Sure it was fun. If your idea of fun is sitting in a van for 10 hours a day, reeling in the miles (3500 of them in seven days); or waiting and waiting and waiting for something to happen (thank God for Walmarts, great places to hang out); or falling in a ditch in the dark (next time I’ll bring a flashlight); or clogging your arteries with fast food (I had to double my statin drug dosage).

Oh, don’t take me seriously. It wasn’t fun in the sense of an Alaskan cruise or Caribbean vacation, but it was a memorable adventure. One I wouldn’t have missed for the world.

I went on the chase knowing there was no guarantee of seeing a tornado. And I didn’t. But I learned how chasers operate, which was the real purpose of going, and I learned more than I thought I would about the monster thunderstorms that prowl middle America. My work-in-progress, Supercell, will be a better novel for it.

PHOTO: A Nebraska supercell, May 2, 2012.

To ease the pain of long hours sitting on my butt, the chasers I traveled with were a good group: two doctors, a retired dentist (our driver), a lawyer, an arborist from Australia and a grocery store manager from London. Two of them, it turned out, were at least casual writers, so beyond big honkin’ storms, we a had another mutual interest.

Roger Hill, our tour leader, was an absolute joy to be around. Personable and articulate, he harbors the knowledge of a college professor and the enthusiasm of a college cheerleader.

Thanks, Roger, for a trunkful of indelible memories: witnessing the birth of a monster West Texas supercell; listening to coyotes chant in tandem with rumbling thunder; dogging a supercell through a lightning-filled Nebraska night; and chasing a hail beast along the Red River.

Ya know, I think I’ll be back. Still gotta notch a tornado on my belt.

-May 8, 2012-

So Friday’s journey took us from Salina, Kansas, to north Texas, essentially where we’d begun our hunt the previous Sunday. As we passed through a toll booth on the H. E. Bailey Turnpike, a toll collector, in a very distinctive Oklahoma twang, said, “You guys chasin’ ‘naders?”

Chris, the Aussie, sitting behind me, asked, “What he’d say?”

“Something about tomatoes, I think,” I answered.

Tom, our driver: “He asked if we were chasing tornadoes.”

Oh.

Well, we knew we wouldn’t catch any ‘naders that day, but we hoped to bag a nice supercell or two. Even that, however, seemed a long shot as we watched several storms come off the dryline south of Wichita Falls and do the ol’ pop-and-drop routine.

All the while, our tour leader, Roger Hill, monitoring radar, had his eye on a supercell about 60 miles to our northwest. The storm was lumbering eastward along the Red River, but Roger feared it, like the others that day, would kick the bucket before we could intercept it.

Still, it was the only game in town, so off we galloped through 100-degree heat. Halfway to the cell, the inevitable happened. “It’s falling apart,” Roger announced. [Collective groan.]

We slowed our pace and began thinking about where to eat dinner.

Then Roger brightened. “Hey, this thing’s making a comeback!” he said. [Collective cheer.] Was it ever. It exploded into a supercell the size of Rhode Island, spitting out teacup-sized hail underneath a 67,000-foot cloud top.

PHOTO: From our chase van’s laptop: a radar image of the Rhode Island-sized supercell along the Red River. The storm’s massive hail core is denoted in purple. It’s moving east. Our position is at the center of the yellow rings. We’re running north to intercept the storm.

We finally caught up with it just ENE of Wichita Falls. As we stood on a lonely farm road watching the seething blackness approach, Roger called out, “Hear that?” A steady low thrum, like distant thunder with no rumbling, surged across the plain. “That’s a hail roar! Huge stones aloft bumping into each other.”

Something new for my meteorological lexicon.

“Hey, you know what,” Roger continued. “There’s a little town up ahead. The hail core is aimed right it. If we can find a car wash there to hide in, we could get some super video.”

Or, if there’s no place to hide, a new windshield.

But wonder of wonders: one gas station, one store (maybe a few more), and… a carwash.

