How did you get interested in Chasing?

[cedwards]

Here is one that I always get. How did you get interested in chasing?

[cedwards]

I was originally interested in Hurricanes. I grew up in Colombia. The only severe weather was floods. Half the year, we got no rain at all. the other half it raind hard almost every day, but only for a short period. There were no storm sewers, so the water flooded the streets and washed everything away. We moved back to the US and I got a direct hit from Hurricane Alisia in 1983. I have been tracking them ever since.

The first I ever heard of chasing was probably the NOVA special. I started chasing at Texas A&M in 1990. I later moved to Oklahoma for better storms and to attend OU. I learned a lot form more experienced chasers. I am still learning, by experience and form others.

[George Tincher]

I developed an interest in severe weather at a very early age. By the time I was in 3rd grade, I was a pretty sophisticated little weather weenie. Hehe. This interest also greatly helped me in my studies as well. Prior to developing this interest, I viewed reading more as a chore rather than something fun. So I lagged behind much of my class. But once I took a keen interest in severe weather, books became a requirement, as there was no internet in those days. Therefore through reading every book I could find related to severe weather, I was reading at a much higher level in short order than most of my class...simply because most of the books dedicated to severe weather were written for a much older audience than 3rd graders. So I suppose my interest in severe weather helped me in more ways than just giving me an extra hobby.

Now as far as chasing, I had never even heard of chasers or knew that anything such as chasing existed until the NOVA program mentioned by Charles. But that definately caught my eye and made me go "hmmmmmmm".

Later, sometime in the early 90's, I saw and recorded a program on A&E called "The Stormchasers", hosted by Bill Curtis. This really opened my eyes, as not only did it show chasers chasing purely for scientific purposes, but also amateurs doing so as a hobby. I found the Gene Rhoden segment of that program particularly interesting.

So sometime around 1995, while still a high school senior, I took an interest in going out locally and observing storms. I can remember being out on the rather wild evening of May 18, 1995 watching a tornado warned embedded HP supercell. I also became a SKYWARN spotter that year. From that point forward, it has been my goal to go out and see whatever I can when the opportunity presents itself. Due to my location and situation, I am not in the same league as most of the folks here. I haven't been able to get out on the Plains yet. And the terrain here is not the best in the world. But boy, I sure enjoy getting to see a nice storm as much as anyone. And I'm always trying to learn something new, which is why I am a member here. Heck, I even enjoy cyberchasing if the action is outside my area and I have developed a love for nowcasting. If it's severe weather related, count me in! Hehe.

-George

[Shane Adams]

My story is both stereotypical and unique. I grew up in Oklahoma, so naturally I was around severe weather from the start. However, unlike many chasers, there was no incident with a tornado that marked my life and lit a spark to learn more. My spark was never seeing a tornado my entire life. They wouldn't come near me. Once I figured this out, I decided to go to them. It's worked out pretty well so far.

[Robert Dewey]

This is what started it all for me: http://www.spc.noaa.gov/misc/AbtDerechos/c...7-81991page.htm (http://www.spc.noaa.gov/misc/AbtDerechos/casepages/jul7-81991page.htm)

We didn't have power for nearly a week... It stands as the worst storm to hit my neighborhood, in memory, to this date.


As the storm system continued east across the state a semi-trailer truck was blown over on I-69 east of Battle Creek. Some of the most severe damage in southeastern Lower Michigan occurred from Shiawassee County eastward into the Flint metropolitan area. In New Lothrop 10 mobile homes were blown over with one being blown into a nearby lake. In Durand numerous camper trailers were blown over and one person was injured. Quite a few homes and cars were damaged by falling trees in Owosso. A roof was blown off an elementary school in Swartz Creek and on the west side on Flint near I-75 roofs were blown off two apartment buildings.

Wind gusts from 75 to 85 mph were common in the Ann Arbor, Detroit, and Pontiac areas. Many homes and cars were damaged in Rochester and Tecumseh and trees and power lines were blown down throughout the region.

Of course, I was only 6 at the time... I remember it like it was yesterday. It was a very hot and humid day, partly sunny off and on. I was sitting in the living room playing candy land with my friend, when we noticed it getting really dark. The tornado sirens then went off, and I began to panic. My friend and I went into the kitchen and my mom told us that if it got too bad we would head to the basement (being in Michigan, tornado sirens going off don't really mean a whole lot, as nothing usually happens). Anyway, just as she said that, the wind really kicked up, ripping the roof off from our deck... That was it, we were in the basement, LOL. When we came back up, the neighborhood was pretty trashed. Numerous trees were uprooted, quite a few roads were blocked by trees, power lines were laying all over... I HATED storms after that event, for about the next year... Then I began to love 'em LOL

[Jeremy Lemanski]

always was interested in it, i remember back in either 94 or 95 a squall line racing in from the NW, i think a MCS, as it was in july and was a ring of fire type setup. I still remember the weather channel's radar with its solid line of red moving SE. We got hit with high winds, i don't know how high it got, that blew down trees/power lines/blew in windows. That got me interested in weather.

However, what got me crazy/nuts about it was watching may 31st 1998 role across my neighborhood.

[Jeff Wear]

For me it was the chance to see weather I wouldn't see just by sitting at home. Once I learned that most thunderstorms are fairly brief and localized - it became obvious to me I'd need to go to where the weather is happening for my best chance of seeing something interesting.

[Tim Vasquez]

Like Charles my weather interests developed overseas; for me, in Germany. The systems there were frequently well-developed high-amplitude systems coming off the Atlantic -- occlusions, huge blocks, cutoff lows, etc, and we got some bizarre wind profiles from time to time. One of those weird profiles was associated with a squall line that came in from France in summer 1976; it sort of swept the anvil sort of rearward from the storms, and what was a 70-degree sunny day gave way to a wall of blackness coming in from the west. No perceptible anvil, just this wall of Cb with a little cirrus and blue sky above. Once it arrived it buried the town in about an inch of hail. That was strange enough for me to start poring through meteorology books and learning more, and I never stopped.

The chasing slant developed in 1986... I used to spend time over at the NWS office in Fort Worth, and got to know Alan Moller. He uncovered this world of chasing and photography that I never knew existed and hooked me up with Tim Marshall. Before long I was going over there on weekends to watch tornado videos, and met other chasers who occasionally dropped by. My first chase was Feb 14, 1987 to Hillsboro, Tex. Solid squall line... a poignant and fitting start.

Tim

[Kyle Flannigan]

I became interested in storm chasing and severe weather when I was young. Thunderstorms always fascinated me and I would watch The Weather Channel for hours. I'd get books on storms and weather from the local library. I would go outside and observe a squall line approaching. My mother thought I was a bit crazy, and would have to drag me indoors out of fear that I would get struck by lightning. In 1991, I experienced Hurricane Bob when I was living in Long Island, NY. Then, in July of 1994(in E. PA), I experienced one of the worst svr storm/tornado events to hit that state. And, I also experienced one of the worst winter storms EVER in January of '96. All of that severe weather just got me even more interested.

[John Diel]

The interest developed Sept. 3rd, 1970. Out chasing baseball hail with hard hats and baseball gloves! Pretty dumb in retrospect.

After that, I wanted to be a meteorologist, but my math skills weren't quite up to par. 1979 I started volunteer work with the Red Cross and helped out on several occasions in SE Kansas over the next couple of years.

A large interval where I was in the Army and not really able to chase and then started back in about 5 years ago.

[Mikey Gribble]

I grew up in Wichita and have been interested in severe weather as long as I can remember. I really got started chasing on May 8, 2002. I was glued to the TV the night before when Pratt got hit by a tornado. At some point during the coverage, I realized I had a car and I could drive to these storms instead of hoping they came to me. I don't know why chasing storms never occured to me earlier, but it didn't. So I started doing research on severe weather and dove right in to chasing storms that week.

[Colin P.McIntyre]

In 1987 Edmonton was hit by a F-4 tornado that killed 27 people.Having
the holy hell scared out of me i thought it might be a good idea to learn
somthing about thease storms.Still don't do alot of in car chasing but
continue to learn all i can about thease storms.

[Skip Talbot]

TWISTER! Ever since I saw that movie I wanted to be a professional chaser... :roll:

But seriously folks, it was probably that Plainfield F5 of 1990, only 15 miles from my home, that first got my attention.

Twister was the greatest movie when I first saw it, and I confess that it did introduce me to the art of pursuing severe weather, even though I had an interest in this weather long before. It wasn't until 2003, however, before I felt confident enough to actually head out on my own chases.

[Bobby Eddins]

My brother was a serious weather geek. He got observations on lowband long before there even computers in households and I'd get on the roof to watch storms and lightning from as far away as Abilene. We really didn't know anything but Harrold Taft was a god in our house.

My dad was a fixture on the local ham repeater (WB5FPI) and was very involved in RACES and SKYWARN. I remember hearing him talk to chasers such as Sam Barricklow (K5KJ) as they headed out and my interest was sparked by this.

I started chasing local storms just to see them in the mid 80's and thought at the time I'd gone a long way when I ended up about 40 miles from home.

In 1991 I I had my first successful chase with the April 12th Glenrose/Rainbow tornado. Then on April 26th I actually targeted and drove to the Lawton area and got close enough to see the Red Rock storm from a distance and ended up in northern Oklahoma after dark and long after the show. This was a bust but a light went on in my head that day and I knew my 1 day chase range was much larger than I thought.

Since then I've chased every time I could, though the older and more experienced I get the more selective I have become.

[Andy Wehrle]

The first time I ever heard about storm chasing was in first or second grade when I came across this little children's book about storm chasers. It had a little story about a chase Tim Marshall and Roy Britt did together, when a tornado chased them for awhile.

Since then I always thought storms and tornadoes were pretty cool. I eventually moved on to more in-depth books about the subject lol. I would always watch and tape those specials The Weather Channel used to do, like Target Tornado and The Chase. Whenever I was watching TV and saw the little watch or warning icon in the corner of the screen, I would immediately flip to TWC and see what was going on. Then I would go ballistic with anticipation whenever a warning crawl came on TWC, then be disappointed when nothing happened except a little rain and thunder.

As a kid I didn't see much severe weather. My house got rolled over by a couple of derechos causing trees to come down in the neighborhood, but that was when I was too little to remember. Seems as soon as I got interested in severe weather was when the drought started for my location, and storms would always weaken as they approached, lol.

