Tour 5 Day 1 - Lightning Fest, And A Bit Of Horizontal Hail

[IanM]

Great day to start the tour, with some pretty hardcore cells kicking off mid afternoon as we headed through Kansas. A slight pause while we rebooted barrons cost us 10 mins, which ironically left us facing fierce 60mph+ side winds, driving rain and hail doing its best to take out the drivers side windows. We pushed on for a few miles as the conditions worsened, stuck in a convoy of traffic, until we hit Norton where some quick steering took us round the trres and part of a roof in the road, we were able to take a road south, hoping to escape the worse. Another cell had pushed toward us and merged with the original cells, leaving us no option than to pull onto the pavement and shelter under a building awning until the bigger hail and winds had passed. We then pushed on to Hill City where lightning started a large fire to our north, and the strong winds were creating some unexpected dust storms, reducing visibility to less than 25 metres in places.

Finally we overtook the gust front and leapfrogged different positions watching the storm line approach until deciding to let it hit us while we sheltered in a a car wash, once the heaviest rain cleared we were treated to a massive show of lightning that continued as we ate pizza before setting of for a 120 mile jump north to Grand Island, with a spectacular light show to keep us company. we recorded the stream for a while as it was late in the UK and we figured you might want to see it.

Anyhow, I'll let the others post up any photos, and we'll work on the video when we get some time.

[Paul Sherman]

Great stuff, and with what looks like another 5 straight days chasing ahead, this like the others looks like it will be an action packed tour.

Lots of happy people already, Ian C Has some great video from the middle of Norton (Kansas) I am sure he will upload soon.

[Nick F]

Nothing like horizontal large hail battering the car to ease the guests in, lol.

Baseball-size hail falling into someone's pool in north Texas on the news this morning here, a world away from the thundery showers we're due today.

[Methuselah]

Brilliant! look forward to seeing...

[Arron]

Nicely done guys! Already missing being out there

[Dorsetbred]

Nicely done guys! Already missing being out there

Understandable, yesterday's punch was a classic event.

As I mentioned to the SHerminator "Not bad effort for Day 1. Now lets see what you can really do!"

[IanM]

A quick piccie - I didn;t get a lot of chance to use the camera yesterday, but this one was caught while leapfrogging through Kansas to Nebraska

[Dorsetbred]

So, yesterday was "Chase Day 32" then?

Which means here we go on Chase day 33.....

[Dorsetbred]

And a quick on yesterdays gusts measured 59mph, almost taking the car door off it's hinges.

Sure was windy even before Ian M. had pizza

[lewisosd]

God I miss chasing. Have fun guys!

[dallas]

Are you gonna push as far north as you can, see you have turned east at the mo?

[Paul]

Owen's blog entry for yesterday - an explosive start to his storm chasing 'career'

http://forum.netweat...t-the-deep-end/

[Roger J Smith]

Sounds rather like my average weekend camping trip without the happy faces.

[Tom Lynch]

Nice stuff chaps - i would hate for this tour to miss out on a piece of the action - less said about large hail the better

Tom

[RichB]

Best of luck Tour 5. We had a great time on Tour 4, big thanks to Paul, Tom, Arron & Nick. Enjoying the stream but need to try and sleep, the joys of jet lag especially as I am working tomorrow