We parked in the gravel parking lot of the Interagency Visitor Center just before 4:00am.  The building serves as both the visitor center for Gates of the Arctic National Park as well as the local headquarters for the Bureau of Land Management and the Division of Fish and Wildlife Conservation.

It may have been before 4:00am but the sun was brightly shining…just the way it had been for the last several continuous days and nights.

Our journey had begun the prior evening just outside of Denali National Park.  Ten hours of driving overnight while staring directly into the Sun along the road ahead had done quite the number to our equilibrium.

Uke managed to fall asleep almost immediately after parking the truck.  After that long intensive drive, I wasn’t sure how he could have possibly stayed awake any longer.

Myself, on the other hand, of course, lay awake staring directly into the Sun which was perched well above the horizon.

Driving a semi functional vehicle is not something I’m really proud to be knowledgeable about, but sometimes it comes in handy.

One of the large passenger vans at our worksite had a bad torque converter.  We were going to drive it two hours to Fairbanks (or as close as we could get).

The van backed up just fine, but when I shifted it into drive it would not budge.

After several attempts of revving the engine up quite high, shifting over and over into every gear, the van was still stationary.

On one final attempt, the van finally started to creep forward. I revved the engine just below its limit and it kept slowly creeping forward a bit faster.

“Go! Just GO!” Uke yelled at me from his nearby truck.

*Banging on Door*

“Andrew! Get up…..I smell smoke!”

We were just ten days removed from a significant fire on our property when I was woken up just three hours into a night of sleep.

Nevermind it was 8am, and also the fact that night does not exist in Alaska in June.

Smoke in the Canyon

I walked out of my door and the strong odor of a forest fire was unmistakable. The view of the canyon directly in front of our property was notably obscured by smoke.

However, we were clearly not in any immediate danger, unlike the last time.

“Meet me at my truck in five minutes.”

Uke called me and we instinctively knew it was time to go for a quick ride to try to find the fire.

The last month has more than likely been the busiest travel month of my life.

For starters, Sarah and I are married! We managed to fit a wedding and honeymoon in the West Indies into our odd lives.

We were officially wed on May 10th on the beautiful island nation of Barbados by the hilarious Rev. Holder.

Saturday brought the first serious severe weather event of 2019 to the United States. Although, much of the storms failed to live up to the expectations based on the forecast.

The severe weather event was a relatively small part of a massive and remarkable storm system that is affecting the entire United States.

Assault on all Fronts

On Friday, large snow flakes fell across Tuscon Arizona, and even as far south as the Arizona/Mexico border.

A blizzard packing 70mph wind gusts and up to 10 inches of snow affected western Kansas and other parts of the plains states.

Major flooding has been ongoing in parts of the deep south, particularly parts of central Alabama and Mississippi.

On Sunday the 24th, the low pressure system is now moving across the Great Lakes. Areas of Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, and surrounding areas can expect up to 12 HOURS worth of 40mph winds with gusts of over 65mph possible. Power outages are likely.

Wednesday in Hattiesburg

On Wednesday, there was a 5% tornado risk issued by the SPC for a small sliver of southeastern Mississippi.

This is a lower end risk, however since it encompassed such a small area it (presumably) leaves a pretty good chance that you can see a tornado.

Many of my biggest tornadoes have come on these lower end days.  The trip was only 90 minutes, so I had to bite on this regardless of what the atmosphere actually looked like.

There was not a single severe weather warning of any kind issued on Wednesday.However there was quite a bit of flash flooding in Hattiesburg, albeit short lived.

King Cake Shake

King Cake Shake in Hattiesburg!

By far the best capture of the day was this KING CAKE SHAKE that chased me down and cornered me at Ed’s Burger Joint. Ed’s is located just down the street from the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg.

Yes, it was even better than it looks. The shake contained chunk of king cake that easily made their way up the over sized straw and sloshed around between my now decaying teeth.

Saturday – Moderate Risk!

Saturday was the long awaited and much hyped day. Everyone was expecting a tornado outbreak, although there were a couple of ingredients that seemed to be missing.

Just before midnight on Friday night, the SPC issued a 15% hatched risk for Tornadoes across much of Mississippi.

15% hatched risks are noteworthy for their boom or bust predictions. Often times, they are complete busts. More on this phenomenon at a much later time..

Tornado Watch and Developing Storms

My initial target guess on Friday was that we were would be in Indianola, Mississippi around 10:30am on Saturday.

Things shifted a little bit later. Our first stop off of the highway was located at Mississippi State Road 12 near the town of Durant.

After around 20 minutes of waiting and watching, we hopped back onto I-55 north with the intention of heading to Greenwood, MS.

As storms started to gain strength but just as quickly fall apart, we decided to aim for another cluster of developing storms further south.

Back onto I-55 south, our chosen storm was quickly looking more and more impressive.

As each mile marker passed, we were convinced that if any storm was going to drop a tornado today, this would be the one.

The National Weather Service issued a Tornado Warning for Yazoo county, and the storm was heading directly into our windshields as we traveled south-southwest on I55.

Passing the village of Vaughn, little more than a name on the map, we exited onto Mississippi Route 16 and creeped a bit northwest.

There was a slight clearing in the forest just off the exit, although it could be considered quite modest for Mississippi.

On the Shoulder of I-55

We returned to Interstate 55 northbound after just six minutes on a side road. The storm was moving quickly and this was the only way to maintain a view.

We found a acceptably a clear spot in the trees to pull well of the road and watch the sky’s actions unfold.

The field of vision certainly wasn’t great, but it was good as it gets in this part of Mississippi.