The first time I saw actual severe weather firsthand was on June 6, 1999 when a supercell's rotating wall cloud passed by while I was visiting my uncle's family near Brodhead: http://sphs.angeltowns.net/A_R_Wehrle/stor...nts/060699.html (http://sphs.angeltowns.net/A_R_Wehrle/stormaccounts/060699.html)
It never dropped a tornado, but the violent motion in the clouds was awe-inspiring to see. The storm did blast the area with damaging RFD winds. I've always regretted not getting any pictures of that storm in progress, so I'm looking to take up chasing to have the chance to witness that again.

[Nick Parker]

I have always been interested in stroms. Being a youngster and going through a derecho didn't help the situation. 8) But, it really got serious about chasing during May 2003. That whole week I spent running around trying to get a good shot of a tornado around here. Then the evening of the 6th rolled around. Let's just say I didn't have to go anywhere to chase this time. That ole F-4 came to me. Ripped the roof off the house, leveled the barn, and "pancaked" my truck. The news networks all said it was headed north of us. (Nice try.) So this really pushed me to become involved in a public level to help this "surprise" from happening again. Joining SKYWARN gave me contacts to get ahold of and provide real-time information. So far, i've got some good photos of supercell's but nothing major. Im kindly in the same area as George Tincher, long rolling hills and such. It makes it a tad tricky to find a good, open spot. But, im ready for this Spring, especially May...So bring em' ON!

[Tony Laubach]

April 26, 1991 - Andover, Kansas

Watching the unfold on The Weather Channel was incredible! That's probably where the chasing seed was planted for me! I've always had a fascination with weather, and particularly severe weather. That stemmed back to when I was 5ish and I was in the car in a parking lot when a HUGE storm rolled through. The car was shaking and my brother was screaming in the seat next to me. I remember that storm like it was yesterday.. that's where the severe weather seed was drilled. Chasing itself, Andover.

[Kurt Hulst]

Ever since i was a little Kid i would always watch thunderstorms roll by. Lightning always fascinated me and well look at me now i take pictures of it, hehe. The clouds motions has as well captivated me. Another thing that got me was even though i may live in such a flat area the clouds that roared upward have always been my mountains. Kinda reminds me of when i visted Colorado for all those relatives weddings when i was younger. My aunt has a large large family. Tony you might know where Loveland is. thast where she lives


Hey Nick Parker is that a D8 CAT you got in that Pic. ive operated a D8R but not in cab. sorry for the off topic just was curious

[APritchard]

My dad has always been interested in storm chasing and tornadoes in general. He was a county storm spotter at the young age of 18. One of his best friends is also the chief meteorologist at the public radio/tv station here at the U of I (in the weather office where I now work :) ) I made my interest in storms apparent early on, so I always had those two supplying me with plenty of tornado video. I would always be quite jealous when my dad would leave to go chasing with the atmos-sciences chase group here, but would love to hear his stories when he came back.

So, I've really been interested in tornadoes since I learned to talk and walk. If I had to pick an event that really shot me into obsession mode, It'd be the April 19 1996 tornado outbreak here in Illinois. Watching an F3 tornado scoot through my hometown one nite, a mere mile from my backyard was an amazing experience. Thankfully no one was injured.

[David Wolfson]

My interest in weather, especially of the severe kind, dates from when my parents stood me up on the toilet seat so I could see out the window what's now known to be the meso of the supercell that produced the Worcester tornado of 1953 come over our house south of Boston. We went out later and collected bits and pieces of Worcester that dropped into the backyard. By the next year when hurricanes Carol and Edna hit I was hooked.

[Nick Parker]

Yea Kurt, it sure is...D8T to be specific.

Mods: Sorry for off topic..just replying

[Perry Williams]

What got me interested in chasing?...

The same two events which got me interested (fascinated; crazed; infatuated; etc) with severe storms and tornadoes in general...

1) experiencing/ surviving a pre-dawn tornado which badly damaged my family's suburban Atlanta, Georgia home when I was twelve...

2) the April 3, 1974 superoutbreak.....which happened only two weeks later...


Those were the sparks that set my severe storm interest ablaze...

[Joe Zemek]

I had always liked storms, but had a strong fear of lightning due to a childhood almost-hit. Got over that after amazingly not being hit by close and intense lightning during a fast T-storm at Garden of the Gods (think iron-rich red rock area).

The IMAX chaser film got me interested in chasing. And yes, Twister did its part to keep me interested. I took time to self-educate and was totally hooked when I saw a beautiful HP meso on my second-ever chase day. I Love Nebraska...

[charlie roswell]

I was always afraid of storms as a young kid.

Two things I think helped to gradually turn that fear to interest.

1. When I was only 9 a tornado passed a few miles south of my house. I remember standing outside and watching the amazing lightning display, then finding out later there had been a tornado. On the bus ride to school the next day (first day of class I believe) we drove through the damage path of the F3. I was amazed.

2. Twister. Just the idea of chasing storms.

[Aric Cylkowski]

I was about four when I gained a heavy interest in the weather, after I got to spend a few nights in the basement with my mom telling me to get under the desk and that a tornado was probably on its way. After that, I wanted to get a good idea of what a tornado was so I would know why I should be hiding out in the basement.

By the time I was seven, I had received a videotape on tornadoes made by The Weather Channel (which included chase footage from various sources) from my grandparents for my birthday. I've been told I watched the tape so much, I wore it out. The chase footage captivated me, and from that point on I knew I had to become a storm chaser. By 9, I was a SKYWARN spotter, undertaking various local chases with little success (funnel clouds or rotating wall clouds) until I was 17.

[Andrew Geil]

I'm into this for the babes. Nothing attracts chicks like a Skywarn bumper sticker and a ham radio. :)


Ok, just kidding. :> I got involved with the local emergency management as a spotter, and just slowly worked my why up (down? lateral transfer?) the storm food chain.

The one thing spotting/chasing has done for me is give me a better direction for my career. I am actively involved in Emergency Management now; working towards my state accrediation, etc. Amazing what can become of this. :)

Babes are always nice though...

[Travis Livengood]

Interest in weather came from having my elementary school nearly hit. I remember trying to get away from the class and look out the window and see what was going on.

Chasing? I don't know, I guess just getting tired of waiting for storms to come to me...I seem to be a little more portable than they are. So now I go to them.

[Angie K Holliday]

I've been interested in storms since I was a little kid. As a little kid, I got scared by storms a few times, especially when the wind really picked up, and I still get somewhat nervous when the wind picks up.

When it was time to go to college, I had to pick between astronomy and meteorology to pick where I wanted to go. I decided to pursue astronomy first, but didn't finish my degree. A couple years later I worked it out to go back to college and get a degree in meteorology, which was easy to do since I already had taken all the math and physics I needed. I breezed through the classes, cause I knew most of the stuff already from my reading weather books since grade school. In 3rd grade I did a paper on tornadoes, wish I knew where that was!!!

I didn't know much about chasing till Twister, and haven't been on a real tornado chase yet. I have chased some severe storms, but don't have much to show for it. I also ran from a tornado one day when I wasn't expecting to see one and got scared!

I really got scared when I was in the middle of a major storm that went through Iowa City in June of 1998. We had a derecho come through. They issued a tornado warning for where I lived, and as I was getting ready to go see what was up, the wind hit. We had straight line wind at my apartment for about 20 minutes. I never got to go look outside, as the wind was so strong I thought the windows would get blown out. Turns out the wind was about 80 mph where I was, and there was a report of 123 mph not too far from where I lived, and the town that my brother lived in. After that we had torrential rain, that flooded my street. Saw some nice mammatus after the storms were moving out. I guess that really got my interest back into weather.

Looking forward to learning enough about chasing to go someday.

[Sarah Berling]

I'm into this for the babes. Nothing attracts chicks like a Skywarn bumper sticker and a ham radio.

Lol. The kind of babes you want to attract would be interested in the skywarm bumper sticker and the ham radio. :)

I was originally interested in geophysics, volcanology in particular. Somehow, that evolved to meteorology (which I suppose isn't so strange as they're both geosciences). I'm going to try to major in both in college next year. But I'd have to say that, like Shane, it was the lack of tornadoes that drove me to this insanity. Before this last month, I had never seen a supercell. Yes, I'd seen towering Cu and thunderstorms but not a supercell. It was amazing and incredible and very, very addictive.

Sarah

[Ryan McGinnis]

I've been a weather nut since I was pretty little. When I was 10 or so I had a pretty good collection of books about tornadoes and I'd scoured the library clean on the subject. I wanted to be a storm chaser way back then. Of course, those days I thought that there was an actual "job" that involved storm chasing. Living in Des Moines and then later Sioux City Iowa meant that there was plenty of storms to see each year. (I was lucky enough to be out of town when the twister went through Sioux City and took out the powerplant!)

Interestingly enough, when I was maybe 12 or 13, my dad got me a subscription for a year or so to the old paper-based Stormtrack. I probably still have a few issues floating around in a trunk in my parent's basement. ;)

Storm chasing is one of the more joyous things I do. Even when I bust I have a good time. To some extent, I chase for the excitement, but there is a lot more to it than that. Storms are incredibly beautiful to me. I get a real zen moment as I approach a large thunderhead.

[Scott Olson]

I grew up really near the ocean on the central coast of California. For the most part our weather was very dull. But when I did see a thunderstorm I was amazed and would just totally absorb it. Six years ago I took a trip for the first time across the rockies into the Great Plains for a job working for the Governor of Indiana. This coincided with an active system moving through. Each day I witnessed amazing things that I could have never imagined existed living in CA. A tornadic supercell by Denver and a beautiful single cell in Aurora, NE.

-Scott.

[Joe Nield]

I have a story not unlike that of most meteorologists with a severe weather obsession, but with a funny twist. Two tornadoes touched down just across a small field from our car in Illinois as we were returning from a trip to Minnesota when I was about five years old. Fortunately, they moved away from us. As soon as we got back, I was in the library. I think I've read every weather-related book in the Plainfield Public Library collection. The problem with this is that I read so much about how destructive and dangerous weather could be, that I developed a tornado phobia. If it was cloudy and breezy, I was sure a tornado was about to come kill us all. The word "overcast" became the bane of my existence for a couple of years.