We hunkered down in it to wait and watch. But, lucky for the little town—-Petrolia, the lettering on the water tower proclaimed—-and unlucky for us, the hail core petered out and swept by just to our north. Nothing but marbles.

Thus our adventure ended. No ‘naders, but lots of indelible memories.

Some final thoughts tomorrow.

-May 7, 2012-

We saw a lot of these yesterday…

But none of these…

We might have had a shot at some action in Missouri yesterday, but the SLT guys don’t like chasing there: too many trees and too many hills, and it would have put us way out of position for today’s target area near the Red River in northern Texas. (There was a tornado watch issued for northern Missouri/southern Iowa yesterday, but the only twister reported was near the Mississippi River, a couple of hundred miles from where we were.)

We won’t catch a tornado today, the conditions just aren’t right, but we might be able to lasso a high-based supercell or two spinning off the dry line. More importantly, it will put us close to Oklahoma City where we’ll bed down tonight and then say our goodbyes tomorrow morning.

So, I got skunked, but I knew going in that was a possibility. As I said earlier, this was all in the name of making the backdrop of Supercell as real as possible.

Yeah, there were long days, a couple of crummy motels and waaay too much fast food, but the bottom line is IT WAS WORTH IT. To witness the birth of a monster supercell on the high plains of West Texas. To pursue a cell through a lightning-flecked Nebraska night and watch it spit out a funnel. To listen to a chorus of coyotes singing counterpoint to a rumbling storm near the Red River.

Priceless.

-May 4, 2012-

Meanwhile, over our shoulders, we watch a massive supercell blow up all by itself about 40 or 50 miles south, down near the Kansas border (photo below).

Finally, we throw in the towel on the nearby storms and decide to make a dash for the southern one. On our way, however, one the northern boomers decides to tease us with newfound energy. So we zig north. The storm goes flop bod. We zag south, the southern monster again our target.

We knew it would be dark by the time we ran our intercept, so I become Mr. Grumpy, kvetching—-silently—-about milling around in the blackness, after my bedtime, just to shoot lightning (of which there was plenty).

As we punch through the leading edge of the supercell to get on its southern side, the “viewing” side, Roger, our tour guide, says,”It’s got a hook!”—-the classic radar signature of a tornado.

We get south of the storm, turn east and run ahead of it, then pull off the road to watch. Continuous lightning illuminates the supercell, revealing a massive, rotating wall cloud. A “mothership,” Roger calls it.
The inflow winds whip at our backs, thunder ripples over the flat landscape and tornado sirens moan in the distance.

Suddenly, the wind changes, the outflow from the huge storm smacks us in the face. “Time to go,” Roger calls. We scramble back into the van and fly (never breaking the speed limit, mind you) eastward. Then the real excitement. “It’s got a funnel!” someone in the back of the van yells.

We stop again and pile out of the vehicle like Keystone Cops. Sure enough, less than a half mile away is the lightning-lit embryo of a tornado, a funnel cloud hanging from the mothership (photo below, courtesy of Gawain Charlton-Perrin). It’s not the little funnel that could, however, and doesn’t quite reach the ground.

Again the storm’s outflow rips at us and we scurry away, stairstepping our way east and north through the lightning-filled night, keeping a close eye on the roiling supercell. It cycles in and out of its tornado threat mode, but never quite makes it.

Still, it was exciting.

No more kvetching.

-May 3, 2012-

So we packed it in early and bunked down in Yankton. After a marathon run the previous night from Amarillo to Wichita, the decision was welcomed by most of us. It certainly was by this old dog. It was great to actually saw logs for eight hours.

Yeah, I’m the old dog on the tour, probably by 10 or 15 years. But I’m also the only rookie on the chase. Roger Hill, the chief guide for Silver Lining Tours, is the grizzled veteran. I think he said he’s seen something on the order of 400 twisters. Tom Howley, our driver (from Pennsylvania) is on his 49th pursuit. Too bad I’ll miss his Silver Anniversary tour.

