Rich on the Road

Aftermath of the Storm
Headed North and West

Wow! What a wild ride it's been already for myself, photographer David Tafalla and the Tempest Tour storm chasing expedition. I'm just catching up now at a chicken joint in Decatur with the storm past us and tracking northeast. Storm chasing is over for the day and, having determined that the best chance for super cells tomorrow is in southeastern Colorado, the Tempest Tour gang is on the road for there. We have called ahead and booked hotel rooms in Childress, Texas for the night now -- still about a six-hour drive from where we will need to be Friday afternoon. This storm chasing is hard work.

Our first weather encounter came about 4:30 today just north of Granbury. We'd been heading toward Stephenville and a monster storm when we encountered a smaller rogue cell that ended up producing a couple of twisters. We saw one near Godley. It came out of the cloud and about halfway to the ground before being swallowed up in the storm squall. Storm chasers try to stay ahead of or behind the storms, so they can film them. We ended up right in the middle of a couple nasty squalls as we navigated back roads -- following the storm on radar and trying to anticipate where it was headed and what it would do. A lot of rain, high winds and some fantastic lightning displays as we wound through Joshua, Cleburne and northwest into Tarrant County.


All this is very exotic for the five Brits on our tour. Thunderstorms are rare there -- tornadoes almost never occur. In fact, the storms in Tornado Alley (a large swath through the Central Plains) are unique to the planet.

Bill Reid is leading this tour, along with Scott Weberpal (a college student from Wisconsin) and they are driving us hard. We've already been warned not to drink a lot after 3pm because no stops are made when storms are being pursued. The t-shirts they've handed out have a cartoon on the back with a tour leader telling the group "No we can't make a potty stop! We're chasing an F-5 Tornado."

We'll sleep tonight -- then be back on the road at 9am. I'll check back with you all at breakfast.