The Storm Warrior

‘Riders on the Storm’ by the Doors was playing in the background. Jason hadn’t shaved in about a week. He’d been out on the plains for a long time. Sometimes as mile after mile rolled by he forgot just how long. He tended to just blank out and daydream of so many things out on the road.  It was an odd life, but to him it was beautiful. Most people just didn’t understand.  When he got the call he had to go. It was something deep inside him, something almost primal. Looking at computer forecast models with all the colors and gridlines flashing before his eyes there came that time of year when all those colors and gridlines would come together just so. When it happened it was like a bulls eye on the map. It didn’t matter if it was ten miles or two thousand miles. When it happened everything else around him came to a screeching halt and all there was before him was the road…and the storms.

Today was looking to be a remarkable day in Kansas.  Cape was progged at 4500, helicity was over 200 and LI’s were over –10 in places. The hot day was wearing thin for Jason cause the AC in his higher mileage truck just didn’t seem to blow that cold. I don’t know, it was something about that new kind of Freon they were using.  It just wasn’t the same.  For most of the day racing along near the Oklahoma / Kansas border to get to his target there had been few clouds in the sky. The cap had been holding well. But finally as he glanced ENE out his front windshield in the distance he could see the large white cloud.  This was not just any cloud as it had the appearance from a distance of a mushroom cloud from an atomic bomb that someone had carelessly dropped.  However Jason knew this was not a mushroom cloud. It was what’s known as a supercell. When Jason saw it his heart practically stopped. “Good….lord” he mouthed as the words barely left his lips.  The brilliant white of the cloud was echoing in his mind. Jason knew that this was not just any supercell.  It was one mean… 

Suddenly the cell phone went off loudly playing ‘Jingle Bells’.  Jason jumped and practically swerved off into the ditch, as he was startled.  It was Kyle, one of his chaser friends who was also a meteorologist.  Kyle said, “Dude where are you!”.   Jason replied “Man you won’t believe this.  I’m looking at this incredible supercell that looks like an atomic bomb blast to my east.” Glancing at his GPS moving map display Jason continued “Looks like I’m in eastern Barber County headed east straight toward this baby”.  “Incredible”, Kyle responded, “God I wish I could have gotten off early enough to make it. The setup looks insane!” Josh replied “Ha ha ha, sorry man, I know how it goes – been there”. Kyle continued, “Anyway man, I just wanted you to know that they just issued a Tornado Warning for northern Sumner County south of Wichita a bit northeast of Conway Springs. Base reflectivity is showing a nice hook right now, and velocity has a decent couplet already with 120 knots outbound, and 110 in. The good news is the storm doesn’t seem to be moving that fast and is apparently using part of an old outflow boundary from last night as I can see from vis sat”. Jason replied, “Ok, well thanks for the update. It’s pedal to the metal for me man, time to switch to ‘chase speed’. However as you know it won’t be easy. Since they passed that ridiculous anti-chaser law it’s been hell. Seems like all my chaser friends are either in jail for running roadblocks, or just can’t afford to go out anymore because of all the fines they’ve received.  If you consider that and the price of gas, not to mention turnpikes (thank you Kansas) who can chase anymore?”. Kyle responded, “I hear ya.  Nobody even wants to buy any of our footage anymore because they all think we’re some kind of vampires waiting for some prey so we can cheer as they die!”. “What’s the country coming to?”. Jason responded, “I don’t know Kyle, I just don’t know. I don’t even no how much longer I can do this. Chasing is my life, but you can’t chase from prison much.  I’ve had a few close calls but so far no one’s caught me and I really don’t know how long I can hold out.”  “As you know, Kansas has a reputation.  Even before the law passed they had a reputation of not liking chasers.  Seems they’ve almost always put up roadblocks.  I know older chasers used to tell me stories about the Kansas troopers that were always hard to believe back then.  This one guy was telling me he pulled all the way off the road, on a side dirt road out in the middle of freakin’ nowhere to video a tornado.  He was out of his vehicle setting up his tripod and aligning the camera when the trooper jumped out of his vehicle and was yelling at him like a lunatic. The Trooper just acted mad like he was infuriated for some reason.  The Trooper said ‘get your video and camera gear and go – that way’ as he sternly pointed in the direction opposite of the tornado. My friend tried to explain, ‘But I’m not hurting anything am I? What could I possibly be hurting out here in the middle of nowhere?’. However it was no use this just made the Kansas Trooper madder. The Trooper got more animated so my friend took the hint and went on and missed the great tornado photo opportunity for no reason”. Kyle replied, “Geez. Well, you’re not going to like what I have to say Jason. Looks like Wichita NWS has issued a tornado emergency so the roadblocks will be going up, and back roads cordoned off.”. “Great”, Jason replied sarcastically, “At least I have my shotgun, and my 45 Kyle. They can put up the blocks but I ain’t stopping. The day I stop chasing is the day I might as well be dead anyway. Later, Kyle”. “Good luck Jason I hope you don’t get caught.”. The phone conversation ended.

