5/22/02

What a day.  It's great to get back to chasing after so long of a "rest".
We didn't vary too much from our earlier call of Concordia, KS, and
arrived there early in the afternoon.  We really didn't expect anything
much to happen until later in the day, after 6pm, so we started to unwind
with a bit of Frisbee playing.  Playing Frisbee in 40 kt winds takes on an
entire new dynamic, and we got a pretty good work out.  

Just as we tired of retrieving the Frisbee from the next county, and
started thinking about lunch, we got a call from Chris Howell, now in
Michigan.  Chris told us, in no uncertain terms, to GIT GOING NOW into
southern Nebraska.  Storms were initiating just at the KS border and
moving NE into the area just NW of us.  Chris had targeted the
southernmost cell of the existing line of cells moving into Nebraska for
us, and it was extremely difficult to stay on target with all the
convection exploding around us.  However, experience has taught us to a)
stay keyed on what you start out for, unless there is overwhelming
evidence that you shouldn't  b) If you can't get your own data, rely to
someone that CAN.  c) Listen to Chris.

We got to a cross road just about 15 minutes after a tornado had been
reported in the storm we had targeted (unconfirmed), and though it was one
of the most dynamic storms we have seen, and tried like hell to drop a
tube, we didn't see it.  There was a lot of low-level stuff going on, lots
of eye candy. There were lots of things happening that would have easily
been mistaken for a tornado as well (scud, downdrafts, etc.)  
The storm did have mild rotation and a pronounced wall cloud, and a HELL
of a lot of rain and hail.  Just as we were getting in to the beauty of
the moment, one of the chase tour convoys pulled in, parking one of their
vans directly in front of where we were shooting and where the spotters we
had met were trying to look.  They headed east to follow that particular
cell, which we determined to be "spent", while we headed south to
intercept new cells forming along the front.  

The storms of Wednesday night got us all energized and keyed up again, and
we.re looking at the KS/OK border for Thursday.  

Nancy, Brian, Josh, Lisa, and Moose
www.mcwar.org