The Post Online - Vacation spent chasing tornadoes

June 23, 2008

Geimers spend vacation chasing tornadoes in Midwest

When Connie Geimer and her husband sat down to plan their annual vacation, they decided the wanted to try something a little different this year.

OK, a lot different.

“We watched the Discovery Channel,” Geimer explained. “There's this show about tornadoes, and we kind of wanted to do something with that because we like to travel. So we found this guy who is a professional storm chaser.”

Geimer said she, her husband and a friend from Oregon met in Denver early last month and hired the services Dean Cosgrove.

“We hired him for the week and flew him out to Denver,” Geimer said. “We rented a Suburban and he had a Doppler computer that he hooked up in our car. We basically drove towards wherever there was going to be a storm. We went to Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, and Colorado.”

Geimer said she used to make fun of her husband over his obsession with the weather. But the results of combining their passions – hers for travel and his for twisters – turned out pretty well, she admitted.

“He's one of those guys who sits and watches the weather,” she said. “We've been to Diamond Head, did the Route 66 trip and we've done volcanoes in Hawaii for two years. But this was our best trip by far, ever.”

Geimer said their vacation began on a Saturday. They flew into Denver with suitcases packed full of light, spring clothing.

“There was half a foot of snow on the ground and I was wearing flip-flops,” she said. “I didn't check the weather and I'm the packer. I usually carry too much stuff. This time I didn't."

Connie and her husband successfully navigated the blizzard and headed for Nebraska. The three-hour drive took six in all the snow and wind. After a night at a Ramada Inn in Buffalo Bill Cody's hometown of North Pratt, Neb. – “it was really a dump,” she said – they headed to the tiny town of Curtis to meet Cosgrove.

“He was kind of this nerdy, quirky little guy,” she laughed. “He had little glasses on, and he had his 1980s wrestler jeans.”

From there, the novice storm chasers and their new mentor headed to Dodge City, Kansas, where they spent two days.

“On our second day we drove out to Greensburg which was about an hour away,” she said. “On that day the year before, an F5 tornado came through and destroyed like 95 percent of the town. We wanted to go and see that because we were tornado chasing and there wasn't really any weather.”

Geimer said the town's hospital was still operating out of a mesh tent, and the nurses were all sitting outside in lawn chairs.

“I'm a nurse so I appreciated that,” she said. “They had the helicopters there, I guess so that in case they got any more weather they could get all the patients out.”

In town, Geimer said, there was little more than a rebuilt country store, which doubled as the grocery store.

“For miles and miles and miles there was nothing. It was complete destruction. It was really sad,” she said. “Nothing was really rebuilt. There were holes where basements used to be.”

Geimer said the highlight of their visit to Greensburg was seeing President Bush and his Secret Service detail come into town as he made his way to the local high school to speak at graduation.

“He had five helicopters,” she said. “Two flew in front, two in back, he was in the middle. So he did a loop around, then he landed. And the motorcade went by and that was neat.”

The following day, Monday, it was back to storm chasing. And there was finally some weather in the area that looking threatening enough to produce a few tornadoes.

“We had a big storm coming in on the other side of Kansas Oklahoma, so we went over there and saw this huge storm,” she said. “It actually produced a small tornado. We started at 9 a.m. and chased storms until 11 that night.”

On Tuesday, they visited Liberal, Kan., the self-declared home of the fictional character Dorothy from “The Wizard of Oz.”

“One family turned their little house into the farm house from the film and they built a yellow brick road,” she Geimer said. “They sell the bricks for $65 each. We didn't buy one because I'm too cheap for that. But we did take our picture there with The Post for the Photo Patrol.”

They chased storms again on Wednesday, but didn't see any funnel clouds. Just a lot of hail and lightning, she said.

“What happens is you get up and you have to wait for the weather to get hot enough for a storm,” Geimer said. “The heat has to make the atmosphere unstable so the storms will create winds with friction and cause a tornado.”

On a trip into western Kansas, the Geimers were able to take a close look at a specially-built, tornado-chasing tank of a car.

These two guys, Josh Furman and Sean Kasey, have built a machine the call the TIV, the Tornado Intercept Vehicle,” she said. “They storm chase. And they were there and it was kind of neat. And a guy from the weather channel was there. He's this guy that we watch all the time.”

Geimer said she and her husband saw plenty of funnel clouds, but nothing ever touched down or caused any damage.

“We chased a little bit on Thursday then came home on Friday because my favorite cat died,” she said. “And then there were big tornadoes in Oklahoma the next day.”