Latest news with #TIV2
Forbes
4 days ago
- Climate
- Forbes
Ryan Shepard: The Thrills, Science And Dangers Of Tornado Chasing
Getting uncomfortably close to a tornadic supercell, Colorado, May 2025. As I've written before, storm chasing is all the rage. Like the long lines on Mt. Everest now, hundreds of amateurs have saturated the community, what with advanced weather apps available on cellphones. Many of these amateurs haven't a clue as to what they're doing. They get in the way of serious chasers who do it for science to better understand how tornadoes form and act, and therefore are able to alert the public earlier to save lives. Ryan Shepard, 39 and founder of Storm Of Passion, is one such chaser. Along with his tank-like Tornado Intercept Vehicle (TIV-2), one of only two in the world, and his extensive knowledge of meteorology, he is able to drive into the funnels of twisters and take critical measurements. Following are edited excerpts from a recent conversation. Jim Clash: Why is it so important to penetrate a tornado? Ryan Shepard: The weather models are getting better, but radar can't see what's happening with winds at the surface. Going into, or getting as close to a tornado as possible to take measurements, helps us understand this critical surface component to improve models and get better warnings out to the public. We can do that in the TIV. Clash: Have the recent budget cuts to NOAA, NSF and other weather services impacted your ability to predict storms? Shepard: They have. Tornado warnings have been delayed or even missed. People in that area cite short staffing as part of the problem. The other thing that will play out longer-term is replacement and refurbishment of radar equipment, weather balloons and the like. Storm Of Passion founder Ryan Shepard in his TIV-2, May 2025. Clash: I'm guessing research has been impacted, too? Shepard: Yes, funding has been cut hugely for new research grants. I see less equipment out there and more amateur storm chasers. When I started doing this 18 years ago, Vortex 2 had a $9-million NSF grant supporting 90 vehicles. Now there are maybe three or four. Now ninety may be a bit much, but only four? There is probably some happy medium in-between we could live with. With our TIV research, though, we can hopefully fill in some of that gap. Clash: The TIV has bulletproof windows and armor plating, plus the ability to lower its chassis and deploy anchor legs into the ground. Shepard: Yeah, that's to keep the wind from lifting the vehicle and to protect from debris moving in excess of 200 mph. Even small debris at that speed is like a bullet. Then there's hail, which can be bigger than a softball and stops conventional chasers from getting close. We need that protection to collect our wind data so close to the funnel, or even within it. Clash: Ever had any close calls in your multiple years of chasing? Shepard: It was the end of May 2019 in eastern Kansas. I was guiding for a commercial touring company, and was not in the TIV. We had four passenger vans driving close to a particularly significant supercell. We were heading south to get in front of it again. Storm Of Passion's TIV-2 tornado intercept vehicle, May 2025. It was extremely full of rain, rain-wrapped actually, and that made it impossible to see into it. A second tornado was hiding in that rain downdraft, rated EF-2, not too strong but didn't appear on radar until it was over top of us. The tornado knocked two of our vans off of the road. One rolled three or four times in a field, the other flipped upside-down in a ditch. Thankfully, we only had minor injuries, except one person who suffered a broken vertebrae and had to be airlifted to Kansas City for surgery. We had never seen anything like that before. It scared me even though I was in one of the two vans that stayed upright. I was worried for the others in the tipped vans. Had we been in the TIV, it would have been fine. Clash: What's the difference between adventure and exploration? Shepard: Exploration is discovering something, gathering new data. With adventure, you're just trying to get an experience, walk in someone else's footsteps, like on Mt. Everest today.
Forbes
27-05-2025
- Climate
- Forbes
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.
Forbes
22-05-2025
- Automotive
- Forbes
Tornado Intercept Vehicle Readies To Saddle Up To Ferocious Twisters
Storm Of Passion's unique TIV-2 tornado chase vehicle on the move in northern Oklahoma, May 19, 2025. There are essentially two vehicles which can safely penetrate a tornado's violent ground funnel: the Dominator, owned and operated by the well-known storm chaser Reed Timmer, and the TIV-2, owned and operated by Ryan Shepard at Storm Of Passion. To protect its chase crew from hail stones, some as large as a grapefruits, and debris spun at upwards of 150 mph by internal winds, Shepard's TIV (tornado intercept vehicle) features bulletproof windshields and special steel armored plates. To keep the vehicle from being launched into space, or flipped and rolled, four heavy metal anchor spikes, one at each corner of the vehicle, can be deployed to dig several inches into the ground. Storm Of Passion crew (Evan Breitenbach left, Tyler Schlitt right) en route to a supercell in northern Oklahoma, May 19, 2025. As part of my coverage of storm chasing, Shepard agreed to let me tag along with his folks this week in search of twisters in Tornado Alley. Storm Of Passion's headquarters in Kansas is a key area within the Alley, so staff can easily relocate the vehicle to places where supercells, the huge cloud structures that spawn tornadoes, are developing. The key chase months are April, May and June, with the most concentrated historically this third week of May. The TIV-2 is street legal, weighs 14,000 pounds and, with a turbocharged engine of some 600 hp, can reach speeds approaching 90 mph, necessary sometimes to stay ahead of a storm. Basically, the vehicle is a beast on wheels, and, as you can imagine, its unusual appearance garners attention everywhere it goes. Before meeting up with Shepard, I had already hunted with some well-known chasers including Raychel Sanner (Tornado Titans), Tim Bovasso, Jeff Anderson and Chris Coach, and was lucky enough to have encountered some impressive tornadoes. Rare anticyclonic cone tornado near Silverton, Texas, April 24, 2025. These included a rare anticyclonic cone near Silverton, Texas, and a large stovepipe funnel and ensuing wedge tornado near Matador, Texas (April 24); a weak EF-0 rain-wrapped affair near Joplin, Missouri (April 20); and multiple strong vortices just outside of Dallas (May 18). So when it came time to hang with Shepard, I had already checked off that bucket-list item - seeing a tornado, not an easy thing to do - albeit from the safe distance of a few miles. The plan with TIV was to get much closer, say within a hundred yards, maybe even enter the vortex. Photojournalist Mike Killian and I met Shepard and his crew near Blackwell, Oklahoma, on May 19, predicted by most weather sources to be the biggest storm-potential day of the year. I was excited. Hundreds of chasers went out, including us in the TIV. Although it was a fascinating learning experience for me to buckle in to the TIV and barrel into an impressive supercell, complete with hail stones, we found no twisters that hyped-up day. Most other chasers were disappointed, as well. In fact, it turned out to be one of the biggest bust days of 2025. Storm Of Passion founder and CEO Ryan Shepard, May 19, 2025. Oh well. Now that the front has moved east, it's a waiting game for us. Another big front is expected later this week coming east from the Rocky Mountains, and that should stir up some interesting weather. Meantime, Killian and I are holed-up at a Baymont hotel in Blackwell. When we do catch one, and I'm confident we will, I'm hoping to get close enough to hear the freight-train roar from just outside of the funnel, or maybe even from inside of it. That is something I haven't experienced yet. As is always the case with tornadoes, though, it's fingers crossed. Bring it on, Mother Nature!
