Day 11:

May 21, 2008 -- We left Sterling, CO that morning, not expecting much. We decided if we ran into something on our way east, then great, if not, there would be another day. So we watched Cumulus Fields form, and watched them rise. We stopped at Wendy's for some lunch, and went into the gift shop, where they had a ton of fun stuff! I got Colorado post cards...for me :)...and the "Taste of the Rockies" for Kevin's little brother. They're little candies that look like rocks. But not rock candy. We left there and headed out again, we found something that was promising. As we headed to it, we saw another storm that was promising, so we made sure if the first storm fizzled out, we could always turn back and go to the other one. And that is what we ended up doing. We turned around after the other storm lost it's potential, and headed west again. Once we did that, another storm appeared to our east, where we had just been. We kept our eye out for that one as we chased our 2nd storm. We stopped to reevaluate the situation, and concluded our 2nd storm was the best choice, so we headed straight to it. We got to a clearing on a dirt road and pulled over to watch. We were there for a long time as we watched a beautiful lightning show, and wall clouds drop, and rain off in the distance. There was even some that evaporated before it hit the ground! It never produced anything, but it was a fantastic sight, and we were in the most perfect place to see it. I got some great lightning shots too! Some guys that worked near by came over and talked to Dave and others and told him about when there were six tornadoes around the area. Wow! I think he might have shown them video too, I didn't go over, so I'm not sure. I was too focused on getting a great lightning shot! :) After a while, we decided to move on to our destination of WaKenney, KS. We stopped to eat at an Arby's. :) No one else seemed to care where they ate, so I just threw that out there, and it worked! We got to the hotel, and we pretty much passed out we were so tired.

Day 12:

May 22, 2008 -- We met after breakfast to discuss our options as to where exactly would be a good place. Initiation wasn't suppose to be until later, so we could take our time getting to where we needed to go. We also wouldn't have to go too far, since we were in the middle of the tornado risk area. As we drove down the road, we were noting that the cumulus clouds were rising a lot quicker than the initiation time seemed to be. So we were in for an early day of chasing...which meant a lot longer time for chasing. We found our first storm. It was beyond Amy, KS some. I forget exactly where, but around there. It looked very promising. Behind it was another storm, it looked even more promising, so we moved back to go see that one. That storm had a big rotation wall cloud, that kept sucking up cloud tags below it. We were waiting and hoping for it to drop a tornado right there in front of us, but the system kept cycling, and it didn't appear to want to drop a tornado. The other storm we saw a funnel, and later someone reported a tornado. So that was our first tornado of the day! After that storm, we moved in position for another storm, and that one dropped a tornado too! We got some shots of it before it disappeared, and it wasn't a typical tornado. The condensation funnel didn't reach the ground, but there was debris flying around on the ground, so the winds had made it to the ground. TWO tornadoes! I was barely expecting to see ONE! From there everything kind of gets in a blur of what happened after that. We went to more storms, and tornadoes were dropping left and right, and we ended up seeing 7 total from all those storms. It looked like things were settling down, so we figured we would turn around and head back to WaKenney, KS to stay the night again. When we turned around there was a couple people there and they came over to talk to us. They were a group of British filmmakers, I guess you could call them, doing a story on groups who go out and chase. They had been following a few people that day, and saw 3 tornadoes, and he was very impressed. When we told him we had seen seven, he was like WOW! He thought three was a lot, and we were like, it is! So they interviewed us and said they worked for the Virgin channel, but I'm not sure if anywhere around here gets it, but that was still very cool! We headed down the road when they noticed another cell headed right for WaKenney, so we decided to go see that one too. By this time it was getting darker, and it was getting a bit more dangerous to be out driving around dirt roads. But we went to see it anyway. We passed through WaKenney and went south to see the storm. We saw a funnel cloud, and turned down a small dirt road to get closer (eek!). The funnel touched the ground right in front of us! As soon as it touched, it sped off to the right. Then Dave gets on the radio and says we need to get out of there or we'll get hooked. So we tried to get out, but the other chasers their moved to we weren't able to go anywhere. We backed out and we started getting pounded. We finally got out of the road and back onto the interstate, but we were getting hit so hard we couldn't see much past the car. There was hail, wind, and rain pounding the car horizontally. I don't think I have ever been so scared in my life. The hail was golf ball sized and if it had been any bigger, it probably would have damaged the car. I'm still surprised the vans faired as well as they did. Sandy and Morgan in the middle of the van were holding on to each other, ducking down with their sweatshirts over their head and trying to talk to the other van who was further up the road. I'm not sure how the guys were in the back, but Kevin, the leader and driver, was praying next to me. I was curled up with my whole body shaking wondering if I needed to try and call people to say goodbye. I was so scared for my life. Soon...but really it seemed like years, the winds died down enough for us to try and catch up with the other van. It had turned to go east to get out of the hook. We found the road by following a car with a blinking light on it. Finally it started to die down, and my phone rang. It was my mom telling me dad had called and said there was a tornado by WaKenney, since she knew we were staying there again, I was like, I know it touched down right in front of us. It had to of been half a mile away. I told her about what we just went through, and I was laughing, but it was definitely nervous laughter...or hysterical. After we got down the road and to a place that hadn't even had rain all day, I started to calm down a bit. We got out to stretch our legs and watch the storm off in the distance. At first I did not want to get out of the car, but eventually I did. We were all pretty shaken up. I called my grandparents because they had called me after my mom called them and then I called Kevin to tell him about everything that happened. That was a crazy experience that I will probably not forget any time soon! After the fact, Dave told us that the part we were in was just the outskirts, and was the most non-severe part of the storm. It is really hard to believe anything much worse. When we got back to the hotel we had saw a van with the windows punched out, and we found out later that the chasers in that van had stopped chasing at that point, and had gotten something to eat. They were leaving the restaurant and ended up getting slammed with the storm and said the smallest thing that hit them was a stop sign. So they must have had worse than us, it is so hard to believe. The hotel's doors were blown open and some glass stuff inside was broken, and the gas station store across the street had their front doors blown out.

Today -- Might be the same as yesterday, but our dirt road options are less since they all got rained on yesterday and won't be very good to drive on in a van. We'll see what happens! We'll probably end up in east Kansas to get out of the way of any night time tornadoes that might come through the area. Hopefully my camera won't die today! It's all charged up and ready to go.

I haven't had a good connection to upload pictures just yet, but I hope I shall soon! The cable is knocked out here at the hotel, as well as the wireless. It also looks like the power went out as well, since all the clocks were blinking when we got in. Crazy!

~Taylor~

Other Blogs:
Roanoke Times
Storm Chase
Sandy's Blog

P.S. I forgot to mention that I saw the Tiv yesterday too! That was pretty cool.

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