This is how ridiculous it was: if you remember, shortly before the tornado scene in "The Wizard of Oz," there is a shot showing crepuscular rays shining down through the clouds. Well, my young mind being what it was, I made the connection and soon came to be unnerved by even those as well, as I was sure that they were a sign of imminent tornadogenesis.

When I was about 7, my parents had had enough and took me to see a counselor. To this day I don't know how it worked, but it did. We talked about tornadoes maybe once or twice, and spent the rest of the time just chatting and playing games. After this, while I still held a healthy respect for the power of tornadoes, their possibility no longer controlled my life. I became nearly obsessed by severe weather. However, after a while, I was no longer content to merely read about them. I simply had to see them for myself. My failure to do so for several years, even though I was not seriously chasing at the time, was nothing short of frustrating.

That's what made last season so sweet. ;)

Through all of it, I consider myself incredibly lucky to have parlayed an early obsession for severe weather into a love of all things weather, and the greatest career I could have asked for.

[CLong]

:D I was born a month before the Waco, TX Tornado of 1953. (gives away my age-LOL) I think I had those details so embedded into my head, by the time we moved west, I was always looking up into the clouds. The first time I saw hail, I was 12, and it was in Denver, CO. I thought, this is it!!! Since then, I've lived in tornado alley, most of my life. I will never leave, because I don't have to go much farther than my back yard, to watch a good supercell or yellow rotating cloud, gives me chills thinking about it. This week, we were in a flash flood. (McCook, NE) More rain, than I've seen in years. There were so many storms here, I surely hope....one of you good folks were here to enjoy them. Keep looking up! 8) Clong

[Dennis Gulley]

:) Mine was born out of fear. I never had any bad weather experiences as a child but I was terrified of tornados. This proberly came from some of the scary black and white pictures that I would look at in the encylopedias we had at the local and school libraries. I remember once that they had a show on tv called the life of the tornado and told my parents that I was going to be brave and watch it. I didnt get past the beginning credits before I took off running, crying and hiding under the covers of my bed totally petrified of what I had just seen.
Now I basicly have no fear but its more of an obsession now. I love severe weather and I feel the need to be close to it. It took me a while to realize that severe weather was not going to come to me so I would have to go out and seek it myself. After my first tornado during the Hallam storm last year I am now helplessly "hooked" (get it? haha). Ive now seen 7 tornados since May 22 04.

Happy and safe hunting to all.

Dennis

[Melissa Moon]

Well, growing up in Fort Worth, Texas, my dad used to always take me to the top of the hill when we'd have a storm approaching from the southwest, and there were a few times where we'd see funnels and even a few tornados. That was pretty cool, especially since I was only a young child.

I always wanted to go out and drive to them when I was young, but I never could because my parents were pretty strict, and wouldn't let me do anything out of the way (save going to the top of the hill to see what I could see) because they though I'd crash the car or something. Didn't actually get to go chasing until I moved out from home to go to OU, and suddenly I was surrounded by many others with the same desire to chase as myself. I'm still weary of taking my own car out since it really belongs to my parents and they're really anal about the possibility of a hailstone knocking out a window or two (considering we had one of our older cars beaten up in the 1995 hailstorm).

[Mickey Ptak]

Originally posted by Skip Talbot
TWISTER! Ever since I saw that movie I wanted to be a professional chaser... :roll:


TWISTER born here whether I like it or not. :wink: I had no clue people actually chased. So TWISTER was a cracked door for me so I opened it and dove right on in.

I'm not going to say it started back when I was a child because as a child I was scared of storms and wanted nothing to do with them. Thunder sent me to the closet. As a teen I had nothing but legs and a** on the brain. But as time had it’s way with me, I grew up and Twister the movie came along and saved me from the retched, filthy, and sinful life I was leading and I slowly became engulfed into more normal and excepted way of life and weather and storm chasing became apart of it.

Mick

[brody_clifton]

My interest began after the evening of March 28, 1984 when one of the tornadoes from the Carolinas outbreak , an F4, tore through two small towns 10 miles northwest of where I grew up. We drove around the next day looking at some of the damage - large pecan trees twisted and snapped, brick homes leveled, and a pickup truck lodged about 15 feet up a debarked tree. I was eight then.
In 1996 I began researching the mechanics of severe storms and forecasting, and chased my first storm that summer. I can't remember for sure, but I think it was an online storm chasing website I had found and joined up with, CASI (Central Atlantic Storms Investigators) that introduced pursuing a storm in a vehicle. Since then I have done so each season.
To this day, I am still seeking my first view of the 'needle in a haystack'. 2005 is my first season armed with the power of a laptop, WxWorx, and GPS/mapping software. This has allowed me to have some limited success already this season seeing some funnels and several rotating walls, and I think it will not be much longer before I see a twister for the first time, either on the east coast or on the central/northern plains during vacation in a couple of weeks.

[Bryce Stone]

May 3rd, 1999 started it for me. Interestingly enough, I had no idea about what was going on just 80 miles or so west of me until later that evening when I went home and turned on the news.

It's hard to imagine a life like that now . . . not knowing what the weather is doing. I still wish every now and then that I had started chasing on May 2nd, 1999. I missed what was probably the biggest weather event of my lifetime, and it was right in my own backyard.

[Kem Poyner]

Have you seen the movie "Powder". It is about a kid that attracts lightining. I really think I am a living tornado magnet. I have been in 3 tornados in my life. I don't mean that a tornado passed a mile from my house or one went near my school, I mean IN a tornado.
When I was 5 years old living in Northeast Iowa, a tornado picked up the mobilehome my family lived in while we were eating supper. Smashed our trailer into a thousand pieces! We were all injured with my Mom being the worst. It was very terrifying. A few years later I was obsessed with tornados. I could not learn enough. I own every book and dowloaded every paper on the net I could find about the subject. I have been formally chasing for 12 years, but started climbing up on the roof during storms now for 40 years!
The last tornado I was "in" was three years ago while chasing in the Texas panhandle at night. I'm the guy who had the 100 yard wide tornado pass directly over him while holding on to a pipe along side the Lela overpass.( I did keep the video camera rolling!) I figure when I leave this earth for good, it will be at the hands of a tornado. Kem Poyner

[Blake Michaleski]

I'd say hurricane andrew got me interested in meteorology and forecasting. After I started going to school at ULM I met Scott Blair, He showed me his website and I was rather intrigued. So he let me come along with him on some chases during the semester. I actually saw my first tornado with him only about an hour and a half south of Monroe. In the first year of chasing I learned alot about mesoscale and synoptic meteorology and has since driven a passion for mesoscale phenomena in me. I still love Hurricanes and intercepting them but nothing compares to standing on teh side of a dirt road looking out across the caprock at a monster supercell. I also fully believe that chasing has benefited me in my professional career as I feel that having to forecast on my own to get me to where the storms will initiate has made me a better over all forecaster. of course i stil gotta finish these last two calculus classes first. :roll:

[David Douglas]

1982.

I got my ham radio license when I was 15. I used to monitor the 146.94 repeater in Fort Worth, with Alan Moller giving updates on the repeater, Ed Eddins (WB5FPI), K5KJ, and a host of others during every severe weather event. Before I could drive, I hooked up with another ham/spotter (Gerald Handley, WA5DBY now W5DBY) and went on a spot/chase down in Cleburne. He had a van without any insulation and we got in a big hailstorm. It was Loud! I was hooked!

The crazy thing was when I was 16, my mom used to let me take my 1977 Toyota up into Oklahoma to chase. I can't believe she let me do that!

David Douglas
Austin, TX

[Blake Michaleski]

K5KJ

That's Sam Barricklow. That's probably one of the most famous chaser callsigns :wink:

[David Douglas]

Ah, yes. When I was typing I could remember his callsign but not his name for some reason! Oh well, I must have killed those brain cells.

David Douglas
Austin, TX

[Steve Miller TX]

Great thread! I've lived in Texas all of my life (born in Morton). Severe weather is a way of life here. I've always had a deep fascination for weather of all sorts, but severe thunderstorms were my favorite. At age 5 or 6, a tornado glanced our trailer park and rocked our trailer severely ripping off the awning and causing some localized damage. As I got older, I vividly remember the skies turning dark and ominous like I was transported to another world.

Growing up around DFW, Harold Taft was THE world's greatest weatherman. I can still see the old black and white radar screen pop up after the large red letter graphic that said "Weather Bulletin" flashed across the screen interrupting whatever TV show was on. He would come on in his very concerened and stern grandfatherly voice and point out the storms on radar and talk about folks taking cover. It was the first time I ever saw a hook echo. The whole experience was like some big civil defense reaction to an invading enemy. ;-)

I grew up with Harold Taft because back in those days, there was no Weather Channel. He had an excellent ability to forecast Texas weather better than anybody else (just ask any of the old timer locals and farmers around these parts who still remember him). He was discussing mesoscale stuff before I even think they had a word for it. He was a great teacher too and I learned a tremendous amount of meteorology just by watching his weather casts.

Anyway, I installed my first weather station on the roof by age 12 and started keeping detailed daily records almost hourly. I had a mail subscription from the Government Printing Office to get the weekly archive of surface and upper air weather maps which I would spend hours comparing with the records I had kept. I had a big Texas road map on my wall and would plot severe weather watches using pins and string then track the storms using nothing but NOAA Weather Radio....no radar or internet back then. ;-) My mom would have to threaten and coerce me into getting off the roof where I would watch storms roll in. I'm lucky I didn't get stroked by a CG.

I actually chased (sort of) on my dirt bike a small, weak tornado/funnel that tracked through southern Duncanville when I was about 12 or 13. I was so excited that I didn't sleep for a couple of days. LOL!! I remember the LONG trek back and got home very late to one very pissed of mom. ;-)

After that, things just evolved and finally in 1997, I had the money and resources (including internet) to start seriously chasing and have been ever since when I was able to. I hope and pray that one day they make some sort of modified wheel chair type of vehicle so I can still go chasing when I'm 80 years old.

[David Douglas]

I watched Harold Taft too! He was my childhood hero :)

Did you know that he played trumpet in the civic orchestra in Fort Worth? He used to practice at the KXAS studios in his off time. I actually have one of his hand drawn weather maps (4'x4') that he used on air. It's framed on my wall in my office!

[Paul Stofer]

Thats a great topic, Charles. I guess it all started when I was a kid as well. Storms didn't scare me in general, but the lightning sure did. Living in Dallas, the lightning can get very crazy; however, those who live here know spring can get annoying sometimes as we live in the "North Texas Curse". Thats why we venture far away!

