Well I haven’t posted in a couple of weeks for a few reasons.  After everyone in the StormScapeLive family started to recover from the shocking Moore tornado, Mike Phelps met up with the group to kick off the 2nd tour of the season.  He drove for a few days with one of his friends from The Weather Channel and picked up Kim on the way out to Denver.  Right at the start of that tour the 2nd deadly EF5 Tornado hit Oklahoma in as many weeks.  Mike and his team were on the outskirts of this storm and it scared the heck out of me as well as many others.  Just prior to this, Randy Walton, tour coordinator was having difficulty catching his breath and had some chest pains.  Everyone watching the stream held their breath.  One in fear of Randy’s condition, and two, as the winds were buffering against the vehicles.  At one point someone in the second vehicle asked “why are we stopped” and the words that Mike uttered sent chills down my spine…”We go forward we die”.  It was at that moment that I realized that could be me in the van with them.  I never expected to see them get that close.  I know Mike promises to get you a tornado if he can while the tour is going but I had believed that he kept a safe distance.  I was a bit horrified and started to doubt my decision to go.  This was on Friday May 31st.

Over the course of the weekend we learned how quickly that monster grew and how it caught many, many people off guard.  Worse was the fact that so many people were on the highway when it hit.  There is a lot of controversy on why people were on the road but I won’t get into that.  I’ll leave that discussion for others.  On Saturday evening, I watch the team having fun and retired shortly before they arrived at their hotel.  When I awoke in the morning was when I discovered that shortly after I had logged off on Saturday, messages started to circulate about 3 veteran chasers who had perished in the storm.  My mind immediately went to team Twistex.  I said out loud, “Oh God, please not Tim”.  To my dismay, it was Tim Samaras and his son Paul and Carl Young.  I was devastated.  Because of FaceBook, I have had the opportunity to chat with each of them on many occasions.  Last fall I purchased one of the videos that Paul had produced of Team Twistex in action.  Tim was gracious enough to autograph it for me.  I will treasure that video.  May they rest in eternal peace.

I had many people tell me that I was crazy for wanting to go on a similar trip and that I was being selfish and thinking only of myself and not my family.  What if something like this happened when I go out.  I had others telling me don’t listen to them…go anyway.  I had to take a few days to pray over it and decide if it was the right thing to do.

Five days after the terrible storm, Michael Phelps posted his reflections on what transpired that day and posted the video that Shannon Prentice one of the tour guests had captured (http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/33601981).  After reading his post I responded with the following:

An encounter with one of God’s most graceful creatures