IT FINALLY HAPPENED! WE FINALLY CHASED DOWN A STORM SYSTEM THAT WAS FULL OF TWISTERS! AND THEN IT CHASED US DOWN, AND THEN THERE WAS SOME HAIL.

Let me tell you how it went down (because it was amazingly awesome.)

At 3:45 am Chase woke me up by yelling “Come on y’all, right quick, get into the truck.”

Then at 3:50 he woke me up again. (Pete’s like their sleep. That is a fact that has been proven by science.)
A few minutes later we were all in our respective chase vehicles, tearing toward the storm. All of the things that have gone wrong so far, all of the equipment that’s been broken, all of the bickering and “loud verbal disagreements.” That the team has, all of that went away as we were closing in on the front that Frosty had nicknamed the “internminator.”*

*Intern Terminator. Frosty told me “Don’t be offended. I like you. You’re a nice guy, but the data leads me to believe that this storm system carries a pretty strong grudge against interns.”

Now, in my time, I’ve seen thunderstorms that seemed to come straight out of Hollywood, but I’ve never seen anything like this storm. The clouds in the sky were boiling and the lightning was bright and constant enough that you could have read a book. “Catchin’ a strom” as Chase calls it, means being able to be at the right place at the right time, and this time we were – there was no doubt about that.

Debbie and Scott gave each other a look that meant “this is the place.” We all pulled to the side of the road, pulled out the equipment and got to work. I was busy putting the field Doppler through the warm-up sequence when I heard Chase yell.
“Hey kid! Look out!”

(Debbie’s calling me now, so I’ll tell you the rest soon!)

Stay twisty –
Pete.