Tuesday May 14th has been a day to look forward to for months. Today we start our storm chase and that is definitely exciting! Before we can really start chasing there is still a lot that has to be done but we are getting there.

Before the chase starts you have to arrange a lot, beginning months before the actual trip. It was in autumn that we had our first chase meeting. We brought up memories of previous chases and discussed who were planning to go in 2002. At that time we were thinking of 5 chasers. Unfortunately one of us had to cancel a few months in advance as he wanted to stay with his family. This meant it would be the four of us. In February we got our flight tickets and rented a van. This is very important as you spend half of your time chasing in the van. It is a kind of home so we need some space. For 4 persons we rent an 8-person van so a few of us can rest in the back while on the road. As the date of departure came closer more things had to be arranged. The equipment has to be complete and it turned out we got a great sponsor for this years trip. WeatherBug!

The last few weeks several tornadoes have touched down in Maryland, unfortunately even with some people losing their lives. It makes clear once again that chasing is not something you just do just like that. You have to know what you are doing and always keep your own safety and that of others as a primary rule!

Today we got up very early around 04.15 A.M.. We slept at the house of Coen’s parents as it is easy to get to the airport from there. His parents brought us to the train station where we left at 05.00. The trip to Schiphol Airport was fast and we had our bags checked in before 06.00. This is 11.00 P.M. Dallas time as the time difference is 7 hours. Our flight to Heathrow (London in the U.K.) went smooth and took only an hour. We had a few hours before our direct flight to Dallas from there. We did some shopping, had a good breakfast and installed some software on our two laptops.

At 10.15 A.M. everybody was sitting in the plane and ready for take off. However, some suspicious luggage had to be removed from the plane so we had a delay of 45 minutes. We then flew to Dallas where we arrived at 14.45 local time. It is a long flight of more than 9 hours but we did fine. We had some sleep, started writing our diary and watched some good movies like Lord of the rings. After collecting our luggage we went to pick up our van, a Chevrolet Astro for 8 persons. At 16.15 we arrived at our hotel, the Microtel Inn in Irving. We checked in and were glad that the magnets for the van and our t-shirts had arrived. They looked very good and made the WeatherBug StormChase 2002 official! Eric started working on the laptop right way to get some very important things done. We had to get our internet connection working together with the connection to our Sprint phone and our email. After a few hours and some loooong talks with the AT&T helpdesk (ever tried to actually get someone speak to you?) it finally worked. The others went to the Sprint shop and got the cell phone working. Coen contacted AWS and NBC about the interview on NBC 5,KXAS in Dallas. They wanted to host us on the morning show Wednesday. After studying the weather maps for Wednesday we decided to go there. The weather is calm so we are not likely to miss out on a tornado. Deciding to go there Wednesday morning meant we had time to install the rest of our equipment then and gave us the opportunity to go to sleep early. After a good meal at the Outback Steakhouse we called it a day at 10.00 p.m.. We fell in a deep sleep after a 23-hour day.