Wind, Rain, Sleet, or Hail

Today's photo is a bit of a snapshot. To picture the scene, imagine that you'd just successfully intercepted the first tornado of the year after almost a month of driving and driving and driving and failing and failing and failing. Not only that, but you'd managed to drop weather instrumentation in front of the tornado -- so much weather instrumentation that this tornado is now the most studied tornado in the history of humankind. Imagine you'd done all this, then floored it south down the highway, narrowly missing getting struck by the tornado. Now the tornado has passed. You've returned to pick up your tornado instrumentation. You've done it.

This is the scene: June 5, 2009, Goshen County Wyoming. From left to right, Chris Bowman, Andrew Arnold, and Matt Rydzik of Project Vortex 2 are checking and preparing to retrieve their tornado pod -- which likely took a direct hit from a tornado. Chris, on the left, has found a nice treasure -- a tennisball-sized piece of hail. If these three guys look elated, it's because they are.