Around the age of 12 I began to watch storms on TV and go outside to observe them and compare them to what was being shown on the radar. I quickly got over my fear of lightning and grew a fascination. Whenever storms rolled in, I would be the first one in the family to turn on the weather channel and then run outside to watch the storms move in. I began searching the internet for weather related essays, reading lots of books and watching lots of videos.

One afternoon I was online and I actually ran into a METR student at the University of Oklahoma who is now probably my best friend who has since graduated the program. My METR friend, pretty much became my weather mentor. He was very patient with me and he showed me the science behind weather and storm chasing. He also taught me about mobile data gathering and how all the instruments and sensors worked. I learned much from this individual, I have no idea where I would be, chase-wise, if he hadn't had been there.

Then Twister came out, which even though it was a far fetched hollywood movie, it still fed my interest. I finally got my dad involved in my weather hobbies. He is a great guy. Before I got my driver license he would drive me to go to the NOAA open houses and help stir my interest, as well as cart me around to observe severe weather in the area.

Finally, I turned 16 and applied what I had learned from my METR friend on mobile atmospheric observing and storm chasing, and I assembled a Mobile Mesonet for the vehicle. I began chasing in 2001 and have been chasing ever since. After I graduated from High School I took some Meteorology courses in College. Now that the 2005 Storm Season is over, I am looking forward to the hurricane season. I will be moving to Oklahoma in 3 months to continue to pursue my interest. Thats just my little entry in this thread, but I'm glad I could share my upbringing into this wonderful hobby... :)

[Steve Miller TX]

Originally posted by David Douglas
I watched Harold Taft too! He was my childhood hero :)

Did you know that he played trumpet in the civic orchestra in Fort Worth? He used to practice at the KXAS studios in his off time. I actually have one of his hand drawn weather maps (4'x4') that he used on air. It's framed on my wall in my office!

Did you also know that Harold Taft was a young, budding meteorologist that participated in making forecasts for the WW2 D-Day invasion? He really pioneered TV meteorology in many ways..especially the serious, no-nonsense professional manner. The day that he died was a pretty sad one for the North Texas area.

I used to have 3 of his hand-drawn maps when I met him in person at the Channel 5 studios back when I was age 12 (about 1977). Those got lost (or stolen) among some other momentos during a move quite awile back. I'd give anything to have them back. The one thing I remember when touring the studios was his small office that had every wall plastered with all sorts of charts....and LOTS of hand analysis! His immense persona on the airwaves is still greatly missed around here. I miss it too. I sometimes wonder if he ever realized just how much of a deep impact he had on a 12 year old boy from Duncanville, TX. ;-) I also wonder if I would be the extreme weather weenie I am nowadays without his influence in my early years.

[Ann Money]

How did I get interested in weather and storm chasing. I also grew up watching Harold Taft in Dallas. I credit two people... my dad and my son. My dad in instilling me the thrill of "emergencies", many a night i was awakened to follow a fire truck or police car to some fire or such. To this day I can't see a fire truck without wanting to turn and follow it. Then nine years ago I moved to Shawnee Oklahoma. In October of 98 I was at home and realized the only thing on TV were the weather people of the local stations tracking a severe line of thunderstorms and telling us that we all needed to have safe place to go in our homes. Then Rick Mitchell ( channel 5 meterologist) practically screaming " if you live in Shawnee get in your safe place now!!!!. Well I found a closet jumped in as a tornado passed over my house. That helped get my juices flowing for the weather.

My son, who is all grown up, and has gotten in to chasing has gotten me all jazzed up about it now. I know about CAPES and Lift Indexes and drylines and all kinds of things now. Have purchased the GRLevel3 and read stormtrack addictively now.

So this year bought a good digital camera and made my husband take me out recently to see storm clouds, lighting and wall clouds. ( From a very safe distance.... not too brave yet.) I am loving it and hope only to get braver and wiser in storm chasing.

[Marcus Opitz]

I cannot recall the exact year I became facinated with weather. I suppose it was when I started taking flying lessons at age 14. I used to sit on my roof during the spring and summer months, listening to all the local air traffic and weather radio on my scanner. I would gaze at cumulonimbus and towering cumulous till sunset. I was too young to drive so all I could do was watch the storm structure. I guess that is why I am such a storm structure fanatic. :lol:

When I was 15, I used to ride my bike down to the local park to "get a better look" at the storms rolling in. Chasing on your bike... Hows that for a newbie chaser!

At around that age my father let me sneak out of the house in the early morning hours to chase storms in OK with my cousin, my mom was pissed!! :lol: Eventually she got over it and I have been doing it ever since....

Each year (even at 25) I still learn 100% more about severe storms then I did the previous years combined.

[Laura Good Buffalo]

I guess I first got interested in weather when I was a kid. I saw my first lightning when I was nine, a week after my dad died, so it kind of stuck with me.then two weeks later we moved from S CA (few storms, at least then) to NE MO ( lots and lots of storms). My mom used to head for the basement and I headed out the front door every time a good storm hit. she thought I had lost my mind. My uncle was with the NOAA, so he was always quizzing me on cloud types and stuff when I was a kid. Now I'm in NW NE (need more storms!!) I don't get to chase much, just do alot of observing from the house, too hard to pack up two toddlers and take with :roll: but it gives me plenty of time to read up on meteorology texts. :wink:

[Traci Heath]

I got interested in storms on July 5, 1994. I was camping at Browns Lake in Salix, Ia and a strong storm came in. I have to admit I was getting scared when I saw the clouds stop and then start to spin like smoke coming out of a stack. The lightning started coming straight down. I wanted to leave but my husband (at the time) would not leave. Then we heard the sirens going off in town. We saw two funnel clouds and they looked like they were going to become tornados but they didn't. Then after a little bit we saw a F3 tornado hit a trailor and destroy it and throw the double car garage acrossed I29 and Hyw 75 (the tornado did not cross I29). After that night I couldn't get enough. I now chase with my best friend when we get the chance.

[skipper bennett]

After reading previous entries about Harold Taft I am compelled to make a short ( I hope ) entry.

I grew up in North Central Texas and also watched Harold Taft almost daily. During that time my memory of other tv station "weather people" seems to bring up some smiley person sticking these velcro symbol-thingies on weather maps that would glitter and flash in the studio lights - sunny weather, rain, storms etc. . Even as a kid I quickly began to draw a distinction between that fluff and the no nonsense, terse and teaching type forecasts and information that Harold Taft broadcast.

Like Steve, I remember the black and white radar shots that were shown during severe episodes. If you lived around here and storms were coming, Harold was the place you went to first for information...and we trusted him.

Funerals sometimes have a way of spotlighting the regard and honor people associate with a public person. Two funerals in North Central Texas stand out in my memory where men were eulogized on a live broadcast over local media and recognized for their profeciency but mostly for their character and what they held was true................Tom Landry and Harold Taft. Peace upon him.

[Robert Edmonds]

Figure I'd mention just for a bit on how I got started. I started three years ago. I'm kind of big into photography, and was interested in trying to take lighting shots. The problem was back then I lived in the mountains west of Denver, and I rarely saw a storm much less where it was producing lighting reliably enough to capture it. So, I decided to go find a storm out on the plains. Basically my first time was a complete failure. However, as I gained knowledge I became better and better at finding storms. Although I have been able to take lighting shots I've never been really successful to the degree I like. The reason I chase today is because I like watching their power and seeing the severe weather events unfold. I'm still interested with the photography of the storms and trying new techniques at capturing their power.

[SteveCarter]

For me, growing up in NW Illinois, the storms could get pretty intense. I remember when I was around 8, we had a tornado close by, and all people talked about was the tornado for DAYS. It was exciting listening to their stories. By the time I was 12, I remember getting so excited over a mere t-storm WATCH, I called people out of the phonebook to tell them there was a watch!! Most people thanked me! lol I've always been into nature, animals, etc, but storm chasing has only become a reality in the past 5 years, as it REALLY takes the money and time. Storms are something that we have NO control over, and I find the unpredictability arousing and invigorating. Gosh, starting to sound like a prelude to some kind of flick I wouldn't let my kids watch! lol

[Jason McIntosh]

I first became interested in weather when I was about 7 years old. I was at a local Cub Scout outing in a park. Our scout leader learned of bad weather heading our way. The next thing I knew we were all evacuating the park. At that moment a kid in my group pointed to the sky and yelled "Tornado!" There it was; my first look at what I would be chasing the rest of my life. I still remember how quite everything was. The kids, adults, cars, birds, and the wind. Everyone just watched in awe as the tornado crossed the field in front of us. I guess it was a good mile away. I will always remember that day.
:)

[Lisa Wadlow]

I've loved storms ever since I was a kid and would go outside to take pics of the sky and clouds. My dad was a weatherman in the Army so maybe it was inherited.

[Gaetan Cormier]

I've been doing amateur astronomy since 1985. First thing I learned in astronomy is to learn the type of clouds that announces bad or good weather, since clear skies are needed for astronomy.. Well anyway.. I always had a good interest in weather, but astronomy was my favorite pass time...

On the night of July 4th to 5th of 1999 a Derecho swept my area causing a microburst that gave damage to a whole bunch of buildings around where I lived, at first I even tought that a tornado passed in the neibourghood. Anyway, that event got me hooked on meteorology and in the summer of 2000 I began chasing the few storms we get here in around Montreal, Quebec. Since then, I barey touched my telescope since clear skies are not that frequent here... Meteorology is a better hobby for me.

