What Stands in a Storm (13 page)

Storm chasers have been chasing storms for centuries. Unaided by technology, the act began as simple observation of a phenomenon that inspired great speculation and a considerable amount of pre-urban myth.

Benjamin Franklin was one of the first to document a chase on American soil in April 1755, twenty-one years before the birth of our country and 115 years before the creation of the US Weather Bureau. Franklin, then forty-nine years old, was on a gentleman's ride in Maryland when he spotted “a whirlwind.” It appeared in the form of a sugarloaf (a cone-shaped block of refined sugar) “spinning on its point, moving up the hill towards us, and enlarging as it came forward,” he wrote. As his companions stood gaping, Franklin urged his horse alongside it, watching the dust swirl up into a funnel the size of a barrel. Testing the commonly held belief that shooting a bullet through a waterspout would cause it to dissipate, Franklin tried cracking his whip at it repeatedly, with no effect. He chased it into the woods, where it stirred up leaves and bent tall trees with “a circular motion [that] was amazingly rapid.” After it dissipated over a tobacco field, Franklin turned to the colonel he was riding with and asked whether such whirlwinds were common in Maryland.

“No, not at all common,” the colonel replied pleasantly, “but we got this on purpose to treat Mr. Franklin.”

Centuries of amateur storm chasing followed.

Scientific storm chasing became a regular practice in the 1970s, when Doppler radar and numerical cloud models brought about a revolution in the understanding of storms. When Doppler signals bounce off an object and return, the device can “hear” subtle shifts in the echoes that indicate whether that object is moving closer or farther from the radar source. Using data from multiple Doppler radars, scientists could now calculate the speed and direction of winds swirling within storms.

Numerical cloud models produce three-dimensional simulations of developing storms, and these realistic simulations enable researchers to quantify the forces of storms. Unlike earlier models, which simply strived to
understand
these processes, new models could help
predict
them.

Today's scientific storm chasers span a pretty wide spectrum. In popular chasing territories in parts of Oklahoma and Kansas, scientists may find themselves sharing the roads with chase teams driven by very different motives. For some, it is research. For others, glory. Others are there because weather tourists have paid them for the wild ride. Since the inception of YouTube and reality shows like the Discovery Channel's
Storm Chasers
, a growing number of nonscientific glory chasers take to the road in storm season with more nerve than knowledge.

The tour groups do not often chase in Dixie Alley.

As Peters and Coleman were driving straight into the heart of their storm, another chase team seventy miles south was gunning to intercept a large storm on a parallel track. Their radar showed the hook echo heading northeast at a steady clip, approaching the Tuscaloosa county line. Avoiding other teams on nearby storms, they chose this unclaimed supercell and sped southwest to meet it.

Behind the wheel of his Toyota Highlander, meteorologist John Oldshue stared intently through the wipers. On the radar, the echo was a perfect red hook. There was no way of knowing for sure until they saw it, but instinct told him this was real, and it was somewhere on the ground.

Throughout his years of chasing, Oldshue had caught four tornadoes—one of which had nearly caught him—and he knew their mercurial nature. Now retired, he had spent most of his decade at ABC 33/40 in front of the green screen, but during outbreaks he drove the StormChaser van. Today he was chasing as an unpaid volunteer, supporting his former colleagues.

Oldshue was another case of a weatherman who had found his calling as a child. He was three years old when the 1974 outbreak captured his fascination forever. In elementary school, James Spann became his hero. Oldshue remembered the date Spann got his first color radar—July 27, 1977—because it was Oldshue's seventh birthday, and the advent of color radar was just as much cause for celebration.

When Oldshue was a freshman in college, there were no meteorology programs in the area. So he enrolled in his next choice, the veterinary program at Mississippi State. During an internship with a large-animal vet, he met the cow that changed his career. The cow was suffering from constipation, and the vet had Oldshue don a rubber glove that stretched all the way to his shoulder. In the middle of the procedure, a thunderstorm broke out, and Oldshue realized that he was more into the weather than he was the cow. Which was, at the moment, saying a lot. Mississippi State had recently introduced its broadcast meteorology program, and Oldshue promptly changed his major.

Oldshue thrived in the program. When it came time for his college internship, he knew just whom he wanted to work for. He looked up the phone number of his childhood hero and left a gushing message on Spann's answering machine.

“You don't know me,” he said, “but I have watched you since I
was in diapers and I want to be a TV weatherman. I want to be your intern.”

Spann called him back and left him a message Oldshue would save and replay for the next three weeks, perplexing his future wife with the magnitude of his man-crush.

“John, this is James Spann. I've never had an intern, but I'd love for you to become my first.”

Oldshue interned with Spann for the next two summers, an apprentice to the master. When he graduated, Spann helped him land his first job at a TV station in Tuscaloosa. After a succession of jobs in and outside of meteorology, Oldshue returned to 33/40 as the weekend weatherman. During tornado season, he drove the back roads looking for ground truth. He was one of the best chasers at the station.

