What made you decided to become a storm chaser.

[Erik Burns]

I was thinking about it today while driving to work.. Did you just wake up out of bed and decided to chase storms.

What made you take the plunge?

It was almost 6 years ago for me, I had always enjoyed severe weather and on a stormy May evening I decided to go drive around in the storms and "play around" I wasn't really thinking about tornadoes and while listening to the radio the program was interupted with the famous EAS tone. Tornado warning. Well I freaked out and drove over to a Kroger store and seeking shelter in the building.. Nothing happend but it sure got my blood going. So ever since then I took more of an interest in storm chasing.. So that was my day to become a storm chaser.

Whats your story?

( mods I made a typo in my thread name could you fix it please?)

 

[Dustin Wilcox]

It started when I was about 3 years old; being FORCED to stay in the basement with my mom during tornado warnings while my old man was "allowed" to be upstairs observing the situation sparked some curiosity, that through my younger years turned into interest. By the time I was old enough to know what was going on I was glued to the TV during Severe Weather, watching the coverage. By the age of 8 I wanted to be a meteorologist, and as soon as I turned 16 I was out "chasing" albeit only locally, until I gained a little more experience.

 

[Sean McMullen]

My story might not be as exciting as most but I still like it. I've always loved severe weather and wanted to see a tornado. I would watch the wall to wall coverage of severe weather events actually hoping a tornado would head towards my area. One day I was watching that very thing when I said to my wife, like I had a bunch of times before, that I really wanted to see a tornado. Well she just says to me, "Why don't we just go to the storm and see what happens." I was like, "Really?!" and off we went. We didn't see a tornado that day but but we did get caught in a hail shaft so it was pretty exciting. We were hooked from then on. We started checking out things online and we decided to go on a storm chasing vacation where we met some incredible people that basically guided us on our trip and it was the best time we have ever had in our lives. Now, I'm going to school for Meteorology in Lincoln and not doing too bad I must say. I chase for a local television network in Omaha and make some descent money, locally and nationally. Overall, chasing has changed our lives forever and for the best. I'm very happy with our situation and look forward to starting a career in broadcasting. My wife is also nuts about it which makes life easy. Sometimes I feel like the luckiest person in the world.

 

[Jerry Prsha]

I'm not sure that it was a conscious decision for me. I would sometimes follow squall lines from the St. Louis area into Southern Illinois hoping to catch some big storms. The concrete in St. Louis would limit the storms but they always started to "pop" on the "East Side." It was kind of a killing time kind of thing and it always helps when you just love to drive.

Net thing I knew I was traveling further into Illinois and then towards Peoria. I think it's just a shifting of gears thing to end up in the Plains States to chase.

The strange thing was shifting from being reactionary to a planning a chase.

 

[Danny Neal]

The Plainfield F5 hit as I just turned 3. The tornado hit about 10 miles to my SW and I remember running to the basement with my family. (I was actually grabbed out of my kiddy-pool) So sitting in swimming trunks huddled around a TV while hearing Plainfield was "gone." It got my blood going. My first unofficial chase was May 18th, 1997 around my neighborhood as an HP supercell rolled through. My first real storm chase netted in an F2 on April 7th, 1998. I definitely attribute my chasing bug (weather bug for that matter) to that terrible August day.

On a side note, my dad told me the day I was born (July 10th, 1987) a severe thunderstorm(most likely a supercell) rolled into the southside and there were tornado warnings about 3 times throughout the day. Whether true or not, it makes for an interesting story!!!!

 

[David Drummond]

Red River Outbreak 1979.

My story is here for those with enough caffeine to keep them awake through it.

 

[Chris Lott]

I grew up somewhat interested in severe weather, but the Jarrell,Tx tornado of 1997 and the Moore,Oklahoma tornado, along with all the media coverage just consumed me. I watched stories on tv, countless videos on both events and that was what really peaked my interest into becoming a chaser. The violence and beauty of mother nature is awesome.

 

[Dean Baron]

I swear we just had a topic about this exact same thing... anyways, no big event made me want to chase, just watching the many storms i've seen come through, how different they all were but were are still so cool. i think one of the best things i like about chasing is not just seeing the storm, but also being out in the country away from everything, its just so relaxing i guess. I do remember sneeking upstairs during a couple tornado warnings and seeing the puke green sky with a tornado just a few miles away. I think those were the kinds of things that made me want to chase.

