In late winter and early spring, just before the start of storm season, storm chasers suffer from SDS – Storm/Supercell Deprivation Syndrome. This is a serious psychological condition, caused by a long abstinence from storm chasing, lasting from last autumn. SDS may manifest itself in a number of ways. Typical symptoms include: somewhat neurotic multiple-checking of various models, particularly at 240+ hrs, enhanced irritability, heightened activity on social media, particularly in chaser groups and discussing long past setups and chases, again. Universally, watching Youtube videos and posting photos of storms from past seasons on social media is no longer an effective treatment.
Fortunately, this condition is reversed in the first two weeks or so of chasing. As the chaser is lifted from what has commonly been called a bottomless pit of despair, the upswing may be exceedingly strong. We have prepared a short dictionary, which may prove useful in interpreting early season storm chaser reports:
| What chasers say | What chasers mean / see |
| rapidly rotating | I think it’s rotating. Maybe the photos will show it. |
| rapidly developing | These cloud have been looking the same for the past half hour. |
| impressive setup | Marginal instability, some shear. |
| possible supercell | Pulse cell, multicell, any cell. |
| likely supercell | Multicell, supercell, fat pulse cell. |
| huge | There is something there. |
| It’s a short drive | It’s 1000 km one way, but I’m desperate. |
| Had some structure | Rain-free base. |
| There’s a good chance | 1 out of 10 models shows it. |
| It’s iffy | Guaranteed bust, but I’m going anyway. |
| Moderate instability | 100-200 J/kg MLCAPE |
| Extreme instability, for April | 400-500 J/kg MLCAPE |
| I hope you get a good one | If I do too :P |
| Great catch by XY! | Aaaaa! Noooo! Die! Why didn’t I catch it?! |
After the first two weeks of storm season a storm chaser typically finds inner balance, rendering the above dictionary (mostly) useless.
