<\/p>\n

A trek into the Great Plains to hunt nature’s most elusive predator<\/p>\n

By Jenna Blum<\/p>\n

OH, WHAT A BEAUTIFUL EVENING it is in the Oklahoma Panhandle, five miles west of Guymon. The sunset blazes orange, cattle graze on yucca flowers, prairie grasses wave serenely toward the horizon.<\/p>\n

At least, on one side of Highway 412.<\/p>\n

On the other, a massive Supercell thunderstorm rotates low over the land.<\/p>\n

Black and purple, with a bright green heart of softball-sized hail, the circular storm bears uncanny resemblance to an Independence Day spaceship. Vans, Doppler-radar trucks, and emergency vehicles zoom along its periphery like ants rimming a giant carousel.<\/p>\n

On the storm\u2019s underbelly, ragged clouds start twisting into a drill bit. Over the CB, on \u201cchaser channel\u201d 146.520 MhZ, meteorologist \u201cDr. Bob\u201d Conzemius tells four vans of hopeful listeners, \u201cIt\u2019s reorganizing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sure enough, the drill bit elongates into a crooked finger pointing toward the ground. All along 412 breath is collectively held. If that snaky green funnel touches down, it\u2019ll become the Great Plains\u2019 most feared and destructive weather phenomenon: a tornado.<\/p>\n

Precisely what the clients of Texas-based stormchase company Tempest Tours have traveled 5 days and almost 3000 miles to see.<\/p>\n

THE 2000 GLOSSARY OF METEOROLOGY defines a tornado as \u201ca violently rotating column of air\u2026pendant from cloud to ground.\u201d The weakest twister boasts 85 mph winds; the strongest is a 250+ mph blender that liquefies everything in its path\u2014for instance, Greensburg, KS, on May 5, 2007.<\/p>\n

Who would willingly seek out these vicious vortices? As Helen Hunt said in the 1996 movie Twister, \u201cWho are these people?\u201d<\/p>\n

First you have your experts: there are approximately 200 professional stormchasers in the US, 5 of them leading Tempest\u2019s 2007 Memorial Day Tour. In the off-season, the Tempest boys hail from Pennsylvania to California and range from cabinet salesman to wind specialist. Kinney Adams is a Wisconsin videographer, Keith Brown an insurance analyst from Chicago; tour director and 7-year Tempest veteran Bill Reid is a grocery-store clerk and LAX weather spotter in his other life. What do these men share? In most cases, a meteorology degree\u2014and in all, an extreme love of extreme weather. Every storm season, from May-July, they\u2019re tooling the Plains, guiding one of Tempest\u2019s 7 tours or chasing solo during downtime.<\/p>\n

Then there are Tempest\u2019s clients, civilians willing to pay $1895-$2550 per tornado safari. There are 19 guests on this excursion\u2014Tempest\u2019s largest ever; most average 6-11 clients\u2014and, not surprisingly, most of us converging on Oklahoma City\u2019s Wingate Inn for orientation are \u201cweather weenies,\u201d myself included. I\u2019ve been tornado-obsessed since childhood, when I saw one in my grandmother\u2019s farm town. Tour photographer Marcia Perez shoots severe storms from her native Dallas. Rochester, MN resident and Wizard of Oz fanatic Leisa Luis-Grill requested this trip for her 50th birthday. West Virginian Doug Nichols is a SKYWARN spotter.<\/p>\n

But 8 clients come from storm-starved Britain and the Netherlands. How did they get hooked? \u201cA Discovery Channel documentary on freak weather,\u201d says Peter Playford, a spry sixty-something Londoner.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been waiting 10 years, since Twister,\u201d adds James Connor from Manchester, UK.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have no interest in any of this,\u201d says his aunt Melanie Connor. \u201cI stupidly promised I\u2019d take James for his 18th birthday.\u201d<\/p>\n

