Tour leader: Roger Hill
Tour guides: Caryn Hill and Tim Kozier
Day 1 - May 23 (early birds chased on the arrival day, too); Day 10 - June 1
Arrival Day - May 22: After much logistical leg-work, we managed to get a few of the Tour 3 customers to arrive in Oklahoma City early enough to chase with a partial group on this amazing day. The result: 5 tornadoes, some incredible, on two different storms in southern Nebraska and northern Kansas.
Day 1 - May 23: This day clearly looked like a major tornado day over Illinois so the group departed Kansas City, MO early in the morning and eventually intercepted a high-based supercell northeast of St. Louis. For some reason, this storm never got its act together.
Day 2 - May 24: For obvious safety reasons, the group, tired and haggard from the past two hectic days, HAD to spend the night in Peoria, Illinois at the conclusion of Day 1. Thus, despite their best efforts, they simply could not get to the target area (the triple point over southern Nebraska/northern Kansas) in time to see a nice tornado-fest that occurred there early in the afternoon. Nonetheless, they got to witness some pretty incredible storm structure on three different supercell storms that day. Pictures soon.
Day 4 - May 26: Tour 3 intercepted a beautiful striated LP supercell near Hinton, Oklahoma; this storm tried hard to produce a tornado but couldn't. Pictures soon.
Day 7 - May 29: Tornadic supercell in northern Kansas. Five tornadoes observed.
Day 8 - May 30: Several tornadoes were observed with a wet supercell in central Illinois.
Inaugural "on-call" chase: May 29, 2004. The first on-call chase was conducted by Stuart Robinson, Alister Chapman and Mark Humpage in southern Kansas. They picked up the customer (Liana S.) in Wichita, Kansas the night before and intercepted a highly photogenic tornado in Harper County on the evening of May 29. Some low-quality images of that tornado are shown below.