My frequent seat mate, Gawain from Chicago, is on his seventh safari with SLT. Andy and Jeff, anesthesiologists from Dallas, are returnees, too. Chris, from Sydney, Australia, is sticking around after this chase for the one that departs immediately after. And Tim, from London (yes, the big one), will be coming back in June.

PHOTO: Departure day for SLT in Oklahoma City. In the center, facing the camera, Tom Howley (L) and Roger Hill (R). WIth backs to the camera are Tim (L) from London and Chris (R) from Sydney.

Today we’re hoping we don’t have to venture far from Yankton. The area from northeast Nebraska into northwest Iowa appears prime. So I’ve donned my talisman, a Silver Lining Tours tee shirt; I’m sure that’ll work. Gawain’s lucky charm, a Junk Yard Dog (a pro wrestler of yore) action doll, failed yesterday, so he’s going back into the suitcase.

Tom said that whenever he runs over a snake (he doesn’t do it deliberately, he emphasized), the tour sees a tornado. It’s worked seven of eight times.

Here snakey, snakey, snakey.

-May 2, 2012-

Today (Monday), quite frankly, was a bit of a disappointment. We tracked a couple of high-based supercells across the Panhandle, but never met with the awesome, in-your-face display of meteorology we did Sunday when we were in nature’s delivery room to witness the birth of a supercell on steroids.

Photo: Monday—-high-based supercell just east of Amarillo, Texas. That’s a rain/hail shaft in the lower left, not a tornado.

Monday we managed to draw fire from several marauding bands of hail, and once had to turn tail and run after we failed to beat an advancing supercell to a particular road we wanted to follow. When golf ball-sized stones began shotgunning off the van, and we knew even larger caliber stuff lay in wait, we beat a fast retreat.

Oh, and here’s my lesson-learned for the day. It’s damn hard to write a blog bouncing through a rainy, wind-swept, lightning-filled night in a Chevy van filled with guys munching on Subway footlongs.

Addendum: we arrived in Wichita at 2 a.m. After about four hours of sleep, I was awakened by a good-morning phone call from my wife in Atlanta. Bye bye Nodsville.

Ah, the glamour of storm chasing.

-May 1, 2012-

Our tour guide, Roger Hill, raising his voice to be heard over the galloping wind, says, “This thing could turn into a real monster.”

Minutes later, a wisp of dark scud appears beneath the underbelly of the storm. “Watch,” Roger says, “this may be the beginning of a wall cloud.” What? That dinky little misty thing? (See photo below.)

More and more scud appears, dipping, darting, circling. It happens fast. Within minutes the base of the storm is seething with rotating black clouds almost touching the ground

To our right, a plume of dust streams across the road, riding the inflow. The storm is even stronger now, advancing on us. It’s not more than a couple of hundred yards away. Then it’s over us.

“To the left,” Roger yells. “Look. That blowing dust is the downdraft.” It’s dust whipping out of the storm now, not into it. (See photo below.)

The dust expands rapidly, spurred on by 60- or 70-mph winds. Dirt and grit fill the air as we scramble back into the van. We flee south and watch the flat landscape to our rear disappear in wind-driven blackness as Roger’s monster crosses the road. Cars and trucks heading toward it pull off to the side and stop, giving the now-classic supercell due respect as it barrels toward Lubbock.

We monitor the storm from a safe distance, paralleling it as it churns eastward. Radar indicates it harbors a rotating mesocyclone, a precursor to a tornado. But it doesn’t drop one. Lucky for Lubbock.

So, no tornado. But I don’t care. How many weather geeks get to witness in real life, up close and personal, what most only read about in textbooks—-the birth of a High Plains monster, a classic supercell thunderstorm?

-April 30, 2012-

I’m nearest the door in the Silver Lining Tours van, so I’m first out, stepping cautiously onto the mesquite plain. I take two steps back from the van to allow the door to swing open. I take another step, but there’s nothing to step onto. I go down, sprawling on my side into a dry culvert with little prickly things lining the bottom.

