27-05-2025
Impotent Storms, Not Necessarily Impotent Storm Chasers
The TIV-2 storm chase vehicle as a dangerous rotating tornadic cloud moves across the road, Oklahoma, May 2025. (Note the long queue of chasers behind.)
Even if you're in the biggest, baddest storm chase vehicle out there, it doesn't guarantee that you're going to see a tornado. I should know as I embedded for five long days roaming tornado alley in search of the elusive beasts in what amounts to an armored tank.
Ryan Shepard was kind enough to include me in his crew of half-a-dozen aboard the iconic TIV-2 (Tornado Intercept Vehicle), crisscrossing the American plains from Texas to Colorado to Kansas to Oklahoma.
Folks may remember the vehicle from the popular Discovery Channel TV series Storm Chasers. Another TV series, MythBusters, subjected TIV to 250-mph winds produced by a jet engine without the vehicle sustaining any real damage. Everywhere we went, people came up - both storm chasers and the general public - taking photos and asking questions. It's a little like you're like Tom Cruise, I guess. The attention is welcomed during down time, says Shepard, less so when the crew is focused on chasing a twister.
Storm of Passion crew members Tyler Schlitt (blue shirt), Ryan Shepard and Evan Breitenbach (top) with the TIV-2.
Shepard calls his outfit Storm of Passion for good reason. His crew not only has intense passion for what they do, but they do it for free during peak tornado season, typically from April through June. Jesse Gillett, who is making a documentary about Shepard, is a student at The University of Connecticut. Tyler Schlitt is a photographer who lives on a farm in Missouri. Evan Breitenbach, TIV's main driver, also works on a farm as his day job.
The storm chasing community has grown exponentially in recent years, maybe too much. With sophisticated weather apps now available on most cellphones, amateurs can pinpoint the time and location of where supercells, the structures which produce tornadoes, are likely to occur. In earlier days, it was mostly pros at the weather services and NOAA who could make such predictions. Couple that with the public's fascination with storm chasing from the recent 'Twister' movie, and you get the picture.
Because of its popularity, chasing has become downright dangerous, and for a number of reasons. One, when hundreds of chasers all converge in a narrow, defined area, conga lines of vehicles on the highways and backroads form. Not only is the traffic frustrating, but what happens in the event a tornado drops down on cars trapped in the line? These folks will have no way to escape. Some will get caught in the tornado's damaging hail, some of which is the size of softballs, or worse, in the tornado funnel itself, where 150-mph-plus winds flip cars, and kill people.
Approaching a tornadic supercell in Storm of Passion's TIV-2, eastern Colorado, May 2025.
Sadly, it's a bit like the overcrowding on Mt. Everest now, where a line of more than 100 climbers, mostly rich amateurs, wait to summit on a predicted good-weather day. The climbers don't realize that if an unexpected storm hits the mountain, like in the 1996 'Into Thin Air' tragedy, many will panic, having no escape route, and die.
During our chasing time in the TIV, we encountered such congestion. Some was due to it being the Memorial Day weekend, when people are off from work, but overcrowding is more the norm now than the exception, says Shepard. He prefers finding isolated supercells that have a decent chance to produce a tornado when he can, and chase there where less chasers are, though sometimes that location is hundreds of miles away.
What the TIV crew was able to do was position us near a few supercells that almost produced tornadoes, but didn't. Twice the tornadic rotation clouds passed directly over us, an eerie feeling, Tornadoes are fickle. From a meteorological perspective, all of the requisite elements may appear to be there, but nothing happens.
It's still a big puzzle, and one of the aims of NOAA and serious chasers like Storm of Passion to solve. The TIV vehicle can actually penetrate the wild vortices of tornadoes with scientific instruments aboard to better understand how, why and when twisters are produced, and therefore be able to warm the public earlier to avoid unnecessary deaths.
A developing supercell at dusk, Oklahoma, May 2025.
To sum up, on my visits to Tornado Alley this spring I did reach my goal of seeing and photographing a few tornadoes (see stories below) - while also encountering the stunning supercells that produce them - but only from a few miles out. I didn't get the experience of being close enough to hear the famous freight-train roar of the funnel and/or actually penetrating the vortex in the TIV-2, as was planned.
That said, I've learned over the years as an adventure writer that bucket-list items are often achieved in small incremental steps, and that patience is usually rewarded. Oh, and that Mother Nature is unpredictable. There's always next season. Stay tuned.
