My Tour 5 Highlights

[IanM]

After 4300+ miles (enough to have driven home from Denver...), 240 US gallons of unleaded, 5 states, multiple storms, good laughs, countless Jager bombs and stealing an old mans car keys I thought I'd gather some pictures from the tour into one post.

The only ones missing are the tornado and some video footage, which I will hopefully get up later.

A high altitude start on change over day

First chance to stop after being battered by a nice horizontal hail core and dust storms

Colorado/Nebraska border, as Nebraska continues to tease but produces a stunning sunset followed by a nice light show, that I failed to take a decent shot of...

South Dakota and Minnesota - or five rotating wall cloud day, structure and wide open spaces, awesome day

A bit of head beating in the northern states later, we arrived in the Badlands for some night photography, and an overnight stop in a piece of Americana, a time warp motel that somehow had survived since dinosaurs roamed the earth.

And the last hurrah, Friday delivered some awesome scenery, tricky road choices, the narrowest tarmac in the USA and a lovely LP supercell to play with

And finally, I found this little devil lurking in my pics, an extra from Ghostbusters?

A nice 'gentle' introduction to chasing for our competition winner, Owen - the 80mph sideways hail was a nice way of the Plains to welcome him to chasing, and then meeting Chris and Dan on the same day a little taste of home too.

All round a great Tour, as always the guests make it the fun it is, and Paul and Ian C always deliver a mix of cool weather and good entertainment - cheers guys, until next year.

Ian

[Owen]

6 states - don't forget our brief unsuccesful visit to Wisconsin!

The stand-out highlights for me were;

1. The core punch of HP supercell on day 1

2. Minnesota chase-day surrounded by rotating wall clouds and watching that funnel dropping right in front of us.

3. Stargazing in the Badlands

4. The final day with textbook LP supercell, CGs, mammatus and those amazing Colorado skies up until the point where the mood dropped after seeing Timmer's photo.

Remind me never to have Jager Bombs the night before a 20+ hour journey :-p

I will get round to finishing that blog in the next few days and working miracles on my out of focus photos! Took a video on the final day which I will get round to uploading too.

[Dorsetbred]

Brief visit to Wisconsin, we were a mere 5 hours from Chicago. A friend of mine lives in Eastern Wisconsin, and says its all flat, no trees.

Obviously, we didn't go far enough east. Hohum, trees trees trees everywhere

6 states - don't forget our brief unsuccesful visit to Wisconsin!

The stand-out highlights for me were;

1. The core punch of HP supercell on day 1

2. Minnesota chase-day surrounded by rotating wall clouds and watching that funnel dropping right in front of us.

3. Stargazing in the Badlands

4. The final day with textbook LP supercell, CGs, mammatus and those amazing Colorado skies up until the point where the mood dropped after seeing Timmer's photo.

Remind me never to have Jager Bombs the night before a 20+ hour journey :-p

I will get round to finishing that blog in the next few days and working miracles on my out of focus photos! Took a video on the final day which I will get round to uploading too.

[Dorsetbred]

And of course, the best books know to man,with the aid of rumble strips

[Paul Sherman]

Completed my Blog for the 2012 Season

http://plainschaser.blogspot.co.uk/

When you get to the bottom, just click older posts for earlier 2012 Chases.

[Dorsetbred]

Thanks Paul, it's great reading the where & the when/what.