Into The Storm: Part II
Part 2: Sensations
It is late spring in Wyoming. A few years ago, I wouldn’t have missed the salmonfly hatch for anything. But here I am, driving right by one of my favorite streams at 82 miles per hour. The water gets a wandering eye as I race over it, but it is chocolate milk, usual this far down onto the prairie. No doubt it’s a bit off color miles upstream, and runoff-starved trout are looking up for giant stoneflies to bumble into the current.
I am looking up. Big storm days don’t happen often in Wyoming, but today has the best forecast in years. I’m on my way to hunt tornadoes. Most of my life I've felt drawn toward uncertain risks. I want to know why.
The rusty old Corolla is sailing true. I glance down at my phone, punching between weather models when I hit occasional signal. My hands are tingling. Turkey necks rear into the sky as I approach the northern Laramie Range. The little cumulus towers rise on the prairie’s warm thermals, then fall over. They have the necessary instability, but not the cohesive energy. Yet.
Remnants of last night’s storms drift high over the mountains. They are impotent shadows of their former selves, but their tops are being whipped up into lemon meringue. The jet stream is parked right over eastern Wyoming like a fire hose, and a burst of high level winds is forecast to sweep through the region this afternoon. Those pie in the sky clouds are being sheared off by the advancing wave.
Surface dewpoints are approaching 60 degrees Fahrenheit across the southern Powder River Basin- marginal most places in Tornado Alley, but decent here. East of the Laramie Range looks good too, except satellite images show a thick bank of stratus clouds most everywhere I’m headed. They’re keeping the ground surface from heating up. I need to choose a target and soon.
Hours to the southeast, clouds are burning off near Cheyenne. Here north of Casper, the sun is shining brightly. It seems possible either area could produce a big storm. I look off to the southwest, where a disorganized line of cells is drifting out of the Wind River Basin ahead of the trough ejection. It’s only noon, but they already have overshooting cauliflower tops, signaling lots of lift from colliding air masses.
Both the Casper and Cheyenne areas have instability and wind shear necessary to form a supercell- a massive, rotating thunderstorm. I need a tiebreaker. It comes down to a practical consideration. The roads north of Casper are few and far between, just a couple lonely blacktops and oil field roads. I decide to press on.
Today’s storm chase requires careful planning and execution, neither of which guarantee success. Too much depends on fortuity. The unpredictability has brought me here. Like skiing, wingshooting, or fly fishing, storm chasing requires long periods of focused attention, occasionally rewarded with bursts of euphoria.
Some might label me an adrenaline junkie, but I recently learned that psychologists call such pursuits ‘sensation seeking’ -the quest for novel, immersive, and intense experiences.
For the moment, things don’t seem too exciting. I drive under low stratus clouds from Casper to Wheatland before breaking back out into the sun. Ahead, numerous small cumulus bubble off the Laramie Range as a surface breeze pushes moist air up against the mountains. I pull off at a rest stop to say hello to Kevin Palmer, the only other storm chaser who lives in my hometown. We briefly hover over our phones, trying to pick a target based on the conditions, not the streams of other chasers who are starting to pop up on social media.
“It’s Chugwater”, Kevin says, smiling. In the storm chasing community, certain towns get a reputation. Sometimes it’s just hype, or the fact a big storm happened there once. Sometimes, specific spots just produce. The Cheyenne Ridge is a low landform running east off of the Laramie Range. The intersection of the two at Chugwater is a concentration point, funneling surface wind and moisture. We hop back in our cars and blast south toward a line of Spotter Network pins creeping up the radar map out of Colorado.
I’m just north of Chugwater when I pull off at a parking lot to re-assess. I notice the Subaru in front of me looks familiar. It is Reed Timmer, the world’s most famous storm chaser. I am an introvert, so I sit and consider for a few minutes before I decide to walk over and introduce myself. Reed is friendly, and we briefly chatter about which radar blob might turn into the storm of the day. We also lament several tornado-warned storms near Kaycee. It looks like the northern target I drove past is about to go off.
For many years, I regarded Reed and other storm chasers with a secret envy. I grew up in the Nebraska Panhandle, an excellent place to see some of the most intense storms on earth. The few I got to watch were swiftly approaching dark shelves crowned in roiling green clouds, while my mom called for a hasty retreat to the basement. I wanted to be out there, experiencing the raw power mere water vapor and wind could produce- and beauty, if you cared to see it.
Psychologists describe sensation-seeking on a spectrum. All sensory types bring important strengths to society. Most people are in the middle. Some people are sensation-averse, thriving in situations that are predictable and familiar. For these people, the risks of storm chasing are just downright foolishness. Toward the opposite end of the spectrum, sensation-seeking people crave new and challenging situations to test their abilities.
Sensation seekers don’t have a death wish. It isn’t so much about finding risk, but rather finding a risk to be worthwhile by some internal measure. From a practical standpoint, there’s not a whole lot of purpose to storm chasing. Although a few chasers make enough off of YouTube streams and t-shirts to scrape together a living, the large majority have nothing temporal to show. For sensation seekers, what exactly is the payoff?