So that's my story :wink:

[Angie Norris]

Charles, great thread!
I really don't know exactly where my interest in severe weather started. As a kid, I grew up in a rural area of east TN, so tornadoes weren't a part of our weather experience. When storms would come through during the day, my mom would frantically go through the house unplugging everything electrical. I would either be out in the yard or going from window to window trying to see what all the fuss was about. At night, she would make my dad drive us around until the storms were over. I was supposed to be asleep in the back seat...however...I'd usually be making comments about the lightning show. One storm in particular from my childhood years stands out. It was close to Christmas, and had been one of those evilly warm days when as a kid you know there's not a snowball's chance that you will get to throw snowballs for Christmas. That night, there must have been a big cold front passing because there was thunder, there was lightning, there was wind, there was hail, and it sounded like the house was going to come apart. That was probably the best storm I experienced as a kid. After that, I started reading everything I could find about the weather. Tornadoes were fascinating...pictures of the black spiralling clouds would keep me entertained for hours, and newspaper or television reports would bring everything to a halt.
As a nursing student, I was on the disaster team, and we were activated the night of the Superoutbreak. There was an F1 that took out a small trailer park north of Knoxville, killing a set of month old twins. Here I was, doing field triage in the damage path of a tornado, and almost hoping another one would come through so I could see it.
Many years later, we had an outbreak in the middle of February in middle and east TN. An F3 missed my subdivision by about 500 feet straight up and I was outside watching it. I didn't know there was a tornado out there...I just went outside because the "thunder" sounded funny. Three weeks later, the "Superstorm" dropped 2 feet of snow in my yard and I saw (heard?) thundersnow for the first time. Ok, I finally got the hint...and started seriously studying weather, particularly the severe variety, and like my son says, I've not been "right" since. (He says he can't decide whether I'm obsessed or possessed).
My first chase was a squall line on March 8, 1995 (yep, I'm pre-Twister), my first season in the Plains was 2001, first tornado on vid was November 10, 2002, and first Plains tornado was May 22, 2004 in Nebraska.
It took a while, but I'm finally where I was meant to be.
Angie

[Jay McCoy]

I could have sworn I posted in this thread a long time ago but guess not.

I got interested in wx at a very young age. I grew up around wx. my dad was a t.v. met for KFDA and then KAMR (both in Amarillo) for 30 years. I remember watching him prepare his big wx board with sticky symbols such as a sun or cloud and watching him draw his fronts with a big magic marker. We used to sit out on the porch when he wasnt working and watch the lightning.

My 1st chase was in 1985. I wasnt old enough to drive yet (15yr old) but my best friend was so I made him drive me. Didnt catch a tornado that day but saw some great storms.

The 1st tornado I caught chasing was on May 7th 1986 near Canadian, Texas. it was a beautiful dark stovepipe. I wish I had a video camera at the time but being 16 and camcorders being new and expensive I only got to watch it. I do believe Gene Moore caught some great shots of it. I will have to search and see if I can find a link to posts.

I have been chasing now for 20 years without missing a spring and still get excited when I am loading up for the day. On big events I cant even sleep the night before.Maybe thats why I still do it.

[Bobby Prentice]

One of the most common questions I am asked is "Why did you become a meteorologist and/or storm chaser?" I was born in Alva, Oklahoma but grew up in Norman, Oklahoma in the shadow of the "Golf Ball" (the original research Doppler radar at the National Severe Storms Laboratory (NSSL). Norman lies within the heart of "Chase Alley" and my parents sent my sister and me to storm shelter many times. I have always been fascinated by storms.

The turning point was a June evening back in the late '70s. I was about 10 years old. My aunt and uncle were playing cards with my parents at our home in northwest Norman. A supercell thunderstorm formed in Kingfisher County and moved slowly south-southeast across the western side of Oklahoma City toward Norman.

I remember seeing the first tornado warnings on television and then going out to our backyard to watch the storm approach. The evening was breezy and the air was muggy with a sense of excitement in the air. Initially, the storm was too far away to see. However, as it approached an incredible spectacle unfolded.

I went to our back patio door to warn everybody about the impending storm. They gave me the normal "yea- yea, sure-sure," until I opened the curtains to reveal a storm which resembled the Mother Ship from the movie "Close Encounters of the Third Kind." Their jaw dropped and that's when they began to pay attention.

From that point on I've been hooked. I never even knew there was such a thing as storm chasing until I watched the NOVA "Tornado!" episode on PBS while I was attending Norman High School in 1985. That program was responsible for the development of many new storm chasers. I wasn't even able to go storm chasing until I was a freshman at the The University of Oklahoma in Spring of 1987. Unfortunately, 1987 and 1988 were two of the worst years in history for storm chasers. I didn't chase much and I didn't see much. However, things got more interesting the next year.

In 1989, I worked at NSSL during the Initial Operations Testing and Evaluations phase of the WSR-88D Doppler Weather Radar. My job was as a radio communicator between NSSL nowcasters in Norman and storm chase crews out in the field. I didn't get to chase much, but my knowledge of storms grew exponentially through interaction with my co-workers. Project members included Don Burgess, Gene Rhoden, Roger Edwards, Rich Thompson, Dave Gold, Greg Stumpf, Brian Curran, Gary Skaggs, Bill Conway and Arthur Witt. It wasn't until 1990 that I experienced routine storm chase success.

Today I continue to study, chase and photograph storms. It is one thing to study weather in a textbook or on a computer. But, many meteorologists are simply lost when it comes to real atmosphere. They don't even know how to do something as basic as "read the sky." There is no substitute for the real thing.

I love virtually every aspect of storm chasing: Utilizing meteorology skills to make the forecast; the excitement and anticipation of the chase; the "Route 66" experience of the open highway; the ambiance of a big sky on the Great Plains; the history of the people on the Great Plains; meeting friends I only see once a year at an intersection in the middle of nowhere; the sport of trying to predict how the storms will evolve; and the awesome power, beauty, and ambiance of storms.

[Bill Tabor]

Originally posted by cedwards
Here is one that I always get. How did you get interested in chasing?

A tornado took my swing set in Knox City, Tx when I was three. When 13 I moved to the country in Tx where I could watch storms and began taking an interest in nature and would regularly take outtings to go watch inbound weather systems. Later on in life as an adult living in Colorado there was a Tornado warning issued for my county but the clouds only looked like gray. I was curious and had heard of a few people chasing storms years ago. I had also considered the idea of driving to storms years before to try and quench my thirst for storms which just couldn't be met by waiting to develop and pass over where lived. I decided to 'chase' after the warning based on information given in the warning to see what I could see. All I had was a paper map. I don't think I initially even had a NOAA radio. I had no clue of storm structure, or any knowledge of severe meteorology but I did love watching storms.

I didn't catch a tornado the first time out, I think I saw a funnel though. I believe I caught a tornado on my 3rd trip in the local area northeast of Colorado Springs, CO.

[Lisa Post]

I got started on my interest in storm chasing at a young age as well. Traci mentioned on the last page the storm that went through Salix, IA back in the 90's...I lived in Salix at the time, and though my family didn't personally have anything happen to our place, I remember my parents driving us out to see the damage the next morning...I was absolutely amazed at seeing what a tornado could do. Also, for school, my class went on a field trip to Port Neal, the coal plant that got destroyed by that tornado, a year after the event. I remember there being pictures on the wall in one of the rooms of the plant, showing what the room had looked like after the tornado hit...also got to see a home video of the funnel from one of my friends who lived out at Brown's Lake....gave me the heeby jeebies just watching the cloud formations.

Storms have always fascinated me, and to this day I wake up if I hear even the slightest roll of thunder, and cannot sleep until it has passed. I lived in south central Nebraska for six years, and absolutely loved the storms we'd get out there. I am now back in Sioux City, where the storms are not quite as frequent, but are intense when they do occur. I just love the electric, butterflies in the stomach feeling I get every time severe weather comes my way...

I have not been able to chase much as of yet, but this next spring I am planning my first "full-fledged" chasing trip, so hopefully I'll have something valuable to add to this forum...I also think my love of traveling, photography, and meeting new people played into why I got involved with chasing...

[Joey Ketcham]

Like most people, I developed a fascination with thunderstorms and tornadoes at a very young age. Growing up I was always questioning my mom as to what tornadoes were, how they formed, and why they were destructive. It was just a curiosity that developed naturally within me.

But it was one particular event that really triggered my interest that made me want to study storms up close and in person. It was in spring of 1994, and at the age of 13, when a supercell had developed and made it’s way into Bourbon county Kansas, just about 25 miles north of me.

The storm, which had already, became tornadic and prompted tornado warnings, had the most amazing structure to it. I remember staring at the anvil that spread through the skies and being amazed at how awesome that was. I watched this storm until I couldn’t see it no more, instantly I began to do further research into the type of storm that was, how they formed and what happens within them.

From that moment on, my interest in thunderstorms and tornadoes just continued to grow and eventually I began storm spotting and then storm chasing.

[Anthony Silver]

My fascination with severe weather came about, probably around age 7. I believe it was the spring or summer of 1988, my dad and I were in the backyard, having a little BBQ during a thunderstorm, and then the sirens started sounding. My dad (yes, he's a big storm freak too!) got all excited, went inside and grabbed the camcorder and came back outside and began shooting film. Eventually we observed a tornado off in the distance, which began moving closer and closer to the house. His house was situated in an area where you could see everything from miles around. This would have been my first time ever seeing a tornado. When it got within maybe a mile of the house my dad decided to chicken out and wanted to take cover. I just stood there watching in amazement. My dad eventually resorted to dragging me in the house. He did finish videotaping the storm as it moved through the neighborhood. Fortunately, everything on our block was spared, but a school, car wash, and some other buildings about three blocks away suffered some damage. The tornado was a weak one, but nevertheless I had the time of my life watching it. Last I checked, dad somehow had a brain fart and misplaced the tape, but it would be neat watching that again.

From that point on my facination with storms grew and grew as each year went by. Tornadoes, hail, winds-you name it I loved watching it. I became a very big Weather Channel nut, and could sit there and watch it for hours on end, which annoyed everyone. By the time I was 13 I began chasing storms with my Uncle and Cousins. I just loved getting up at the butt crack of dawn on a chase day, and going on those 1000 mile road trips and not returning until late evening. This was a tradition we had every spring and summer when severe weather was rolling through the plains. This also became somewhat of an addiction for me. I began reading the meteorology textbooks, talking to local TV meteorologists, attending the local spotter trainings religiously each year, and eventually spending hours on end looking over Internet resources. When I turned 17, and got my first car, me and some buddies would get together and head out each spring roaming the Great Plains in search of Severe thunderstorms and tornadoes. Even after high school, when everyone went their separate ways (college, jobs, etc), we still try to find time to meet up on those severe weather days. Chasing (in my view) is a hobby like no other, and I see myself doing it the rest of my life. It's certainly one I could never get bored with.

