IanM

They are all in this thread now Tom :-)

Same camera, but I tweaked the laptop a bit to cope with a bit better frame rate, and the internet has behaved itself a lot better this year. I think the cunning plan of using our own kit rather than renting might have helped.

I borrowed this from Laura's facebook post - always good to see the gang enjoying a post tornado steak at the Big Texan!

Great work chaps. I hope deep fried testicles were consumed too?

Can't believe that I fell asleep 5 minutes before the first touchdown, awesome chase day!

We've upgraded the Tahoe's for the rest of the tours, I'm not sure they are great for hail though.

Cheers Tom, great stuff!

I feel like I'm still driving - around 900 miles yesterday for a last chance chase of the season for Tour 1 guests, and me... What a day, totally different ending to the one we expected - a 2 hour flash flood delay before a 5 hour drive back to Dallas, but well worth it. A cell that grew and intensified quite quickly in the high temperatures in oily West Texas. It then cycled from classic to HP and back again a few times, switching between outflow dominant and back re intensifying as we stopped and started for pictures. Knackering, adrenaline fuelled and even had a brief touch down that meant we had to drive over downed power lines (which were safe at the time) before the dustbowl we'd been watching from turned into a fast flowing river joining lakes either side of the road, with large hail rattling the underside of the car as it washed past. I'm still cursing that I didn't grab some photo's of the floods, but the ohers were filming away, and you've seen Tom's quick upload form last night too. Sad to be leaving the USA, but happy that we gave the Tour 1 newbies plenty of memories and reasons to think about coming back to play again :-)

Apparently 4" hail on this storm. We're in Coyonosa watching it cycle up and down. Edit. Signs of rotation and gone tornado warned.

Here's a few pics to add to Tom's videos, this was a proper adrenaline fuelled chase day, I think the T1 guests were properly gobsmacked by how this beast looked as headed straight toward it.

A couple of quickies from me before hitting the sack while CG bombs drop around the hotel... This was what we drove towards, the pictures can't do it justice, a real hail munching beast - there were softballs in that core And a hasty pano stitch that needs a lot of tweaking, but you get the idea

We are parked up and watching developments to the south. I'll kick the stream back to life in a sec

A gloomy view from the motel window in Salinas right now, as morning storms clear through. The news and weather channels here are all on high warning levels with advice about finding shelters, being prepared and perhaps the worst anyone wants to hear - long track night time tornadoes possible. As Nick said on the original post, there is potential for very damaging storms today if everything comes together, and we're in the middle of the risk area right now so will be heading out later this morning and hoping for some central plains chasing away from all the towns and cities. I'll be keeping an eye on the stream once we're up and running so you can follow along, but if it gets hectic and the stream does go down, I might not be able to fix it instantly, so please bear with us.

Storms popping up way to our south now. We need something to develop a little closer to be chasable, in the meantime we're at a very full J B Thomas lake.

Currently sat in Snyder, TX. Live streaming a lawn mower shop while waiting for things to get going. There's an MD issued and we're pretty much in the middle so its just a case of wait and watch now.

A quick couple from me : It rained - Then it lightninged -

You can see why there has been so much flooding with these storms, when it rains, it really rains!

A bit of hail coming towards us now. Edit: that died on the next radar scan...

And now its developing. Radio warnings for severe storms have just been issued too.

Waiting for developments in Loraine

A bit of a post pizza hut Caprock chase looking likely.

All in all it's been a up and down start to the tour, right place, wrong time sums it up for some of the storms. But that's what happens when you have to make decisions to be in the right place for the next days risk. That said, we've seen plenty, a tornado or two (depending if you count a satellite as one for the list...), spectacular lightning, a typical Kansas dusk supercell firing off like a 70's disco and strikes close enough to make you flinch. I'll have to drag through video to see if I got anything of last nights tornado (Day 1), and the cold front that followed us back towards Colby was pretty cool, along with the funnel clouds that appeared out of a rapidly reorganising storm that we'd just about given up on (I'll need to grab a copy of a video from a guest for that one, as I was driving) So 6 states, over 1000 miles, happy guests and some spectacular viewing, roll on the next storms.

Lunch break while we wait for the MCs to stop messing with us. Stream back soon.

Yeah Yeah, mock if you like. But I have Shiner Bock in my bag, storms in my pocket and Tom is sharing a room with the gust front

While I wait for the first PB&Jelly bagel of the season settle, I had a quick play with the pics from our test day. A cold storm played tag with us for an hour or two before things got really going I have some video of the hail hitting while we sheltered at a gas station, but need new codecs to convert to the right format, new cameras might be cool, but they can be a pita sometimes too...