"THE TOUR PACKAGE NOW ADDS daily hotel lodging, bottled water, a
professionally edited highlights tape and lifetime discounts on all future
tours"

1. TOUR MEETING LOCATIONS: Tours 1 through tour 3 will begin and end at Will Rogers International Airport in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Tours 4 and 5 will begin and end at Denver International Airport in Denver, Colorado. Upon arrival at the airport, a hotel shuttle will transport you to your hotel in Oklahoma City or Denver. We have developed a long-standing relationship with a certain Oklahoma City hotel. We are in the process of booking rooms at one of the brand new hotels near Denver's International Airport for Tours 4 and 5. We always book each tour's block of rooms months in advance. You will be transported from the airport to this designated hotel via the hotel's free hotel shuttle bus. Additional details will be mailed to you by March 1, 2001. This information always includes details such as: suggested packing list, typical tour daily itinerary, contact information and arrival day logistics (the "arrival day" will be described in the next item below). 
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2. WHEN TO ARRIVE AND DEPART: Each of the four available tours is 10 days in length. And we do mean 10. For this reason, we have set aside so-called "arrival days" before the actual start of each tour and "departure days" at the conclusion of each tour. You should schedule your arrival to the meeting location on your tour's designated arrival day and your departure on your tour's designated departure day. The arrival days for the 2001 tours are: April 25 (Tour 1), May 7 (Tour 2), May 22 (Tour 3), June 3 (Tour 4), June 15 (Tour 5). The departure days for the 2001 tours are: May 6 (Tour 1), May 18 (Tour 2), June 2 (Tour 3), June 14 (Tour 4), June 26 (Tour 5). Example: If you are scheduled for Tour 1 (April 26 to May 5), you would arrive at Will Rogers International Airport (OKC) on April 25 sometime during the late afternoon or early evening. You would leave OKC on May 6 after NOON local time. The second tour participants should arrive during the late afternoon or very early evening of May 6. Due to the fact that we give a comprehensive orientation on the evening of your arrival, we require that all attendees arrive at the meeting city prior to 5 pm (if at all possible) on your arrival day. We also strongly suggest that you schedule your return flight to leave after NOON the day AFTER your last tour day so that we can maximize our driving range on the last day of your tour. 
3. ORIENTATION MEETING: We will have an important orientation meeting at about 7:30 pm of your arrival day. We will tantalize you with video footage of some of our previous storm chases as we go over important ground rules designed to make the tours a safer and more enjoyable experience. Afterwards, we will go to dinner together.
4. COST AND PAYMENT DETAILS: Tours 1-4 costs $2400/person (but only $2300 per person if sharing a hotel room). Due to the more personal and intense experience created on this tour (e.g., we only book 4-5 participants on this tour), Tour 5 costs $3200/person ($3100 per person if sharing a hotel room). This includes all expenses EXCEPT airfare, food and incidentals. It also includes bottled water and soft drinks! It includes, of course, ground transportation and lodging during the tour.  We require a non-refundable deposit of $600.00 to reserve your slot payable by personal check, cashier's check, or money order. Another $600 is due by April 1, 2001. The balance of $1200 ($1100 per person for hotel room sharing participants) is due when you show up on your arrival day.
5. TOUR TRANSPORTATION: We will travel in the following combination of highly-equipped vehicles: (1) Lead Van: Dodge Caravan XL with ample room for 4 passengers. (2) Second Van: 15-passenger van with a total of 7 passengers plus driver. On our very most popular tours (the dates of these vary from year to year) we add a third passenger van staffed by two more highly experienced tour guides. Both Lead and Second vans are equipped with the following set-up: computer navigation systems; cell phone-laptop computer combinations for mobile data downloading (cell phone network is really improving and we are now able to get data this way 75-80% of the time); LCD screens located in the front of the Primary van and on the seat backs of each bench seat in the Second Van for allowing YOU to view the data that we are analyzing, including Doppler radar images downloaded from the Internet; CB Radios for effective van-to-van communications. If and when mobile wireless satellite data ingestion is proven to work consistently and reliably, we will adopt this technology.
