"This tour is like a trip through your childhood foods," says Luis-Grill, eating her favorite, Cherry Mash. "I'm having a wonderful time."
On Memorial Day our 3,000-mile effort finally results in a closer encounter. We've followed this supercell for six hours, observing its life cycle from cumulus puff to the monster mesocyclone now covering Cimarron County, Oklahoma. Around dinnertime, as we parallel the storm on 412, it produces a big anteater-snout funnel that quickly feathers apart.
But the storm isn't done yet. Ten minutes later, Reid allows a short observational stop, and we join the "chaser jam" lining 412 just as Guymon's sirens go off. The wind punches our vehicles and keens in the telephone wires. The supercell's base lowers further, extinguishing all light but a wink of sunset and its own luminous green core.
I'm thinking how much my grandmother feared that eerie phosphorescence when a thin funnel snakes from it sideways. It lengthens, crooks toward the ground, and touches down -- for a few seconds. Then it retracts and is gone.
Our crew stands in silent awe. Or is it anticlimax?
I ask my chase-mates during our post-midnight post-mortem in an Amarillo, Texas, McDonald's.
"I'm ready to do it again tomorrow," says Nichols.
"Me too," says Connor, reluctant chaperone turned addict. "It was so beautiful I forgot to be scared."
There's enthusiastic agreement. Everyone's walleyed with adrenaline, talking like newly inducted cult members.
"I've never been a religious person," says Luis-Grill as we head out to get some sleep before our final day's chase. "But that storm was like Communion -- being one with something so much bigger than yourself."
Jenna Blum, author of the novel "Those Who Saved Us," can be reached at jennablum.com.
