Over 2 weeks is a long time to be away from home and a young family I had to have an understanding wife and daughter and asked myself if what I was about to do with all its cost was worth it.

Building in extra days to the 2 week tour is a good idea as you loose 2 days at each end in travling, as it turned out all you do is travel, in our case best part of 6500miles on the road which brings me to the vehicle, we were upgraded to a people carrier which for the 3 of us was spot on, a car would have been grim! with taking all your stuff cloths, cameras, kitchen sinks ect x3 it soon takes up the avalible space,we did over 800miles in 1 day you need to be comfortable! fuel is cheap so economy is not to much of a problem when fuel is 75% less than we Brits pay!

Storm chasing is no resting break, its an endless chase of wherever the weather takes you and most of the time a great Storm one day means a long drive the next. The long days, lack of sleep and high miles took there toll on all of us and sometimes resulted in differences of opinion.

What did we see? Well more lightning than a crowd of people can shake sticks at, fantastic cloud formations like-- Mama, Wall clouds, Funnel clouds, Cu, and Nimbus, to name but a few, Huge powerful gust fronts, inflow/outflow winds, visible updrafts, Horizontal winds, Mesocyclones, Gustnados, Dust Devils, and of course the Tornado, 2 daytime, one at night although not more than a brief split second sighting of this one.

Best Memory: Everything, well if I was to pin it down to a few, Hail Roar, and a lightning display which was firing at 2 or 3 a second, I had to ask myself a question, what sort of energy dose it take to produce these wonders of nature.

Funnest Moment: Watching James get out of the car at high speed and remove the C.B. airal of the roof of the car while CGs flashed near by.

Worst Moment: Making a mistake of getting to close to a Storm after dark and not being able to escape. ( Obviously we did--but it took a while)

We have seen many wonderful things on our tour this year, true we never saw a huge Tornado whipping up everything in its path of distruction but the sum of the parts I witness added to an experience which will stay in my thoughts till I return again to the central western plains of the U.S.A. we know as Tornado Alley.