How did you get interested in Chasing?

[Stephen Levine]

My fascination with the beauty and splendor of thunderheads and lightning began when I was a toddler in the early 1950's.
When I turned 7, my parents bought me my first weather book, which I read ASAP.
In 1963 as a 5th grader, I won an award in a national weather predicting contest hosted by a major book publisher.
In college, I spent countless hours in the library during vacation times, searching for and reading articles on tornadoes and lightning. It was frustrating trying to xerox the photos on those old tech machines.
In 1977, I simply got tired of watching cold fronts come through and giving us sprinkles while about 30 miles down the road, enormous arcs of thunderheads would explode. So I began to go after the storms.
Living in SW Ohio at the time, nobody around me had ever heard of or conceptualized storm chasing. I was totally isolated in my passion, though one woman friend thought it was pretty cool.
In 1995, I decided to organize a spiritually based storm chase tour company. Moving from California where I lived at the time to Dallas assisted with this dream. The next year "Twister" came out, which certainly helped my exposure.
I experienced the transformation from being isolated as a youngster to being featured in world wide media. That was a healing breakthrough for me.
I no longer run the tour, but my wife and I go out on brief annual sojourns during the tornado season. Our honeymoon consisted of a storm chase vacation.
What a transformation from isolation to sharing the joy of the experience!

 

[Isaac Pato]

A lot of things shaped my interest in meteorology, which came long before I knew anything about storm chasing. I grew up around Boston, MA, a place not often frequented by severe thunderstorms. Nevertheless, I was a big fan of thunder and lightning as a kid. My parents tell me that I used to run wildly around the house during storms.

I can remember a wide range of individual extreme weather events that drew me into meteorology. There are far too many to list here, but I’ll try to give you a general idea. From a severe thunderstorm at summer camp to extreme heat in March 1998 (the big El Nino year) to thundersnow producing nor’easters, all of it excited me.

Like Dann, I had a fascination with maps when I was a toddler. I was always the navigator in the car, and whoever was driving took me seriously because I was generally right. I would even plan out extravagant cross-country trips, using as many interstate highways as possible.

The link between maps and weather clicked for me when I discovered the weather maps that were in the newspaper. The Boston Globe had colored high temperature maps with noon pressure/frontal positions for the entire country.

I am a big fan of hot weather because I hate the cold winters in Boston, so as kid, I would look at the maps and root for the warm fronts to come up from the south. Obviously, I had no concept of how these things worked. All I knew was that I wanted three straight days of 90+ highs so that we would have a heatwave (yeah, to all the southerners here: us Bostonians have no concept of what hot is...).

I was introduced to sailboats at around the same age. My father would take me down to the Charles River in downtown Boston. They fascinated me so I decided that I was going to learn how to sail. I got the chance to do that when I turned 10 years old, old enough to attend Community Boating, Inc., the boathouse that owns most of the boats on the Charles River.

The more involved with sailing I got, the more I needed to know about the weather. I started by looking up as many sources of weather forecasts that I could. Ranging from local news stations to the NWS. I compared them to try to figure out which days had the potential to be hot and windy, my favorite sailing conditions.

The more I read about weather, the more I wanted to know. The interest that I had in it from birth had finally gotten the better of me. The more I learned about thunderstorms, the more I wanted to see of them. I would go up onto the roof of a 5-story parking garage near my house during storms to watch the lightning. When I got my license I decided to “chase†in eastern MA. This chasing really only involved driving to a place in the path of a thunderstorm and waiting for it to hit me.

I have known since I was a freshman in high school that meteorology was what I wanted to do. Now, I am a freshman at the University of Oklahoma. I’ve already gone chasing some squall lines, and I can’t wait to see and photograph my first supercell. I am completely hooked on chasing. But I don’t care if I don’t see the best storm, or even if I bust. I’m in chasing for everything that it has to offer. Even if it’s just driving around and seeing the plains on a bust.