The second guy out of the van, an anesthesiologist from Dallas, rushes to extend his hand to pull me up. Did I mention it’s dark. Like Can’t see nuthin’. He tumbles into the ditch beside me.

Night stalkers we’ll never be. At least we were unhurt; a little scratched, a little sore, but undamaged except for our pride.

Once upright again, we enjoyed a good light show. But to me, the most memorable feature of the night was more audible than visual: thunder rolling and tumbling over the flat Texas plain, punctuated by a chorus of coyotes jamming in the dark.

The bottom line for day one of the great chase: no supercells and a whole lot of waiting (the part they don’t advertise about tornado chasing). We drove a racetrack pattern around the Red River between Wichita Falls and, Texas, and Altus, Oklahoma, and stopped periodically to monitor weather patterns and radar reports.

And we waited. And waited. At an ice cream shop/minimart in Burkburnett; at a Super Wally in Wichita Falls; at a Fina truck stop in… the middle of nowhere. (Fun watching two long BNSF freights blowing down the line, however.)

So we’ll try again today, probably pushing into the Texas Panhandle. But I fear it may turn out to be another day of waiting and hoping. And waiting. And waiting.

All in the name of gathering authenticity for Supercell. (But maybe I’ll leave the waiting parts out.)

-April 29, 2012-

My wife is absolutely convinced I’m a dead man walking; certain I’ll get swept up like Dorothy and end up as road kill on the Yellow Brick Freeway.

More likely, if conditions ripe for twisters go into hibernation, I’ll die of boredom.

But no matter. My primary goal, believe it or not, is not to get up close and personal with a Great Plains’ monster—-though I’m not averse to that—-but to learn how tornado chasers operate. To see what their daily routine is, what meteorological parameters they examine, what monitoring equipment they employ, and how they communicate with each other during a pursuit.

I also want to get a sense of the “atmosphere” surrounding a chase: the tension, the excitement, the apprehension should we actually corner our quarry.

All of this, of course, is in the name of literature, making sure the backdrop of Supercell, my work-in-progress, is authentic. I don’t write science-fiction. I do science-fact. Well, to an extent. As a novelist, I’m always stretching and molding the facts to create a story with a lot more of an edge than would be found in real life.

My goal is to write something that will keep my readers turning pages. But I’m hoping, too, they’ll come away with just a bit more knowledge about something: hurricanes (as in Eyewall), the Ebola virus (as in my next novel), or tornadoes (Supercell).

I’ll keep you posted during my chase on how things go.

Well, time to make a packing list. I don’t suppose my wife would find it humorous if I slapped a “Yellow Brick Roadkill” sticker on my suitcase.

-April 25, 2012-

IMAGE: Kansas tornado, 2008, NOAA photo. (Hope to have my own photos posted within the next few days.)

In September 1989, John Hope helped bring The Weather Channel to national prominence as the source for hurricane information. Hurricane Hugo, a classic Cape Verde storm and the first category four to hit the U.S. in quite some time, slammed into South Carolina with 140-mph winds. John, red-eyed and rumpled, stayed on the air for 18 consecutive hours, advising and calming residents as the powerful storm swirled from the Atlantic Ocean into the Palmetto State.

For its coverage of Hurricane Hugo, The Weather Channel was awarded a Golden CableACE from the National Academy of Cable Programming in 1991. By the end of that year, the channel was wired to over 50 million households.

Growth at The Weather Channel, both in terms of viewership and employees, continued unabated during the 1990s. By the late ‘90s, the firm had grown so much it was forced to house personnel in several different locations around northwest Atlanta. To centralize operations, in 1997 the channel purchased an eight-story office building on Windy Hill—-apropos for a meteorological operation—- overlooking the busy highway interchange of I-75 and I-285. The building was the former corporate headquarters of Georgia International, an insurance company.

