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5/12/00 New York, NY - 10:00 a.m. - My chase is starting out in the concrete caverns of New York City. I went there chasing a million dollar prize, and ended up with a lovely trip with my wife and a prize of a $20,000 trip for two, anywhere in the world, not a bad consolation prize. I just got my wife of to the airport, she said goodbye, and said "Don’t get too close", she knows we are going to push the envelope this year with O.Z., she seems more worried this year than years past. Nancy Bose told me over the computer last night that Chris Howell and Geoff Mackley were in Kansas City and were in the middle of a tornado outbreak. Well at least O.Z. and my truck saw some action. I am leaving NYC at 2:30 p.m. and will arrive in the calming Great Plains around 6:30 p.m. It will be great to see the group again. I packed the trooper with all of the necessary camera equipment before I left for NYC. The truck was picked up by Chris Howell yesterday morning and he made the trip to Kansas City solo. The only thing I can think that I forgot is my tripod, which is no big deal. For my still photography I either hand hold or use a monopod with my long lenses. I have a ton of stuff to load up here before I leave. I recently had a new cell phone shipped to me, and will program it on the ride out to Wichita. St. Louis, MO - 6:00 p.m. - Well what a day it has been, so much for calming. My flight from NYC to STL was moved from LaGuardia to JFK, because our plane was diverted to JFK because of bad weather, bad weather that did not materialize. The forecasters for the airports put a delay into effect and were so wrong. They bussed us to JFK and the flight took off 1 1/2 hours late. St. Louis and rushed to my gate to get there at 5:25, five minutes late, I was out of luck. I was bumped to a later flight and will arrive in Wichita at 9:36 p.m. Oh as for the cell phone I mentioned earlier, it was ripped off out of the pocket of my baggy shorts, vanished from thin air. I had to call and have the service disconnected, and hopefully will get another phone sent to me soon. So for now it hurry-up and wait in St. Louis. Wichita, KS - 11 p.m. - Finally arrived in Wichita after sitting in STL for 6 hours, when we finally left, there were 70 planes sitting on the runway. I was met at the airport by Nancy Bose, Brian McNoldy and Geoff Mackley. Bill Seigerwald got stranded in Chicago and Chris Howell was busy figuring where we should go tomorrow after picking up Steigerwald at the airport. So for now it is time to go to bed, night. - Allan Detrich 5/13/00 We stayed the night in Wichita and after waking, proceeded to charge every battery possible for the long day ahead. I shared a room with Geoff Mackley, and I think we had every outlet possible in our room in use the whole time. While packing, we were surprised to see Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reporter Bill Steigerwald emerge from the hotel. We were just on our way to pick him up at the airport. Our last bit of news about him was that he was to arrive this morning at the Wichita airport. Well, he decided to be a trooper and arrived in Wichita from Chicago last night at around 2 a.m. He had already been up and sent back a report to the paper about his travels, which were pretty much like mine. We then ran some errands around Wichita for much of the afternoon and then headed West towards Medicine Lodge, KS. where we will spend the night. We stopped in Cheney, KS for lunch-super, and had a long chat with local Pete McIver about tornadoes he had seen. One that was familiar to all was the Pampa , TX tornado. He also told us about the time when he had to throw a mattress over his head to help hide himself from another twister. From Cheney, KS we finished the trek to Medicine Lodge, KS, where our chase team spent almost a week here using the Copa motel as a base camp. Familiar sites such as the Indian Oven restaurant provided the necessary coffee to keep us going. Chris Howell and Brian McNoldy will spend most of the night making their predictions of where we will head tomorrow. Steigerwald and I spent several hours processing photos and writing accounts of the days travel. The weather was a bit cool today, and sunny, oh well, you cant win them all. Also I can’t forget to mention Christopher Merrill in Chicago, my web guru, who makes it possible for all of you to read this. Until tomorrow, night.
Thanks, 5/14/00 Well today was one of these days you don't really want to have as a storm chaser. Blue skies and warm temperatures were dominant over the area. We killed the day by driving to Dodge City, KS and had dinner. On the way we visited the worlds largest hand dug well in Greensburg, KS. The team took the $1.50 tour to get some exercise and also got to view a large 1000 pound meteorite for free, what a bargain! After visiting Dodge City, we drove back to Medicine Lodge. On the way back Bill Steigerwald, Geoff Mackley and I took a detour and drove out into a cow pasture and just took in the the vast view of the big sky. we were witness to a beautiful cirrus cloud show, (see day three photos). We also were amazed by a large display of politically motivated art along RT 54. It left no democrat unturned, and was in full motion due to the high winds in the area today. The night was spent snacking on strawberries and mellon and staring at the computer, as Chris and Brian look at the forecasts for the next few days. Things are looking good, there is a slight risk of strong thunderstorms east of us for tomorrow. It may not be the motherload, but something is better than nothing.
