Gorky

Well, I'm not getting out till tomorrow so the rest of the team will be in DFW mid afternoon picking me up. Any chance of a chase close to DFW would be a nice bonus! I'm currently in a hotel at Gatwick and will be flying out tomorrow morning. It'll be an early night as I'll be gettign up pretty early. I hope everyone else had a comfortable flight and I'll see you all tomorrow afternoon B)

I'm guessing you aren't quite as pessimistic now as you were a few weeks back on the ST forums then Certainly the second half of the chase is stil ltoo far out for me to really consider it, but I say once we get in 6-7 day time frame, seeing something so ominous has to be taken with more than a grain of salt. Either way I've decided to go into town and get some extra DV tapes tomorrow. Especially with my inability to copy to the laptop at the moment. I don't think 6 hours is anywhere near enough given those charts.

Looks like we could be storm chasing from the airport the day we fly back given those charts

The problem is I'm missing drivers and software for the camera. I'm not even sure it came with any at all to be honest. It was bought from pixmania (who are utter crap imho), and came with no English manual and only had a european power connector. I find all this out the week before I am to take it, despite asking to borrow the thing 2 months ago

Hmm, it could be quite amusing taking an umbrella with us and seeing how it holds up to baseball sized hailstones At the very least we good video it and showcase the amusement/pain on youtube. Those types of videos of utter stupidity resulting in somebody getting hurt seems to go down relly well We'd be Internet celebrities. As for next week, I am so much more optomitic now than I was last week looking at the models for next week. Seems like some very chasable days on the cards. Still a little way out so I'll hold my breath for now, but if the GFS is to be believed, we shouldn't have too much problem finding ourselves some storms. I'm all packed now and just about ready to go. It's a shame I was unable to reschedule my flight to the earlier day so I guess I'll see you all on Monday afternoon. Out of interest, will anybody who is going be able to transfer video from minidv cassettes to a laptop whilst over there as I am borrowing my sister's camcorder but she doesn't have the driver disks anymore. If not I'd have to wait until I got back to share video with the rest of the forum

Yes, next Tuesday does look like it has the potential to be very serious. The placement of the moderate risk area is pretty bad for a number of large population areas. Let's hope the system slows down or speeds up displacing the worst of the weather East/West of OKC etc. Things look to quieten down significantly after that - let's hope that's not for too long.

Well, I'm starting to gear up for the chase finally. Work has been distracting me greatly for a while as half the team I work with have either moved on to other jobs or gone on long term sickness without being replaced, so I've had very little time to hype myself up yet. I don't think I'll really start worrying about models until at least next wednesday however. GFS long range has been pretty good on the big events, but it doesn't really impress me on the more marginal chase days. I just hope nothing forms miles from DFW on the 30th as that would kinda suck

Would be nice if that was delayed by a day or two as I don't get out until the 30th!

Yeah someone took to the controls as the storms came in.. They were focusing on all sort of features.. I feel ashamed but I couldn't look away to post about it sooner They were zooming on some small scuddy features which may have looked like a wall cloud to the untrained eye. I see it's been reset to looking at the construction site again. It was much more fun pointing at the clouds :lol:

The cell over Fort Worth is showing a nice hook. SRVs aren't overly impressive but it's hard to make out with it being so close to the radar site.

http://www.austinprojects.com/Omni/webcam.html This cam view was aweseom watching the rain come in.. you can get a good idea of the visibility... pretty much none :lol: I notice that the metro area is now under a tornado warning also

Another event kind enough to fall on a friday so I can follow this through the night. I will be watching this with interest especially regarding the Nascar racing going on in the area. I think the capacity of the speedway is close to 200,000 although chances are it will not be so full as only support races are run today. Being open air, I really wouldn't like to see a hail storm go through the area, never mind a tornado. I usually follow the racing anyway so I may end up combining two hobbies into one tonight... but hopefully not. A couple of tracks have been hit recently by tornadoes, but not during an actual event. Thousands of people camp in trailers in the infield at the larger tracks like texas so the worst case scenario is present here.

