Extreme Tornado Tours 2023

• This evening starts with orientation. Coincidentally, Twister came on TV before orientation.

• During orientation, we introduce each other, go over safety and what to expect the next day or so.

• For dinner, we headed to the Frosted Mug!

• Tomorrow we are heading west!

• As we head west toward Amarillo, we stopped at the Twistex memorial in El Reno, OK. This memorial commemorates 3 storm chasers that died in the widest tornado ever recorded on May 31, 2013. It was 2.6 miles wide. Click here for more info.

• Lunch: Qdoba in Weatherford, OK.

• Since today was a travel day and no storms, we visited the Palo Duro Canyon State Park which is southeast of Amarillo, TX. This is the 2nd largest canyon in the US.

• Today is our first chase day!

• To start, we are headed to Cadillac Ranch in Amarillo, TX where you can spray paint the cars. Yes, it’s legal 🙂

• Due to the storms being crappy, we spend part of the evening at the Thompson Memorial Park instead.

• Today ended up not being a chase day. It was a down day due to the storms being pretty weak.

• Dinner: Nothing as a group. We were all stuffed from lunch!

• Tomorrow, we are headed north!

• Today we are headed north toward the Oklahoma Panhandle.

• Lunch: Boise City, OK.

• We are chasing in the Oklahoma panhandle! Saw some pretty good storms!

• This morning we started off with breakfast at Scissortails where I got avocado toast with bacon and feta cheese & a cookies and cream frappe. It was so good!

• We stopped in Altus, OK for a quick lunch to make sure we arrive on time for the storms to fire up.

• We ended up chasing some supercells in the northeast part of Texas.

• Dinner: The Rack Pub and Eatery in Bowie, TX.

• Lodging: Executive Inn & Suites in Wichita Falls, TX.

• Today we are headed to Missouri for our last chase day tomorrow.

• Lunch: Sam’s Soulfood & Barbecue in Lawton, OK. Great catfish!

• Plans have changed and we are headed back to Texas to chase. It looks much better down there than Missouri. You just never know and things can change at anytime.

• We intercepted a hail core of a thunderstorm today!

• This day is always the most depressing day as it is our last day.

• For the first time since I’ve started doing these tours, we are chasing on our last day!

• Lunch: Herd’s Hamburgers in Jacksboro, TX. One of the best cheeseburgers I’ve ever had!

• While chasing I was able to get some incredible lightning shots around the central Texas area. See below:

• Before dinner, we had an amazing view of the sky including a rainbow.

Day 8 – Sunday, May 7, 2023: Go Home Day

• Thankfully I could sleep in since I had an afternoon flight. We got back to the hotel almost 1 AM CT.

• I had a 2 hour 40 minute flight back to Reagan Airport and it took about 2.5 hours to drive home. Traffic was a mess on I-95 Sunday afternoon.

Conclusion

This was an incredible adventure! I was very fortunate to have an amazing group of people on tour, which I do every tour I’ve been on. Thank you Trey, Alec, Ben and Stephen for another awesome experience! Even though we did not see an actual tornado, we did see some supercells, lightning, hail, meet great people, eat great food, and capture an amazing sunset on our way back! Extreme Tornado Tours once again, never disappoints! I’m looking forward to the next tour whenever that may be!

Group Photo

Thanks nick for the group photo!