Storm chaser stares into the abyss — then runs toward it
MILWAUKEE — Past a country cemetery and empty fairground, past cows, grain elevators, railroad tracks, red-brick banks and storefront cafes.
Past Greeley, Wis., where the welcome sign proclaims “562 friendly people and a few old crabs,” and where Anna Mae Dutcher runs the register at the Rapid Store filling station and exclaims, “I wouldn’t do what you do for all the rice in China.”
Past grass-covered sandhills that roll like a waving green ocean and past drab land flat as a tabletop.
Until finally, after more than five hours and a couple of hundred miles, we leave our cars and vans, rush to the end of a farmer’s field, face the wind and wait.
A tornado is coming.
“I’m not a mainstream weather weenie,” Kinney Adams says, on the long drive from Milwaukee to Nebraska. “I’m a deep moist convection weather weenie.”
Adams is a storm chaser.
He is part of a small band of weather enthusiasts who roam the broad space across the Great Plains and Midwest — Tornado Alley.
Like migratory birds, they show up every spring in search of supercell thunderstorms and the big ones — tornadoes, fearsome and oftentimes destructive funnel-shaped columns of air.
“The tornado should be the icing on the cake,” Adams says. “We’re storm chasers, not tornado chasers.”
You can spot them — the storm chasers — a mile or more away.
They’re the ones driving vehicles that look like rolling high school science fairs.
Adams owns a black 2001 PT Cruiser with 89,687 miles on the odometer and five antennas on the roof. The passenger side front seat has been removed. In its place is a console, bolted to the floor and topped by a computer that spews out real-time satellite data and in an eerie, mechanical monotone of a voice pronounces, “Approaching strong storm, exercise caution.”
He carries two video cameras, one to pop on the dash, another to carry into the storm.
Adams is lean, lanky, a little bit intense, glasses, mustache and goatee outlining his face, his gray-flecked hair topped by a khaki hat with the brim buckled up to the sides, making him look a little like an old-time cowboy. He is 48, a video artist, composer and speaker who works at Pevnick Design, a Milwaukee firm that creates graphical waterfalls for trade shows.
Storm chasing is part meteorology, part drag race, all feel. The chasers attempt to outflank, outthink and overtake a storm. The race may take hours, may take hundreds of miles and lead to nowhere. But there are days where the races produce a few seconds, minutes of awe.
“Water and air, if you stir it just right, becomes an engine of unbridled fury,” Adams says.
A tornado is powerfully simple, says 34-year-old Doug Raflik, another storm chaser.
“It’s just wind,” he says. “It’s just rotating wind — in the right conditions it will blow away anything in its path. A thunderstorm is just air, just air and water combined with a little heat that can create these 70,000-foot thunderstorms that can dump ice balls the size of softballs and tornado and lightning.”
Adams and Raflik aren’t chasing windmills. They’re chasing clouds.
As we ride through Nebraska, out on I-80, Adams turns up the CD player as Tom Petty sings “Runnin’ Down a Dream.”
“I rolled on, the sky grew dark
I put the pedal down to make some time
There’s something good waiting down this road
I’m picking up whatever is mine.”
Grand Island is an old central Nebraska railroad town that is home to 44,000 people, a place of broad streets and well-tended parks and homes.
We are in the parking lot outside USA Steak Buffet, after lunch, on a weekday afternoon. Adams and Raflik meet with a Tempest Tours group that is led by Reid, who has dark hair, dark eyes.
Reid sits in a van, engine running, poring over weather reports and a computer that spits out real-time satellite data.
Two other vans sit, motors idling. Fifteen tourists, including some from Britain, Canada, the Netherlands, and a female weathercaster from Brazil, toting along a camera crew, wait for Reid to offer up clues on the day’s run.
The group has been on the road for more than a week and has seen little weather action, prowling the Plains, driving thousands of miles.
The tourists don’t seem to mind.
The storm chasers work up a plan.
Adams wants to stick close to Grand Island, to wait for a storm. Reid disagrees.
“I’m going to go north now, maybe 60, 80 miles, you coming along or not?” Reid says to Adams.
Adams pauses, checks the data, and finally murmurs, “Okey-dokey.”
It is 1:35 p.m.
The chase is on.
We ride beneath skies that turn from blue to gray, dance with cumulus clouds and drive in and out of rain showers. We roll through a part of America that is spectacular in its emptiness and loneliness, roll into Madison County, where comedian Johnny Carson was raised.
Roll into Meadow Grove, population 311.
A tornado siren sounds.
The sky turns dark gray to near-night black.
We pull up to the farmer’s field.
And wait.
It is 6:48 p.m.
A loud, whooping rush of wind erupts. A dark brown wall of dust and debris kicks up. Maybe, maybe there is a funnel, about a mile away.
“We’re going to get hit with this,” Raflik shouts, standing by the field. Adams captures the scene on the dash-mounted video camera.
Dust covers us.
Another chaser, a lone man from New York, picks up his camera gear, throws it into his car, and races off, wheels screeching.
The tourists gape, at the chaser and the storm.
It’s over in 30 seconds.