Jason hammered the accelerator launching his vehicle forward and to the east like a missile headed for space. Side roads flashed by along with prairie land and a few trees here and there. The cloud was drawing nearer and he could make out more details now. The storm had a large split flanking area with a very large rain-free base.  It appeared he could see a couple of possible areas of development with lowerings.  As he finally crossed IH35 and made his way north to Mulvane there was more and more traffic.

“What in Hell?”, Jason muttered to himself and to his dashcam audience. “Who are all these people and where did they come from?”. He was noticing all the sudden appearance of vehicles on the roadways. Some of these appeared to be chasers with some antennas although most chasers had gone to a ‘Stealth’ mode.  The rest of the people were spotters, and lots of locals and teens – probably out of Wichita that came out because of the warning.  Everyone was driving SO slow and it was starting to impede Jason’s momentum to the storm. He continued to mutter and curse at all the people as he progressed toward the tornadic portion of the storm. He knew the best way to lose them was to just get right under the freaking developing tornado.  This is just what he planned to do if he could ever get passed enough of these vehicles to get to any tornado.

The lightning was intense with this storm. It had been awhile since Jason had seen such spectacular bursts.  They were quick cloud to ground bursts that mostly stuck near the tornadic wallcloud, but they were very fast and very violent looking. It would not be wise to get out of the vehicle, set up a tripod, and try and film this storm. At times it seemed it was ‘raining’ lightning all around as he approached the wallcloud, so much so that even he ‘lover of storms’ thought he must be crazy to proceed. But proceed he did, and as he watched the wallcloud was developing more and more fast rotation, and a funnel began protruding below, and snaking it’s way toward the ground. It’s hard to describe what Jason felt as he watched this in progress.  It had something to do with a vision, which he had visualized in his head days in advance while reviewing computer forecast models.  He had looked upon the data and sorted it and coalesced it, spending hours upon hours considering it.  Now, here before him across all the time, and hundreds of miles distance traveled was the proof of his sanity – the logic of his mind. It was kind of like in the movie Field of Dreams, the line ‘If you build it they will come’, but instead it was ‘If you dream it, it will form’ or something like that.  Like I say it was hard to explain.  Suffice it to say that Jason was flustered and hardly breathing with excitement.

He continued on to intercept the developing tornado and then as he topped the next hill looking in the distance perhaps a mile or two he could see cars backed up, and some wooden barricades erected along with a few law enforcement vehicles with lights flashing.  It was one of the dreaded roadblocks he had hoped to avoid. However, rather than slow down, our boy Jason punched the accelerator and sped toward the roadblock. The Troopers could see that Jason was probably a ‘chaser’ and appeared to not want to stop.  One of them stood out in front of the wooden barricade with his hand out in a ‘Stop’ position.