[Dave Kaplow]

Here's the short version:

I've always been fascinated by storms as far back as I can remember, but I never seriously considered chasing them until 1989, when a damaging F4 hit New Haven CT, very near the neighborhood where I lived. It's likely I could have seen this tornado if I had just bothered to stick my head out the window and look... But I didn't, for various stupid reasons, and afterwards I was so mad about the missed opportunity that I decided then and there that seeing a tornado was now a major goal of my life. I began to chase severe weather in New England at every opportunity, but I didn't really know what I was doing until I got online in '99 and began to educate myself about things like storm structure and the finer details of chasing. Very soon, I knew that I had to get a taste of the real thing out in Tornado Alley. After my first trip to the Plains in '02, I was thoroughly hooked. I can't imagine ever giving up this magnificent obsession.

[T. W. Miller]

Like many others, my fascination with weather and storms began at an early age. Was 8 years old when a tornado ripped through Enid, OK missing a direct hit on our house by only half a block. While the swing set was destroyed by a large section (about 6 ft. or so long and over foot in diameter) of concrete pipe and numerous other pieces of debris lay in the yard, all one had to do was step across the alley to the block behind us and several homes were completely leveled with others sustaining severe damage (roofs missing and such). In addition, my dad had to pull me away from the window as I stood awestruck as the tornado approached. Other memorable part then was shortly after passage everyone ran out to watch the tornado move on southward and quick survey of immediate vicinity only to seek cover soon as a strange roar from the north rapidly became louder; let the gates of hail (golfball - tennis balls) open among thee.

So began that every chance I could and no matter where would watch storms as they passed near or overhead. Particularly loved to watch lightning and the intense cloud formations. Saw numerous severe storms and tornadoes as a child, either in OK or Texas Panhandle when visiting relatives there plus near home once we moved to DFW. Also, I grew up listening, watching, and learning from a grandmaster of meteorology; Harold Taft. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s read and studied much literature about weather; still do.

Most of 1970s and 1980s storm experiences are only memories as I could not afford video or still camera equipment and/or did not have with me at time of event. Early 1990s changed that when I got more serious with photography in general and for about 10 years or so could afford to venture farther for chases when time from jobs permitted. Then I was able to translate book knowledge to field observations, which is truly best way to learn as nature rarely has textbook days.

Weather is neverending learning experience, which is great stimulation for the mind. The sky is nature's palette while air and moisture are the ingredients used to paint the canvas with magnificent shapes and colors plus is the grandest laboratory in which to experience nature's powerful show. Besides, I love road trips; especially, when not sure where will end for the day or what will be seen along the way (might be a song in there...?).

From Wayne's world, Chase On!

[Joe Guerra]

Well, here goes:

Around 1996, my Dad came running in and told me to go to the basement, when we finally got down there, he told me that we had a tornado warning, I was really scared to begin with, but then, I got curious and decided to look out of the small glass window, just in time to see a funnel cloud go right over the house. From then on, I became a sort of "Kid Chaser," which after a storm passed through, I would ride my bike, with a Wx radio tied on, and my camera slung over the right handlebar, and would try to get pictures of the storms as they moved away. Each storm would have a whole roll's worth of film, and I couldn't wait to see how the pictures came out. I basically i did this routine, while studying storm books in the mean time, until I could drive. Now, I try to chase every storm I can, and have had some scary moments, as well as moments that made my hobby even better. Like being stuck under a wall cloud in traffic, to seeing a funnel just miss a high-rise in the city, to nearly being struck by lightning about 5 times (Yes, not as exciting as David, but still surprising.) Since that first trip to the basement, i've been hooked, and haven't been able to break away since (which is a good thing.)

[Glenn Dixon]

Jarrell

The day after the Jarrell tornado I was reading up on the internet because I used to live just a few miles south of there. I read this crazy story about these people who were driving around in a car, staying just ahead of the storm and taking pictures and video. They were chasing the dang thing! The idea somehow fascinated me and I ended up finding this online list of people willing to take chaser wanna-be's along for the ride. I lucked out and ended up riding along with Steve Miller (TX). One year and many chases later I even got to see my first tornado! It's now many miles and many tornadoes later but I still love to chase.

[carey libby]

back in 94,i was sitting in a deer stand around 4 in the afternoon when a thunderstorm came through.first the rain,then the 3/4 inch size hail,and just when i thought it could not get any worse,i looked out the window only to see the pine trees start to rotate.the meso storm ended up producing a F2 a mile and a half from where we were hunting.
since then,i have been active in Skywarn.

[Jimmy Deguara]

Hi,

My story in some ways is somewhat different and other ways similar. Similar in that the fascination started at an early age - different in that my initial interest stemmed from fast flowing water on the farm and that I live in Australia with little chance of experiencing tornadoes. Fast flowing water led to rain as well, fast flowing creeks/streams and floods! By the the age of 10, I had picked up on the interest in thunderstorms. In my early teens, and during a severe Australian drought, I became fascinated in the behaviour of thunderstorms and quickly picked up purely from observational purposes the behaviour of multicells as "developing on the side". I recognised there was something different in certain storms - I recall vividly a supercell with an overshoot looking different and of course severe storms in general particularly significant hailstorms were well structured and organised. The theory although not thorough came in later - I guess I still like to "read the skies".

Although there was an intent to move into other areas that had more severe storms, (we seemed to miss out on storms more than others - this proved to a certain extent true) it was not until 1989 when a well known scientist by the name of Chuck Doswell visited Australia and was invited to give a presentation. My first weather related meeting - Chuck Doswell speaking about "Storm Chasing on the High Plains". This was the first time I realised there was a fascination to chasing tornadoes. Chuck had some excellent slides of tornadoes and of course wild flowers. This represented a turning point as I had looked at someone with a similar interest for the first time - I was looking at a mirror image as a storm chaser - prior to this I had tried to keep secret this fascination in fear of being ridiculed. It was the first time I had realised that "storm chasing" actually existed. This also helped me become confident as a human being to get out there and do what I liked doing without fear or ridicule - others with a similar interest I would promise to help as well if possible.

In 1992, I was given contact information about a Professor Howard Bluestein. I sent a letter expressing an interest in setting up a storm chasing network here in Australia. One thing I recall with this letter was the requirement of a 5km grid network of roads! This made me scratch my head - we don't have them outside our cities! But this did not stop me - the scientific papers that had been sent were an inspiration. Howard did not ignore this letter - moreso he sent more information that I had ever imagined! It was not until 1993 that I met with my current website partner Michael Bath and we decided to begin storm chasing. It was more local and then we went abroad during the late 1990's. Stork Track and Tessa were very important to maintain the connection to the US and the reality of tornadic supercells, storm chasing jargon, theory and culture. The internet certainly was an important turning point in communicating to the whole world particularly via the websites. Michael then also moved to the North Coast of NSW so he and I had to obtain new chase partners. Our connection though still remains after 12 years to this point via that website.

David Croan (now also a website partner) amongst other chasers, teamed up since then and in 2001, we both headed to the US to explore the unknown. As suggested many times before, we have had to do things the wrong way around on the wrong side of the road! It was nerve-racking - what would it be like, how will we find tornadoes as we had never chased them in Australia. I can only say that the learning kerb skyrocketed from this point. I made new friends and also met up with Tim Marshall in our first year. The White Deer tornado still remains the most exciting event chased - the emotions brought out by that event are second to none.

Storm chasing still remains an important part of my life as you are one with nature - be it chasing a supercell or tornado on the Great Plains or chasing a supercell or multicell in Australia, just being out there with friends that understand is what it will always be about.

Regards,

Jimmy Deguara

[Jesal Patel]

My interest was sparked after I faced the sheer power and energy of a F2 tornado. I was staying at my cousins' place when I was 13 for the summer in 1993 when an F2 went through the backyard. I remeber the roar, and shaking of the house. It was terrifying to hear all the windows break, feel my ears "pop" from pressure change, feel leaves, mud and other debris hitting my body as wind was moving objects inside the house. The lot their house was in was wooded and we could feel thumping and lound bangs as trees were falling onto the roof of the house. Almost all of the largest trees were uprooted. Luckily, although, there were 12 of us in one house all visiting, no one was hurt. Unfortunatey, other people died from the same tornado as it went over a Walmart a few miles away.

I remember being in complete awe and feeling profound repsect for the power of mother nature when I saw that a stick had pierced the wall of the house such that one half of the stick was outside while the other half was in a bedroom. I was slightly dissappointed that I never saw the actual funnel. Since then, I have always watched by the window in excitement whenver there have been watches and warnings in my area, hoping to see what I experienced.

I only started chasing in the past two years and have loved it the whole time. I've been fortunate to have others from Stormtrack share their knowledge of storms and let me chase with them. For people with no formal meterology background, Stormtrack and its users are an invaluable resource for learning and bringing people together in this hobby we all love.

-Jesal

[Mike Ridgeway]

Growing up in the Chicago area I became fascinated with severe weather, TV warnings and once in a while a siren or two. Drove by myself and chased my first severe storm (no tornado) in eastern Colorado in 1990. I was hooked. And now I teach weather in my Earth Science classes at a Junior High. Love it.

[Glenn Dixon]

Jarrell

The day after the Jarrell tornado I was reading up on the internet because I used to live just a few miles south of there. I read this crazy story about these people who were driving around in a car, staying just ahead of the storm and taking pictures and video. They were chasing the dang thing! The idea somehow fascinated me and I ended up finding this online list of people willing to take chaser wanna-be's along for the ride. I lucked out and ended up riding along with Steve Miller (TX). One year and many chases later I even got to see my first tornado! It's now many miles and many tornadoes later but I still love to chase.

I had forgotten that I already posted in this thread! As a follow-up, I just found this in the StormTrack archives:

Craig Green's 5/27/97 Chase Report (http://www.stormtrack.org/library/logs/chase111.html)

[Scott Bell]

I was interested in severe weather since I was 5. Our neighborhood was hit by an F3 tornado and I can still remember the seriousness in mom's voice as we ran to the basement, watching trees hit the ground outside the basement window, the sound of windows breaking, and the unbelievable destruction outside just 10 minutes after we went to the basement. That left a heck of an impression on a 5 year old!

I wasn't quite scared of tornadoes, but for a long time, I definately felt the hackles on the back of my neck go up when the humidity and temperature hit a certain point. I knew nothing about dewpoint depressions, etc, I just knew it was "right" for something bad to happen. As I got into college, I enjoyed watching thunderstorms roll across Missouri from a distance. Of course I watched Twister but wrote it off as hollywood and didn't even think about chasing as a true hobby at that point.

