The tour started uneventfully, so much so that one couple, Elvery and Michael Hall, both 29, from Crawley, England, near Gatwick Airport, vowed that if they saw a tornado they would get married.
A few days later, on one banner night between Nelson and Hastings, in south-central Nebraska, they witnessed not one twister but 14. "It was a good sign," Elvery said later. "We got engaged."
But then, after Freudenberg and others joined the tour, another tornado drought set in. The group spent long afternoons in dispiriting sunshine hanging around gas stations waiting for thunderclouds to materialize. Thorn, 40, an engineer from Oregon who founded his company in 1998, was cautious. "The storms are still having trouble getting organized," he said.
Finally, weather reports on a small screen on the van's dashboard turned promising, with the warning: "Hail and tornadoes as bad as it's going to get this year."
Tracking an approaching storm on radar, Thorn aimed the motorcade toward Beloit, in north-central Kansas. Suddenly, near Asherville, the blackening sky loosed a barrage of large hailstones that hammered the van with the racket of marbles in a tin pan. "Turn around!" he commanded.
They backtracked out of the bombardment and stopped near Scottsville to watch the clouds writhing. It was almost time, Thorn said. "This could be it," he said.
In the distance a grayish wisp snaked down like a wizard's beard and elongated into a funnel cloud heading to earth. Below it, the earth seemed to explode.
"It's on the ground, it touched down!" Thorn shouted. "You lost your virginity, Ed."
A curtain of rain swept in. "Go! Go!" ordered Thorn, shooing everyone into the vans to keep up with the moving storm.
They stopped again a few kilometers away near Yuma under black clouds that unfolded slowly like a crab nebula. Ropey tendrils snaked earthward. "It's doing it. It's doing it," Thorn said.
Suddenly the whirling clouds seemed overhead and the wind was roaring like an oncoming train. After days of chasing tornadoes, a tornado was chasing them. Everyone tore for the vans, which started moving even before the doors closed.
From the trail of split trees and downed branches, a tornado seemed to have passed close by.
"That's the first time I felt the wind of one," Thorn said.
One of the drivers checked some readings and said, matter-of-factly, "149 mile (240km) an hour shear, just where we were."
Thorn began making calls on a cell phone looking for a motel in Salina. "I need 18 rooms," he said, waiting for the inevitable question before repeating, "Yes, 18."
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