6. TOUR LODGING: The tour pays your lodging on each of the ten tour days. We are not going to stay in a roach-infested fleabag motel. You will get a clean, comfortable room each night that you're with us. Although we do not have an unlimited hotel budget, we will do our best to ensure a reasonably high caliber of lodging on your tour. During the past few years, here are the motel/hotel chains we have used most often: Super 8 (a storm chaser's favorite), selected Best Westerns, Holiday Inn Express, Quality Inns/Suites, Red Roof Inn, Fairfield Inn, Hampton Inn. Once in a while we stay in a "mom-n-pop"-owned motel in a smaller town (usually places that we have used previously when we wind up far off the beaten track) but the minimum standard we always strive to apply is clean and comfortable.
7. WHAT TO BRING WITH YOU: You should plan on bringing a large duffel-type or soft-shell suitcase as well as camcorders, cameras or laptop computers. We strongly discourage you from bringing hard-shell suitcases! Make your best attempt at packing ten days' worth of clothing (again, these types of details are expounded in the additional tour information that every participant receives around March 1 of each year). We will be staying at Motel 8's (when available), some of which have coin-operated washers and dryers. Pack for warm to hot and humid weather. Pack two pairs of jeans and long sleeve shirts. We will occasionally encounter cold weather.
8. WHAT WE DO DURING "SEVERE CLEAR": Much of the success of your tour (i.e., the number of tornadoes and/or storms that we witness) depends on the atmosphere. Although we offer our tours during the very peak of the climatological tornado season, the large-scale weather pattern does occasionally become unfavorable for frequent severe thunderstorm events. We have not yet had a tour during which there were no severe storms encountered, but during these occasional inactive severe weather regimes, we can go 2-3 days with no significant thunderstorms. On days when there are no storms expected (of course, we hope those are very few!), we will offer a few tried-and-true recreational options. These activities are weather-related whenever possible. Examples from last year: we toured the Storm Prediction Center/National Severe Storms Laboratory in Norman, OK; we toured three National Weather Service Forecast offices; viewed tornado damage; we attended the annual StormTrack picnic; the famous Big Texan steakhouse in Amarillo, Texas; we even had a cookout! We often find ourselves in the vicinity of beautiful state and national parks. We have visited Devil's Tower, Mount Rushmore, the Badlands (we love South Dakota!) and the Medora Badlands National Park (western North Dakota).
9. EDUCATION: We work very hard to give you a meaningful education. While you are with Silver Lining Tours, you will enjoy a unique opportunity to learn from us. You will have plenty of time to learn about the formation, structure and dynamics of severe thunderstorms, tornadoes and other interesting weather phenomena in terms you can understand. You will be able to watch your tour guides actually prepare the morning forecast every day. You will be shown our systematic approach to severe weather forecasting. You will enjoy the advantage of gaining insight while you are watching the atmosphere in motion. We feel strongly that if you come to our tours with a genuine interest in increasing your understanding of the atmosphere, you will walk away feeling like you have really learned something! We pledge to work tirelessly at increasing your knowledge about severe thunderstorms, storm chasing, forecasting and weather.
10. ADDITIONAL PERKS: Each participant will receive a complete professional-quality video of the tour highlights from all 2001 tours, a Silver Lining Tours t-shirt and a discount on future tours. 

PLEASE read the Frequently Asked Questions section of this web site for more information about our price structure, philosophy and more!

Here is what you must do to book a tour:

1. Contact me via email or phone and let me know that you have read the information provided in this web site and you would like to book a tour. I have taken care to ensure that every relevant detail is included in this web site.
2. I will mail to you a Tour Agreement that you must read carefully. If you agree to the terms described in the agreement, sign it. The tour agreement has a space in which you can indicate your tour of choice. I will let you know if your tour of choice is close to capacity when you contact me. Please be aware that only people 18 years of age or older may join our tours unaccompanied by a legal guardian or parent.
3. Mail the signed tour agreement along with the non-refundable deposit to the address provided in the "Contact Information" section of this web site. Make your check or money order payable to "Silver Lining Tours, L.C.".
4. Congratulations! You are now ready to participate in the "atmospheric adventure of a lifetime"^TM with Silver Lining Tours!

We are now booking slots for the 2002 tours.

  Simply e-mail David Gold and tell him you want to know more!

  We will gladly mail to you a 2002 tour brochure!

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