"Hurry Up and Wait"

Today, the Tornado Intercept Vehicle (TIV) made an appearance in our parking lot and hogged up all the attention. So clearly, I had to be a tourist too and get my picture with it.
Here's Jeff with the DOW7 of which he is working in. Jeff was my math tutor when I was a freshman in college.
We waited until 3:30pm for word of where we were going. We had two potential target areas, but the one east of where we are staying looked like it was going to be a night time storm break out - which ended up to be true. In the meantime, the usual shenanigans were going on.
We finally rushed out of Hays, KS to sit in a parking lot for 40 mins in WaKeeney to watch the developing storms and receive commands from our control unit.
I can't tell you how many times today I thought to myself, "I could do this forever". The whole working with very interactive people, all fit to be field employees, planning routes and watching storms develop, not to mention driving to them. Too bad it can't be a full time job. It combines several of my favorite things in one - weather, maps, people, and going places.

We ended up deploying to a developing cell near Lyle, KS

I took a bit of video but there wasn't anything too impressive today except for some lightning nickel-sized hail, and multiple roadrunners. What I am going to do is rather than post videos on here, I'll likely post some videos on Youtube once things really get started and link them from here.

The chase was fun - we were up on some back country dirt roads. Another one of the vans got stuck on a dirt road that turned to mucky mud - as well as the media vehicle, and another van by trying to help the other van. I am lucky we didn't take a 'wrong turn' - I thank my awesome navigator for that.

Monday looks like high potential for a tornado outbreak. We could have several days in a row of chasing, and potential to see my first twister. (eek!!)