“You saw a pretty tight rotation on a surging dust front,” Adams says. “This is a real classic case. No way to visually verify it. All I know is that was cool, that was significant.”
Past Greeley, Wis., where the welcome sign proclaims “562 friendly people and a few old crabs,” and where Anna Mae Dutcher runs the register at the Rapid Store filling station and exclaims, “I wouldn’t do what you do for all the rice in China.”
Past grass-covered sandhills that roll like a waving green ocean and past drab land flat as a tabletop.
Until finally, after more than five hours and a couple of hundred miles, we leave our cars and vans, rush to the end of a farmer’s field, face the wind and wait.
A tornado is coming.
“I’m not a mainstream weather weenie,” Kinney Adams says, on the long drive from Milwaukee to Nebraska. “I’m a deep moist convection weather weenie.”
Adams is a storm chaser.
He is part of a small band of weather enthusiasts who roam the broad space across the Great Plains and Midwest — Tornado Alley.
Like migratory birds, they show up every spring in search of supercell thunderstorms and the big ones — tornadoes, fearsome and oftentimes destructive funnel-shaped columns of air.
“The tornado should be the icing on the cake,” Adams says. “We’re storm chasers, not tornado chasers.”
You can spot them — the storm chasers — a mile or more away.
They’re the ones driving vehicles that look like rolling high school science fairs.
Adams owns a black 2001 PT Cruiser with 89,687 miles on the odometer and five antennas on the roof. The passenger side front seat has been removed. In its place is a console, bolted to the floor and topped by a computer that spews out real-time satellite data and in an eerie, mechanical monotone of a voice pronounces, “Approaching strong storm, exercise caution.”
He carries two video cameras, one to pop on the dash, another to carry into the storm.
Adams is lean, lanky, a little bit intense, glasses, mustache and goatee outlining his face, his gray-flecked hair topped by a khaki hat with the brim buckled up to the sides, making him look a little like an old-time cowboy. He is 48, a video artist, composer and speaker who works at Pevnick Design, a Milwaukee firm that creates graphical waterfalls for trade shows.
Storm chasing is part meteorology, part drag race, all feel. The chasers attempt to outflank, outthink and overtake a storm. The race may take hours, may take hundreds of miles and lead to nowhere. But there are days where the races produce a few seconds, minutes of awe.
“Water and air, if you stir it just right, becomes an engine of unbridled fury,” Adams says.
A tornado is powerfully simple, says 34-year-old Doug Raflik, another storm chaser.
“It’s just wind,” he says. “It’s just rotating wind — in the right conditions it will blow away anything in its path. A thunderstorm is just air, just air and water combined with a little heat that can create these 70,000-foot thunderstorms that can dump ice balls the size of softballs and tornado and lightning.”
Adams and Raflik aren’t chasing windmills. They’re chasing clouds.
As we ride through Nebraska, out on I-80, Adams turns up the CD player as Tom Petty sings “Runnin’ Down a Dream.”
“I rolled on, the sky grew dark
I put the pedal down to make some time
There’s something good waiting down this road
I’m picking up whatever is mine.”
Grand Island is an old central Nebraska railroad town that is home to 44,000 people, a place of broad streets and well-tended parks and homes.
We are in the parking lot outside USA Steak Buffet, after lunch, on a weekday afternoon. Adams and Raflik meet with a Tempest Tours group that is led by Reid, who has dark hair, dark eyes.
Reid sits in a van, engine running, poring over weather reports and a computer that spits out real-time satellite data.
Two other vans sit, motors idling. Fifteen tourists, including some from Britain, Canada, the Netherlands, and a female weathercaster from Brazil, toting along a camera crew, wait for Reid to offer up clues on the day’s run.
The group has been on the road for more than a week and has seen little weather action, prowling the Plains, driving thousands of miles.
The tourists don’t seem to mind.
The storm chasers work up a plan.
Adams wants to stick close to Grand Island, to wait for a storm. Reid disagrees.
“I’m going to go north now, maybe 60, 80 miles, you coming along or not?” Reid says to Adams.
Adams pauses, checks the data, and finally murmurs, “Okey-dokey.”
It is 1:35 p.m.
The chase is on.
We ride beneath skies that turn from blue to gray, dance with cumulus clouds and drive in and out of rain showers. We roll through a part of America that is spectacular in its emptiness and loneliness, roll into Madison County, where comedian Johnny Carson was raised.
Roll into Meadow Grove, population 311.
A tornado siren sounds.
The sky turns dark gray to near-night black.
We pull up to the farmer’s field.
And wait.
It is 6:48 p.m.
A loud, whooping rush of wind erupts. A dark brown wall of dust and debris kicks up. Maybe, maybe there is a funnel, about a mile away.
“We’re going to get hit with this,” Raflik shouts, standing by the field. Adams captures the scene on the dash-mounted video camera.
Dust covers us.
Another chaser, a lone man from New York, picks up his camera gear, throws it into his car, and races off, wheels screeching.
The tourists gape, at the chaser and the storm.
It’s over in 30 seconds.
“You saw a pretty tight rotation on a surging dust front,” Adams says. “This is a real classic case. No way to visually verify it. All I know is that was cool, that was significant.”
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