May 16-17, 2003 Greetings one and all from Tornado Alley. Initial MESO team convergence occurred this year in Kansas City, MO. Nancy flew out of New York to meet Jason and Grizz in Cincinnati. The three of them rode to Indy where they met up with Allan and Lisa, who had rented a Chevy Trailblazer. The five proceeded to Kansas City where they met up with Brian, Chris, and finally at about 1am, Josh pulled in. A word on ECHO. We once again simply have to thank those who helped this dream become a reality. However, the end result surprised and exceeded the team's wildest expectations. John Griswold, with the help of Jason Sebastian, have pulled off a major miracle with ECHO. Fully operational and simply beautiful, ECHO is ingeniously designed to have state of the art tracking and forecasting abilities, equipped with a high level of emergency medical supplies an other equipment for assistance in disaster relief efforts. Top all that off with an entertainment center (stereo, TV, VCR, and DVD player with two screens). We have an intercom from the cab to the back, two computers with mobile connectivity to the Internet and GPS humming from the cab and the Capricorn 2000 weather station gathering data from the lab. The guys did a wonderful job of the outward appearance as well. A picture of the finished product is available at www.mcwar.org in the GALLERY under ECHO. As is so often the case when the "gang" gets together, the first evening (Friday) was filled with a lot of laughter. We managed to forget in an instant the 5,000+ emails each of us received reminding us that we had just missed one of the largest severe weather outbreaks ever to occur in May. We had a riotous dinner at the Smoke Box in Kansas City, just outside of the airport. We all recommend this spot TREMENDOUSLY, as the barbecue there is the finest we've seen. At any rate, in light of no huge indicators of imminent severe weather, we decided to head WNW into central Nebraska. We opted to get dinner and spend the night in Lexington. Dinner was at yet another amazing restaurant: Vet's Club Steakhouse. It's somewhat more formal than our usual fare, but we "behaved" and had some incredible Nebraska steaks and friendly conversation with our waitress. We expect to stay in the general area of the NE panhandle for severe weather on Sunday afternoon, then sort of surf the front back into eastern NE/KS on Monday. Cheers from MESO! www.mcwar.org