[PaulKn]

Hi all,

Helen and I were in the USA from May 14th to May 30th this year on our annual storm chasing trip.

Initially there was no severe weather so we headed to New Mexico to see White Sands, near Alamogordo, which was pretty amazing.

Thereafter we headed back to the Plains and were treated to a number of rounds of severe weather. As other threads have testified, it was by no means a classic season but there was plenty of severe weather out there - it just took a bit more work to find. I have no problem with this at all as it's ultimately more fun to have to look in very fine detail to produce a target area, and it also limits chaser traffic: at no time did we see anything like some of the scenes we've witnessed in the past.

The icing on the cake was the chance to see an annular eclipse of the sun, which we did from West Texas. Here the maximum eclipse was around or just before sunset, which was pretty stunning. However, it was almost scuppered, for us, by an innocuous cumulus cloud, which moved in from of the sun as the partial phase of the eclipse was taking place. We did a quick re-position to the west and saw it! Cammie and Tim were with us then which made it even more fun.

We also met up with Ian Miller, and Pete Scott and Nathan Edwards. We also saw Ian Williams et al, so pretty much all the UK chasers!

Full write ups and some pics are in my blog - the first day is here: http://ukstormchaser...05/arrived.html

You can then navigate to the other days.

Below is a selection of pics of things we saw: tornado on May 25th in Kansas; 3rd phase of annular eclipse in west Texas, just after max eclipse; and lightning in Nebraska on May 23rd.

[Ian Williams]

Great brief account Paul and Pics, will sit down tonight and have a read of your blog, i`m sure it will be a must - read, cheers

[PaulKn]

Thanks, Ian! I should also mention that we saw Stu Robinson too.

[Tony Gilbert]

Pretty gutted that I couldn't make it this year . Though Paul's Blog and other chasers experiences posted over to us here in the UK made it a bit more easier to cope!
Whilst the outlook was looking rather stark earlier in May things soon turned around for the better with a fairly consistent workable pattern by middle of the month. June has continued to show some further severe weather mainly over the High Plains. Though maybe less that earlier years!
Ironically July has in the past shown some good severe weather over the northern plains though I have sadly noted that the Denver/ Chicago flight fares have now rocketed up to £700.00. So even the potential for a late season chase looks to be out of the question now.

Anyway just just 11 months and one day to go till I have a chance to chase again

PS. The idea of a chase blog sounds a great way to let everyone now about your adventures without getting too embroiled in discussions when your tired and its late in the motel room!

This post has been edited by Tony Gilbert: 14 June 2012 - 17:09

[PaulKn]

Yeah, sorry you couldn't make it this year Tony, but as you say, we're already 1 month closer to next year's chase!

A blog is a fun way to let people know what you're up to - friends and family are quite interested in our adventures too, so it's nice for them to see where we are!

The last few years have seen a marked change in my approach to these trips, as I treat them much more like 'our' holidays now, and so I'm not interested in getting involved in deep forum conversations about risk areas, etc, and just focus on where we want to go. I'll often post those thoughts on the blog, in case anyone is interested.

It's also a nice to have it as a record, so in the winter, I can look back at what we did, to get through the cold, dark weather!

[Ed.]

Some fantastic images of nature REALLY strutting its stuff! no doubt those memories shall remain, or as you say, when things turn decidely back to normal :-)