His most famous catch was the F4 tornado that had struck Tuscaloosa on December 16, 2000, a monster spawned by a winter outbreak that scarred the land from Mississippi to North Carolina. Oldshue had been chasing that twister through Tuscaloosa, trying to capture live footage for Spann to broadcast. It was his fourth tornado, and prior experience informed his calculated risks. He had a wife and kids to think about, as well as the reporter riding along in the StormChaser van. He did not take this responsibility lightly. For safety, he wanted to give this huge storm a wide berth, and his conservative calculations should have kept them in the safe zone. But tornadoes can never be trusted to behave as expected. This one had veered suddenly. It was one of the small percentage of funnels that moved due east instead of northeast. Oldshue and his colleague were standing in the parking lot of a Hampton Inn, looking at what he thought was a wall of rain.

Those birds wouldn't be flying out here if this was a tornado.

Then he looked closer.

Those aren't birds. Those are car bumpers.

As it barreled toward them, Oldshue and his colleague ditched the
van and ran inside the Hampton Inn, joining the manager and a group of guests taking shelter in the hallway.

They took a direct hit. No one at the hotel was hurt, but that storm killed eleven Tuscaloosans, nine of them in a trailer park. Oldshue walked outside to find the StormChaser van nearly totaled, an incident that his colleagues would never let him live down. It was no small consolation, however, that he and Spann would win an Emmy for their coverage.

Oldshue did not get his livestream that time, but other live footage, captured by a remote-controlled SkyCam, had saved countless lives and ushered the station into a new era of warnings. It had proven that live footage was more motivating to viewers than the most detailed, cutting-edge radar.

Now, years later, Oldshue was gunning for another shot at getting a tornado live on TV. But with wireless signals patchy from the morning damage, that was going to be a matter of luck and timing.

Riding shotgun, Ben Greer was a close friend who found Oldshue's chasing stories captivating. Greer worked in the film industry, setting and lighting scenes, and had hoped one day to film a live tornado. He had brought along a high-definition camera to use alongside Oldshue's streaming weather-cam, which he was now rushing to assemble with nervous hands. In his lap was a bird's nest of unfamiliar wires, cameras, and gadgets that Oldshue had dumped in the passenger seat and was trying to talk him through.

Today's decision to chase had been last-minute. The friends had talked about chasing together for years, but the right opportunity had not yet presented itself. Earlier that week, when Greer had seen an outbreak on the forecast, he picked up the phone. Oldshue, who had long since left his job as a broadcast weatherman, demurred.

“Let's go,” Greer said. “Let's do it.”

“No,” Oldshue said. “I'm retired. I'm done.”

They hung up, but the prospect nagged at Oldshue. Once you're
bitten by the storm-chasing bug, it was hard to cure the fever. He called Greer back.

“Can you be here in thirty minutes?”

They planned to head west of Tuscaloosa until they learned that another chase team—a third pair working with 33/40—was already on that storm. So they set off to find an unclaimed supercell. This one, farther south, looked promising. When supercells come in pairs, the second often grows stronger, fed by the storm before it.

“Nobody's on it,” Oldshue said. “Let's go catch it.”

They shot down the interstate, dodging traffic as they headed toward a rural area about twenty miles southwest of Tuscaloosa. Greer downed a Snickers and a Coke, plugged cords into cameras, and tried to stay calm. Oldshue looked for an exit with a high point. In this part of the state, the foothills of the Appalachians give way to the coastal plain. There are not many hills. But the trees that blanket the undulations turn some roads into tunnels. They hoped they could find a hill high enough to let them see the horizon.

As he drove, Oldshue told Greer to open his computer and send a message to 33/40. He knew his old colleague Jason Simpson would be running the radar and scanning the chats for ground truth. Those guys would be slammed and he would not bother them unless he felt there was a high likelihood that he would have a storm to show. Today, he had that feeling.

They pulled off the interstate at an exit where they thought they might find the highest point and turned into the parking lot of Frontier Bingo. Greer stayed at the car while Oldshue ran into the establishment,
searching among the bleeping gaming machines for an authority he could ask for permission to film on the property. An old man in overalls and a younger man in a suit both gave their blessing. He ran back out to meet Greer.

From here they still could not see the horizon, but they watched the sky to the south, above a roadless hill, for the shape of a funnel. The mercury was dipping.

Pursuing the northern storm, Peters and Coleman raced through the rain. The wind was bearing down upon them, licking the truck with sudden gusts. On either shoulder of the interstate, trees had been cleared, providing a rare wide swath of sky. But they could not see much through the downpour. Raindrops spattered on the windshield faster than the wipers could sweep them away, and through the sheets of water they could see little more than the blurry taillights of the trucks they passed. They were pushing ninety miles per hour.

The air filled with the scent of pine. Small needles and twigs flecked the windshield, catching in the wipers before getting brushed away. Falling leaves were a telltale sign that they were somewhere inside the supercell. Their options here were slim. They could try to punch through to the other side, risking a slight miscalculation that could get them hurt or killed. Or they could quickly find a place to hunker down and pray as the storm crashed over them. Either way, it was an all-in bet.