A storm falls apart on a Moderate Risk day in Mississippi.

The Tornado warned storm’s core moved over the interstate directly in front of us. As this occurred, we felt a cool breeze of wind coming at us from the gyrating clouds.

Cool outflow was coming from the storm where warm inflow should have been occurring.  In addition, the radar signature looked very weak and completely disorganized now.

It was obvious this storm was not about to produce any tornado.

Nevertheless, we continued to follow it…for an entire six minutes longer.

After that, the base of the storm was well to the east and completely obscured by the treeline.

There was no real way of catching up with these storm motions, let alone the very sparse road network of Central Mississippi.

Well, Shall we Return South?

As the storm moved away, we looked around at the large number of generally uninteresting storms on radar.

The only noteworthy storm was a small but lone cell that was heading towards Jackson.  The cell had a bit of a hook shape indicative of a good updraft with reasonable sheer.

However, the storm was already nearly parallel with I-55.

By the time we reached Jackson, the storm had (predictably) weakened considerably and was just to our east.

So finally we decided to chase our next target–Whataburger.

Yeah yeah, it was inevitable. It was now after 3:00pm and we had only eaten a little sandwich from Starbucks.

An Empty Return Home

After eating, I drove Sarah around downtown Jackson. I had coincenditally just been here three weeks ago for the first time myself.

We drove down Historic Farish Street just west of the center of downtown Jackson. This is a completely abandoned historic district that contained food, entertainment and nightlife….all except for the still surviving Big Apple Inn.

Strong Tornado Hits Columbus, MS

I won’t get into details on here, but one strong tornado did occur in Columbus, Mississippi late on Saturday evening.

Unfortunately, one person was killed by this tornado. The tornado was rated EF-3 and did quite a bit of heavy damage to Columbus.

This was the only noteworthy tornado of the day. Thus the predicted tornado outbreak did in fact not occur. This is just one of numerous times a 15% hatched has been a complete bust when we were chasing.

Again, we would love to figure out what the deal with this is and hopefully will someday.

Three Strikes

That there makes three busts in a row in the state of Mississippi for me in just three weeks time.

Events may not work out as expected. This is a basic prerequisite of life.

However, the lessons and sights that come along the way will always carry forward with you.

No matter how small…

“You’re moving to New Orleans? Oh no, that place is a freaking cesspool man!”

It was only by a small stroke of luck that I ended up finding one of the most dreamy slices of the planet at all.

After spending a few nights in Hue during the peak of Tet, the Vietnamese Lunar New Year, it was time to slither just a bit south down the coast to Hoi An, Vietnam.

Tet is the biggest holiday in Vietnam and celebrations last for over one week, with much of the country completely shutting down to celebrate for several days.

Liberal Kansas to Trinidad, Colorado.

More Properly Known as: Liberal, Kansas to Trinidad, Colorado – May 2015

Just after the Sun peaked in the sky on May 16th, we were in the pre-trolling phase of  convective development. For today we were just outside of Liberal, Kansas.  There had been a moderate risk placed early that morning which stretched from Liberal, Kansas down to Childress, Texas.

We overslept, and the better risk appeared to be down south in Texas, however at this point we were too far north, and apparently more interested in Braum’s burgers than whatever the hell was going on outside with the atmosphere.

Road Food Time!

It was around 2pm when the towering cumulus clouds appeared to be anything but towering. Notably it wasn’t exactly humid outside as would be preferred for a storm day.

After the repulsively delicious and hedonistic meal was finished, we went out to the car and sat on our asses before driving further south out of town.

The car ride from the airport was daunting to say the least.  We were doing about 50mph through curves that would have been signed for 15 in the USA.  Honestly it was probably bad enough that I should have left questionable feedback for the Uber Driver, but I was having fun and wouldn’t do that.

After about twenty minutes of  bouncing from curb to curb, riding through tight and frequent twists, we were finally nearing the hostel. The car ride reminded me quite a bit of Atlanta, in the sense that this was a very large city, yet was sprawled out all over the place that you hardly knew whether you were in the center or not.

Rolling hills, short but yet very steep, which were covered with wide roads that wound back and forth…so much that you hardly knew which direction you were heading.

Arriving at the Hostel

The day dragged on longer than expected, and I didn’t arrive at the hostel until just after 9pm.  By that time, it appeared we were already in full evening party mode.  I could barely get in the door of the damn place!

It was the smallest and shackiest looking building I had gone inside of during my entire time in SE Asia.  The roof was flat and from street level, appeared to be about two feet shorter than I was.

After going through an unreasonably lengthy “pre-adventure”, the first official tornado chase in two years had begun.

(Not including a couple of hurricane chases…)

Since leaving the Wichita airport, we had stopped at Walmart, Target, Best Buy, and Five Guys before we finally got our asses on the actual road out into the open skies of Kansas.

As we rolled northwest on KS96 toward Hutchinson, it was almost surreal to be back on the open and empty plains after spending so much time in indescribably crowded, hot, and polluted Asian cities.

Great Bend Reunion

Great Bend Kansas. Population of about 20,000. We’ve probably been through this quaint town 25 times in the last five years.

On the south side of town, we stopped at a KwikShop gas station around 2:30pm. As I am pulling the rental Nissan into the gas station, I notice several cars that have a bit of a peculiar familiarity.

“…Hey guys, is that Andrew? It is! It’s Andrew Newcomb!!”

Uh Oh. I was far from prepared for this.  Before I could even get out of the car, I had a small huddle of friends I had not seen in quite a while.