Day 5
Belfield, North Dakota
Finally a good night’s sleep, helped by an adrenaline charged day yesterday and a late night. We did arrive at our motel until about 10pm, tired and hungry a healthy tip to the lady in the kitchen of the bar secured us Pizza and fries, which went down nicely with a couple of beers.
Having now been with Todd for five days you actually start to remember what he is telling you – he is an excellent teacher. One of the first things you look for in the morning when you wake up is cloud cover. Cloud cover is bad for storms and you have to get out from under it to stand any chance of seeing some action. Based on this we headed south.
After a few hours it was becoming clear that chances of seeing any storms today were low, however we persevered. Our route south had us sat in a side road just outside of Rapid City for just about an hour before it was decided today may just be a wash out. We drove east for another 10 minutes and came across an oasis, which was disguised as a gas station, sold beer as well as fuel and had a few high tables inside with a few bar games and even a crib board. After a beer and few jokes with the local cowboys, Todd informed us that our home for the night would be Wall, just an hour’s drive east.
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Storm Chasing
Day 4 – Storm Day!
Keystone, South Dakota
Today I learnt that waking up at 5,000 feet above sea level with a hangover isn’t the greatest feeling in the world. I headed off to breakfast in the hope that the fried food and coffee would settle my stomach and stop everything from spinning. It didn’t, which was unfortunate, as today was my turn to ride in the back of the SUV. This was a job for my trusty travel sick pills – Kwells.
First stopped of the day was Starbucks! Or as Todd put it, our last chance for a real coffee until we start coming south again. A quick caffeine and cash point/ATM stop and we were back on the road again, heading north towards North Dakota and into west Montana.
During the course of the week Todd had been telling us about a town up in these parts where bikers from all over the USA converged each summer for a weekend of music, beer and apparently, drunken nakedness. So as it was en-route, we made a dive off of the highway into the town of Sturgis, South Dakota. It certainly was a biker town, I have never seen so many Harley Davidson’s in one place at the same time. A quick visit to a ‘real’ bikers bar and we were off again.
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Storm Chasing
Day 3
Chadron, South Dakota
I woke up early again… 5:30am today. It’s ok though, I can attribute that to the group of bikers that started up their Harley Davidson’s right outside my motel room window, however the sun was shining and I knew we had a sightseeing day planned, due to the lack of storms that day. First thing to do was to get myself breakfast before meeting with the others at 9:30am.
As mentioned, today was a ‘non-chase day’, so order of the day was sightseeing! Despite having come to chase storms for only six days, I was quite excited about doing some sightseeing. After all it would be a shame to come all this way and at not see anything other than paved roads and fields of grass and cattle. As our target area for the next day (Day 4) was Eastern Montana we were going to be heading north through the Black Hills of South Dakota, which is the home of the Wind Cave National Park and more famously, Mount Rushmore.
The Wind Cave National Park was the first stop of that day and it turned out to be one of the most memorable, non-storm, parts of the trip too. The caves themselves have an interesting history and are well worth a visit if you are ever in the area. Our tour guide – bless his heart – was a nice young lad, who it appeared, was still training to be a ‘Cave Ranger’. The talk he gave during the tour was very informative although his philosophical tone was the cause of a few sniggers during the hour we spent inside the caves. His opening line of “Imagine you are a 16 year old boy…” was one that stuck with us for the rest of the week.
Next stop on our whirl wind tour (yes, that’s a joke) of the Black Mountains was Mount Rushmore. The mount has the faces of four former American presidents carved into it. The faces, which are each over 60 feet in height, represent the first 150 years in the history of the United States. As with every stop we were asked to meet back at the SUV at an allotted time, in this case, 45 minutes later. Whilst waiting for the others to return, I enjoyed watching a storm pass through the valley below. Watching it shed its load of rain and discharge its lightning was quite surreal as I was stood in the blazing sunshine hoping I wasn’t getting burnt, no more than a couple of miles away from the downpour.
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Storm Chasing
Day 2
Denver, Colorado
I woke up early today, really early. Considering the long day I had yesterday I was actually worrying about oversleeping and missing our 9:30am departure. However, I had needn’t have worried, as I was up and awake at 04:30am. Hmm
At 9:30am we were all ready at reception waiting for Todd and the SUV to arrive, everyone asked politely how each had slept. A quick seat selection for the day – we are expected to rotate where we sat in the SUV to give everyone a chance of riding up front, being the first day and the only person travelling alone, I got shotgun. The front seat afforded a great view of the onboard computer with live weather and satellite data.
Our first stop wasn’t as far away as I thought it might be – ½ mile down the road to the Village Inn for breakfast. Breakfast consumed (French Toast & Maple Syrup) we were finally away. As we set off Todd explained that we were going to be heading firstly to Northeast Colorado and then North in to Nebraska. The plan was to head towards a developing storm front in western Nebraska.
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Storm Chasing
Day 1 (27th June 2009)
This is it. Today is the day I make the long trek to Denver, Colorado to join a tour group and go storm chasing! When I say storm chasing, think Discovery Channels program ‘Storm Chasers’ and you are on the right track. Severe thunderstorms, high winds, large hail and tornados are all on the menu for the week.
The aim of the trip is to join other like minded people to actively track down and chase severe weather in the American Midwest. Severe weather constitutes supercell thunderstorms that are capable of producing tornados. The group I am joining is run by Storm Chasing Adventure Tours and claims to be one of the most well equipped chasing companies in Tornado Alley. Never having done this before, I have taken their word for it.
For the next week I will be living out of a SUV and staying in a different motel each night, so packing relatively lightly is essential. Hard cases are banned and duffel bags are in. I set off for the airport feeling like I didn’t really have enough clothes to see me through the next week, but I had enough clean undies and socks to last me the week, plus a few days extra.
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Storm Chasing
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