East of Chugwater, things are getting interesting. I’m on a gravel road lined with chasers, a few storm tour vans and meteorology students. Today’s forecast is good enough to draw people from all over the continent. Just to the north, dark clouds swirl. I can see an inflow tail stretching miles to the northeast, betraying the moist surface air feeding the storm. Initially two thunderheads popped up and they have been battling for dominance ever since. Now, the leading storm is slowly absorbing the other.
Low clouds reach down, almost directly overhead. Suddenly, shouts erupt down the line of chasers who stand holding cameras and phones. A thin, wispy tornado spins out of the clouds, then quickly disappears. I snap a few shots, but don’t waste time. There are dozens of vehicles parked along these country roads, and I don’t want to be stuck in ‘chaser convergence’. I race miles ahead, dropping off the Cheyenne Ridge.
I pull off at a creaky old windmill screaming in the wind. Kevin stops behind me. We are joined by Paul Smith, the well-known ‘sprite’ photographer, and Greg Robbin, a photographer from California. We watch as the storm overhead takes a deep breath, then winds back up. The waste-wind at the back of the storm, starts to wrap into the rotation, blinding us with blasting gravel and rain. I drive a few miles further up the road, and look back just as a tornado materializes out of the rain. It swirls for a few minutes, then gently lifts.
This storm is becoming a cyclical supercell, a rare phenomenon, perfect for storm chasing. I stair-step on roads south and east. As I drive into La Grange, I look north and briefly see a white tornado looming through the rain. I’ve put myself too far south for a good photo, so I just enjoy the quick view, and the fact that this noticeably stronger drillbit isn’t plowing right through town behind me.
Storm chasers are sometimes criticized for enjoying other people’s misfortunes, but as a rule we don’t want anyone to be hurt. We would much prefer to see storms stay harmlessly over open country. When a tornado does hit civilization, chasers often suspend the pursuit to help with search and rescue operations. Chasers also provide real-time warnings to those in a storm’s path. Today, we are feeding tornado sightings to the NWS Cheyenne office. Meteorologists evaluate those reports and issue warnings ahead of the storm’s path as it drifts into Nebraska.
The central Panhandle has a decent road network, but somehow I manage to find myself on one of the worst I’ve seen. The storm is gaining speed, so by the time I bounce over treacherous washouts and cobble-strewn potholes, the storm is almost on me. I stop for a look back at Scottsbluff National Monument. The inflow wind in front of the storm is so strong it blinds me, but I can see a massive mesocyclone, or rotating storm base. My phone blares angrily as the cell network puts out a rare ‘tornado emergency’ warning.
In open country no longer, this monster is bearing down on the largest town in the region. I have only a few minutes to decide- do I try to slip out ahead of the storm before the hail overtakes me? I decide to play it safe and drop south to leave the storm. Even sensation seekers have guardrails on their risk tolerance, and I’ve found mine. I join locals who stream out of Gering, frantic to avoid a totaled vehicle or worse.
It takes a good 45 minutes for the storm to pass. During that time, I have no idea what is happening. I’ve lost cell signal. For all I know, when I go back north, I might find total chaos and devastation. I try to mentally prepare for such a scene, wishing I had thrown my first responder kit in when I left home.
Somehow, none of this happens. The North Platte Valley has seen some weather disasters over the years, but this storm is merciful. It cycles over town, dropping copious hail but waiting till it clears the east edge of Gering before forming its last two tornadoes. Only one trailer house is damaged- surprising for a storm that put down nine tornados over its hundred mile path.
The day has spawned several other impressive storms. My northern target produced another cyclic supercell and multiple tornadoes as it traversed the roadless region I avoided. A big twister hit coal mine buildings near Wright. The day isn’t isn’t over though. There’s still plenty of instability behind the leading storms, and I play dodgeball with a few bursts of hail before making a soggy camp next to Kevin’s rig in a twilight downpour.
The morning comes bright and clear. Kevin is still asleep, so I take an early mountain bike ride before starting the drive home. The long miles roll out as I traverse a region I love, one of the last wild prairies. I have plenty of time to ruminate on the day before. I wonder at the forces conspiring to produce such a spectacle. More, I wonder at the forces within me pulled me to this place. What do I have to show for my efforts?
Psychologists are unsure why some people gravitate toward sensation-seeking. Studies have suggested it’s because of a greater increase in brain function relative during new and challenging experiences. Other studies have shown sensation seekers have lower levels of dopamine-regulating enzymes.
I’m not a neuropsychologist. I only know how it feels when I find myself in novel circumstances. I feel excited, interested, self-confident, even peaceful. For me, the gnawing stresses and confusion of the mundane are more daunting, so it's no wonder I seek out new sensations. I’m not so much chasing the next big fish, ski line, or tornado. I am chasing a crucible of experience which burns away the chaff in my life, removing everything that doesn’t matter.
Here I am, driving home through a wild country, my soul at peace with my place in the world. Nothing encumbers my thoughts but the long ribbon of life and a road back to my family. Everything else evaporates in the prairie sun. That peace is my reward.