One of the building’s main attractions was that its basement had 18-foot high ceilings, necessary during the 1970s to house the bulky computers of the era. For The Weather Channel, the high ceilings turned out to be perfect for accommodating the complex lighting needed for television studios. (The main studios of The Weather Channel remained in the basement until 2008 when a new High-Definition studio was christened.) By the end of 2001, the network boasted 80 million subscribers.

In September 2004, with over 88 million subscribers, The Weather Channel established a record for total-day viewers as Ivan, the third powerful hurricane to slam the southeastern U.S. within a month, churned toward the central Gulf Coast. 1.6 million homes tuned in to monitor the fearsome storm’s progress.

The record was broken the following year when over 1.9 million homes clicked on their TV sets to track the now-infamous Hurricane Katrina as it prowled toward the Gulf Coast. While such high viewership often rides on the back of misery, there is a positive side to it: as Katrina approached, the channel reached almost 51 million viewers with storm warnings and safety messages.

It’s unfortunate, but also the nature of the business that the channel’s highest ratings come during severe and often deadly weather. But such is the case for any news or information outlet. The ratings of CNN, Fox or any of the legacy networks soar in the face of disasters and war. Think 9/ll, Desert Storm, the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, or the Japanese earthquake/tsunami.

NO LONGER A LAUGHINGSTOCK

As The Weather Channel’s personnel matured, the “lawlessness,” as former on-camera meteorologist Bill Keneely termed it, disappeared. On-air presentations became more professional; graphics, slicker; production, smoother. Technology made delivery of radar and satellite imagery almost instantaneous and extremely detailed. In addition to the inimitable John Hope, some of the best weather experts in the nation signed on with the network giving it an on-air meteorological credibility that remains unparalleled.

The emergence of The Weather Channel as one of the most highly regarded cable television brands in the nation has been nothing short of remarkable. From 4.2 million subscribers when the switch was first thrown at the network in 1982, the company is now wired in to over 100 million homes and businesses, second in the cable world to only TBS with 101 million subscribers.

The Weather Channel has become not only a media phenomenon, it’s become an icon of American culture. It’s referenced in popular novels, featured as background TV fare in motion pictures and presented as the source of good-natured chuckles in cartoons. But it’s no longer a laughingstock.

EPILOGUE—-THE MAJOR LEAGUES

In 2008, The Weather Channel stepped into the major leagues. It was purchased by NBC Universal and two private equity firms, Blackstone Group and Bain Capital (yes, the one that Mitt Romney used to head), for $3.5 billion.

The buyers weren’t looking at just the television capabilities of The Weather Channel, but probably as much, if not more, at its “vertical branding.” That’s media-speak for its ability to reach not only TV viewers, but weather-sensitive audiences via cell phones, PDAs and the Internet. Weather.com®, for instance, is the seventh-ranked news and information Website in the world. In June 2011, it boasted over 40 million unique visitors.

Overall, the sale was a great deal for The Weather Channel, in that it increased both exposure and resources for the Atlanta-based network. By the way, Brian Williams, the NBC Nightly News anchor, is reported to be a big Weather Channel fan. When Marshall Seese, the long-time and very popular co-host of “Your Weather Today” (and now narrator for the audio version of Eyewall), retired in November 2008, Brian sent him a special video message that was aired on Marshall’s swan-song show. A classy move, I thought.

The transition to the big leagues did not occur without turmoil, however. On November 19, 2008, Black Wednesday to Weather Channel old timers, almost 80 people were axed from the company’s payroll. The carnage was the result of the steep global recession, plunging ad revenues and dwindling viewership.

Sometimes, radical surgery is necessary to save a patient.

But that’s in the past. The patient survived and is doing well. Happy anniversary, Weather Channel.

So now my attention turns to tornado chasing. My departure for the “great hunt” is April 27. I’ll keep you posted on my adventures (all in the interest of gathering authentic background for my novel-in-progress, Supercell) in this blog. Check it out once in a while.

IMAGE: GOES-7 visible image of Hurricane Hugo, Sep 21, 1989 (Univ. of Wisconsin)