Thanks, 5/15/00 The day was slow again, but the momentum is building in the atmosphere and the next three days are looking good. The weather systems are converging and Wednesday is looking like an incredible day. Today we prepared for the possible storms on Wednesday, by doing a practice run on the deployment of O.Z. We drove about six miles outside of Medicine Lodge, KS to a bluff area and planted O.Z. three times. The times ranged from 1:20, 1:00, to .45 seconds. The camera was rolling all the time. The wide angle lens captured all the action of us pounding in the six hardened steel stakes. With two people hammering in the stakes it went much faster than ever expected. Necessities like washing clothes, sleeping and crunching data was the order of the day. We also were visited by another storm chase group, Cloud Nine Tours. Maps and clipboards, and charts now litter the walls of our hotel rooms, housekeeping and hotel management look at us out of the corner of their eyes. Locals greet us with "You some of those storm chasers like in Twister?" It has now just become easier to say YES, instead of going into the full explanation that storm chasing is NOT like in the movie Twister. Electrical and computer cords lie all over the rooms like snakes, and battery chargers dim the light in the rest of the town of Medicine Lodge. The movie Airplane is the choice of the night by all. Chris Howell continues to crunch raw data at the computer and he lets out the occasional gutteral laugh. Between laughs and downloads on the computer, he spits his chaw into an empty Dr. Pepper bottle. "Roger, Roger, what is our vector Victor?" As the drink cooler sitting on the dash of our rented van says, "You don't need to be lucky if you are good." But that is the way we feel right now, good and lucky!!! 5/16/00 Well, today was a big fizzle. We had some hoped that today might yield a storm or two, but due to heavy cloud cover, the surface heating needed to trigger the storms, just did not happen. We took a road trip to Hays and Russell, Kansas in hopes of finding late afternoon storms, but did not. Chris Howell was sick most of the day, but was a trooper and took the ride with us. We saw some good clouds with some updraft and slight circulation on the way home, but evening was upon us and darkness was setting in quickly. So for now it is back to the computers and to the business of plotting tomorrow's course. Tomorrow is another day!! Allan Detrich 5/17/00 And what a difference a day makes. Our morning started out by leaving Medicine Lodge, KS at around nine in the morning. Our destination - Nebraska. Our convoy made good progress, we were joined by Bill Tabor, a chaser and friend from Texas. His cell phone, laptop connection proved vital for the days chase. We got to Kearney, Nebraska in the early afternoon, things were blowing up all around us. As we left Kearney and headed west on Interstate 80 towards North Platt. Shortly after leaving Kearney, we witnessed a dust storm, that reminded me of photos of the dust bowl days on the North side of the highway. Further down the road, we had strong storms popping up on both sides of the highway. To our south we had a large funnel cloud which was spawning rope tornadoes and was an impressive site, at times the L-shaped cloud looked like the front of a locomotive. To our north, we had a large dark wall cloud. At about the time we were enjoying the sites, we got into a hail shaft, with hail the size of quarters. We pulled over to a roadside rest area to ride out the bombardment. After the hail passed, we continued towards North Platt. We had a spectacular dark wall cloud to the South, this was a continuation of the funnel cloud storm we saw earlier to our south. We headed north out of North Platt and was followed by an immense roll cloud that went from horizon to horizon. Geoff, Bill Steigerwald and I fell behind the rest of the group, and decided to photograph the front. We had large clouds trying to form tornadoes, although none touched the ground. The temperature dropped about thirty degrees in a very short time. We were surrounded on all sides by huge storms. The storms formed one large tornado, which we missed by a few miles, near the town of Maxwell, Nebraska. We sent the night in the area, finally eating dinner around 10:30 at night. I spent till 2:30 in the morning toning my photos from the day. Which can be seen in the day six files. I was so tired when I was done, that I felt like I was hit by a truck. Night all..... 5/18/00 Meet Sue Taylor of Maxwell, Nebraska, and you will have met a pillar of strength and resiliency. Around 5 p.m. Wednesday Sue Taylor had a close encounter with a tornado and came out a winner. A winner because her and her daughter escaped with their lives, despite loosing most of their possessions, cars and several family pets. The twister approached the Taylor home silently but left with a roar as it turned the house, cars and surrounding trees into a twisted mess of rubble. Taylors new Isuzu trooper was sitting on top of what used to be on the corner of her home. Her basement was filled with the first floor of her home. “If we would have gone into the basement, we would not be here today,“ she told workers helping in the cleanup. “We hid in the doorway near the front of the house, the wall collapsed on top of us, which sheltered us from the flying debris.” Taylor has several gashes on her arm and face, her daughter had her leg cut badly also. She had survived that is all that mattered to her, and her family was safe. Taylor had no insurance on her belongings, but has lots of support from the locals or Maxwell. She plans to auction off anything that is salvageable from her home, and start over from scratch. Members of M.E.S.O. donated a total of $290 dollars to Taylor, and will be taking donations from the public to help Taylor. You too can send donations to the below address and mention that they are to help out Sue Taylor in Brady, NE. Please note that you saw this on my site, or that you heard of Sue Taylor via M.E.S.O.
