Newell, S.D. — THE first time we leave the van for anything other than gas, food or sleep is in a field in western South Dakota. We are maybe 100 miles from the geographic center of the United States, which looks and feels a lot like the middle of nowhere.
We've been cooped up so long that simply getting out to look at the sky is like arriving at Disneyland. The horizon is dark, except for one hole, through which pink light seeps. Five or six miles off is a yellow curtain that is probably hail.
The sky is sneaky. Clouds hold still, then seem to shift suddenly once you look away. The altered light makes the grass intensely green. A shelf cloud rolls toward us and dangles fingers toward the earth. It must be miles away and thousands of feet up, but it looks as if that storm cloud might reach down and scoop up the prairie, might pluck us from where we stand.
This isn't a tornado. Not even a severe thunderstorm. But for our group of tag-along storm chasers with Tempest Tours, it is a very convincing preview of coming attractions.
We had started out more than 1,000 miles and 30 hours earlier in Oklahoma City, and we would cover 2,000 more miles of Tornado Alley before the week was over.
There is no place on Earth where violent storms occur as regularly as in Tornado Alley. In this 1,500-mile north-south corridor in the middle of the U.S., warm air over the Great Plains and cool air off the Rocky Mountains roll around in one of nature's most powerful wrestling matches.
I was taught to avoid such weather. In the small Ohio town where I grew up, the tornado warning siren was tested each Friday at noon. Like all the kids at East Elementary, I practiced curling up nose to knees in the basement. I covered my head with my hands if there were a tornado. I did not go out and look at it.
Until now.
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'The Show'
I first meet my fellow tornado tourists in a nondescript hotel conference room after a buffet breakfast in the lobby of starchy foods and watery coffee, the first of many to come. There are five guests including me, three journalists from the BBC, two drivers and Brian Morganti, our tour director.
After introductions, we sit through a safety lecture that warns us of the non-tornadic risks -- hail that shatters car windows, flash floods that submerge roads. Stay away from wire fences, we're told, because they can carry the electric current of lightning for two or three miles. Tornadoes, which have killed 49 Americans so far in 2006 cause 50 fatalities a year here on the mean. Like the others, I've made peace with any dangers. We've all signed waivers that absolve Tempest Tours of anything short of strapping us to a windmill in the path of a twister.
