Storm Chases WordPress Plugin

This site runs on StormChases, a WordPress plugin I built to log storm chases. This includes information such as the date, states chased, miles driven, hail/wind/tornado data as well as a GPS Track and any Spotter Network reports.

The plugin is open source, free to use on your own WordPress site, and available on GitHub.

View on GitHub
Download Latest Release

Grab a versioned copy from the Releases page above rather than cloning the repo directly, unless you specifically want the latest in-progress commit.

What it does

  • Guided chase-logging wizard — creating a new chase walks through the required basics (date, chase type, states, miles, chase partners) first, then optional weather details and a chase map upload, before landing on the full edit screen. Logging a backlog of several chases at once? “Add Another Chase” starts the next one immediately.
  • Chase logs as a custom post type, accessible at /chases/YYYYMMDD/ — states chased, partners, miles, largest hail, highest wind, and a bullet-point list of milestones.
  • Chase Type — Convective, Hurricane, Winter, or Other. Hurricane chases get repeatable Landfall entries (name, coordinates, time, wind speed, Saffir-Simpson category, pressure); Winter chases get repeatable Snowfall Reports (town, coordinates, time, depth); Convective chases can tag Storm Mode (LP/Classic/HP/Hybrid supercell, QLCS, multicell, etc.). Best Chase of the Season is tracked separately per type.
  • Chase Partner / Chasers Encountered profiles — tag a name as a real, reusable person (autocomplete, with an optional website and location) instead of just free text. Someone tagged as both a partner and an encountered chaser gets one combined “other chases” popup, not two.
  • Tornado entries with name, EF rating, start/end coordinates and times, and a photo — reorderable by drag or arrow keys, with a click-to-place map for coordinates instead of typing lat/lon by hand.
  • GPS track upload (KML, GPX, or NMEA) with a start → end scrubber — drag it manually or hit Play for automatic, speed-adjustable playback — automatic gap detection where signal was lost, outlier rejection for bad GPS fixes, and a historical NEXRAD radar overlay synced to wherever the scrubber is positioned.
  • Spotter Network report import via CSV, matched automatically to the right chase day.
  • Interactive maps — every tornado colored by EF rating, every spotter report colored by type (tornado, hail, wind, funnel cloud, wall cloud, damage) — on OpenStreetMap or Google Maps, with fullscreen and clickable detail popups. The tornado map can also overlay memorable storms, hurricanes, and logged hurricane landfalls alongside logged tornadoes.
  • Chase statistics — Overall totals (chase days, miles, longest chase, states, chase streaks, top chase partners) plus independently-toggleable Convective (tornadoes, EF rating and storm mode breakdowns, Busts/Blue Sky Busts/Kiss of Death days — each with a hover explainer), Hurricane, and Winter sections, for all time or any single year. An optional sortable “Biggest Chase Days” table too, and Settings-page control over what a brand-new Chase Stats block starts with.
  • Chase archive — browse past chases by year, or just the latest N, with optional tornado/hail/wind stat icons per entry, and hurricane chases labeled by storm name instead of just a date.

Blocks

As of version 2.0.0, everything below is a Gutenberg block — search for it by name in the block inserter. (Earlier versions used shortcodes; those have been retired now that every one of them has a block equivalent.)

  • Tornado Map — every tornado logged, colored by EF rating, plus optional memorable-storm/hurricane overlays, a legend, and reader-facing layer toggles.
  • Spotter Reports — every Spotter Network report, colored by type, as a map and a list.
  • Tornado List — a chronological list of every tornado, linked back to its chase.
  • Chase Stats — aggregated totals for all time or one year.
  • Chase Archive — a list of past chases, filterable by year and by count.
  • Current Location — embeds a live chaser-location tracker.