Deb Bertand One thing for sure is the that tragedies like this tornado, amazingly brings out the best in people, the human spirit is a wonderful thing. We drove to Hays, KS in silence and spent the night. We are driving to Wichita, KS tomorrow morning to meet the rest of the M.E.S.O. crew for our Beta chase, and who knows where Mother Nature will lead us from there, or who she will want us to meet, so that she might change all our lives. Allan Detrich 5/19/00 Today was a down day for us, no storms, and people on the chase team were coming and going. Bill Steigerwald left from Wichita at about thesame time several others were coming in. We were joined by Eric, a video photojournalist from France, who will be doing a documentary on M.E.S.O. Everyone made it in, Steve, Doug, Jill, John and Rose, except for Carol, who blew us off for the second year in a row. She will never know what good time she has missed, and friendships formed. Until tomorrow.... Allan Detrich 5/20/00 Well, this day was not to be too much as far as weather goes. We left Wichita, KS and decided to head west towards Wakita, OK. This has been a stop for the M.E.S.O. chase team all three years we have been on the road. The skies were bright blue and just a few clouds were visible in the distance. We stopped in a small town for lunch. The sign was tempting, "All the Calf Fries you can eat", looked harmless enough, and we were all starving. The waitress put all of us in a back room by ourselves. The first question asked of the waitress was "What are Calf Fries?" "Bull Balls" she replied bluntly. Well needless to say the reaction from the group was one of disgust, laughter. We have seen many head of cattle out here in the plains, and I guess the has to be twice as many Calf Fries as cattle, but none were eaten by our group, except for Nancy Bose. Nancy "had the balls" to taste the delicacies. "They taste like hot dogs." We figured chicken, but everything can’t taste like chicken. We stopped in another small town for fuel and checked radar because we saw some cells developing out North East. We decided to head for the storms, and were treated to an incredible light show, and a sunset through rain shafts. The view was from a cow pasture just North of the Kansas border. This storm was not supposed to be. It seemed as though the storm was just meant for us, and the cows. Not another sole was in sight, just us, the cows and Mother Nature. 5/21/00 Today we traveled from Woodward, OK, to Norman, OK, to position ourselves close to where people think things will happen, and to also visit the National Severe Storms Lab. We were given a brief tour by lead predictor, John Hales. After dinner we went see a movie called appropriately enough Road Trip. It was a riot. When we exited the theater, there was a giant wall of clouds moving in from the North West. These storms are now giving us a lightening show and some rain as I write this. we can only hope for more of the same tomorrow. Allan Detrich 5/22/00 The day started out slow but ended up like a snowball gaining speed rolling down a large hill. We were hit by a heat wave today, the temperature reached 103 and broke through a critical level, a level that would cause storms to break out somewhere in the area. Chris, Brian and Bill worked the computers all morning and by 1:00 had pinpointed a location out East that was bound to have storms. The chase team got loaded up and headed East on Rout 40 towards Arkansas. In the distance we saw some cumulus clouds on the horizon. The white clouds were boiling. We stopped out about 70 miles from Oklahoma City because of radio problems and to check radar. We located some great storms and headed for them at full speed, but it seemed the faster we went, the farther the storms got from us. We stopped again on Route 9, about 20 miles from Arkansas, and were about to give up, when a cell broke through the top of its self and exploded into the atmosphere. We decided to go for it. We were gaining on this cell and it was growing to immense proportions. The faster we drove, the higher this cell, now a Low Precipitation Supercell got. We got into Arkansas and tracked the west side of the storm for many miles and finally stopped to enjoy this 50,000 foot high monster on a county road in Brownsville, AR. The chase of this cell lasted from 7:16 p.m. till 8:27 p.m. After watching the whole North edge of this Supercell rotate and spawn off small funnel clouds, the monster seemed to be out of gas and started to dissipate. We followed it into Magazine, AR, and once darkness had set in, we gassed up the fleet and headed back to base camp in Norman, OK. The chase was 512 miles long and lasted exactly 12 hours. Allan Detrich 5/23/00 I won’t kid you folks, today was a slow day. Most everybody was recovering from yesterdays chase and took it really easy. We rented some movies and had a few laughs and drooled as we watched Twister for the 50th time. Looks like we will be on the move tomorrow to the North and have a better chance of weather than we did today. Allan Detrich
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