Do You REALLY Want to See an EF-5?

[Paul Knightley]

The sentiments in Bob's piece are very sound - it's all about the perception of chasers. We're going to get excited/enthralled/intrigued, etc etc, every time we see a tornado/storm. We'll come onto ST and other forums and rave about pics/vids we took, or others took, etc. But it's worthwhile keeping it all in perspective. Yes, storms will occur whether we see them or not - the topic here is not the ethics of chasing, but the way in which we enthuse about it.

As a visitor to the USA I'm always careful to take note of what folks may have been through, but you don't have to be in a town which has been hit before. Checking in to a motel, many clerks will ask about why we're visiting. I'll say we're storm chasing - all have been very interested in this, but several have mentioned that either they or a close relative/friend have been affected by a tornado - in that sense, I'm always careful about how I mention the subject in the first place.

 

[Nathan Edwards]

I know a few people who have expressed the desire to see EF-5s whilst chasing and it's a pretty good benchmark of whether or not I'm going to get on with them or not. I don't see many people saying that anymore after they've seen the damage they do. It's almost always people new to chasing though I'm sure the majority of people new to chasing don't have these thoughts...



Some what related to this topic, I'd always considered myself lucky that I'd never seen a particularly damaging tornado and especially glad I hadn't witnessed a killer tornado out of the 40 or so I've intercepted. Recently though, whilst uploading some post processed photo's of the Canton Lake tornado, I discovered through research that someone had died some weeks after as a result of their injuries. It was somewhat of a downer to find a chase I'd enjoyed had such consequences as I thought it had stayed over mostly rural areas and not done too much property damage or caused many injuries. I presumed the fatality had been down near Canton Lake where it was at it's most violent and before I intercepted it when I first read about the death.

When I got onto the storm, I came across a church with some damage on Highway 60 near Fairview but the damage wasn't too severe - mainly roof damage - but a grove of trees opposite had been decimated as the tornado passed over. The photo's I had were pretty much as the tornado was crossing the road and it made a cool shot with all the dust flying around and debris from that grove of trees. I was proud of the shot and put it up for others to see. People liked it and I liked the fact that people liked it. Then out of curiosity, I decided to look at the area on google maps to see if the church had been repaired and it had. The grove of trees was missing on the opposite side but within them was the outline of an old foundation. I switched to street view and got a pre-storm image showing a small farmstead with some small barns and outbuildings behind nestled between the trees. I kinda knew what was coming but I searched for some details on the victim and found a news article which placed the farm he was sheltering in at Cedar Springs. Google places Cedar Springs at that crossroad. I then read an obituary asked for donations to repair the church next to his farm which he attended since a boy. That church was the one I was parked at for 5 minutes clearing debris from the road and the photo I'd days earlier been proudly showing off to people was actually documenting the exact time this person was probably critically injured.

It has left me feeling pretty weird about the whole stormchasing thing. I'll always just chased and put to the back of my mind that I hopefully wouldn't see this sort of thing but now I find out I had witnessed such an event and didn't know about it for almost 2 years. I know I gave some pretty accurate spotternetwork reports that day as soon as the tornado emerged into view and whilst they were highly unlikely to have ultimately changed anything the fact that I'm possibly helping with reports makes me feel a bit better. I still wonder if I could have done something if I'd known there was a building there but there were plenty of other people on the scene including local police as I left. These sort of questions don't help though! I have a habit of overthinking these what if scenarios and it's probably not healthy if you chase storms...

I'm hoping to come over and chase again this year regardless. I chased last year and only saw EF0's and awesome structure and I'll be perfectly fine if the same holds true for this year!

 

[Dan Robinson]

All good points here and on Bob's blog. I do think we need to be careful not to beat ourselves up too much on this though. On a trip to Boston in November of 2001, I was able to see Ground Zero in Manhattan just 2 months after 9/11. Some of the remains of the WTC were still standing. While of course there was no joy in that experience, I counted it as sort of a solemn privilege to get to see it. As a chaser, I regard witnessing an EF5 the same way. I don't wish for one, and certainly don't take any pleasure in the human impacts. But, from a meteorological and historical standpoint, witnessing such an event holds great significance to me as a chaser.

