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