Shattuck, Oklahoma.
There was a moment a couple of days ago while being blasted in the face by a 50 mph concoction of dust, manure and hail the size of ten pence pieces that I thought, 'Enjoy yourself, you're on holiday.'
I'm storm chasing in America's Midwest. At present, in Lubbock, Texas. This is the combined result of a decade's worth of tornado nightmares, an unhealthy appreciation of the film Twister and a now massively overdrawn credit card.
A week before I arrive in the States, one of the largest tornadoes to ever set down on Earth tore a path across Moore, Oklahoma, claiming the lives of 24 people.
A devastating loss of life, but as a friend incisively pointed out, "You must be fucking gutted to miss that, mate."
A day before I arrive, the experienced and respected storm chaser Tim Samaras also loses his life when a second round of ferocious storms hit the midwest state. His truck is later found flattened, having been thrown half a mile through the air. I'd later discover that Tim was a drinking buddy of the man in charge of safeguarding me from the world's wildest weather for the next week.
Just outside Lubbock, Texas.
Therefore, it is with an odd air of gruesome anticipation and quiet respect that I board my flight from London Heathrow. Ten hours later, in Denver, Colarado, I meet the team and fellow storm aficionados in the hotel lobby.
In a nearby conference room, we try hard to pay attention to an almost laughably 90s "orientation" video presented by a local TV weather man named Bob.
Bob explains what to look for and how to stay safe. I write down a few notes on potential shelters – "Ditch not bathtub" – before we head out into the wilds of Tornado Alley.
Among the 12 others also along for the ride are a Welsh family, a middle-aged couple whose favourite film is Irreversible, a very dry Swiss guy who works in pharmaceuticals, a loud Australian railway worker and my favourite, a short Chinese ex-cop from Florida called Anthony. All are armed with large digital SLR cameras. This is a package holiday for that very small cross-section of society where adrenaline-seeker meets meteorological nerd.
There's something brilliantly ramshackle about those in charge of the tour, too. Mike, the endearingly awkward meteorologist; Jase, his blokey right-hand-man; and Matt and Rob, the drivers who form an odd double-act, obsessively using the van-to-van walkie-talkies and proudly displaying a dazzling array of luminous, tornado-themed T-shirts.
Rob in one of his twister T-shirts. (Photo by Chris Boyd)
They study weather models and maps each morning, point meaningfully at seemingly innocuous cloud formations and place bets on where to take the convoy to best encounter a twister. From them, I learn about inflows and outflows, mammatus clouds and gust fronts, skud and mesocyclones.
Some days we're chasing until late into the evening, as tornados usually form between 4 and 6PM. Some days we sit in the baking heat of deserted fill-up stations, squinting at scattered clouds that never get their act together. For all the gizmos and flashing LED screens, at its heart, storm chasing still relies on watching the skies, waiting and gut instinct.
En route, we take in the sights – rundown windmill farms, sand dunes and UFO research centres. Though I'm sad to say we never make it to Wakita's one-room Twister museum.
"They have a can that Bill Paxton drunk from during filming," Rob tells me enthusiastically.
Local folks clock the weather equipment on top of our vans from time to time and immediately want to know, firstly, "Y'all storm chasing?" And secondly, "Is a twister going to hit here?"
The in-van meteorological radar.
The second of which I'm unable to answer with any degree of authority. And regardless, I don't seem to be fully understood any time I mutter something through my gloomy northern English accent.
There is, however, an overriding sense of people just getting on with things here, regardless of what nature throws at them.
In Dodge City, we park up outside a motel to spend the night, just as a torrential downpour of rain starts to beat the hell out of the streets.
Across the road, a man in chef's whites perches unfazed on the edge of the sidewalk, smoking a cigarette like he's lounging by the pool on his first day back from military duty.
We drive a lot, too. We drive through Kansas and Oklahoma, the Texas panhandle and New Mexico. Hundreds of miles a day in pursuit of thin air. Hours spent scrutinising every rising, passing cloud and every possible funnel shape in the sky, days seemingly lost to never-ending roads. It quickly becomes an addiction. Occasionally I try to sleep in the van or listen to Anthony's police stories – mostly of practical jokes so intricate and ridiculous that I question whether any criminals actually get caught in the Florida area.
When factors do finally align and you find yourself stood on a verge, confronted by a colossal swirling black supercell lit up by a hundred thousand flickering lightning flashes, it's difficult to feel anything but complete awe.
There's no doubt you're meaningless in the grand scheme of things as the air pulls and pushes in front of you. To an agnostic, this is the closest you get to a close encounter with God.
This awe changes instantly to mild terror when Mike starts violently punching the van's horn. One of the only things the group remembers from the orientation video, this means "Get the hell in the vehicle now."
In the confusion, half the group get knocked to the ground by freight train-speed, straight winds. As we prize open the van door, the onboard computer repeats the words, "Warning, you are approaching a rotating storm. Please exercise caution."
By now, the radar screens are filled with reds and yellows that look like they're about to eat the vehicle. We hit the gas and take off swiftly, gawping at the twisting wall cloud forming in the rear view mirror.
It's fair to say that storm "chasing" is probably more accurately described as storm "identifying-and-then-running-away-from".
Essentially, the job of the storm chaser is to document, to spot storms, notify weather centres and newsrooms and ultimately give anyone unlucky enough to be in the path of an oncoming storm enough time to get to shelter.
Despite this, the obvious excitement involved threatens to turn quiet appreciation into an extreme sport. TV Shows like Storm Chasers have encouraged a generation to quit pussyfooting around and to recklessly head gung-ho into the storm core. Anyone with a smart phone can now download a number of radar apps and ride out unsupervised onto the great plains themselves.
This inexperience and recklessness on the roads may go some way to explaining the sad death of Tim Samaras. As it turns out, a personal friend of Mike's. There's talk that Tim, his son and a crew member may have been caught in a traffic jam caused by amateur chasers when the unpredictable twister hit.
Back in Lubbock, it's quickly becoming apparent that we've found ourselves in the middle of one of the largest thunderstorms to move through the area for a good 30 years. Power lines spark out as they hit buildings and crash down on the tarmac, hail cracks the windshield and flash flooding threatens to drown both vehicles.
"If you feel the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end," says Jase, looking over his wrap-around shades, "get on the ground immediately, you're about to get hit by lightning."
"Thanks," I say, "but my hair's been doing that for the last five days."
We survive the night and wake to find at least one motel in town without a roof, and our courtyard full of stranded refugees.
And almost as soon as it has started, some 2,500 miles down the road later, the week draws to an end.
Some seem disappointed by the lack of twister touchdowns we witnessed. Others are are still shaken by thoughts of flash floods engulfing trapped cars. And a few, like myself, remain completely overwhelmed and changed by the landscape, the people and the troubled skies.
"Was it like that film Twister?" asks a friend when I get back.
"More like the made-for-TV version, Tornado, starring Bruce Campbell and Ernie Hudson," I say. "But all the better for it."
More stories about natural phenomenons that can kill you:
My Journey to the Edge of an Exploding Volcano