Big thanks to the team for giving me this chance to chase for real this year as opposed to the virtual chasing last time out I hope a few of you who aren't so lucky will be able to take part via the forums. Your ideas and suggestions will be a great help and I hope we can bag some awesome footage to share with you.

I'm sticking with North Eastern Arkansas into the Missouri Bootheel. There is some reasonable chase terrain in the area, although you would want to plan any potential river crossings in advance by not positioning too far from a bridge over the Mississippi River. Hopefully things will have less of a tendency to turn linear further south and the storms can tap into some of the best instability in the area.

Tomorrow looks like it is shaping up to be a pretty big event. I'm wondering if they'll upgrade to a moderate risk with the next outlook. Things could get pretty hairy down towards Arkansas given progged instability and shear... should the cap not be too strong. Edit: SPC beat me to the post with their update and chose not to upgrade yet.. They have hatched a large area for significant weather chances however including parts of Texas/Oklahoma and Arkansas however.

Yes.. Quite an evening. Sounds like a few towns may have been hit by large tornadoes unfortunately. Reports are pretty scattered, but there are now 50 reports with at least a handful of other confirmed tornadoes mentioned in warnings but not posted to the reports page.

34 tornado reports and climbing. Still several cells with confirmed large tornadoes on the ground around and about. 1 fatality confirmed in the Oklahoma Panhandle already, and that storm still has a large multivortex tornado on the ground in Kansas 2 hours later. It's probably cycled but that is one impressive cell. McLean may well have been hit by a large tornado as one was confirmed just southwest of McLean and the hook went right over the city. Another storm which headed just east of Goodland is currently displaying 186kt gate to gate shear on lowest tilt atm too! This has apparently also had an incredibly large long track tornado associated with it as it passed through mainly rural areas. It will be approaching a few mroe populated areas soon hwoever, passing just between Bird City and McDonald in KS if they are lucky.

I've had time too examine today, and I'm happy that the SPC have shifted the fatter portion of the tornado warning area from the north end to the southern end of the risk. I think I'm in the right area roughly, but probably should be positioned further west, into the Texas panhandle. To be honest, I don't think you can be in the wrong area if you are anywhere in that moderate risk... Severe threat should be pretty widespread today.

Put me down for playing the southern part of the dryline here. I think the biggest tornado threat will be up into Nebraska but I worry about the storms staying discrete for any length of time. I think there may be fewer tornadoes south but possibly stronger and longer tracked. Would be sacrificing beter shear for better instability and I think it may jsut apy off. Targetting Woodward, Oklahoma (It seems that place comes up as a possible start location every time there is severe threat in the Mid West. Maybe we should book somewhere there in advance for the real Chase;))

Snowing here at the moment. Not settling but it is reasonably heavy. It sleeted for a few minutes before so it struggling to stick around.

I thought I'd missed something out They've shrunk the area on todays update, but increased to a high risk for much of Alabama and Mississippi. 30% chance of significant tornadoes there and a large swath of 15% chance of significant tornadoes. Since I probably bored myself to death in Tulsa yesterday watching all the Kansas action on my laptop, I hope for a better chase day today I'm nto going to position myself to chase the Highest danger area, but will sit in the Missouri bootheel instead. Nice chase country around there with the river being the only hindrance. It gets way to wooded down in alabama and Mississippi for my liking

First High Risk of Severe Weather in 2007 has been issued....

In relation to tomorrows event, I think it's been a while since we've seen a moderate risk as large Very scary indeed Large parts of Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Louisiana, Mississipi, Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky and South Carolina are all under a moderate risk...45% hatched.... I think I'll just put a pin in a map of the eastern half of the states for tomorrow's chase and I'll probably be ok position wise

I'll be parking myself on the North East side of Tulsa near Claremore hoping for some early daylight convection. If not I can follow I44 NE into Missourri for the evening light show although it may well be a case of dodging nocturnal tornadoes

The SPC is very bullish about the next system with a severe weather outbreak for tomorrow and especially Wednesday. Looks like I should have gone storm chasing during this week which I have off work and not in May Day 2 Day3