybe it's the catalyst to take a really hard look in the mirror and truly figure out what is really the best thing I need to do for me.
For years, doing June First full time was the dream and what I worked so damn hard to get to… but is it really worth this extreme stress it's seemingly putting me in?
Some serious reflection is in order for me.
Cheers,
Ethan