In 2004, I read the National Geographic article about Tim Samaras' probes and knew instantly "that's for me." I found Storm Track within 3 hours of reading that article, had the distinct pleasure of accompanying Matt Crowther and Betsy Abrams on their chascation that spring and have been hooked ever since. Time and other obligations often keep me from being able to throw myself into chasing like I would want to, but it is a fascinating hobby, and one that will keep me interested for a long time.

[Cris Schroeder]

It's hard to believe, but I was around 4 years old during the 1974 tornado outbreak. My dad was a volunteer firefighter in a small town just south of Marion, IN and I remember being at the firehouse for some reason. The weather was getting bad and we hopped in the Nova and headed out of town to pick up my aunt who lived in a trailer house. Later I remember the sky being unbelievably dark, and huddling under the workbench in the basement. Nothing got hit close to our town, but it was definitely a memorable experience, even for a 4 year old.

Most of the memories are fuzzy, probably due to how young I was at the time, but it's stuck with me ever since. If I close my eyes I can still see the look of the sky and the feeling of the wind as we dodged tree branches in the old Nova.

As I got older, I wasn't aware that people actually chased storms. In college I would occasionally drive after building cumulus but didn't have the slightest idea what was really going on. Several years after college I worked with a guy who was an armchair chaser, and he introduced me to new ideas like the lifted index, CAPE, etc. It reignited the old spark, and here I am.

Funny...somehow I didn't expect my first post to be something like this!

[Derek Weston]

I'd been a life long severe-weather lover before my incident with the April 13 2006 Iowa City tornado last year.

It was then that I decided I wanted to chase. That experience put me over the edge, I was scared, but also exhilarated. My passion for severe weather was rekindled, and then some.

I found this board shortly after the tornado and started soaking up information.

(Not that I'm anything but dumb compared to those of you that *really* know what you're doing. . . I've got a ways to go)

I hope to go on my first *real* chase the next decent opportunity we get in the midwest. I've "sort of..kind of" chased on a few different occasions close to home. One of those chases was on the May 21 2004 Palo Iowa supercell, a cell that dropped an F3. The chase involved my dad, brother, sister and I taking off for a country road that led into Palo. (Palo being only about 10-15 minutes NW of our Cedar Rapids home) We ended up turning around and going to back due to some "scary" looking clouds -- scuds, lowerings, and whatnot. We actually snapped a few shots, and may have caught what would be the tornado far in the distance. Maybe I can post pictures. Had we just turned off our westbound route on to the northbound gravel road we were near, we would seen the Tornado as it headed off NE away from us. Not knowing exactly where the Tornado was when we took off, we were incredibly stupid to head west into the oncoming storm. (thankfully it wasn't high precip -- so we didn't do something really incredibly stupid)

Would have chased a bit today but had a bit of a gear breakdown at the last second -- power supply for laptop failed -- so I stayed home and let the weather come to me. (which was probably a good decision considering the mess that we had today in Iowa)

[Terry Tyler]

interest in meteorology in general began as fear...i was scared of storms, and the uncertanty of sitting in your trailer one minute and go flying thousands of feet in the air the next was scary for me...i would trip hard when tornado warnings come out, especially at night...

i decided to learn about storms so i wouldent be scared of em nomore...i figured if i had some kind of "control" over the storms by knowing where they were or what they could do, i wouldent trip so much...i started learning alot about meteorology on my downtime...looking at meted and SPC publications and other websites...

the aspect of soooo many different things in one big package that was surprisingly fun to play with and see really interested me...

i learned about storms from when i was little like 14-17...i didnt have alot of time to teach myself new things when i started getting more into my sophmore-junior years of high-school because i was often wrapped up in things...i started chasing storms in 2005 and havent done too well because im low-income, but im on my 3rd year, and every year i keep coming back...its my dream to be a professional storm chaser, and thats all i really know what to do being out of school now...im just working part time until i can afford all my equipment...but meteorology is still as much alive as it was when i first got into it, or actually...even more intense...

...i still try to learn it if its out there...i teach my self new things, but i find that experience is my most valuable tool, because ive looked at the stuff every day for 4 years or so...i get an affinity for it and get a physical "feel" for it too...

[Michael O'Keeffe]

My story started back when I moved to Virginia from New York. I was about two years old maybe 3 and we would get frquent violent summer t-storms. These storms would have lightning and thunder like you wouldn't believe. The thunder would a lot of times rattle the windows of the house. I was fasinated and terrified by these storms. Then, mulitple tropical storms and hurricanes hit my area (Chesapeake, VA) which would engulf our house with strong winds, rain that hurt when it hit you and lightning storms beyond belief. Then, I saw the movie Twister. I learned people actually chase tornadoes and storms. Not even three months after my dad got transfered to Wichita, KS right in the middle of tornado alley.

The story was just beginning for me. The first spring I lived in Wichita during the spring of 1998 I expiernced what a tornado-warning is like. That year storms seemed frequent and I remember being yelled at to get away from the windows as my dad and I would stand watching the storm through the sliding glass door in the back of the house. Then came the spring of 1999, I was 6 years old and I came back from kindergarten on May 3, 1999 with not a care in the world. As the evening grew dark and soon the TV sprang on blaring tornado warning and it was a very large F4 tornado heading straight towards Wichita. My mom and dad rounded up my sisters and I and we bolted down the stairs. The tornado missed us by about 6 miles. The next day we wanted to meet my dad for lunch. The drive there was something I would never forget a trailer park was gone not a single trailer left standing. The only one in tack was upside down in a lake. 6 people died at that trailer park, because the storm shelter was locked. This was a wake up call for me. I wanted to know more.

A few years pasted and I moved to a house on the outskirts of town. Fields surronded my house so I could see everything. I was 8 years old and my parents let me use the video camera. For months I filmed lightning, clouds, and hail as my interest grew larger. I will never forget what happened in May of 2002 when a tornado missed our school by less than 300 yards. We were held back till 5pm that day and mulitple tornadic storms moved through our area, but only one was on track for us. I saw the cone tornado as it moved in on us. Kids cried and teachers paniced as this event occured. Our school was spared.

The interest died after that. It was not till 2005 when my dad asked if we wanted to go to spotter training was my interest regained. I was now in Kansas City and that year we never left the city limits. Then came 2006. It's 2007, I'm 14 years old and I have captured 10 tornadoes this season already! and I don't intend to stop soon.

[B. Kotcher]

Circa 1990 I saw a documentary on TV about--I couldn't believe it--people who actually went out looking for tornadoes. That's the sort of thing that I would have always liked to do but I'd never brought it up because it seemed too crazy. You mean there were people who actually did that??? I want to do that!

But I lived in California and didn't know the first thing about meteorology and I had no idea how to start. The catalyst was when my little brother moved to Kansas in the late 90s and described the insanely powerful storms he was experiencing and how he'd love to chase with me if I wanted to try. So I read a bunch of books on chasing and flew out and hit the road with him one stormy day, armed only with the latest SPC and Weather Channel forecasts, a weather radio, and a map. I've been hooked and have been chasing on the plains almost every year since...

--Bob

[cdcollura]

Good day...

I used to be TERRIFIED of storms when I was a kid, living in NY. My biggest scares were lightning storms, and most notably, Hurricane Belle in 1976.

One day my grandfather and I watched a storm when I was about 9 or 10. We watched it from the kitchen window of his house, lots of wind and heavy rains, and frequent lighthing, around the summer of 1978 (or 79). He explained to me what was going on, and I was no loger afraid of lightning, but intrigued by it.

Afterwards, I started getting DISAPPOINTED as storms "missed" my area. Then I would see on the news of what I "missed" ... And there was NOTHING I could do about it ... Until I got my driver's license in FL in 1986.

I figured if a good storm is somewhere, and it will miss my town ... why not DRIVE TO IT ;-)

My first severe storm I deliberately chased was when I was 17 in Palm Beach County, FL in April 1986. Before then, I actually attempted to chase storms on my bicycle - Yes, riding a few miles up the road into the slow-moving FL storms after just moving there in 1985 (not safe either)!!

In October 1984, I took my bike to see the 15-20 foot waves from Hurricane Josephine. I rode 26 miles (each way) to the beach and back, which was Smith's Point in New York. My mom knew where I was going, caught me riding back after (thank God not before - at least I got to see a hurricane surf / winds) ... This was at a cost but worth it to me, even though I was grounded for a month. I guess this is my first "hurricane chase", and I just turned 15.

More and more chases unfolded as I became more knowledgable about storms and hurricanes. In 2000, tired of chasing in FL, I opened my opportunities to severe weather in the central USA and hurricanes in any coastal area of the USA as well.

So much for a childhood "fear" and "phobia" ... Now a life long "passion".

For "good luck" I keep a picture of my grandfather with that exact same window behind him where him and I watched that first storm that changed my life. It goes on EVERY chase I go on!

[Rich Thompson]

I can't point to any specific event that sparked my interest. My family claims my third word was an attempt at rain, and I believe them. They've recounted stories of me standing at the window and watching it rain when I was only 2 - I still do that now!

Growing up in Houston, my first interests were in floods and tropical cyclones. We also had several severe thunderstorms thrown in the mix, and rare brushes with winter weather. I watched the sky and tried to anticipate what would happen later in the day based on the cloud types in the morning. I'm not a "morning" person, but I got up at 5:45 am through the early and mid 80s just so I could watch AM Weather on PBS. The Weather Channel slowly replaced my daily routine of living from one newscast to the next.

I was aware of storm chasing to some extent in the early-mid 80s, and I did drive short distances to find better viewing locations away from trees or buildings in the spring and summer. Still, my chasing interest didn't take off until I showed up at OU and met other like-minded geeks like Roger Edwards, Gene Rhoden and Bobby Prentice. Within my first 2 weeks on campus, Roger and I attempted to chase a supercell NE of Norman in early September of 1985. The chase was a failure and we got lost south of I-40, but that didn't seem to make any difference. My luck with tornadoes didn't change until 1990.

Rich T.

[Gerrit Gulden]

Always a fun topic to think about what got me started. My earliest memory of Severe Weather was around 1991, I just got out of school and the sky was very ominous. Lightning was very vivid and the hail was about 1/2", I remember a very unique smell in the air, it was a sweet & pine like smell. Ever since that day I have been interested in the weather. I always had an interest in the weather cause my Dad was always observant of weather. Ever since I could remember he would point out different aspects of weather, I slowly caught on and around 1995 I started researching the weather. By 2000 I was a Skywarn volunteer and was chasing any thunderstorm that came around Southern California. By 2002 I got into weather photography and have been learning ever since on how to improve, etc. Best Hobby Ive ever had.,....

