Adventure-seeker to chase tornados this summer
While most students plan to enjoy the sun during the summer, this student will be chasing storms.
Tim Wright, a biometeorology graduate student, chases the most dangerous kind of storms– tornados.
While most people run away from these spectacular storms for safety, Wright will be running toward them in May, putting him in the path of torrential rain, golf-ball-sized hail and of course, the possibility of being sucked up into the sky.
The thrill of tornado chasing, he said might be compared to the thrill of sky diving.
“I’m not an adrenaline junkie, but it’s pretty fun,” he said. “Half the experience is actually seeing the cloud and the thunderstorm that produces the tornado.
“You have these huge magnificent storms that build up,” he said. “They’re bigger than anything you’ve seen out here in Utah.”
The storms can quickly rise to 65,000 feet, where the only thing that stops them is the stratosphere. He said they are like a mushroom cloud.
“They look like an atomic bomb explosion,” he said.
Wright, who has been storm chasing since 2001, is now preparing for his next adventure as he plans to head out again between May 1 and May 15 depending on when the storms become active. The storm forecast must be exact and gives him a maximum of three days’ notice to get up and go, he said.
And the trips are more than just storm chasing.
“As you’re following the storms, you can do tourist stuff,” he said. “It’s like a road trip.”
Depend-
ing on where the storms take him, he will go as far north as Minnesota and as far south as the Texas panhandle, but no farther east than the Missouri River.
For the past three years, his friends, some of them independent weather forecasters from California and others in the
biometeorology department at Utah State University, have rented a car. This year, however, he found out that it was actually cheaper to buy a 1984 police Ford Crown Victoria for $200, which he said has been tuned up and ready to go.
The reason for the old car, he said, was for the heavy and thicker steel body that has a better chance of staying on the ground and has greater protection from the hailstorms.
In past trips, he has witnessed baseball-sized hail produced from the tornadoes.
The hail shoots out from the storm at more than 120 mph, he said and “if it hits you on the head, it will kill you.”
When he sees a tornado hailstorm from a distance, he said it looks like a white sheet.
Wright said with road maps and staying at least a mile from the actual tornado, he remains safe. He also said he always stays behind a tornado.
“Never get in front of it,” he said.
Although, he has had one close call. On his first trip, while his group was viewing a funnel off in the distance, he decided to look up and saw a tornado forming in the clouds.
“It was like looking at the end of a rope,” he said.
He quickly warned his friends.
“You’ve never seen four guys jump in car so fast,” he said.
Luckily, the tornado never touched the ground.
-joelfeathers@cc.usu.edu
Tim Wright hopes to have a thrilling summer. (Photo by John Zsiray)