 

[Dean Baron]

I dont have a big story either about a tornado that hit my house or anything like that, but living in Minnesota for 18 years we have gotten our fair share of decent storms which is what got me into the interest of weather. My goal has been to get a degree in meteorology but we'll see how that goes. anyways, i remember as a kid always going right to the window and watching the lightning and whatever else the storm produced. in 2005 i really started to pay attention to radar and started reading books about chasing and trying to figure out how to read models. in 2006 i got certified in Skywarn and started chasing that summer and have been chasing since, with my biggest year coming this past summer. i just saw a piece of paper from elementary school asking what we wanted to be when we grew up and of course i wrote storm chaser.

 

[Jim Leonard]

My facination for severe storms goes way back to the late 1950's. I have always had a passion to see strong winds. I can remember back to October 1959 when tropical storm "Judith" came across the SW coast of Florida, living in north Miami we experienced gale force winds from the south and southwest during most of the day and I remember being outside and really enjoying the event. The following year I began to notice accounts of hurricanes on the radio and newspapers and when what we call now a days a category-4 hurricane "Donna" was heading in our direction for several days and I remember how exciting that would be. The center of this 930mb hurricane struck the upper Florida keys with fringe winds of 75 to 90mph gusts in my area of north Miami. Four years later I was lucky enough to experience the eye of strong cat-2 hurricane "Cleo". Only a year later get winds of near 100mph from hurricane "Betsy" who's eye passed through the upper Keys. After 1966 when the hurricane drought began for south Florida I began to plan to chase them where ever they strike but the only problem I was still a kid.
At the same time I was also a fanatic about tornadoes but living in S. Florida it would be a few years before I would be able to track them down.
Late in the year of 1973 I went to a seminar held at the Nationa Hurricane Center by Joe Golden who showed a 16mm film of the Union City, Oklahoma tornado.
All I can remember from that film is how fascinated I was with not only the motion of the tornado but also the cloud base motion. There were a few questions from the audience that asked is that time lapse? Joe had to repeat no that was real time. After seeing this film I made the decision that I had to see one of these myself the next year.
1974 I along with a frend of mine Eddie Sims went for one week to Oklahoma during mid-May with the hope of seeing a tornado in tornado alley. We saw some good storms and for the first time golf ball size hail but we new little how to intercept supercells. That week we went to the old OU maproom and met Gene Moore who was most kind and gave us a crash course on how to intercept severe storms. Since then I have not missed a single year out to the plains and any hurricane is fair game and even will go to the west pacific for a few typhoons.

 

[Amymarie]

When I was little, my Dad & I used to sit on our porch & watch storms come in. I still cherish these memories. I have always been completely fascinated by weather & I trace it back to my Dad.

As a young adult, I lived outside during summers for 4 years as a camp counselor. I went through some amazing storms (not all of them strong storms, but all of them interesting) & I just loved it. I love the cycles of weather & I love watching clouds change. I realized if you watch & live outside for extended periods, you can somewhat predict what will happen. My friends used to make fun of me b/c I was always aware of the skies & could many times predict what was going to happen. This fueled by storm watching & my friend & I used to go out in the country so we could watch storms come in.

Enter the age of the internet, & I love watching storms move on the radar, as well, & seeing how weather moves across the planet. I am such a dork, but I like to keep the radar up & go outside to watch the live action. Better than a movie!

This summer, I was at a canoeing class near Lodi, WI when they had their burst of tornadic activity. We were on the river when sirens kept going off. I spent about 3 hours watching the clouds in complete awe-wow. I had a weather radio so I could follow everything going on around the area also.

I have never done any real chasing but I would like to someday. I am not sure how to switch from watching what comes by to "chasing". I loved reading all the replies. I guess some people are just born to love storms.

 

[Brandon Ivey]

As a kid I was always interested in science. It was inevitable living in Kansas that it would eventually manifest into weather and storms. It began with interests in things like nature, fossils, dinosaurs, and astronomy. In my early elementary days, my dream was to become an astronomer or an astronaut when I grew up. That quickly changed in 1990/1991 when the Hesston/Andover tornadoes hit close to the Wichita area. I was in fifth grade when the Andover tornado hit. I was just appalled as a young kid at how the atmosphere could produce something so violent and devastating. I began searching for every weather-related book I could at the school library. I watched tornado specials and stocked up on Tim Marshall's videos. I watched The Weather Channel for hours on end. And these were the days back when The Weather Channel was good (early 90's). When I got in trouble my parents would ground me from watching (T.V.) The Weather Channel. When I got my drivers license, that is when I began to go out (close to home) and chase a storm every now and then. It grew into a serious hobby by 2001 and I have activity chase, as time allows, every since.