 

[Linda Kitchen]

I loved the movie Wizard of Oz. The tornado snaking around had a profound effect on me. Living in Az, we had some great storms, but for me the prize was a tornado. I grew up, got married and had 3 kids, so chasing seemed out of the question. In 1994, I decided that my youngest was old enough to leave with my husband, so I called my best friend (since 3rd grade) Kathy, and asked her if she would go to plains with me. Kathy is always up for an adventure and was all for it. That was the first year we chased in the plains. We have gone out every year since.

 

[John Gnuechtel]

I'd second the wiz. The effects they used to make a realistic tornado in those days were astounding. I was terrified as a kid. For me, the shift in thinking came when I was about 14 or 15, living in the northwest suburbs of Chicago. Most older Chicagoans in my family (and neighborhood for that matter) had some bad memories of outbreaks in the 70's that caused quite a bit of bad things, so they passed that on to their kids...my parents and aunts/uncles. The day I remember was when I had to go ride my bike through a park district to try and find a sibling who was supposed to be at the park district swimming pool with friends. The friend's parents got him out of there earlier, but I didn't know. So I ended up riding my bike through some non-trivial hail and watching a gustnado blast through a field near my house. Having done that on a bicycle kinda made me feel like I could handle just about any of that stuff as long as I could see what was happening. From that day forward, I wanted to get out and see a real tornado.

Edit: I had a couple books from when I was in grade school about the Super Outbreak before I remember it being named as such; mainly horror stories about Xenia, Ohio. It was more reinforcement for seeing just what it was that did these kinds of things.

 

[Simon Timm]

A tornado went through my hometown of Madison Wisconsin in 2004. It was small but mean. At the time of terrified of tornadoes and severe weather, though this experience shaped my interests in severe weather, because it revealed to me how powerful mother nature is.

 

[Jeremy Jones]

It was 4 years ago for me, I was 21. My twin brother and I were watching the local news, and we decided to head out and try to catch up with a rather slow moving super cell.

At the time, we decided to take his 1990 rag top Mustang, not knowing any better. We
unknowingly punched through the core. We started getting hit by golf-ball size hail, then
it became baseball size. We ended up trying to pull his car under this tree to try and help
protect us from the hail....Well, that didn't happen! The baseball size hail, started piercing the rag top and we were getting hit by them. I ended up tucking into a tiny
ball with my arms "Trying" to protect my head. I got hit twice in my left forearm once in
the Sternum, 3 times on top of my head, and the last hail ball hit me in the bridge of my nose breaking it. I was knocked unconscious, and bleeding heavily out of my nose and tear-ducts from my eyes.

My brother (who by the way didn't get hit once!) quickly drove me to the Emergency where I got patched up, and received a long lecture from my Dad who has been chasing and photographing severe weather for over 10 years.

Ever since then, I have been absolutely ate up with chasing!!!

 

[Matthew Harding]

I have always had a great desire to get out and experience weather up close and personal, but there are two moments that really made me want to get into chasing. First, I can remember listening to coverage of the Hesston, KS tornado on the radio back in 1990 and thinking how cool it must have been to see something so majestic as that tornado. The second was back overMemorial Day weekend of 1996, my family and I were headed back home from an engagement in Salina, KS and drove through a storm. When we got south of the storm, we witnessed a small, rope tornado that was headed for the highway. We scrambled trying to find shelter for a little bit, but that right there gave me an adrenaline rush that I hadn't experienced previously.

 

[Jody Radzik]

I saw a perfectly-formed roll cloud moving along an outflow boundary in mid-central New Jersey at about 700 feet in 1969. It came right over my head like God rolling out the Grey Carpet.

 

[Jeff Richardson]

I was almost 16 at the time. Riding home on the school bus, the thought suddenly occurred to me that as a high school sophomore, I'd be getting my driver's license soon and would no longer be limited to weather photography from my home. It seemed like such a novel idea to me at the time...little did I know that others had been doing it for years...and I learned a lot from them.