17 C17
created: 2023-06-04T10:39 updated: 2023-06-04T10:
Not twenty seconds before the tornado arrived where they had been, Eric was accelerating away from the probe. Hannah was leaning out the window, holding the video camera watching as the tornado went over the probe.
"It's in! It's in!" John shouted, grabbing for the microphone. "M2, M3 this is probe, we've had a successful deployment." The severe weather season had been off to a quiet start, and the team had been off to a slow start as a result. The only probe that had been in a tornado was one of the older probes. The one that they had just deployed was more sophisticated. Hannah slid back into the back seat of the truck as Eric pulled off to the side of the road. She was soaked from the waist up as a result of leaning out the window as they drove through high precipitation part of the storm. Most of her was a cool wet, except for one area that shouldn't have been wet.
"Crap." Hannah said. They had gone shopping after looking through the closet and determining that most of her pants wouldn't conceal the diapers. She had four diapers with her, and three new pair of pants.
"What's wrong, baby?" John asked, passing a towel to Hannah in the back seat. When she didn't respond because she was busy drying her upper body off, he turned around and looked at her. "Oh." Was all that was said. John leaned out the window and saw that the probe was still sitting there, the three anemometers were still spinning, They would measure the wind speed at six, four and two feet off the ground. The goal of this probe was to tell how fast the winds were moving at various altitudes to help aid in construction of homes. "Eric, let's go get the probe and then head into Lone Wolf so that Hannah can get cleaned up."
"Alright." Eric said, looking in the mirrors. "I'm just going to back up, there's no one on this road."
"Ok." John said, still leaning out the window. "You have another six hundred feet."
"Alright." Eric said, not taking his eyes off the passenger side outside mirror. He couldn't see the probe from his side of the truck.
"And stop." John said, opening the door and hopping out. Eric turned to look at Hannah.
"I remember the first time I wet my self on a storm chase..." Eric said, causing Hannah to look at him with a dubious look on her face.
"You didn't..." Hannah said, a smile appearing in her voice. "You are trying to make me feel better."
"I did." Eric insisted. "We were chasing an EF-5 near Greensburg Kansas, it was a monster. We had deployed probes on it and we got too close. Ask your dad." Eric opened the door and got out so that he could help John put the probe back on the truck. A few minutes later, Eric and John were both in the truck and they were heading toward Lone Wolf.
"Probe, M2, M3, We're heading to Lone Wolf." John said, looking at the radar display, trying to figure out their next move.
"Dad," Hannah asked, sliding forward in the seat. "Did Eric wet himself on a chase before?"
"Yep." John said, failing to hide a chuckle. "He sure did. Soaked everything pretty good too..." John and Eric shared a look and then burst out into fists of laughter.
Hannah looked dubious. "You two are pulling my leg."
"Actually, we're not." Her dad replied, glancing at the computer screen again. "There is a picture somewhere. Ahead on the right, they were rapidly approaching a gas station that sat on the outskirts of Lone Wolf. "How fast can you be? This thing might put another one down in the next thirty or so minutes."
Hannah already had her diaper bag in her left hand and her right hand on the handle to open the door. "Pretty fast, I'll be back in a jiffy."
"Alright." John said, watching his daughter open the door and jump out, the pink plaid button up shirt blowing in the wind as she jogged for the store portion of the gas station. "Eric, pull up to a pump, we might as well get gas while we're here..."
Hannah walked inside the store and looked around. One problem with only being four and a half feet tall is that most things were taller than you. "The restroom is back in that corner, sweetie." The clerk said, pointing to the back corner of the store. She didn't even bat an eyelid or flip a piece of purple hair over Hannah's condition. Hannah rushed back to the bathroom and then went into a stall and started the process of changing her diaper. She kicked her boots off and then took the wet pants off. After that, every thing was quick and simple. Five minutes later Hannah walked out of the restroom, wearing a dry diaper and a dry pair of pants.
"Thank you," Hannah said as she walked out of the store. Outside the store, all three vehicles were lined up and everyone was crowded around the passenger door of the truck. Hannah walked up to the truck. "What's going on?"
"Hop in, Hannah." Eric said, loud enough for Hannah to hear it over the sound of the murmurs of the team. Hannah opened the door, got in the back seat of the truck and froze when she saw the radar that was being beamed down from the two powerful satellites orbiting above. She had her seat belt half way on, and simply stared at the screen, not even blinking.
"Where is that?" Hannah asked her voice calm and level, betraying the emotions she felt inside. With a hook like what was visible on the radar image, there was no denying that a tornado was on the ground, devouring everything in it's path.
"Northern South Dakota." Eric said, "It's somewhere near Bowdle."
"Too far away for us to get to..." Hannah said, examining the map on the computer. "Man ,look at that hook though. Is there anything going on around us?"
John played around with the laptop in front of him. "There is a cell that is tracking this way, it's grown in size and intensity on each of the last three passes..." He switched views to see the storm motion. "She's a spinning, Let's go get it." There was a flurry of activity as everyone ran back to the cars and got in. Hannah kept an eye on both the cell to the south west as well as the one that was approaching Bowdle. She was more interested in the cell that was approaching where they were.
"M2, M3, this is probe. We're heading south west from here we're gonna need to turn around and fly." John said. "We're going to try to deploy on this cell as well if it sits one down."
"Alright, Lets go." Eric said, cranking the wheel to the stop and then punching the gas. The back of the truck snapped around and Hannah was pushed into the seat.
"There's a TDS on the Bowdle system." Hannah said, her voice dry. The TDS showed the 'debris ball' that surrounded a tornado when it was on the ground and actively destroying things. When there was no response from up front, Hannah glanced up and saw that her dad was watching the storm that they were heading for, but she realized that they had a slight problem: they were running out of daylight. Her dad was sometimes overly cautious, even without her in the truck. He had a policy of not chasing in the dark. There was no way the rewards would be worth the risk.
"We're running out of daylight." John said, almost as if he could read his daughters thoughts. Hannah watched as reached up and grabbed the microphone. "Probe to M2 and M3, We're rapidly loosing daylight and are still about twenty miles from the target cell. What are your thoughts?" John had the final decision authority, but he liked to have the input of the team as a whole.
"M2, I think we should call it off." Joe Shaw said, his voice sounding hollow through the speaker on the radio.
"M3, I concur. If we get in there, we aren't going to be able to see anything." Tom Jackson's voice sounded much fuller through the speaker.
"Probe to all units, we are terminating the chase and returning to Norman." John said, Eric nodded and slowed down and made a turn that would allow him to head back toward Norman. "Hannah, Look at tomorrow and tell me what you think."
"Already on it." Hannah said, grabbing her laptop and quickly flipping though pages. "Unless you want to go east into Missouri, the only other area that might be decent is down in the jungles of Dixie Alley." The jungles of Dixie Alley were termed as such because there were a lot of trees that one had to contend with and that made it hard to see much of anything.
"Probe to all stations, we're taking tomorrow off. I'll let everyone know on Monday what we're doing next week." John said, and then hung up the microphone.