 

[Michael Towers]

Like some others here I became fascinated by storms at a very young age. In fact, some of my most vivid memories from early childhood involve my family scrambling for the basement to the sound of tornado sirens blaring through the dark of night. Tornadoes at night still scare the hell out of me today, not because of those experiences as a child but just because tornadoes at night are damn scary, lol. As much as I want to see a tornado I dread the sound of the siren at night. The sound that is so beautiful in the day but so terrifying at night when you’re jarred out of sleep to the piercing warning of a possible monster outside tearing through the dark. Interesting dichotomy on a chase trip, hope to see the biggest, baddest tornado during the day but please don’t wake me to that siren in the dead of night.

What ultimately interested me in chasing was simply the desire to see a tornado. I’d always wanted to witness this thing I found so fascinating, and after being captivated by so many chaser videos on TV I finally decided to quit thinking about chasing and actually do it. I took my first chase trip to the plains in 2001 and even though I didn’t see a tornado it was one of the most amazing, exhilarating experiences in my life. I felt so ALIVE, and that’s still the same way I feel every time I’m out on the plains, witnessing the majesty of Mother Nature.

 

[Linda Kitchen]

Living in Arizona I grew up with the monsoons. I always loved the big claps of thunder. When I was about 9, I was sitting by our fireplace when lightning hit our roof. It hit very close to the top of our fireplace and the sound almost knocked me off the chair. The neighbors called us to tell us the lightning had hit our roof and it was on fire. It was a very exciting night because we were all on the roof trying to put the fire out. After that, I wanted to see the "big storms" in the plains. In 1994, my youngest was old enough for me to leave for a while so I decided to head to the plains. I called my best friend Kathy (we met in 3rd grade) because I knew Kathy, would come with me. She agreed if the following year we could go swim with the dolphins. We have come out every year since then. I'm still waiting to go swimming with the dolphins. Last year was our 15th year stormchasing!

 

[Joe Dorn]

I was born a month before the Waco, TX Tornado of 1953. (gives away my age-LOL) Clong

Well young fellow, let me tell you how I walked on the ruble of that tornado...

I was a Junior in Temple High School and they let me out to assist with the ham activities in Waco. Amateur radio was much more essential at that time due to lack of facilities. I'll save you folks the math, I am 72.

In keeping with the thread:

I don't recall not being interested in weather in some form or fashion. The Waco Tornado could possibly be the beginning of the conscious awareness, then riding out typhoons in the Navy, ground to air communicator with the test pilots at Convair/Forth Worth (had to decipher the old teletype weather codes and pass on to the pilots), small boat sailor on the upper Texas coast, rancher in central Texas (where a good rain or new calf is always welcome), and now a weather instructor for the United States Power Squadrons, a boating education organization.

 

[Rob Wadsworth]

We had a tornado in Sunnyvale, California in May of 1998 - the 'El Nino' year.
But it was my Dad's story of how our farm was hit by the Pomeroy Cyclone in 1893 that had me riveted.
My Great Granddad James was in our barn - the largest in the BV County at the time - with a neighbor/hired hand when the twister struck at about 5 PM July 6th.
My Granddad made it out of the barn and was sandblasted pretty badly; but our hired hand was picked up and carried for 1/2 mile and was dashed into a large tree - and died the next day.
http://www.iagenweb.org/calhoun/story.html

When I was 11, I went out with my family from California to see our farm in Alta IA for the very first time.
My Dad took my bro and I to an Odd Fellows home to visit a Mason friend of my Dad - who was a survivor of that event.
He told us what happened to him, and the terrible twister that happened that fateful day.
Many people were killed/injured that day in that part of IA - BTW.
I was riveted; and from that point tornadoes always held a personal and special interest for me.
Now that I have the chance to be an eSpotter and chaser for Buena Vista County IA this year, I have seen four tornadoes my first year out (but not in IA; they were in KS!).
Too cool for school...

