May 8-10 MESO Update


For once, we seem to have picked a time slot for our team chase where 
there is actually a nice shot at some severe weather... as a very dominant 
ridge has had an adverse affect on our chase activities the past two 
years.  But we're getting ahead of ourselves...

Most of us met in Kansas City on May 8.  The allure of severe 
thunderstorms in Iowa that day proved too much for Josh Jans, Allan 
Detrich, and Chris Howell to ignore, so they actually met up with us a 
day later, in central Iowa.  At any rate, it is great to be together 
after another long year.

Perhaps the most startling transformation was that of ECHO.  Master 
designers John Griswold and Jason Sebastian completely redid the 
interior, nicely accomodating the ThreatNet system and new computer.  The 
amount of work done and the aesthetic detail it was accomplished with is 
astounding.  We're all so very proud of it, and of them.

Monday, we played around with severe thunderstorms and then a squall line 
in southern Minnesota that offered us about 8 or 9 opportunities to test 
ECHO out in hail conditions... a safe test, as the hail rarely exceeded 
1".  Like kids on the first day of summer camp, we frolicked in the 
storms the entire day before finding lodging in what is perhaps one of 
the nicest little towns we've been in:  Blue Earth, MN.  The Super 8 
there was beyond great, and the people were stupendous.  We give it a 
MESO 5 vortex rating, and wish that we could have stayed longer.

We are sitting pretty for Tuesday, in Sioux Falls, SD, and things look 
promising Wednesday too a bit further south.  We've met several curious 
and interested passers-by who loved to talk to us about what we do and to 
take a tour of ECHO (and to befriend Radar, our black lab puppy mascot).

Word on ThreatNet:  Where has this been all our lives?!  It's great.  It 
combines GPS positioning/tracking with up-to-the-minute radar, lightning, 
and county warnings.  Though the street level mapware comes at an 
additional expense of $199/county...(that would be about $36,000 for the 
states of OK & KS alone), we recommend the service (without that 
software) strongly...but think we can work with Baron to make it a little 
more chaser-friendly.

We send our best wishes to members Matt Nielsen and Chris Rozoff this 
week; Matt is taking final exams at the end of his first year of grad 
school, and Chris is taking a big exam for his PhD program on Wednesday.  
Good luck guys!

Remember, there's a dark cloud behind every silver lining...

Cheers,
  Nancy Bose   
    Randy Denzer     
      Allan Detrich       
        John Griswold         
          Chris Howell           
            Josh Jans             
              Brian McNoldy               
                Jason Sebastian                 
	          Radar
www.mcwar.org