June 10, 2007 by T Love.

Saw some cool dust devils in SW Kansas. We also drove through Greensburg, KS.  Errrie man, errrie. Pictures and video just doesn’t do justice. According to a designated disaster radio station while driving through the town, it is 79% cleaned up.  But man, the only thing left of trees are mainly the trunks.

We arrived at our motel in Hershey, KS about 1am. It appears we are heading East to Eastern Nebraska if I remember correctly from earlier tonight. If we do chase tomorrow, we will not arrive back at COD till about 2am or so. We need to be loaded and ready by 930a Sunday. Lots of driving ahead as we will be - and I quote from the movie Smokey and the Bandit - “East bound and down”.

I’m off to bed as I want to salvage as much sleep as I can. Sorry for not uploading pictures. I’m having some blog issues with uploading pictures. If I have a few minutes Sunday morning, I will try and post a few.

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June 9, 2007 by T Love.

11am, we met downstairs for a debrief from Thursday. It mainly covered why yesterday really really really sucked big ass monkey balls. Otherwise, there was no storm activity to chase so today was a very relaxing down day.

1210p, we left the motel for Lunch at McKalisters.  Good sweet tea. We left McKalisters at 115p to head down the block to the Storm Prediction Center (SPC) on the OU campus. Our group picture was taken there. Very nice facility to say the least. We left SPC around 255p for our motel in Wichita, KS. On our way to the motel, we saw the Blue Angels practicing at Tinker Air Force Base. That was very cool.

We arived at the Cantebury motel about 6p, checked in and left immediately for old downtown Wichita. We ate at the Whiskey lounge? Very good food. I give it a rating of 5 stars.

We are back at the motel, relaxing, and enjoying a few drinks at the motel bar. It’s been about 4 nights since some of us had a drink.  haha.

Maybe tomorrow, I will upload a few pictures. Tomorrow looks like crap.  I’m going to have a beer.  This is T Love say good night and good news.

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June 9, 2007 by T Love.

Synopsis (again),

Left motel at 915a to head Southeast Nebraska - Northeast Kansas area. Tornadoes, if they formed, would be moving wayyyy too fast in Wisconsin area to chase.  We did analysis in the vans. Lunch was at Bubbas around 204p for about 30 minutes.  We then dropped south. New SPC updates came out, Tornado watches out for our area all day, and things were looking promising.

We drove and drove and drove to see nothing.  This huge ass outbreak that was expected never materialized. What a bust. There was some thunderstorms in NW IL, NW MO, and Southern KS I believe. We arrived at the comfort inn in Moore OK around 950p. Paul checked in but we all stayed in the vans because we were going to check out 2 thunderstorms about 50 miles south. We headed south and the storms were headed NE….nice.

The storms merged and there was some rotation. At one point, we were directly under the Meso. We saw some lowerings of the wall cloud and the inter-cloud (IC) lightning was phenomenal. The few CG’s that we saw were really close and freaking bright. I have some pictures and video of them.

2am, we arrived back at the motel.  We spent nearly 17 hours driving and logged 875 miles that day.

Anxiety and patience were rising for everyone throughout the day. Lack of sleep iover the previous 3 nights s believed to be the main culprit. Take an already tense situation and put that in a warm van and you have loss of control. Van 2’s back AC doesn’t work. It got ugly.

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June 8, 2007 by T Love.

I had a really nice entry and I lost it. I hit the backspace key to delete a few words and what happened was, the backspace button was making my browser go backwards. In a nutshell, I lost what I had typed for 20 minutes.

We have a meeting at 11a. It appears to be a slow day. We may visit SPC. If I have time this morning, I will re-write yesterdays synopsis.

Yesterday, we left the motel at 915p headed for SE, NE - NE KS. At 204p, we ate lunch at Bubba’s Barbque for about 30 minutes. 344p, headed South to Shanob area. Nothing was firing up. A few thunderstorms but they were really crap.