 

[Nathan Withrow]

Growing up in Kansas it was easy to get into the passion of severe weather! Well thats after I left the fear of storms! I would watch storms move in across my area every year, and wanted to learn more about them. So I started to find every book, TV specials over tornadoes, and more to learn about severe weather. I started to watch TWC in its good old days for hours, and all day if I could. I just had to get a camera to start documenting the severe weather events, or weather myself. I had just a camera that took pictures. I took pictures of clouds, and thunderstorms, but that wasn't enough!

It wasn't until the year 2000 where I got my very first Camcorder! That year I saw my first supercell, and got footage of it. April 19, 2000. Tornadic supercell taking over the atmosphere in Southeast Kansas. Well from there I had to study up on these storms called supercells, and I fell in love with them, and knowing that those storms are the ones that produce tornadoes.

I always had a fascination with tornadoes! So much that in grade school at a very young age my focus was not school as much, but storms and tornadoes. I use to color in those kid coloring books of tornadoes, and my teachers were like, What is wrong with this child! Yes indeed through most of grade school I would be looking out the window of storms moving in rather than paying attention to my teacher. It was crazy, but I loved it!

Back to my story of capturing my very first supercell on film, well that day change my life, and from there I got to experience a very extreme weather event that occurred on May 4, 2003. F4 tornado in Girard, KS! Yes I tried to tape that tornado, but had to take shelter in my basement because my family and I did not know if it was coming our way or not. I was so upset that I did not get to get good footage of the tornado.

From 2004 up to 2007 I was so busy with school and personal things in my life, including a move out of tornado alley to Southern Texas that I got out of the passion I had for severe weather, but once I moved back to tornado alley things were good again. I had a vehicle, and that long life dream of chasing down these storms came true in 2007. I started to chase storms around my area strong and severe to see what it was like, and what a feeling it was! I also had access to the internet in 2007 for the first time of my own and heard about a website called youtube, and decided to check it out, and found out you could upload your videos and broadcast it to the world. So from there I started to post my weather videos, and man I thought that was cool!

So I sort of got the hang of chasing for the first time in 2007, but 2008 I wanted to go all out and really chase. So in comes the 2008 storm season and May 1, 2008 after attending college I was preparing to chase later on in the day. I heard that that day around my area in Southeast Kansas that supercells were going to explode if the cap was to break. The Cap did let go, and next thing I know I was chasing this awesome supercell from Montgomery County, KS into Wilson County, KS. Well it became tornadic and I wanted to get closer to it. I saw a lot of nice storm structure, and incredible scud bombs with one lowering that was interesting to me.

Got back home to review the footage I got and was happy with it. Put it on the tube, and got notice from storm chasers! Wow, and that was just the first part of the week of exciting things I saw with more amazing weather to come!

May 10, 2008 was a special day to me as I would graduate out of a junior college that day. Later in the day after making it home I turned my focus to the weather as my area was under a tornado watch. Just a few hours after getting home all hell was about to break loose! Hail started to fall, and I had a bad feeling that something was about to happen. Next thing I heard is a loud sound of the tornado siren going off. I couldn't believe it! I drove off in my car started to look all around to see what the heck was happening. Next thing I see is a funnel cloud, and my adrenaline was going crazy! I drove outside of town a little bit and saw a freakin tornado form in front of my eyes! I was overwhelmed with emotions. I forgot how to use a camera right and how to shoot video when I saw this tornado! I didn't know what to do like should I film it or take a look at this amazing beast with my naked eye! I did both which made for crappy shaky video of the tornado! At times I had to run up the road to get a shot of the EF-4 tornado again. Little did I know that this Massive tornado would end up destroying a town and would kill people. It was so crazy that moment, and in the future I plan on filming another tornado in a more calm manner, and to get some good footage of a tornado. That is my goal for sure!

Too bad the next year called 2009 would bring disappointment! I mostly encountered HP Supercells, or a lot of bad luck, and so many busts on chases. What a lame year for severe weather in Southern Kansas! May 8, 2009 I did see one incredible Derecho! NWS in Wichita wanted that footage that I got of the straight line winds that morning. That footage can be found on the storms of 2009 DVD from the NWS in Wichita!

