Twister chasing not so glamorous, fruitful
Tornadoes ripped through central Oklahoma Tuesday, leaving damage across parts of Oklahoma City and just north in suburban Edmond.
About 100 miles south, in the small town of Lone Grove, another twister left eight people dead. Local television stations were all over the situation, with wall-to-wall coverage and live pictures of one of the tornadoes as it formed and headed toward Interstate 35.
More than likely, there also will be no shortage of tornado video, from the scores of storms chasers who were waiting for just such a storm, in what was forecast to be a “moderate to high risk” environment for severe weather that day.
About 20 miles south of Oklahoma City, in Norman, is where the National Severe Storms Laboratory, Storm Prediction Center and the University of Oklahoma are located.
If you’ve seen any programs on storm chasing, you’ve probably seen the teams who followed the storm with a “doppler on wheels,” or the chasers who raced to put probes called “toto” (for totable tornado laboratory) ahead of an approaching tornado. Professors, grad students and other meteorologists from the University of Oklahoma were involved in such projects.
The idea of storm chasing has been glamorized by the media with movies such as “Twister” and other shows that highlight the expeditions of those on the hunt for the next big storm. Of course the footage is edited down to the most exciting 5- to 10-minute snippets. As one who grew up in tornado alley and spent many hours on the road during college hunting the sometimes elusive tornadic storm, I’ve experienced the less glamorous side of chasing.
It all started with figuring out where to go, and then when and how to get there. One would spend the early morning hours poring over weather data, looking for regions where all the right ingredients were expected to come together. Sometimes it would be right in your backyard, but oftentimes the “best” location would be hundreds of miles (and many hours of driving) to western Kansas or the Texas panhandle.
It always seemed like we were headed out into the middle of nowhere. Timing and position were everything. Ultimately, you wanted to be in the right spot before the storm even formed, and sometimes that meant sitting around under nearly cloudless skies, in the middle of nowhere, waiting for “it” to happen.
Some days, you would hit the jackpot and witness one of the awesome spectacles of nature’s fury. Most of the time though, it was like fishing. Conditions looked good, many hours (and dollars) were invested to be at the right place at the right time, but you would come away empty handed and only left with the tedious task of driving all the way home.