Tensions and frustration was very high in van 2 and tempers were released. I think all that hot air had an effect on the weather! haha.

We just toured the SPC. and we are leaving now south to wichita, KS area.

More on this later as I only have a few minutes to type.

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June 7, 2007 by T Love.

Internet and time to update has been lacking yesterday and today. Lack of sleep is beginning to affect many on the trip.  More on this top and developing story later in this post. Now back to you in the studio for an update from yesterdays storm in SW South Dakota.

We arrived in Valentine, NE for lunch around 200p. 245p we left Valentine heading north as this seems to be the right area. 350p, tornado watch for a storm west of us…we are going for it. 410 tornado warning on it. According to Al Pietrycha from the NWS was on that storm and seen a twister for about 30 minutes. Unfortunately, we were still 30 minutes out from it when the twister dissapated.

530p, we stopped for video and pictures. Great rotation less than a mile from us. It looked really really good. Shelf (RFD) was incredible. Small funnels (I believe) were visible at times. The 10 minutes of tripod video with a wide angle lens should be freaking awesome.  I may have not seen a twister, but this was definatley satisfying…for me at least.

We kinda left the storm around 745p.  Road network was really poor.  What I mean was that there are limited options to travel on. A few storm fired south of us which happen to be on our way to our motel in Grand Island, NE. We arrived around 1140p.  Lots of driving to get here and lots of time in the Vans for the 2nd day in the row.  This brings me around to the top story.

The last two nights, we have been getting in late to our motel and obviously getting to sleep late as well. Last night was another 130a night. Did you notice no mention of dinner last night? Yeah, our dinner was around midnight. Some of us ate, some of us stay at the motel, and some of us….well who knows.

Most of us have not drank alcohol for the last two nights. I prefer sleep over drinking lately. (I know, I know). However, 6 1/2 hours of sleep (if you were lucky) is taking its toll on most.  Decisions are being questioned, crankyness is becoming, sleeping or dosing off in the van is becoming more prevelant. I’d imagine its only going to get worse in the coming days as lots more driving is on the outlook.

We are leaving at 915a. I assume we are heading south.

RFD from last night. The meso is to the far right. About 5 minutes after this picture was taken, the RFD passed over kicking up sand and blasting us. Visibility was less than 50 feet.

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June 6, 2007 by T Love.

Hawaiian day was yesterday. The best men of the trip, Paul and T Love, were the only participants. If I have a moment this morning after the 915a meeting, I will upload a picture or two.

Due to limited connections and connectivity, I could not update last night. Yesterday was a bust. I was surprised that storms were as good as they were - which was still pathetic. We drove and chased in Northeast CO. I believe I heard paul over the radio mention that a mid level meso was detected on Level 3, but don’t take that to the bank. Paul called off the chase at 747p in which we then drove 2 hours to the motel in North Platte.

Van 1 did break down - kind of.  We were limited to about 57mph because of a hose. The drivers had this problem before on previous trips and corrected the problem in about 30 minutes once we were at the hotel. We arrived at the motel around 1045p. We had ordered pizzas to be delivered to the motel as this was our dinner.

Paul held a projector meeting/breifing at midnight which lasted a good 45 minutes. We went over the set up for Today, Wednesday, and for the rest of the chase trip. As of last night, the play appears to be North or South Central/eastern Nebraska, with a chance of South Dakota as well. Convective initiation is the key variable to this. Also playing a vital role is the cap, road network, and rivers. Paul was pretty excited about Wednesday saying violent tornadoes are possible and we should be scared. Wednesday is a risk/reward situation.  There is a chance that we can see great supercell and violent tornadoes, but we can also bust. 

The rest of the week appears to be eastern Kansas, Northern TExas, then maybe the panhandles? Time will tell. Off to huge ass buffet breakfast….and it’s complimentary!

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June 5, 2007 by T Love.

Analysis is done and we are loaded in the vans. I assume a briefing over the radio will soon follow.

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