10 day tour with Tempest Tours in early May 2013 – Part 1 “The setup”

early storm season 2013

I went with Tempest Tours in 2013 from May 1st to May 10th. I was scheduled to go with Weather Gods first but I had to reschedule very late (read more about why here). During this tour I actually didn’t blog or write a diary so I don’t have any detailed text about my experiences of this tour. I will publish some of the best photos from the tour and what I remember from it.

The season of 2013 started off really slow and this tour was no exception, we only had 4 chase days out of 10 which of course was a disappointment. We started off with one chase day before a low pressure blocked the entire continent for six consecutive days. The situation was quite extreme and they even had snow in Oklahoma in the beginning of our tour!

Our tour guide was Brian Morganti, who was a really dedicated and experienced tour guide. Every morning he held a 45 minute (!) presentation of the day’s weather setup. It was highly appreciated, really enlightening and felt really professional. During the down days these presentations weren’t as long which I was quite happy about. In a way it felt like “rubbing in the bad news”, although this was of course not his intent.

 

usa today low tornado activity
This was in USA Today on our last morning of the tour.

 

morning
Brian goes through the setup on our last day.

 

panorama photo storm
I learned about the panorama functionality on my iPhone during this tour. It turned out to be really good for “wide angle photos”. This is the storm on Day 1. Nothing amazing but we were happy to chase right away.

 

questionmark cloud
What happened after Day 1 was perhaps not really a mystery but it sure was disappointing. Even the clouds couldn’t understand why.