STORM TRACK: March 31, 1986 (Volume 9 Issue 3)

This issue concludes my management of Storm Track and concludes all official responsibi- lity, including fiscal and editorial. Timothy P. Marshall is the new Editor. All correspondence and submissions regarding this newsletter should hereafter be sent to Tim: 1336 Brazos, Lewisville, Texas 75067. He is now responsible for Storm Track's management and assumes all the duties and responsibilities, which I once had, for future issues.

I conclude my duties with a very positive sense of accomplishment, in which you all share. Whatever contributions that I made in writing, editing or illustrating were spurred by your articles, anecdotes and pictures. It was also your letters of appreciation, when ST did something right, that really sustained me. Your input shaped my response throughout and was often the inspiration for illustrations. If they occasionally "worked," it was because you made them work. Therefore, we can all take pride in what Storm Track has accomplished. Where once there was no newsletter, ST has grown to become a national (and international) clearinghouse for chasers and storm students -to share unique and remarkable storm experiences, contact each other, share photographic and copyright information, consider the commercial value of our pictures, and e variety of other common interests. Tim Marshall now takes up the cause, and he will certainly continue to need your articles, ideas and support even as you gave them to me. I know I will work closely with Tim in this continuing, creative process and help him to sustain the newsletter for many more years. Thanks again, for everything!

This time of transition also marks my 30th year of storm chasing. I would like now to share with you some reflections on what this has meant to me. - - My first storm experience was en early June evening in 1956 in Bismarck, North Dakota. I had entered a local theater, virtually unaware of the impending fate about me -and, except for the loud thunder, all but oblivious to the turmoil going on outside. After a half hour, my dad drove down to that theater and came inside to take me out. It was then that I saw what the mere wind of kites and sailboats had done & my home town. Hardly raining anymore, when we emerged, the intersections were now a sea of rushing water, and great trees had been thrown down on all sides -s city now darkened, but for the ghostly blue-white flash of power lines, writhing in a tortured dance on wet grass. I was transformed. It was one of those seminal moments, when one turns from a known path and never returns again. The next day. I drove around town end took 8mm movies of the damage (which I still have). Thus began my life long interest in storms and tornadoes.

With early help from solicitous and friendly local weather men, I learned quickly about storm dynamics -end the long straight roads of the Dakotas were etched early in memory. Classic cars of the fifties, with fins and chrome, ere scattered through older slides -even a F49 Ford in one, driving appropriately into an antiqued, golden sunset -down an old two lane road. I chased in western Kansas, when the Interstate ended somewhere west of Ellsworth -recalling a beautiful drive near Colby, when trees lined the two lane road (Just beyond the shoulder) -a protective tunnel of green in an otherwise barren and hostile plain. I also recall giving up on a good many Texas storms, while contemplating a five hour drive from Oklahoma City to Dallas/Fort Worth before that Interstate was completed.

I have driven over 300,000 miles and photographed 47 tornadoes and 98 funnel clouds, However, some of the most treasured slides are those old pre-tornadic ones of Dakota towers and T-storms -a few now yellowing with age end imperfect early processing. Seeing these again, an older man recalls e young one with vast imagination and boundless energy, who wanted one thing moro than anything. Such slides recall and relive again that dream and anticipation -the agony and frustration (70,000 miles and six years of chasing before the first tornado) -but always the vision and determination to see it through on my own. Now, in retrospect, the cutting edge has mellowed some 30 years later. Repeated intercepts have somewhat lowered the anxiety level. The challenge and excitement are still there, but so is perspective and patience.

But, one remembers, and each drive out becomes -more and more- a nostalgia trip, as through a time warp -- returning again (a young man again) to the plains, where everywhere looks like home -and to the small towns and the good, honest, open people, whose grandfathers settled in a new land and wrote large on the pages of western history. Driving the long hours, I recall an old western North Dakota farmer and his wife in a small dirt-road town, who helped an embarrassed teenager break the vent window of his parent's car one night when he had locked the keys inside (excited by an approaching storm). They then asked him in to their small home and shared a full dinner -a total stranger to this old Swedish couple, whom they would never see again. I recall the South Dakota mechanic in a small town, who took me and my rattling engine under his wing, after all the garages had closed for the day one Saturday afternoon -and worked five hours straight to remove the head and replace a broken piston for $40! (wouldn't take any more) -so I could return home the next morning. I recall a cheerful Oklahoma farmer who took a tractor to pull me out of a muddy ditch and then returned to his "cyclone cellar' (long after the danger had passed) to finish a beer and card game with his friends. And, I recall numerous small restaurants, where the cook, waitress and owner were the same a grandmotherly lady, who wouldn't leave until you had declared her special-recipe homemade pie the best this side of Wichita (and it usually was). All this and dozens more memories come slowly back returning apace with the miles of pavement that take you back.

The pioneer spirit is still there, with the grandsons of pioneers in that land, land of the Crowe, Cheyenne and Sioux; land of the buffalo, mustang and eagle; land of fur trappers and mountain men, indian scouts and surveyors; land of the wagon trail following the first wagon of the first settler west of the Missouri unwashed, sunbaked and windblown -- following a dream; a land of giants and legends the "singing wire," the ironhorse and barbed wire that brought an end to an era. Some of you who have lived there all your lives may not think much of this, but these are the ghosts that speak to this easterner when he goes west each spring -- during the long quiet highway miles between storms. Those of us who chase are *indeed* fortunate to have been a part of this experience and the great storms.

This is what 30 years of chasing has meant to me -- when I can turn in on a long November night a thousand miles away, with frost in the moonlight, and dream of spring and the south wind and a sea of wheat -- with hundreds of "waves" moving grandly across a rolling prairie. And over all, white towers climbing into blue space -- filling the sky with darkening premonition of a fate that will not stay or stand aside. The anticipation, the imagination, the dream -- returns again and again.