The Highs And Lows, The Booms And Busts, Of Storm Chasing

With all of the sophisticated cellphone weather apps available these days, storm chasing has become all the rage. Hundreds of hopefuls now hunt Tornado Alley in search of twisters during the peak season, from April through June. The tornadoes come in all sizes and shapes – and of different intensities, from EF-0 being the weakest, to deadly EF-5s.

That said, it is more often than not that a tornado is not spotted, a fact storm chasers learn early on. Some get lucky, of course, encountering one in their first few chases. Others don’t see anything during their first dozen chases. Mother Nature is unpredictable, fickle, random at best.

My own experiences have been mixed. The first time I tried was in 2023 with Raychel Sanner of Tornado Titans. During our three days of chasing in four separate states we saw a number of stunning supercells, the monolithic structures that produce funnels, but no actual tornadoes.

Last month, I retuned to try and seal the deal, and was lucky enough to encounter a weak rain-wrapped affair near Joplin, Missouri, with chaser Jeff Anderson, then three amazing photogenic twisters in west Texas with chaser Tom Bovasso.

Mission accomplished. Well, sort of.

A colleague of mine, photojournalist Mike Killian, had been in contact with the Storm Of Passion chasing group. They are unique in that they own a Tornado Interceptor Vehicle, the TIV-2, capable of not only finding tornadoes, but getting incredibly close, in some cases actually penetrating the dangerous vortices. There are only two of these tank-like vehicles in existence. The other, called Dominator, is owned by the famous chaser Reed Timmer.

Killian was nice enough to introduce me to Ryan Shepard, TIV-2 owner, via a recent conference call to hatch a plan where we would all meet up and chase tornadoes with the objective of potentially getting inside of one. Killian and I have worked on a number of extreme aviation stories together, so he knows my work and I know his.

So back to tornado alley I travelled this past week. While waiting in Dallas, I had some free time, so I contacted Sanner who was in town for a documentary about her company being filmed by a crew from Ireland. She had an extra seat in her chase car, and allowed me to tag along on one of her documentary chase days.

We met at 10:30 a.m. to set off for the day. The outskirts of DFW looked promising, so we stayed local.

Right off, we encountered challenges. The freeways in and around DFW were chock full of unexpected traffic. Once we finally got out of the giant metroplex, more delays ensued, due to road construction. To circumvent the highway traffic, we tried the back roads. That was challenging, too, as they were pothole-strewn, narrow, and, as you might have already guessed, also riddled with construction.

Our target supercell was projected to start to fire between 4 p.m. and 5 p.m. and we barely made it out to it. Sanner constantly studied her weather models to keep repositioning us in front of the supercell and away from the golf ball-sized hail already falling.

Indeed, there were a few times under the wall cloud when enough rotation could have produced a tornado, but it was stubborn. Finally, we encountered so many road delays that the supercell got out ahead of us, and we called it a day.

Sanner, even though she has seen more than 300 tornadoes in her chasing career, was disappointed, mostly because the Irish filmmakers would return to their country without having seen a tornado themselves. They’ll use tornado footage Sanner already has in their documentary, but still.

My plan now is to meet up with Killian and the TIV-2 folks early this coming week, then head to where the most severe tornadic weather is expected. Hopefully, we will get close to, and perhaps inside of, a funnel on the ground. If we pull it off, what a story it will make. Fingers crossed.

ForbesWitness A Day Tornado Chasers Will Never ForgetBy Jim Clash