A  couple of friends of mine — Steve and David — are storm chasers. They go out on warm spring days in search of thunderstorms. Not ordinary thunderstorms though. They seek out the worst of the worst. They look for supercell thunderstorms
A supercell is a severe thunderstorm with a continuously rotating updraft. Supercell thunderstorms are one of the few types of storms that can spawn tornadoes.

As most people who have seen the news over the last week know, we have had an outbreak of tornadoes over the last four or five days. We’ve had tornadoes in Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Iowa, Minnesota, and a host of other states. This outbreak — unfortunately — has resulted an a number of deaths.

That’s where Steve and David come in though. In addition to chasing these storms as a hobby of sorts, they are also — and more importantly I might add — trained storm spotters. They phone in reports of severe weather to the National Weather Service.

These reports trim valuable minutes off of warning times for communities in the path of these storms. For instance, as terrible as the loss of life in Iowa was on Sunday afternoon, it could have been much worse. Thanks to storm spotters, and advances in radar technology the residents of Parkersburg (one of the towns hardest hit) were given roughly 35 minutes to seek shelter. 35 minutes from the time the tornado warning was issued for Parkersburg until it struck the south side of town.

All of this brings me to the title of my post… the amazing pictures.

I can’t emphasise enough the fact that Steve, David, and the rest of the men and women that chase these storms have undergone an amazing amount of training. They have learned where it is safe to be when chasing a storm, and where they shouldn’t be.

For the general public, the National Weather Service has a great page with a number of different presentations on tornado and severe weather safety.

For those of you interested in learning more about severe weather, storm chasing, or watching live video from storm chasers while they’re in the field, Severe Studios is a great resource as well.

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