It no longer mattered to Jason.  A year or so earlier many of the chasers had pondered the significance of an anti-chaser article that was written by the local paper of one of the larger towns in ‘tornado alley’.  Most, particularly the veterans, stayed quiet about it. They had chased many of the years earlier when there were no other chasers and almost nobody knew what chasing was. Back in that time they always had the storms to themselves.  Most of them never really adjusted to the post-Twister era and days of the Internet, Storm Stories, and Learning Channel specials.  Chasing had become more popular, or at least had the attention of the general public. Nowadays, when storms erupted almost anywhere, people would go outside and look around.  It didn’t matter if it was a Tornado Warning, or a Severe Thunderstorm warning that said ‘Take Cover Now!”. That was all the more reason to look it seemed.  Because of this attitude of the public current day chasers were taking the rap for a number of bad accidents and incidents that were carelessly, and incorrectly blamed on them. For awhile some in the ‘chase community’ debated the significance and threat level of some of the articles, but most of them blew it all off as alarmist views. Roadblocks and licenses could never come to the United States.  That’s something you only saw in the old Soviet Union. However, after it was proven that chaser ‘types’ had delayed an emergency vehicle on an occasion once in Kansas the local politicians knew they had a new sounding board for an issue that could help get them reelected.  They knew it always sounds good to say and be able to show how you are going to make things safer for your constituents. Anyway, legislation passed that made it illegal to chase severe weather in Kansas. It was not at first clear how it would be enforced, but what was finally decided was that at the first sign of any significant weather event a ‘Weather Emergency’ would be issued. With that issuance the threat area was determined and the various law enforcement agencies would block all roads into a certain area. Anyone running that blockade was subject to Felony charges for ‘endangering the public’ and other such things. It was worse than the crackdown on drunk drivers.  These people had no mercy when it came to chasers breaking the law and possibly causing harm to the citizens of their local community. After all these chasers had ‘no right’ to be there.

Jason pulled his shotgun out on the passenger side seat, along with a box of double aught buck, and loaded a few rounds. He continued forward entering the oncoming lane of traffic to avoid all the cars that were already backed up in his lane.  When he got within about 50 yards and hadn’t slowed the officer jumped out of the way and went for his weapon since it was obvious the guy wasn’t going to stop.  Jason whipped the shotgun out the window and pointed it forward toward the barricade. He blew a large hole in the wood.  God he loved double aught! Immediately afterward, his truck broke straight through the flimsy wooden barricade splintering it into hundreds of pieces.  He hung his fist out the window and shook it to the wind. As he passed, all the Troopers and stopped vehicles read his bumper stickers which on one side said ‘Goat Ropers Need Love Too”, and the one on the other said ‘Support Meteorology, Kiss A Chaser’. 

Since he was already doing over a hundred-mph by the time the dust and debris cleared he was already a mile or two down the road. The tornado had touched down and was travelling across the countryside like the finger of God. Multiple times it hit structures, parts of which it carried far into the sky and into orbit around it. Once Jason got a few more miles down the road he pulled over on a side road, yanked out his tripod and video camera and began shooting the action.  It was incredible as the white tornado cruised across the landscape like something from another dimension. It looked so out of place. All the while, lightning strikes cascaded around the tornado as it went about it’s business.  Then at one point in this bizarro world it got even stranger, as a beautiful rainbow appeared not far from the tornado. Jason was able to get video of the tornado with lightning and a rainbow all at the same time. While it seems that the government and media thought that chasers were evil lovers of death, none ever witnessed the beauty that such opportunities afforded. In Jason’s mind it had all been worthwhile now.  It was meant to be.

The squad cars had approached quietly with their sirens off in order to sneak up.  Jason, being totally focused on the storm had pretty much forgotten about running the roadblock only minutes before.  He was just caught up in it all.  One of the officers yelled for him to put his hands up. Startled, Jason swung around holding his black digital camera. From the officers perspective it looked like it could have been a gun.  They didn’t take any chances knowing that he had shot at and run the roadblock. They all opened fire.

Jason’s gaze fell on the tornado, and the rainbow as things dimmed.  The lightning was still wildly playing across the landscape. There was a buzzing in his head that got louder and louder until it was like a solid tone, and then all went black.  The Doors CD that Jason had been listening to and forgotten to swap out had cycled around again and the sound could be heard outside the vehicle and across the countryside as it played. “Take him by the hand, Make him understand, The world on you depends, Our life will never end”.

Bill Tabor

Tornado Extreme Storm Chase