SCHEDULE

We at Silver Lining Tours are very pleased to announce our 2002 schedule and we are now accepting reservations for the 2002 tours. We have updated the list of tour package amenities to provide the most complete and enjoyable service possible. The prices below are for a complete tour package that now ADDS arrival day lodging (of course, the package still includes lodging for each of the 10 tour days), tour t-shirts and an end-of-tour banquet.

Note: Italicized tours in the tables below are nearly full as of February 27, 2002.

Tour Number	Begin Date	End Date	Length (Days)	Total Cost	Base City
1	April 26	May 5	10	$2600	OKC
2 sold out!	May 7	May 16	10	$2600	OKC
Reunion sold out!	FULL	FULL	FULL	FULL	FULL
3	May 31	June 9	10	$2600	OKC
4 sold out!	FULL	FULL	FULL	FULL	FULL
5	*June 16*	*June 21*	6	*$1900*	*DEN*
6 sold out!	June 23	June 28	6	$1900	DEN
NEW: July 4 Tour	June 30	July 5	6	$1900	DEN
7	July 7	July 12	6	$1900	DEN

We are offering a special middle to late June tour designed for those that want an educationally intensive, more personal experience. This tour is designed to provide in-depth knowledge about storm chasing and storm spotting. Each participant will be taught concepts that can be used to make his/her own chase forecast, tactical decision making in the field (e.g., how to pick one storm versus another) and how to use and interpret the myriad observations and data available on the Internet. Even though the Southern Plains tornado season is winding down, the Northern Plains and Midwest are experiencing their peak tornado season during the time period from mid to late June. It is emphasized that this tour will be most beneficial to those who already have some kind of prior background knowledge in one or more of the following subjects: meteorology, engineering, thermodynamics, mathematics, physics or storm chasing experience itself. Those that have NO prior knowledge or experience are encouraged to consider another one of our tour offerings."

Summer Tours now available

Come chase the high plains and northern plains during their peak severe weather season of June and July. Your tour guide will be Roger Hill, one of the most experienced and successful chasers of that region. Roger will be taking you through some of the most extraordinary scenic regions of the United States in search of severe weather of all kinds. Eastern Montana, the Dakotas and the high plains experience a significant amount of severe weather, including supercells and tornadoes, during this time period. Your tour will begin and end in Denver, the heart of this chasing region. You will have 6 full days of chasing, with your tour beginning and ending on Saturdays, which are designated travel days arriving and departing Denver. These tours are designed for those who cannot take off for a 10 day tour or fo those looking for a later or less expensive tour. Or, they are for you have always wanted to visit the northern and high plains but haven't yet. For more information please contact David Gold or Roger Hill and please visit Roger's web site at www.stormchase.net to see how successful Roger has been during the late portion of the Great Plains storm chasing season. You won't be disappointed! David Gold will be providing weather forecasts and data to Roger during the 6 day tours.

Declare your independence from the same old barbeque and fireworks and come out to the plains to see the best fireworks display on EARTH! Due to the burgeoning interest in our summer tours, we have opened a new time slot and initiated our Independence Day Tour running from June 30 until July 5. The same arrangements of the other summer tours apply to this one.

Each year we add new technology as it suits our operation. This year, we will likely add a portable projector to make it easier to present the orientation meetings and morning weather forecasts. Also, this could make it even easier to teach our participants why we look at the specific products we do and what relevance they have to the daily outlook. Mobile satellite internet is on the verge of being practical for field applications; we continue to closely monitor this technology and still plan to adopt it once we become convinced of its viability. We have learned that one tour company that uses this technology has experienced many difficulties getting it to work consistently.

Finally, remember that only people 18 years of age or older may attend the tours. However, minors can join the tours if accompanied by a parent or legal guardian. Said parent must be willing to indemnify the tours. Each year we have a couple parent/child teams joining us and it is always lots of fun!

-----------------Additional Information---------------------------------

THE TOUR PACKAGE NOW ADDS arrival day lodging, tour t-shirt and an end-of-tour banquet. As always, the package still includes daily hotel lodging during each of your 10 days with us, bottled water, a professionally edited highlights tape and lifetime discounts on all future tours.

TOUR MEETING LOCATIONS: Tours 1 through tour 4 will begin and end at Will Rogers International Airport in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Tour 5 through 7 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. In 2001 we will establish a similar relationship with one of the brand new hotels near Denver's International Airport (for 2002 Tour 5-7). 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 and reliable hotel shuttle bus. Additional details will be mailed to you by March 1, 2002. This information always includes details such as: suggested packing list, typical tour daily itinerary and arrival day logistics (the "arrival day" will be described in the next item below).
Try making online travel reservations
WHEN TO ARRIVE AND DEPART: Tours 1 through 4 is 10 days in length. Tours 5-7 are 6 days in length. And we do mean 10 (or 6 days). 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 2002 tours are: April 25 (Tour 1), May 6 (Tour 2), May 17 (Reunion Tour), May 30 (Tour 3), June 11 (Tour 4). The departure days for the 2002 tours are: May 6 (Tour 1), May 17 (Tour 2), May 30 (Reunion Tour), June 11 (Tour 3), June 22 (Tour 4). 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.
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.
COST AND PAYMENT DETAILS: Tours 1, 2 and 3 costs $2600/person (but only $2450 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 4 costs $3200/person (but only $3050 per person if sharing a hotel room), and tours 5 through 7 cost $1900/person (but only $1750 per person if sharing a hotel room). This includes all expenses EXCEPT airfare, food and incidentals. It also includes bottled water! 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, 2002. The balance of $1300 ($1150 per person for hotel room sharing participants) is due when you show up on your arrival day.
TOUR TRANSPORTATION: We will travel in the following combinatio of highly-equipped vehicles: Two 15-passenger vans, with AT MOST 6 participants each, a driver and tour guide up front. Both vans are equipped with the following set-up: computer navigation systems; cell phone-laptop computer combinations for mobile data downloading (the cell phone network has vastly improved and we are now able to get data this way a whopping 95% of the time); LCD screens located in the front of the vans to allow you to watch videos during some of the long drives; CB Radios for effective van-to-van communications."
TOUR LODGING: The tour pays your lodging on each of the ten tour days (and the arrival night). We are not going to spend any time 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 the minimum standard we always strive to apply is clean and comfortable.
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.
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).
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.
ADDITIONAL PERKS: Each participant will receive a complete professional-quality video of the tour highlights from all 2002 tours, a Silver Lining Tours t-shirt and an end-of-tour banquet

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:

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.
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.
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.".
Congratulations! You are now ready to participate in the adventure of your life with Silver Lining Tours!

We will now begin to book 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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Warning: The content of this site, including but not limited to the text and images herein and their arrangement, are copyright © 2001 Silver Lining Tours, Inc. All rights reserved. Any unauthorized use including, but not limited to, reproduction, transfer, transmission, dissemination and storage in a retrieval system of any content of this website is strictly prohibited.

Tour #	Begin Date	End Date	Length (Days)	Total Cost	Base City
4 sold out	FULL	FULL	FULL	FULL	FULL

Tour #	Begin Date	End Date	Length (Days)	Total Cost	Base City
5	June 16	June 21	6	$1900	DEN
6 sold out!	June 23	June 28	6	$1900	DEN
July 4 Tour	June 30	July 5	6	$1900	DEN
7	July 7	July 12	6	$1900	DEN