2002 Tour Schedule

We are now offering Waterspout Tours during the month of August!

Note that all of our 2001 tours were sold out before May 1, 2001.  The Reunion Tour has been sold out.  All other tours are booking fast. As of January 12, 2001 there are only 2 spaces remaining on Tour 2; only 1 space remaining on our special educational Tour 4; only 2 spaces remaining on Tour 5. All remaining tours have a handful or fewer remaining spots.

Silver Lining Tours,L.C. Schedule - Spring 2002

We are offering a special middle to late June tour designed for those that want an educationally intensive, more personal experience. This tour is designed to provide in-depth knowledge about storm chasing and storm spotting.  Each participant will be taught concepts that can be used to make his/her own chase forecast, tactical decision making in the field (e.g., how to pick one storm versus another) and how to use and interpret the myriad observations and data available on the Internet.  Even though the Southern Plains tornado season is winding down, the Northern Plains and Midwest are experiencing their peak tornado season during the time period from mid to late June. It is emphasized that this tour will be most beneficial to those who already have some kind of prior background knowledge in one or more of the following subjects: meteorology, engineering, thermodynamics, mathematics, physics or storm chasing experience itself. Those that have NO prior knowledge or experience are encouraged to consider another one of our tour offerings.

                     Our 2002 'Intensive Training' Storm Chasing Tour

Summer Tours now available

Come chase the high plains and northern plains during their peak severe weather season of June and July. Your tour guide will be Roger Hill,  one of the most experienced and successful chasers of that region. Roger will be taking you through some of the most extraordinary scenic regions of the United States in search of severe weather of all kinds. Eastern Montana, the Dakotas and the high plains experience a significant amount of severe weather, including supercells and tornadoes, during this time period. Your tour will begin and end in Denver, the heart of this chasing region. You will have 6 full days of chasing, with your tour beginning and ending on Saturdays, which are designated travel days arriving and departing Denver.  These tours are designed for those who cannot take off for a 10 day tour or are looking for a later or less expensive tour. Or, they are for you have always wanted to visit the northern and high plains but haven't yet. For more information please contact David Gold or Roger Hill (rogerehill@earthlink.net) or even visit Roger's web site at www.stormchase.net for many photos from this region. You won't be disappointed!!!! The entire Silver Lining Tours staff will be providing weather forecasts and data to Roger during the 6 day tours.

Chase Waterspouts with tour guide Roger Hill in Key West, Florida during the month of August.  Click here for complete information on how to join our new Waterspout Tours

Additional Information:

THE TOUR PACKAGE NOW ADDS arrival day lodging, tour t-shirts and an
end-of-tour banquet. As always, the package still includes daily hotel
lodging during each of your 10 days with us, bottled water, a professionally
edited highlights tape and lifetime discounts on all future tours."

OUR TECHNOLOGY:

Each tour vehicle is a 15-passenger van equipped with the following equipment

1. TOUR MEETING LOCATIONS: Tours one through four will begin and end at Will Rogers International Airport in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Tours 5 through 7 will begin and end at Denver International Airport in Denver, Colorado.  Upon arrival at the airport, a hotel shuttle will transport you to your hotel in Oklahoma City and Denver. We have developed a long-standing relationship with a certain Oklahoma City hotel. We always book each tour's block of rooms months in advance. You will be transported from the airport to this designated hotel via the hotel's free and reliable hotel shuttle bus. Additional details will be mailed to you by March 15, 2002. This information always includes details such as: suggested packing list, typical tour daily itinerary and arrival day logistics (the "arrival day" will be described in the next item below). 
   Try making online travel reservations
2. WHEN TO ARRIVE AND DEPART:  The arrival days for the 2002 tours are: April 25 (Tour 1), May 6 (Tour 2), May 17 (Reunion Tour), May 30 (Tour 3), June 11 (Tour 4), June 15 (Tour 5), June 22 (Tour 6), July 6 (Tour 7). The departure days for the 2002 tours are: May 6 (Tour 1), May 17 (Tour 2), May 30 (Reunion Tour), June 10 (Tour 3), June 22 (Tour 4), June 22 (Tour 5), June 29 (Tour 6), July 13 (Tour 7). Example: If you are scheduled for Tour 1 (April 26 to May 5), you would arrive at Will Rogers International Airport
   (OKC) on April 25 sometime during the late afternoon or early evening. You would leave OKC on May 6 after NOON local time. The second tour participants should arrive during the late afternoon or very early evening of May 6. Due to the fact that we give a comprehensive orientation on the evening of your arrival, we require that all attendees arrive at the meeting city prior to 5 pm (if at all possible) on your arrival day. We also strongly suggest that you schedule your return flight to leave after NOON the day AFTER your last tour day so that we can maximize our driving range on the last day of your tour.
3. ORIENTATION MEETING: We will have an important orientation meeting at about 7:30 pm of your arrival day. We will tantalize you with video footage of some of our previous storm chases as we go over important ground rules designed to make the tours a safer and more enjoyable experience. Afterwards, we will go to dinner together.
4. COST AND PAYMENT DETAILS: Tours 1, 2 and 3 costs $2600/person (but only $2450 per person if sharing a hotel room). Due to the more personal and intense experience created on this tour, Tour 4 costs $3300/person (but only $3150 per person if sharing a hotel room). The summer tours, tours 5, 6 and 7, costs $1900/person ( but only $1800 if sharing a hotel room). This includes all expenses EXCEPT airfare, food and incidentals. It also includes bottled water! It includes, of course, ground transportation and lodging during the tour.  We require a non-refundable deposit of $600.00 to reserveyour slot payable by personal check, cashier's check, or money order. The balance is due when you show up on your arrival day.
   TOUR TRANSPORTATION: We will travel in the following combination of highly-equipped vehicles: Two 15-passenger vans, with AT MOST 6 participants each, a driver and tour guide up front.  Both vans are equipped with the following set-up: computer navigation systems; cell phone-laptop computer combinations for mobile data downloading (the cell phone network has vastly improved and we are now able to get data this way a whopping 90% of the time); LCD screens located in the front of the vans to allow you to watch videos during some of the long
   drives; CB Radios for effective van-to-van communications.
5. TOUR LODGING: The tour pays your lodging on each of the ten tour days as well as the arrival night. We are not going to spend any time in a roach-infested fleabag motel. You will get a clean, comfortable room each night that you're with us. Although we do not have an unlimited hotel budget, we will do our best to ensure a reasonably high caliber of lodging on your tour. During the past few years, here are the motel/hotel chains we have used most often: Super 8 (a storm chaser's favorite), Comfort Inns and Suites, selected Best Westerns, Holiday Inn Express, Quality Inns/Suites, Red Roof Inn, Fairfield Inn, Hampton Inn, Hilton. Once in a while we stay in a "mom-n-pop"-owned motel in a smaller town (usually places that we have used previously when we wind up far off the beaten track) but the the minimum standard we always strive to apply is clean and comfortable.
6. WHAT TO BRING WITH YOU: You should plan on bringing a large duffel-type or soft-shell suitcase as well as camcorders, cameras or laptop computers. We strongly discourage you from bringing hard-shell suitcases! Make your best attempt at packing ten days' worth of clothing (again, these types of details are expounded in the additional tour information that every participant receives around March 1 of each year). We will be staying at Motel 8's (when available), some of which have coin-operated washers and dryers. Pack for warm to hot and humid weather. Pack two pairs of jeans and long sleeve shirts. We will occasionally encounter cold weather.
7. WHAT WE DO DURING "SEVERE CLEAR": Much of the success of your tour (i.e., the number of tornadoes and/or storms that we witness) depends on the atmosphere. Although we offer our tours during the very peak of the climatological tornado season, the large-scale weather pattern does occasionally become unfavorable for frequent severe thunderstorm events. We have not yet had a tour during which there were no severe storms encountered, but during these occasional inactive severe weather regimes, we can go 2-3 days with no significant thunderstorms. On days when there are no storms expected (of course, we hope those are very few!), we will offer a few tried-and-true recreational options. These activities are weather-related whenever possible. Examples from last year: we toured the Storm Prediction Center/National Severe Storms Laboratory in Norman, OK; we toured three National Weather Service Forecast offices; viewed tornado damage; we attended the annual StormTrack picnic; the famous Big Texan steakhouse in Amarillo, Texas; we even had a cookout! We often find ourselves in the vicinity of beautiful state and national parks. We have visited Devil's Tower, Mount Rushmore, the Badlands (we love South Dakota!) and the Medora Badlands National Park (western North Dakota).
8. EDUCATION: We work very hard to give you a meaningful education. While you are with Silver Lining Tours, you will enjoy a unique opportunity to learn from us. You will have plenty of time to learn about the formation, structure and dynamics of severe thunderstorms, tornadoes and other interesting weather phenomena in terms you can understand. You will be able to watch your tour guides actually prepare the morning forecast every day. You will be shown our systematic approach to severe weather forecasting. You will enjoy the advantage of gaining insight while you are watching the atmosphere in motion. We feel strongly that if you come to our tours with a genuine interest in increasing your understanding of the atmosphere, you will walk away feeling like you have really learned something! We pledge to work tirelessly at increasing your knowledge about severe thunderstorms, storm chasing, forecasting and weather.
9. ADDITIONAL PERKS: Each participant will receive a complete professional-quality video of the tour highlights from all 2002 tours, a Silver Lining Tours t-shirt and an end-of-tour banquet. It is emphasized that the quality of our highlights video has become quite excellent due to our wonderful relationship with Alister Chapman, a world-class professional videographer. This is yet another advantage of taking your storm chasing adventure vacation with Silver Lining Tours!

PLEASE read the Frequently Asked Questions section of this web site for more information about our price structure, philosophy and more!