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Thursday, 28 February 2008

Tornado Watch

(Originally posted to American Yank in England on 14 January 2008)

Today, my youngest daughter and I went chasing tornadoes. Not the type that prowl the mid-western United States but those that prowl the skies where Her Majesty's presence is needed. RAF Marham is an MOD (air) base just 6 short miles from our house and home to 4 squadrons of the Tornado in both the attack and reconnaissance role. On certain days we can see the aircraft making their turn to final from our kitchen window! And it was today that I decided I wanted a closer look and was not disappointed.

Thanks to the Internet it was a fairly quick exercise to locate some of the better observation points and 10 minutes later we were set. Within minutes the roar of twin jet engines filled the air and we were treated to an hour of off-again on-again sightings of Tornadoes as well as a pair of Merlin helicopters. The biggest treat of the day was seeing the Tornado done up in a special paint scheme celebrating the 25th Anniversary of the RAF flying the Tornado.


Turns out our timing was perfect, a very large storm front is moving over England and the weather is expected to be fairly dismal for the next couple of days. Well, dismal for spotting RAF tornadoes at least.




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About Me

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Fairfield, California, United States
James O'Rear is an avid photographer specializing in aviation imagery (but anything in front of his camera is fair game). He currently lives in breezy Fairfield, California. He is a member the Arizona Aviation Photographers and the International Society for Aviation Photography. He is also the author of "Aviation Photography: a pictorial guide". More of James' photography can be seen at http://www.flickr.com/james_orear