See it in action

Live data from this web site

All-Time Chase Statistics

  • Chase Days: 434
  • Miles Driven: 251,925
  • Number of States Chased: 25
  • Chase Days by State: Oklahoma: 206, Texas: 137, Kansas: 61, Michigan: 32, Nebraska: 31, Iowa: 22, Illinois: 20, Missouri: 18, Indiana: 15, South Dakota: 15, Colorado: 14, Arkansas: 11, New Mexico: 11, Mississippi: 9, Louisiana: 6, Minnesota: 6, North Dakota: 5, Tennessee: 4, Wisconsin: 4, Alabama: 3, Ohio: 3, Wyoming: 3, Florida: 2, Montana: 2, Alberta Canadian Flag: 1
  • Spotter Network Reports: 324
  • Average Miles per Chase Day: 580.5
  • Longest Chase: 3,162 miles (April 16, 2009)
  • Longest Chase Streak: 20 years (current)
  • Windshields Replaced: 9

Convective

  • Chase Days: 434
  • Tornado Days: 108
  • Tornadoes: 232
  • Photogenic Tornadoes: 81
  • Largest Hail Observed: 4.75 in.
  • Highest Wind Observed: 100 MPH
  • Tornado Day Percentage: 24.88% ⓘTornado Days divided by Convective Chase Days — the share of convective chase days that produced at least one witnessed tornado.
  • Tornadoes per Mile: 0.0009 ⓘTotal tornadoes witnessed divided by total miles driven — a rough measure of chasing efficiency. Higher means more tornadoes for the driving effort.
  • Average Miles per Tornado: 1,085.9 ⓘTotal miles driven divided by total tornadoes witnessed — the same ratio as Tornadoes per Mile, just flipped into "miles per tornado" instead of "tornadoes per mile."
  • Busts: 146 ⓘA "Bust" day: storms were expected and something did fire, but the setup underperformed the forecast — a weaker, shorter-lived, or less organized event than anticipated.
  • Blue Sky Busts: 8 ⓘA "Blue Sky Bust" day: nothing fired at all — clear skies despite a forecast that called for storms.
  • Kiss of Death Days: 45 ⓘA "Kiss of Death" day: the SPC tornado outlook included a 15% hatched (significant) tornado probability within a Slight, Enhanced, or Moderate risk (Categorical Risk 1–3) — a favorable-looking setup that historically often underperforms relative to the risk level.
  • EF Rating Breakdown: EF-5: 1, EF-4: 9, EF-3: 23, EF-2: 29, EF-1: 45, EF-0: 75, Unrated: 28, EF-U: 22
  • Storm Modes: Supercell – LP: 1, Supercell – Classic: 1, Supercell – HP: 1, Multicell Cluster: 1

All Tornadoes Map

EF-5EF-4EF-3EF-2EF-1EF-0UnratedMemorable StormHurricaneSnowfall Report

Get it for your own site

StormChases requires WordPress 6.1+ and PHP 7.4+. Grab the latest version from the Releases page on GitHub, upload the stormchases folder to /wp-content/plugins/ (or upload the ZIP directly through Plugins → Add New), then activate it and visit Storm Chases → Settings to choose a map provider and enable the fields you want. It’s released under the GPLv2 license — free to use, modify, and redistribute.

Changelog

Full release notes are in CHANGELOG.md on GitHub. Recent highlights:

  • 2.0.0 — A guided “Add New Storm Chase” wizard; Chase Type (Convective/Hurricane/Winter/Other) with hurricane landfalls, Winter snowfall reports, and Convective storm mode; Chase Partner/Chasers Encountered real people-profiles with website/location and a combined “other chases” popup; Chase Stats restructured into toggleable Overall/Convective/Hurricane/Winter sections with a new sortable “Biggest Chase Days” table and Settings-page control over new-block defaults; all shortcodes retired in favor of blocks.
  • 1.9.2 — Play/Pause and speed controls for GPS track playback, with automatic radar buffering.
  • 1.9.1 — Fixed three separate historical radar overlay position bugs.
  • 1.9.0 — Reorderable tornado entries, GPS outlier rejection, historical radar overlay, and the first Gutenberg blocks.

Found a bug or have a feature idea? Issues and pull requests are welcome on GitHub.