[BrandonWhittington]

I remember all the way back till I was 7 years old. I remember drawing coloring tornadoes hitting houses when I was in kendergarden. I remember when Steve Mcauly coming to our school and giving a huge presentation about tornadoes..................... On June 27, 1992. F4 tornado hit my town of Fritch, TX and pretty much set meteorology in my mind and have been doing it since.

[Susan Strom]

Obsession with voltage starts early. I've been told that when I was a child I wrapped a necklace around a nightlight and blew an outlet apart, causing a loud pop and a black hole. (Dan Robinson...don't get any ideas :))

Seriously...this desert magazine has my story:
http://www.desertusa.com/mag07/mar07/lightning.html

[Ilya Neyman]

Great to see so many people respond to this post, so thought I'd check it out and share my experience. Interesting how many "weather buffs" point to either an avid early-age interest or some experience that influenced them, maybe even a combination.

For me, my earliest memory of being interested in the weather goes back to when I was about 5 years old. I was born in Russia, my family immigrated to America just before I turned 4 and I grew up in California. Our first year we lived in Los Angeles before moving to Lancaster, about an hour's drive to the north but a whole world of different weather. At about age 5 and in kindergarten I remember a situation where a snowstorm had been developing and was forecasted to occur in our area. I vividly remember going outside during break and hearing the duty-aids talk about the strong possibility that it would be snowing here later in the afternoon. At this point I looked up at the clouds and remember to this day the grayish-bluish hue to them, and then pondering "so this is what snow clouds look like". That afternoon, as kindergarten was let out, it snowed. Ever since then it seems I have been hooked to the sky and the weather it produces! I started watching The Weather Channel on a very frequent basis around the age of 8 and remember the vigorous, sometimes El Nino driven storms that would slam California. From the rare once in two to three year snows to the not-so-common thunderstorms I was captivated! I would actually ask to be excused to the restroom during elementary school just so I could go outside and watch the rain falling. Needless to say I sympathize with the teachers that tried to get my attention whenever weather was occurring.

At about the age of 9 I got my first ever weather book, properly titled "The Weather Book" by USA Today's Jack Williams. I read that thing and tried to absorb as much as possible. Over the following years, and especially the summers of middle school my grandfather would take me to the library, sometimes week after week, so I could check out whole stacks of weather and meteorology books. I tried to absorb and learn as much as possible, which made it very fun. When the weather outside wasn't extremely active, the weather in the books was guaranteed excitement!

Between the winter Pacific storms and the summer-time monsoon thunderstorms my interest in weather was sustained. The mid-late 90s also had some very good programming on TWC. It was at this time that I remember watching specials on severe weather and "storm chasing" in the Great Plains. It was very thrilling to watch the kinds of storms that would frequent this part of the country captured on video by people going out in pursuit of those kinds of weather setups. Then of course the movie "Twister" came out and my father and I saw it in the movie theatres. After that I couldn't wait till it came out on video so I could watch it over and over at home. To date, that is the most watched movie I have ever seen.

My first ever stormchasing experience occurred before I even got my driver's license. It was in late August or early September 1999, the night before my family and I had driven up from the L.A. area back home to a background of lightning flashes in the northern sky. At this point I contemplated that if the same thing would occur again the very next day, I would want to be there to witness it! The very next morning The Weather Channel had an area of "general thunderstorms" outlined over the eastern Sierra Nevadas and adjacent areas just to the north of my area. I brought this idea up to my father and luckily he agreed! That morning, camera in hand, my father and I got into the minivan and took off north on my very first ever storm chase! That day ended up being a "clear air bust" as the cumulus clouds building off of the mountains never could get organized enough to develop further, but it was a testament in time, we had driven out there for the sole reason of seeing a storm.

That monsoon season came and went, but the very next year...on Sunday August 20, 2000 I convinced my dad to give it another shot. We headed east into the desert areas of Lucerne Valley, north of the San Bernardino mountains, as a new monsoonal moisture surge was advancing in. The morning of partial cirrus overcast gave way to decent afternoon heating and thunderstorm development. By mid afternoon we had ourselves a storm! Great lightning, a strong downdraft, and torrential rain made this storm chase a success! Capturing it all on video sure felt good!

The years following that I got my driver's license and made my way out locally on stormy afternoons chasing the Mojave Desert during the summer monsoon season.

Then, in the fall of 05', my long-time dream was becoming a reality, when I stepped foot onto the University of Oklahoma campus to become a meteorology student. April 1st 2006 was my first ever Great Plains chase.

:)

~Ilya Neyman

[Mikel Shively]

I also was fascinated by weather at an early age...however I was also deathly afraid of storms at the same time. I studied weather as much as I could, checking out every weather book at any reading level from the local library...some of them multiple times. The thing that always scared me the most, and I dont know why, was when the Emergency Broadcast System would go off....The tone of the EBS system and the tone-of-voice that the broadcaster would have would always scare me for some reason... Eventually the fear turned to fascination around 12 or 13. I was a farm-boy and would rake hay for my dad in the summer. I had nothing to do for 5 or 6 hours a day on a tractor except watch the sky. I always loved doing that. Eventually, when I got old enough to drive, (1996) when a storm would get close, I would go spot and watch the storms as they went by....It wasn't until 2003 that I actually saw my first Tornado, and then once that happend, I wanted to see more, so at that point, that's when I started to actually chase.

[Christie Ponder]

I've always been fascinated by lightning. I've seen some pretty bad storms and as a kid was terrified of tornadoes.

When Hurricane Alicia hit I was up the entire time...afraid a tornado would wipe us away. I got it in my mind that if I was going to be that afraid of something I wanted to know more about it. I started reading books and teaching myself about wx.

Then one summer coming back from a family vacation to Colorado we encountered a severe storm. I told my family what I thought was going on and ended up being right...spotted a funnel cloud and instead of being afraid I was captivated because I understood what was going on.

And there ya have it...I became hooked:)

[Dan Nichols]

Basically I'm not.

And there are a significant number of times that I desparately wish I had stayed home, as the storm would've been better there. But I was tired of storms nearly always "going around me". Everyone at the office/party/barbershop/etc. would talk of the "great" or "scary" storm they just got, while I'd get nothing. So, by meeting a couple of sympathetic storm fans, and with the improving radar images, I got better informed as to finding those nearby "hot spots" where storms frequent. So if I saw a radar blob heading towards one of those areas, off I'd go -- hopefully to get there before the storm did. Often it works; other times I'd be better off right at home with all the comforts of a good porch or carport as my front-row seat. To me, a "chase" is merely a tool to "get me to the Show on time" (paraphrasing an old Broadway tune). Mainly I prefer being on the road before or after a thunderstorm, but NOT during!

And Tim, I love your cute, new avatar!

[Andrea Griffa]

I also was fascinated by weather at an early age and when I was a kid I passed a lot of time watching the water vortex that developed in the bath tub and I tried to understand the reason why those vortex did form.
My chasing passion exploded after I saw the 98' and overall the 99' outbreak of Oklahoma city at the tv news.

[Benjamin Rock]

Well, I remember as a child, we had a siren installed down the street. I always wondered why and what it was there for. I remember asking my mom" what is it for? how does it work?" she told me it was for people so they knew when to go to their basements in a bad storm. Well, it got stormy one day. The skies began to darken and the next thing my mom says is" Let's go to the store". It was scary dark. I never saw anything like it. We started down the street and the siren went off. She looks at me in the mirror and my face was plastered tio the side window in our van. A funnel, my first. I watched it spin and dance in the sky and then it came down and I watched the neighbors house disappear. I always wondered why it happened so I did all i could to study up on weather from that day. Here I am 20 years later, chasing, spotting, watching, and helping and studying to be a meteorologist.

[Dann Cianca]

This is kind of sad, but I sat down one day and pinpointed where my interest in meteorology/storm chasing came from:

I don't have a story to tell of a tornado hitting my town when I was young or anything. Growing up in the mountains of Southwest Montana, tornadoes aren't a usual threat.

There was a chain of events that lead to my love of meteorology. They are as follows:

When I was 2 1/2, my younger sister was born. I recall receiving presents at the time (possibly to ease the transition of no longer being the attention-getting baby of the family). One of these gifts was a puzzle (inlaid particle board) of the United States. You simply put the states into the form to complete the map. This was one of my favorite things as a kid. Before the attention depraved days of constant TV watching and the information superhighway, this puzzle kept my focus for long hours. :)

After this, I loved maps. My family told me I was always gifted with a good sense of direction. I knew my way around town at the age of 3. My aunt recalls a time when I told her we were going the wrong way to some place. She loves to tell that story.

Anyway, in the mid-80's (I was 5 or 6), our cable provider picked up The Weather Channel. My love of maps was stimulated ... maps, practically 24/7! I also had a fascination with the sky, one grandfather being an amateur astronomer and the other being outdoors all of the time.

So, I hate to say it ... but The Weather Channel really fathered my love of meteorology, even if just providing a place for my interests to come together. I was never really afraid of storms ... it remember events like golf ball sized hail raining down in the middle of the night. (We got some really good nocturnal storms in SW Montana ... energy moving off the Snake River Plain and lifted up into the mountains ... great storms!) ... to a day when my great grandmother's 100ft pine was ripped from the earth by a wind storm.

As I grew older, people were calling me "weatherman" ... the ubiquitous nick name for people interested in weather (unless you have a cooler name like "STORM!"). I recall seeing footage by Warren Faidley on TWC and that really brought chasing into the light for me.

Imagine my excitement when I found out they were making a movie about chasing!

... and yeah, it was cheesy ... but I watch it every year, usually early in the spring. The science is silly, but the atmosphere is amazing. (no pun intended). It really gets me in the "mood" ... so to speak.

After I got my license (15 in Montana), I'd go out to a hill top and watch the storms come in. I wouldn't really call it chasing ... more like intercepting at a specific location, but that really charged me up.

... finally, I moved to Colorado in 04' to pursue my meteorology degree and try and get out on the plains as much as possible.

[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.:cool:

[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]

:D 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...:eek:

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...