Well… it’s time to go back to our day jobs.

We travelled around 4,000 miles and bought about $700 worth of Gasoline.

Was it worth it? Would we do it again? Absolutely!

Even though the weather and our luck made this one of the least eventful of the times Avi and I have done this, we still did get some adrenaline-filled days and saw some pretty crazy weather that you don’t see very often.

There is also something incredibly unique to a vacation where there is no plan on where you are going to go, and what you are going to do. Most people take their vacation time to sit on a beach somewhere, go to a cabin, or even just lounge around the house. We got to see parts of America that just are not on the tour. I love that. It is really cool to just cruise the plains for a week, even if you aren’t looking for troublesome weather. I highly recommend it if you have the opportunity to just drive somewhere random. It’s fun!

What really made this chase trip different from the others I have been on was the lack of overall days to chase. We sat under sunny skies for most of the week and really only had 3 days out of the 8 to even attempt to track storms. In chases past, we had active weather on almost all days.

Another cool thing was that this was the first year that I have had true internet from the car with my Sprint card. This allowed us to do the dash camera which was a really cool way for someone to see what a “Virtual Chase” could be like. We will certainly have that again when Avi and I go on our next adventure.

So now I’m back in Wisconsin, and Avi is back in Oregon. I am sunburned, and have a lovely 2-week beard. It was a fun time and I’m glad that we could share it with all of you folks this year.

The nice thing about living in Wisconsin is that as you get into late May and into June and July, the tornado zone moves north. So I am certain that I will be out for a quick day trip if there are tornadoes in the forecast on a weekend.

Thanks again for sharing in the adventures!

Andy and Avi

A half-hour out of St. Louis we had an unexpected automotive crisis forcing us to make a detour through Litchfield, IL looking for a special on tires.

Andy was especially excited to use the emergency reflective triangle.

Continue to watch our blog for a trip recap including, but not limited to, more photos, stories and gas mileage statics.

Yes… this is it folks. The world’s largest McDonald’s.

Near Vinita, OK on I-44 between Joplin, MO and Tulsa, OK this McDonald’s is over 29,000 sq. feet. A quick Google search reveals that there are actually multiple websites and heated debate as to who owns this prize. Orlando, Beijing, and Moscow have also laid claim to this record. You would think that McDonald’s would issue a press release to clear it up.

McDonald’s Press Release Page shows that they are too busy counting down to the 2008 Beijing Olympics, so they are probably going to name Beijing as the world’s largest.

I don’t know… this McDonald’s seems pretty freaking big to me. I got a number 2, and Avi got a number 3. We did not biggie size them.

As I said earlier, we started off the chase near Big Spring, TX. There were two distinct storms that were in the area. The first northern storm started out much stronger than the 2nd, but eventually merged with the southern storm. When your chasing you generally try to stay ahead of the storm to the southeast side. So we were right where we wanted to be for the first one, but had to play some catch up once the storms merged to get ahead of the southern one. Since the storm was moving 35-40 miles per hour, it took us about an hour and a half to get to the right part of the southern one (as noted on the map).

Most of the video that we posted was from the northern storm, because when we caught up to the southern one it was already 8 PM and starting to get dark.

I marked some spots on the map where we saw interesting weather in blue.

“Mr Rice, this is Marla from the Wells Fargo Fraud Prevention Hotline, we have noticed some very weird transactions on your credit card.”

“Did you buy gas in St. Louis?” (Yes)

“Did you stay at a hotel in Texarkana?” (Yes)

“Did you buy gas in Waurika, OK?” (Yes)

“Did you buy gas in Roscoe, TX?” (Yes)

I guess it does look very suspicious. I look like a confused criminal, who is on the run, but can’t quite decide whether he wants to go to Mexico or not.

I will have to say: after the bust Tuesday that had a much bigger atmospheric setup, I was not very enthusiastic about the tornadic potential in West Texas, but I figured since we were out here to storm chase we might as well head over there. At least we might see some pretty thunderstorms.

We started the day yesterday in Gainesville, TX which is north of Dallas. It was about a 3:30 drive to get to Abilene, TX which is where my initial target was. By the time we got into to Abilene (about 2:30 PM) there were a number of supercell thunderstorms that had already fired up along the TX/NM border. We continued west down I-20 and caught up to the storm near the town of Big Spring, TX. The storm had multiple lowerings, wall clouds, gustnados, and maybe even a brief tornado. (We are reviewing the video.)

We stayed on the storm as best we could, and captured some great video in the process.

Avi put together a quick montage which is uploading to YouTube right now. I have to check out of our hotel so this post is quick. But more info will come about our fun in West Texas from the road. And the video, of course.

Andy

Avi and I have just left Abilene and are moving West on Interstate 20 towards Sweetwater. When we get to Sweetwater we will decide whether we want to go to the North towards Lubbock, are continue West to Big Springs.

The thunderstorms have already fired up on the dryline to our west so we will be playing a little bit of catch up but there is still a good 6 hours of daylight left.

More to come… webcam is up.

Andy

Today looks like not a lot of potential for tornadoes, but there is enough for us to head to Abilene, Texas to see what we can find.

A common misconception of chasing is that like in the movie Twister, tornadoes happen multiple times a day all over the place. There are days like that…. but maybe once every few years. On average, a chaser sees a tornado once every 10 days that they go out and chase. It’s really hard to get the proper setup, and be in the right place, at the right time.

Anyway… we got some nice pictures of some cumulus clouds, and I captured a little video of a nice cloud base on a stronger storm that I will post tomorrow.

Also a quick note, the live webcam isn’t always up and running when we are on the road. This is because we have to have internet connection from my Sprint Mobile Broadband card to broadcast the webcam. This means that sometimes when we are on dirt roads, we don’t have internet access, thus no webcam.

Another question I have received is:
What does your laptop screen look like in the heat of the chase?

I have a lot of different programs running at once including:

• My Sprint Mobile Broadband Connection to connect to the internet anywhere I have cell coverage
• The software for the webcam
• The software to connect to the Ustream to stream the webcam
• GPS Software
• The SpotterNetwork Client so that other chasers can see where I am
• Photoshop — so I can draw funny pictures for the blog
• GRLEVEL2 — a radar software package
• Threat Net — an XM delivered radar feed (for places where I don’t have Sprint)
• The internet — some of the sites that I visit the most during the chase are:
  • Stormtrack.org, which is a forum for chasers.
  • The Severe Prediction Center Mesoscale Page, an hourly updating weather analysis page that shows me how the atmosphere is changing throughout the day.
  • The UCAR Java Surface Map, which lets me look at actual observations being recorded.

There are more…but that gives you the general idea.

Avi and I are now in Gainesville, TX spending the night. The forecast for the rest of the week doesn’t look great, so tomorrow might be our last shot. The plan right now is to move towards Abilene, TX in the morning.

Pictures from today will come sometime on our drive tomorrow. It’s bedtime now.

Andy