I do think some of the public is prone to misunderstanding chaser enthusiasm, and as such, some tact is certainly in order as Bob's blog post points out. But I think that some of the responsibility lies with the public in not hastily making those misjudgements. If one really thinks about it, there are many everyday life parallels of phenomena that many people enjoy that also cause death and injury from time to time.

 

[Bob Hartig]

All good points here and on Bob's blog. I do think we need to be careful not to beat ourselves up too much on this though.... If one really thinks about it, there are many everyday life parallels of phenomena that many people enjoy that also cause death and injury from time to time.

The danger in writing a post like the one I've written lies in people's taking it to the extreme. The point isn't to walk on eggshells, but to balance enthusiasm with awareness and sensitivity. I do have an issue with actually wishing for damaging and deadly tornadoes, but I think that most chasers who say they hope for an EF-4 or an EF-5 don't really want people to lose property, life, and limb and aren't aware that it's almost inevitably what they're asking for. They're just using the EF-Scale inaccurately to say they want to see something big, powerful, and awe-inspiring. That's something we all hope for as chasers.

This is a good place to point out that we can't know the EF-Scale rating of a tornado while it's in progress. I realize that probably most of you know this, but not everyone does. The EF rating is not established until after official damage surveys have been completed, by which time the actual storm is long over. Chasers can make educated guesses as to a tornado's intensity, but beyond that, all we can do is track with the storm as it goes where it will and does whatever it does. Those are things over which we have no control. If a tornado does impact a dwelling or a community, then we can do what we can to help, and otherwise get out of the way of first responders.

 

[Michael King]

Nathan, Two other chasers and I were in the same position as you in relation to the Canton F3 as it passed near Cedar Springs. I hadn't realized that someone had been fatally injured till I read your post. At the time I had been gob smacked having seen my first violent tornado and thankful that the church had been just side swiped.

I don't have much to add to what has been a useful consciousness raising conversation of what is really common sense. Any doubt I had that I wouldn't want to be witness to a killer F5, was well and truly extinguished after recently viewing the extended Jeff and Kathryn Piotrowski video of Joplin, which shows a bereft Jeff encountering the horror of the aftermath.

 

[Paul Knightley]

We also saw the Canton tornado and were very saddened when we learnt of the death a few weeks later.

Of course, we know tornadoes do these kinds of things - I guess one reason we find them so fascinating is that they are a violent form of nature.

 

[Stephen Levine]

More than 55,000 people die per year in America due to auto crashes. Countless more are injured, so severely that normal functions are taken away for the rest of their lives. By any definition, this would be defined as a serious epidemic. Does this diminish our love for cars, dampen excitement at new sleek models, or cause us to regret that cars exist? Not at all.
In addition if we built more structures to conform with the ecology of our Prairies and other storm prone areas, there would be far less property damage, injuries and emotional suffering. In most cases we build our structures with blithe ignorance that strong atmospheric forces are part of the natural ecology. The we're stunned when these forces do their thing and damage is wrought.

 

[Keith Wilson]

Thanks Bob. That was a very good read.

Fresh out of high school in 1982, I was at first excited at my first tornado intercept as a chaser. The excitement quickly changed to horror as I watched the tornado rip through the heart of Marion, IL. As I sat there watching cars being flung through the air, I realized that people were probably being killed by this monster.
Later that night as I watched news of the tornado at my home in Paducah, I heard them say that 10 people had been confirmed dead and over 200 were injured.
I was on highway 13 less than 10 minutes prior to the tornado tearing it's destructive path along the road. People didn't seem concerned with the weather.

On that day I didn't have a weather radio, a cell phone, or access to radar. I wasn't even officially a trained spotter yet. I don't even know if there were warnings issued for the storm. If there were sirens sounding, I was too numb to hear them. I do remember LEO trying to warn people right before it hit, and that actually spurred me to move back a couple of blocks farther.

To this day I do not wish for tornadoes of any strength, but that hasn't changed my desire to be there to witness one if it happens.