How Many Overseas Chasers........

[Cammie Czuchnicki]

Myself and my boyfriend are coming from England. It's our first time to the Plains and we are there from 4th June - 27th June. This forum has been a great resource and we have already been helped and advised by so many people, from many different countries. Good luck to everyone this year.
Cammie

 

[Niccolò Ubalducci]

Ehi Stu, you are a forgetful I met you in 2008 at a gas station, probably on May 13th in Duncan, Ok. It was a great bust with Tiv, Dow and a lotta other chasers. I discussed with you and Roger about the terrible synoptic setup of that day.

We have a team chasing this year in the Plains. Our site is www.thunderstormteam.it

We chase in T.Alley by 2003.

I will be in the Plains for the third consecutive year, the Italians will be 4 this year as last year.

We will have a 4x4 vehicle, a lot of Videos + Photos equipment and Grlevel2 Grlevel3 Licenced software + Mobile Threatnet; Davis Anemometer.

We will stream where possible, with Severestudios.

The period will be from April 20 to May 17.

www.thunderstormteam.it (The new site will be released around April 15.)

 

[Scott Sims]

Welcome to(or back to) the States for season 2010 Ladies and Gentelmen. You are all true dedicated chasers to hop the big ponds of our globe to come to the supercell capital of the planet. Reading through this thread today helps me remember that there are several levels of difficulty getting to a plains target area harder than mine. I see folks posting in the forecast threads in OK about getting off work and cruising to Enid in time to WAIT for some random Wednesday afternoon Dryline action and I start to drool. Then I think DAMN I'm jealous, I would have to burn at a bare minimum one day vacation, 4 tanks of gas($150-$200) and only get 2 hours of sleep to get back to work by 8 am after driving the 9-10 hrs to Enid then chase then come back fast as soon as the sun sets with minimal stops. And that's only IF it looked good enough to do it by 20Z the day before, in time to request the day off.

So, first I want to acknowledge the added difficulties those from The East and the West coast of the USA that have a much longer haul than me to the plains and have much worse topography and lower statistical sever occurrences of high end sever storms than I can even locally get to in Southern IL, where its still pretty damn close to tornado alley levels on both.


Secondly, and most importantly, to those of you from Europe, Asia and even more so any of our Southern Hemisphere visitors, hats off to your passion and determination to get over here. Your level of commitment to get to the target area really helps me put in perspective how close my 10 hour drive radius to Enid OK, Russell KS, York, NE and the IA-MN border on I-35 seems. When put in this perspective its really quite small and doable on short notice.

 

[John Begler]

I guess I have it pretty easy compared to a lot of others. Since I live in Ellis Ks it puts me in a good position to catch a lot of storms without a lot of travel. We had a close call on May 23 2008 tho, a bad storm dropped several small twisters that banged up town a little and left us with no power for several days. Had it been a bigger twister that would have hit us, I might have been homeless.

 

[Andrea Griffa]

I guess I have it pretty easy compared to a lot of others. Since I live in Ellis Ks it puts me in a good position to catch a lot of storms without a lot of travel. We had a close call on May 23 2008 tho, a bad storm dropped several small twisters that banged up town a little and left us with no power for several days. Had it been a bigger twister that would have hit us, I might have been homeless.

Ehy, John, I was there that day and actually a very large twister touched down in Scott Bluff neck of the woods.

As for Ellis twisters, did you see em? Do you remember which parto of the city was hit? I'm pretty sure that one of those hit the exit of the interstate at 9.17pm.

 

[Niccolò Ubalducci]

Ehy, John, I was there that day and actually a very large twister touched down in Scott Bluff neck of the woods.

As for Ellis twisters, did you see em? Do you remember which parto of the city was hit? I'm pretty sure that one of those hit the exit of the interstate at 9.17pm.

How can I forget that night Andrea!!

I remember perfectly the Tornado illuminated by lightning in the direction of W behind us while we take the I70 East from the town of Ellis.

 

[John Begler]

Ehy, John, I was there that day and actually a very large twister touched down in Scott Bluff neck of the woods.

As for Ellis twisters, did you see em? Do you remember which parto of the city was hit? I'm pretty sure that one of those hit the exit of the interstate at 9.17pm.

Actually, I had been down in the Ness City area earlier in the evening and was on location with a friend of mine that is a county spotter for Ellis county at his location on the south Ellis county line when things were hitting Ellis. My daughter was with me that evening and she was on the phone with my wife ( she was in our basement ) as things were hitting. We never saw the tornado as we were too far south to see anything other than a black sky to our north and west. As far as damage to the town, it was pretty minimal consdiering what it could have been. There was damage to a friends farm (L.Kohl) on the southwest side of town as well as some powerlines down. There were more lines down just on the west edge of town on west 6th street as well as a barn (G.Kohl farm ) that lost it's metal roof in the same area. There was also some damage to the high school and a garage across the street. More damage also occurred to some homes on east 6th street on the outskirts of Ellis. A home on the NW edge along I-70 also had some damage. If that storm had put down a twister that would have spanned that distance from one side of the town to the other, it would have been approximately 3/4 mile wide. As it happened, for whatever reason, it put down small short lived twisters across that front doing far less damage than it initially sounded like was possible. We were listening to the local spotters on the radio scanner and I remember one call going out that "Ellis is taking a direct hit, Ellis is taking a direct hit" I really expected to come back to find the town gone. We were very fortunate that nite

A classmate from high school that farms near Cedar Bluff had a close call and his brother lost his house entirely at their farm nearby.

 

[Niccolò Ubalducci]

Ehy, John, I was there that day and actually a very large twister touched down in Scott Bluff neck of the woods.

As for Ellis twisters, did you see em? Do you remember which parto of the city was hit? I'm pretty sure that one of those hit the exit of the interstate at 9.17pm.

Hello Andrea, I just uploaded the video of the escape from Ellis, when we had the tornado a few minutes away from us!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrlqlWcq0NM

 

[Dennis Oswald]

May 1st to May 23nd. It´s my second trip to Tornado Alley this year after 2009. I´ll be on my way with 8 other german chasers.

 

[Niccolò Ubalducci]

May 1st to May 23nd. It´s my second trip to Tornado Alley this year after 2009. I´ll be on my way with 8 other german chasers.

I hope to meet you too!

 

[seanO]

Originally I am from Oklahoma but life took me to Sweden... I will be there April 29th through May 14th.

I am so sick of snow... and yes it snowed today.

 

[J Allen]

Over from the 18th May until the 11th of June, and looking forward to getting away from all the stratocrapulus and nimbostratocrapulus in Melbourne, Aus. Over with a larger Aussie contingent of 8.

 

[Jens Winninghoff]

From May 3rd to May 19th. I`ll be there with three other german chasers. It`s my third time chasing in the plains after 2008 and 2009.

 

[Duick Young]

I am currently over here from the UK (April 19th to May 5th). This is my second year making the pilgrimmage but my 4th year of chasing as I was at OU 2005/06 and Indiana University 2008. Saw my first US tornado in fall 2005 and had to wait until April 22nd to see my 2nd, 3rd and 4th was worth the wait!!!
Coming back next year too although I am looking for partners as chasing alone isn't as much fun.

 

[Lars Lowinski]

Hi,

we will be there from May 1st to May 19th with a group of four. That will be my fifth time in the US and my fourth time on the Great Plains. Hope to see some of you guys out there

Lars