Californian Stacy Williams wins for most creative motivation: \u201cI just like riding in vans with strangers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lucky for Stacy, because as Bill explains, tornadoes are elusive beasts, and
\nhunting them is more chess than chasing. He projects the US government\u2019s Storm Prediction Center website on the wall to highlight necessary ingredients for \u201ctornadogenesis\u201d: warm and cold air colliding, moisture, wind shear to induce rotation\u2014and an X factor not even top scientists understand. One Supercell may spawn a twister while another, containing all the same elements, might not. Of about 1200 tornadoes that do touch down annually in the US, most occur over rural areas and last about 30 seconds. And this can happen anywhere in Tornado Alley, from Texas to North Dakota. Essentially we\u2019re embarking on an expensive gamble. Tempest president Martin Lisius says Tempest clients typically see tornadoes every 5 of 6 tours and almost always see Supercells. But our tour could travel 500 miles a day to intercept a promising storm\u2014without, as Tempest emphatically emphasizes, any tornadic guarantees.<\/p>\n

\u201cStormchasing involves a lot of patience, a lot of waiting and long hours of driving,\u201d affirms guide Brian Morganti..<\/p>\n

In other words, a lot of riding in vans with strangers.<\/p>\n

SINCE WE\u2019VE ALEADY SIGNED WAIVERS absolving Tempest of our tornado-related deaths, our leaders brief us on non-cyclonic dangers\u2014rattlesnakes, lightning, too much liquid intake. Then we pile into 4 radar-laden minivans and hit the road. Destination: Hays, KS, halfway to tomorrow\u2019s happy hunting grounds in Nebraska.<\/p>\n

We drive, grab beef jerky and Mountain Dew at truck stops, do a 19-person conga through restrooms, then drive some more. Entertainment consists of roadside kitsch\u2014\u201cSee The World\u2019s Biggest Prairie Dog!\u201d\u2014and our storm-seasoned guides comparing war stories with the mnemonic memory of baseball enthusiasts. \u201cWeren\u2019t you here in 2001?\u201d asks Bill over the chaser channel as we flash through Hoisington, KS..<\/p>\n

\u201cApril 21, F4 tornado,\u201d confirms Dr. Bob, our captive PhD.<\/p>\n

The next afternoon, near Ogallala, NE, we spot our first Supercell. It hangs over the highway like a giant white anvil, its top sheared characteristically flat by strong stratospheric winds.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnyone see a Wheel of Fortune?\u201d asks Keith, referring to the spinning disk that appears on Baron Threat-Net radar when a storm starts rotating.<\/p>\n

Before there\u2019s an answer, we crest a ridge and see a translucent column connecting a tiny pointy funnel to a debris cloud. From our distance, it\u2019s the size of a toothpick. We speed into a dip, and when we emerge, it\u2019s gone.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was a TORNADO!\u201d Marcia and I scream.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat wasn\u2019t a tornado, folks,\u201d says Dr. Bob. \u201cThat was a landspout.\u201d A landspout, he explains, forms when dust gets sucked up by a storm\u2019s powerful updraft winds, whereas a tornado originates from a Wheel of Fortune Supercell.<\/p>\n

Our caravan has strong powers of denial. \u201cI think that was a tornado,\u201d says Leisa, aiming her camcorder toward the storm as it churns over a farm road.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe could just pretend that\u2019s a tornado,\u201d suggests New Yorker Erik Trinidad of the wedge-shaped rain core. \u201cNobody at home will know the difference.\u201d<\/p>\n

We stand shivering in the storm\u2019s cold outflow winds, gaping skyward as if waiting to be beamed up by the mothership. A fleet of spacecraft-shaped Supercells silently surrounds us on the horizon. But the show\u2019s over for now, and the most exciting event en route to Kadoka, SD is we run over a rattlesnake.<\/p>\n

