Hunting Nature's Fury by Roger Hill

Author:Roger Hill
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: eBook ISBN: 9780899975177
Publisher: Wilderness Press
Published: 2009-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINE

Probe Launch

The end of the 2004 chase season came all too soon, and before I knew it was the middle of winter. While other people brighten up with holiday cheer, storm chasers fall into a fit of depression. Winter is the saddest time of year. There are no storms to chase, no distant sounds of rumbling thunder, no towering cumulus clouds or lightning knifing across the skies. There are only short days with cold, gray, dreary skies. From a storm chaser’s perspective, it doesn’t get much gloomier than that.

Many times, chasers fall victim to what is known as SDS or Supercell Deprivation Syndrome. It typically sets in sometime early in the winter and by the New Year has dragged a storm chaser into a bottomless pit of despair. Knowing that months may pass before the next storm to chase, your inner being withers to a sad, lonely version of its former self.

The treatment is universal. Storm chasers spend countless hours in front of the television, watching DVDs from other chasers and of their own past chases. Each video provides a temporary “fix.” But it’s just that: temporary. Inevitably, you need another and then another.

Chasers reminisce, drifting back into their own memories. Or they watch the skies, searching in vain for any sign that the weather pattern may be shifting. They prowl the Internet, looking for new gadgets to buy. They do anything they can to pass the time until storm-chasing season returns. Anything, that is, except fix their vehicles. A broken windshield, sure. But hail dents and other body damage? Never. Each chase vehicle’s dimpled paint job is like a personal signature that tells the story of a chaser’s past seasons: Nebraska 2004, Iowa 2002, South Dakota 2000.

But if one single event provides a better fix than any other, it’s the National Storm Chasers Convention, held in Denver, Colorado. By February 2005 it had become the most popular event of its kind in the country. Dr. Greg Forbes of The Weather Channel was the keynote speaker. Forbes had studied under Dr. Ted Fujita, developer of the Fujita Scale of Tornado Intensity. The three-day weekend included social events, breakfasts, dinners, and one-and-a-half days of renowned speakers.

The convention’s beginnings, however, were much more humble. Perhaps it’s because misery loves company. Or because storm chasers could use a support group. Or because storm chasers feed off one another’s anticipation and excitement and motivation. Whatever the reason, we started getting together informally in 1998.

In January of that year Tim Samaras invited a small group of fellow storm-chasing friends to come to his house in Lakewood, a suburb of Denver. Only six to ten people showed up. My son, Adam, and I, were two of those people, invited by a friend of a friend. Tim and I immediately hit it off with our mutual interest in storm chasing. Videos on a big-screen television in the living room, appetizers in the kitchen, and beer and pizza that night rounded out that first year’s “convention.”

In 1999 Tim decided to do it again.

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