The world is a small place. There are three guests on this trip, and one guide. Three of us have spent significant time living in Chester County. Our guide lived in Thorndale for several years, and another one of the guests was a Coatesville resident for a number of years. I've been a West Chester resident since day one. This in itself is quite surprising, yet it's not the full story. The last trip I took was to Glacier National Park, in Northwestern Montana. While riding the park shuttle, it became evident that three out of the four groups of people on the shuttle were or had ad one time been West Chester residents. For all the land in this country of ours, it seems that my hometown is well represented.

The common bond between all of us, aside from being travelers, is the desire to witness the extraordinary in nature, to experience the sublime. To get close to nature in its rawest, most powerful form. From walking among mountains and glaciers, to close encounters with wildlife, to standing beneath towering thunderstorms, it's the same goal - to change one's life perspective through experience.

So, what am I doing in Kansas City, Missouri, 1,000 miles from anywhere else I've ever been, getting ready to voluntarily put myself in the path of one of the most powerful forces on earth? (The energy released by an average thunderstorm is roughly the same as a 20-kiloton nuclear warhead.) The answer for many of my friends and colleagues was to finally provide concrete proof that I've got a screw (or two) loose upstairs. The answer for me was getting ready to witness the awesome power and complexity of nature, in a way that very few people get to experience, and to see the Midwest, which by the way (so far) isn't quite as flat and featureless and monotonous as it looks from the air.

The first thing we discussed after meeting as a group was that we were hundreds of miles from where we wanted to be, which was somewhere in Southern Oklahoma. That's where, hopefully, there would be enough moisture being pumped northwards from the Gulf of Mexico to initiate the formation of supercell thunderstorms on Tuesday afternoon. It's not the most likely setup for severe weather, but if the ingredients all come together, there could be potential. After that, we'll head far North into Illinois where there is the potential for a strong outbreak of severe weather on Wednesday.

So how do I know this? Because other people smarter than me, who happen to be very good at math and reading weather patterns work at the Storm Prediction Center (see links) in Norman, Oklahoma. They issue "products" (forecasts) called Convective Outlooks that outline the potential for severe weather throughout the U.S. These outlooks are based on 4 risk levels. No Risk, Slight Risk, Moderate Risk, and High Risk. Severe weather can occur even when there is no risk, and when there is Slight Risk there's a decent chance of severe weather. But when they issue a Moderate Risk outlook, it's a good idea to stay close to the radio or television, because severe weather is imminent, and strong tornadoes are possible. High Risk, the highest level, has a very high probability of not only producing tornadoes, but very large and destrucive ones. So while a Moderate Risk day is not a certainty, it's a very solid bit of information to listen to. Especially when it's issued 3 days early.

This is not to sound eager for destrucive tornadoes. Most tornadoes occur in the middle of the prairie, with minimal impact on human life or property. If we have our choice, that's where we want the weather to happen. But it's important that severe weather does occur right now, because the largest and arguably most impotant study ever done on tornadoes is occuring right now. Called Vortex 2, it involves hundreds of scientists and meteorologists from around the country and the world, and millions of dollars worth of research and equipment to better understand how and why tornadoes happen, and ultimately how to predict them better and save lives.

So stay tuned, it's going to be educational at the least.