FOR THREE DAYS we\u2019re teased by cruel storms. Near Limon, CO, we chase what Dr. Bob calls \u201can icemaker,\u201d a huge, dignified Supercell that glows the
\nastonishing deep blue-green of an Alaskan glacier and bombards us with golfball-sized hail. In lonesome ranchland, we encounter what Keith dubs \u201cthe mustache storm of doom\u201d because of two horizontal clouds kissing beneath its base. Over Capulin, a defunct New Mexico volcano, a Supercell inflates and collapses at time-lapse speed, taunting us with a rainbow as it disappears.<\/p>\n

We drive through flooding downpours, a dust storm, a grassfire set by CG (cloud-to-ground) lightning, cattle herds, and tumbleweed attack. As British geologist Dan Irwin says: \u201cEverything but the Big T.\u201d<\/p>\n

Are the tornado tourists disappointed?<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, because we\u2019re seeing the America you never see,\u201d explains Peter in the Badlands.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s awesome,\u201d agrees Doug, exploring a Colorado ghost town populated by cow skulls, rusting baby buggies, and a boxcar full of meathooks. \u201cVery relaxing.\u201d<\/p>\n

And the occupants of Van 3, the \u201cKitschmobile,\u201d are in heaven. As we pinball from Pierre, SD to Tucumcari, NM, they discover Orange Crush cake, Frito Pie, supermarket skull rings, and the life-sized brontosaurus guarding I-90\u2019s kitsch Nirvana, Wall Drug.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis tour is like a trip through your childhood foods,\u201d says Leisa, eating her favorite, Cherry Mash. \u201cI\u2019m having a wonderful time.”<\/p>\n

WHETHER IT\u2019S GOOD KARMA OR THE GUMMYWORMS Doug and his van-mates feed an Oklahoman storm on Memorial Day, our 3000-mile effort finally results in a closer encounter. We\u2019ve followed this Supercell for 6 hours, observing its life cycle from cumulus puff to the monster mesocyclone now covering Cimarron County. Around dinnertime, as we\u2019re paralleling it on 412, it produces a big anteater-snout funnel\u2014that quickly feathers apart.<\/p>\n

But the storm isn\u2019t done yet. Ten minutes later, Bill allows a short observational stop, and we join the \u201cchaser jam\u201d lining 412 just as Guymon\u2019s sirens go off. The wind punches our vehicles and keens in the telephone wires.The Supercell\u2019s base lowers further, extinguishing all light but a wink of sunset and its own luminous green core. I\u2019m thinking how much my grandmother feared that eerie phosphorescence when a thin funnel snakes from it sideways. It lengthens, crooks toward the ground, and touches down\u2014for a few second. Then, languorously, it retracts and is gone. Our crew stands in silent awe.Or is it anticlimax?<\/p>\n

I ask during our post-midnight post-mortem in an Amarillo, TX McDonald\u2019s.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m ready to do it again tomorrow,\u201d says Doug.<\/p>\n

\u201cMe too,\u201d says Manchester Melanie\u2014formerly reluctant chaperone, now addict. \u201cIt was so beautiful I forgot to be scared.\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s enthusiastic agreement. Everyone\u2019s wall-eyed with adrenaline, talking like newly inducted cult members.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve never been a religious person,\u201d says Leisa as we head out to catch 40 winks before our final day\u2019s chase. \u201cBut that storm was like communion\u2014being one with something so much bigger than yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Jenna Blum’s debut novel THOSE WHO SAVE US has been on the New York Times bestseller list since October 2007, earned the Harold Ribalow Prize by Elie Wisel, and is currently in its ninth paperback printing. Jenna runs novel workshops at Grub Street Writers in Boston, her home city between stormchasing ventures to research her next novel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A trek into the Great Plains to hunt nature’s most elusive predator By Jenna Blum OH, WHAT A BEAUTIFUL EVENING it is in the Oklahoma Panhandle, five miles west of Guymon. The sunset blazes orange, cattle graze on yucca flowers, prairie grasses wave serenely toward the horizon. At least, on one side of Highway 412. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19126,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2049,2562,34],"tags":[7],"yoast_head":"\n