I hope for good things in 2010, and look forward to my future in storm chasing, and as part of the storm chasing community!

I hope I did not bore you with this long post! But I thought I needed to post how I got into severe weather and storm chasing! There is so much left out that I didn't talk about! If you want, just send me a message and I can talk more about it or if you just want to talk that would be find too!

 

[Karla Dorman]

Hmmm. Great question! Guess maybe because storms chased me all my life. They terrified me (still do, to some degree, especially if tornadic or large hailers). Moved to 'The Alley' 26 years ago (courtesy USAF). Storms here can be massive and explosive.

Wanted to be a meteorologist, but a svr lack of math skills and my fear of storms precluded that. (I'd be the one on TV: 'We're all gonna diiieeee.' Not good.)

Five years ago, decided to stop letting the fear rule me. No car, so chase off the front porch: confront the beast, as it were, in my own backyard, on my terms, and take its picture. =]

Going on my first REAL chases next season, as a ridealong with an experienced chaser/spotter. Nervous? Yes. Excited? DEFINITELY! (Just as long as I don't wind up in the bear's cage and meeting Mr Bear, shaking his hand. LOL!) Wish me luck!!

 

[Dan Nichols]

From living in a crummy location.

At least from the standpoint of seeing so many promising storms veer of, with the best part missing me by only a mere few miles. I'm definitely low-tech, and rarely interested in that 200-plus mile chase. I try to make close note of those prevailing areas that storms prefer -- and they do have their preferences for no apparent rhyme or reason. Then, using TWC (or radar from a local channel), and my cell phone, I try to judge where a promising cell is located, and if it is heading for one of those favored areas; then I go to that area, whether 15 miles away, 10, or even as close as 3 miles away!!

As I really prefer not to chase at all, and just see that storm right from my porch, I'm always afraid of a longer-distance commitment for fear of that happening while I'm gone. Then, after wasting time, gas -- not to mention traffic hassle -- while seeing little or nothing. I feel "egg in my face" for not staying closer.

 

[Joe Schaub]

I use to be scared to death of storms. When I was a kid, I saw my godparents house struck by lightning and instantly got scared of storms. Fast forward 15 years and I was stuck outside in a severe storm while camping. I sat in my dad's truck and watched this storm and was instantly converted ito being a weather hound. Now I am 31 and can't get enough severe weather. I would love to do a season in the plains one spring. I think that would be an incredible 8 weeks that would just leave me awestruck.

Now with my affiliation with some friends in racing I have helped them avoid some rather dangerous severe weather. Through my years of learning about weather and tracking and chasing storms I was able to get people to a safer location once at a track. The grandstand provided safety during the storms. Lots of rain, hail and lightning but no tornadoes even though the radar shows rotation. It was all we had for structure to get to in time after loading up all the pit equipment and cars since the track ordered everyone off the property when the warnings were issued.

 

[Ken Bayard]

I would have to say riding out a hurricane in Florida when I was 5-6 got me interested in storms... I was amazed that a storm could last 2-3 days and the amount of wind and damage it could do.

When I was around 10-11 and living in Michigan I saw a couple of guys parked outside my parents home talking on their radios when there was an approaching storm. I rode my bike past and asked what they were doing "Oh just watching the sky"... A few minutes later they tore out of there in a hurry, later that evening we learned of a tornado striking about two miles away. A couple years later or house was hit by something while we were not home, no real damage to the house, but the yard was messed up bad, a camper was tossed in one direction, a radio tower in another, tips of trees were snapped off in a twisted manner... No one ever came to confirm anything, but I had decided we had been hit by a very small twister... So then I dove into learning about weather.

When I reached the age of 26 I decided I wanted to try my hand at chasing, so I set out to get my ham license. the first year or two i sat and listened to the local weather nets and from their reports, I would chase. By the time I was 30 I was pretty active in chasing locally.

Im now 35 and I'm looking to head west this spring to try and capture my first tornado on film. So I set out to learn the most I can about "forecasting" in a very short amount of time. Thats how I ended up here at Stormtrack and I'm tryig to absorb as much info from the pros.

Ken