This has been a deadly year for weather. After watching the horrifying footage of tornadoes destroy lives, homes, whole towns.
I was writing this piece in a Kansas City, MO hotel room the morning of May 25th when my friend Peggy Willenberg called. Peggy’s one of the Twister Sisters, a dynamic blond tornado-chasing duo. You may have caught Peggy and sidekick Melanie Metz on Oprah or Leno.
“Girl, what’re you doing?” Peggy asked.
“Writing a piece on tornado preparedness. Why?”
“You’re in the middle of a tornado warning.”
I got up and looked out the window, then at the radar on my iPad. “Crap,” I said. “Gotta go.”
I fled downstairs, past the lobby flat-screen on which I’d watched footage from the previous day’s outbreak in Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri. More sickening damage, more unbelievable human carnage. On Facebook and Twitter I’d just warned friends in the Mississippi and Ohio Valleys to prepare for death and destruction headed their way. Now I stood in the hotel’s parking lot, watching a tornadic supercell pass 2 miles east.
I’d put myself in this position on purpose.
I’m a stormchaser. I’m also a writer, first and foremost. I wrote a novel called The Stormchasers, and for the past five years, I’ve tailed a stormchase company, Tempest Tours, as they ferry vanloads of clients into Tornado Alley for the big weather safari. This season, my Tempest Year 6, I’ve graduated to tour hostess. I was in Kansas City because I’d been traveling from my Minnesota house to Oklahoma to join my tour group. Chasing tornadoes en route.
I chase because I love storms. I’ve been fascinated with tornadoes since witnessing my first at age four in my grandmother’s Minnesota hometown. To a little girl obsessed with The Wizard Of Oz, this experience was terrifying and terribly exciting, and I spent subsequent decades trying to see another tornado. Now I chase with the tour company and with professional chaser friends, and many of us claim the same genesis for our big-weather fascination: a childhood encounter.
There are other reasons. The storms are beautiful and powerful beyond description. Imagine yourself on the Plains, where 90% of your view is sky. Imagine being an ant. Then imagine a tidal wave coming at you. That’s a tornadic supercell. Not to mention the tornado itself, that freaky, graceful connection between earth and sky.
I also love the lonely, majestic landscape in which chasing usually occurs. Most tornadoes touch down in places so isolated — northeastern Colorado, the Dakotas — it’s like being in an Ansel Adams photograph, except in color.
I love the camaraderie. When you spend that much time with people, driving thousands of miles, playing Frisbee or singing show tunes while you wait for a storm to go up, then racing with eye-popping adrenaline to land beneath a natural force that mutes you with awe, you get pretty close to each other. I call my chaser friends my storm family.
I chase for many reasons, none including death wish.
The problem is, this year “death wish” seems most applicable.
America has always had strong tornadoes. But 2011 is the Year of the Metronado. In a horrific confluence of deadly atmospherics and dense populations, twisters are targeting Tornado Alley’s urban centers. Raleigh, NC. Tuscaloosa, AL. And Joplin, MO’s EF5—whose death toll at the time of this writing is 126. The worst tornado fatality count since 1947, when a Woodward, OK tornado killed 181.
Joplin may surpass that grisly record.
Is our weather is getting more violent? What’s causing this? Is it global warming? Will it get worse?
I can’t presume to answer these questions. I’m no scientist. And such topics are hotly debated in the meteorological community. But experts I know agree on one thing: we’re in an extremely active weather pattern that shows no sign of abating.
I’m conflicted about chasing in a season when it seems there’s a good chance, when I aim myself at a tornado, there may be large-scale human misery and death at the other end of it.
It’d be different if I had a way to contribute, if I were a scientist or first responder. What, I asked my mentor, Tempest Guide Kinney Adams, can we do?
Kinney said, “Grasshopper, you’re a writer. Use your voice.”
So I am. Here is what I would beseech you:
* Get a weather radio.
* Sign up for free severe weather alert texts at http://www.weatherusa.net/alerts/ or http://www.weather.com
* Stop thinking this can’t happen to you.
* Have a plan.
* Dear Federal Government, we need shelter. Many Americans have died in recent outbreaks because they don’t have adequate shelters, especially in the South. We need more community shelters. Building code should require tornado-safe rooms in new Tornado Alley homes.
Finally, if you see a tornado, DO NOT GO TAKE PICTURES OF IT. Stormchasing can kill you. Sure, your footage will be on TV and you’ll be famous. After you’re dead.
Be safe.
Great story. Great book. Great advice. THANK YOU.