Storm Chasing In Tornado Alley with my guys

I am actually doing something so unusual, so uncharacteristic, that it is surprising to me.  I am taking a week off to just plain goof off, with my son Julian and brother, Matt “Mesoscale” Michael.  So called because he is a record holding glider pilot in Iowa–with the state records for both altitude and times aloft–and a meteorologist, par excellence.  He can read the most detailed PhD level weather maps available on the planet, finding tornadoes and “Derachos”–walls of heavy black clouds that precede certain highly volatile thunderstorms under just the right conditions as well as a professional meteorologist.

My brothers and I have been storm chasers for about 30 years, since long before it became fashionable.   We we’ve all just naturally and inexorably fasinated with heavy weather since we were kids.  Our dad, also a fighter pilot in WWII, who was both a geologist and meteorologist, turned us on to the fine points of storm chasing at an early age.  How to do it safely, of course, but also how to really find the storm chaser’s Holy Grail: the sighting of a live tornado.

I’ve only seen seven of tornadoes in my entire life, but that ain’t bad.  When I was the medical director of the trauma center in Ft. Morgan, Colorado, I knew the secret way up to the top of the roof of the hospital and would sneak up there whenever a huge storm would approach.  There’s a lot of tornadic activity in Northeast  Colorado.

Today, right at the solstice, is the peak probability for finding these heavy storms here in Tornado Alley.  After July 1st, they taper off in frequency.  I drove the entire 1700 miles out here from Portland (with only two naps on the side of the road) a couple days ago to make sure to be here during this specific high-probability period. We have been having a fantastic time.

Yesterday, the three of us worked together to remove a gigantic limb from a very old oak tree that one of the storms had dropped onto the roof of a house in Ames where I grew up and went from kindergarten to my second year of graduate school–before med school.  Matt did all the climbing with ropes and so forth, and knows the physics of exactly how the limbs will fall such that they don’t kill him or someone else, or further damage any buildings.  It’s trickier than you might think. But the point is that we had a really good time working together, never argued and just had a ball.  Just working in the hot sun together.  Old times–today.

Last night, I was awakened by a thunder clap so loud it rocked my world.  I went running out to the car and started to drive out into the country, but it was only one of the weaker night storms, not tornadic quality, but beautiful nonetheless.  I snagged this extremely curious picture precisely at dawn.  Though I took about 15 shots, only on this one exposure did these little orbs appear so numerous they look like Van Gogh’s Starry Night.

Sunrise with a Gathering of Orbs in Ames, Iowa

Today, the mesoscale discussions at the NOAA labs–National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration–indicate remarkably excellent conditions for possible tornadic cells to emerge and a high likelihood of bow clouds and derachos. Wow.  I know we are a bit nerdy about this, but for us, it is physics and metaphysics: the storms, their mysteries, their consequences, their origins–it is all a spiritual phenomena of the highest order. We have the car all gassed up and ready to go and are just waiting for NOAA’s mesoscale discussions to give us the go ahead and vectors to we have the best chances of intersecting a real barn-burner of a storm.  Wish us luck!

Joke of the day–told to me by an Amish teenaged boy:

What do the Amish do to have a whuppin’ good time at the County Fair?

Answer:  The have a wet-bonnet contest.  [I apologize]

Happy “chasing” whatever is beautiful, fascinating,  and spiritually aligned within your life.

Dr. Todd