Review of "Tania Banyard" by Weather Gods

• Review by: Tania Banyard
• Tour Operator: Weather Gods
• Tour: Tania Banyard
• Year: 2013
• Validated: This review has been validated.

General review

Tour Date 11th May - 18th May 2013. Travelled from England to Kansas. Very disappointing trip. Plus points 1st met a great couple from Texas. Saw some great national monuments, very scenic road trip and Jason our driver was faultless. Minus points weather was not favorable cannot blame anyone for that. Only saw 2 storms, missed a huge tornado in Texas as out of the area. Out of the 2 storms we did see although tornadoes did touch down we were not in the right location to see any of them. 100% success rate has dropped to zero for this trip. If you call dirt devils tornadoes and clouds that have a vague pointy shape possible funnels then you will not be as disappointed as I was. Equipment on the van was just a laptop showing Internet sites that anyone has access to, a weather radio constantly giving repeated broadcasts and a ham radio. No experiments were carried out and other equipment quoted on the website was not apparent. One of the other tourists who also had the same internet sites on his laptop seemed to have a better "feel" for where storms were rotating that did produce tornadoes and were completely dismissed by the tour leader Mark Lingl. I feel that we as tourists were misled by the hype. No doubt the video camera that the tour leader had running constantly through the windshield during storms may produce some interesting footage that can be popped onto his website as evidence that the storms were tornadic but as tourists in the back of the van as it was driving along would not have been able to witness these events and being told whilst on the road chasing a storm "wow guys look at that" .. Out of the front windshield was to say the least very frustrating. Our final chase day was most disappointing as we left a storm early passing by many other chasers including the weather channel with Doppler. As we were driving down the highway we could hear on the radio that tornadoes had been sighted and had been caught by the weather channel team. By then it was too late as we were heading away from the storm to find a hotel for the night before heading home the next day. Information given during the trip was interesting but I can honestly say that watching the weather channel was just as informative !! Will I go chasing again - yes definitely hopefully next year but I will be choosing a large company with better equipment and less hype next time.

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