Last Day

Today started out with hope for a good chase day, but the early morning storms cleaned out the atmosphere. We waited for a bit and got a group picture. No storms...so we headed back down to Norman, OK. Tomorrow, Dad and I drive back home. What a trip this has been! I have had so much fun. I want to thank Charles, John, George, and Mike for getting us to some fantastically awesome storms!! Thanks to everyone for making this trip fun too!!

Bust....

Today was a marginal day. The cap was too strong and no storms worth chasing developed. We drove from Hays, KS to Independence, KS. Tomorrow looks like it may be a chase day on the drive back to Norman.

May 29....does it again

May 29, 2004 was a fantastic day for Tour 2......May 29, 2008 was great!!!!! We targeted a storm near Kearney, NE. Mike Theiss said he saw a power flash. We pulled over and watched. John said there was a wedge in there, he could see the right edge. With that we broke the record for most tornado chases in one tour. That record was set in 2004 by non- other than tour 2!! Soon the storm began to gust out, so we turned and went south into Kansas. We targeted the "Tail-end Charlie" storm. We drove through Glen Elder, KS to get a better look at the storm. We watched a tornado as it would go up and reform. We drove back though Glen Elder as it became too dark to see. We saw damage and realized the tornado went through the town of Glen Elder. The town had tree and powerline damage. We had to turn around beacuse of power lines across the road. Today all in all was a great day, with the exception of the town getting hit.

Drive Day

Today was a drive day to get in place for tomorrow. We started the day in Norman, OK and drove about 500 miles to Norfolk, NE.

May 27 Bust

We drove from Wichita, KS to Elmer, OK. We saw some nice storm structure and blue- green hailcore. The storm became out flow dominant and soon died. We drove to Lawton, OK and most of our vehicle ate at Branding Iron BBQ, which had really good food, which caused me to overeat. Tomorrow looks like a drive day back to Nebraska.

Picture Update

This is a picture of a tornado we saw near the town of Pratt, KS on May 26.

Tied Record....

We had another great day on May 26. We saw more tornadoes (we lost count of how many we have seen on this trip)! Mike, the driver of one of the vans (not the one I was in) got stuck in the mud and we had to wait out the hail before we (the vehicle I was in) could pull him out of the mud. We then drove towards a town to find shelter from the hail. We found a building with an overhang that was large enough for all three vehicles to fit under. We listened as the hail pounded the metal roof. What a sound!! We nicknamed this event "The Collision at Collison". After the hail, we continued down the road towards Wichita, KS where we saw some great storm structure and a least one tornado.
We hve now tied the record for Coud 9 Tours of 4 chase days leading to tornadoes. The record was set in in 2004 by Tour 2 (I was on that tour as well). We still have Tuesday - Saturday and we just need one more tornado chase to break it. Stay tuned to see if the record gets broken......

Another Day Another Tornado

We thought we would be chasing in Iowa, but the storms were in KS. We had to drive back form Omaha, NE to Hays, KS. It was worth it we saw another tornado near Bison, KS. The storm crossed the road and had a ground scraping wall cloud. Just after it crossed the road it dropped a small tornado. Later, the same storm dropped a landspout.

Bust

We drove from Hays, KS to Omaha, NE only to bust. The storm we were watching fell over and died.

Update

Here is a picture of the circulation we were in on May 22.

May 23

Incredible!! We saw one wedge tornado and got into some golfball to tennis ball sized hail (no broken glass). We also got near the rotation of a tornad as it crossed the interstate. We saw semitrucks turned over; one was turned over on the right side and a little further down 2 were turned over on the left side (true sign of rotation). That was near the town of Ellis, KS. We stayed in Hays again.

May 22, 2008

WOW!!!! What an incredible day!!!!!! We saw 5-7 tornadoes! We were in the inflow band of a tornado as it crossed the road a couple hundred feet in front of us!! One of the drivers (Mike Theiss), who lives in FL and chases hurricanes guessed that the wind speed was about a 100 mph similar to category 2 hurricane winds. We saw a nice tornado near Hoxie, KS. We drove from Ogallala, NE to Hays, KS and earned our steak dinner.

Tumbleweeds and Dust

The storms today were too far for us to get to and still be in place for tomorrow. We drove east and are now in Ogallala, NE. We drove through some amazingly, high wind and saw a dust storm and about a million tumbleweeds being blown across the road!

Long Drive

Yesterday, we drove over 500 miles! We drove from Dodge City, KS to Cheyenne, WY. It was beautiful looking at a sunset reflecting on a dying thundershower to our right and the Rocky Mountains on the horizon to our left. The next few days look pretty good for chasing and we need a chase day! I will post pictures later.

Dodge City

We drove from Amarillo, TX stopping briefly at Cadillac Ranch then headed north to KS. We stopped in Greensburg, KS to look at the World’s Largest Hand Dug Well and to see how the rebuilding process is coming. Greensburg was in the path of a tornado in early May, 2007 and 95% of the town was destroyed. I was amazed at how much rebuilding has taken place. We stopped for the night in Dodge City, KS and were treated to a dying thunderstorm that produced some nice lightning.

Big Texan

Sunday, we drove from Norman, OK to Amarillo, TX. We ate at the Big Texan. The Big Texan is known for their 72oz steak. Cristy from Australia tried to eat the 72oz, but was only able to eat about 37oz. Today, it looks like we will be going to Cadillac Ranch. Stay tuned for pictures later.

Drive Down....

Welcome to the first post from Cloud9 Tours. Today, we drove from home to Norman, OK. We met forsupper and met up with friends from past years and met some new people. Tour 2 has 20 people on it! Stay tuned...things should get interesting!

Getting ready for Tour 2

Well...I am now under 24 hours until I leave for storm chasing on Tour 2 of Cloud 9 Tours. There is talk of a "wedgefest" in the plains next week.....I am not getting my hopes up because I know how things can change quickly with the forecasts. We will just have to see what happens.
I know this for sure...I am really excited about going again this year!

Graduation

I graduated on May 10, 2008 at 2pm. It was the 135th graduation and we were the largest graduating class ever at the university!

R.I.P. Autumn

Autumn is gone now. She is waiting for us at the rainbow bridge (thanks, Thad). She is no longer suffering and is in a better place. We will miss her. She was a great dog and we have many memories to remember her. Good- bye for now Autumn. I love you.

Autumn, my dog

This is Autumn. We got her as a puppy and have had her for 18 years.