Students and instructors from Iowa State University chased storms down Tornado Alley as part of a course. (Photo courtesy of Iowa State University)
Always provide an escape route. Stay on paved roads as much as possible. Don’t get too close.
Students and instructors at Iowa State University who chased storms this spring knew those rules well, remembered their own experiences and spent the past eight weeks learning about storm chasing. Reflecting on their observation of the EF-3 tornado that ripped through Carbon, Iowa on May 21, some recognized that they had gotten too close.
Debris fell around the three-car trailer about a mile away from the tornado, said Hunter Fowkes, a recent ISU graduate and storm chaser, as twigs and tree branches floated around in a “surreal” scene as the students realized they were on found path. When Fowkes gave the signal to go, ISU “Field Observations of Thunderstorms” co-instructor Bill Gallus said he didn’t really want to leave, it was so fascinating.
“I don’t think you realize the power of the systems and the tornadoes until you’re in that situation and witness it,” said co-instructor Dave Flory. “We were too close to the Carbon tornado and it was unbelievable.”
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A team of three Iowa State University instructors and 13 students traversed the Midwest for eight days in late May, chasing storms and visiting weather centers and landmarks as part of a storm-watching course.
Gallus and Flory had long talked about teaching a class with a storm chasing component, Flory said, but figuring out the logistics, matching schedules and finding a time to take a class storm chasing trip if this would not hinder the semester was a difficult task.
However, Gallus said students asked about a storm chasing course almost every year of his 29-year career at ISU. The pair knew that many of the students in Fowkes’ class had chased storms before, so they “bite the bullet” and planned the course with fellow instructor Lindsay Maudlin.
Fowkes has been chasing storms since he was twelve years old and has been fascinated by severe weather for most of his life. He grew up in Arizona, where he saw dust devils and desert thunderstorms, then moved to Colorado, where he saw all four seasons.
He saw his first tornado after his family moved to Cedar Falls. They heard on the news about tornado warnings in the area and his father suggested the family check it out.
“We all got in the van, drove away, sat for 45 minutes and got lucky,” Fowkes said. “A storm caused a tornado right in front of us, and from that moment on I’ve been hooked.”
Although any student could register for the course, the instructors had all seniors signed up when the course started in early March. During the semester, students learned about storm formation, storm safety, instrumentation and more, and heard from a guest lecturer from the National Weather Service. They also took part in a simulated storm chase, where students used the information provided each hour to determine where to go to observe storms.
Most, if not all, of the students had experience hunting before enrolling in the class, Maudlin said, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t see anything new on the trip. The group packed three cars full of supplies and equipment for launching weather balloons and took off, not knowing exactly where the storm activity would take them.
There is a saying in the field of meteorology, Gallus said, that when you plan a field survey to observe a certain type of weather, Mother Nature laughs and decides to do the opposite.
“I think Mother Nature was rolling as we went through the preparations and talked about safety, because we had such an insanely active eight-day period that we had a number of learning experiences that I don’t think we could ever have imagined would happen. would actually happen,” said Gallus.
Storms chase far away and close to home
Day one started strong, as the caravan drove into Kansas and encountered a series of thunderstorms that produced two tornadoes. Gallus said the day started without a particularly high chance of tornadoes, but changes in the weather within a few hours of the event created the situation for a “textbook storm.”
“On the first day we said, ‘Great, we’ve got a storm structure, we’ve got a tornado,’ you know, the pressure is off of us,” Fowkes said. “Because if you’re going to see tornadoes on a trip, it’s nice to get them out of the way so you don’t have to be stressed about getting one the whole trip.”
The group then voted to keep driving to Colorado despite having to be back in Iowa the next day, and launched weather balloons ahead of storms that didn’t turn out as they had hoped before driving part of the way home. However, after they left Yuma, where they launched the balloons, the city was hit by 70 miles per hour winds and baseball-sized hail, damaging most buildings.
On day three, storms swept through Iowa and the caravan witnessed both the Greenfield and Carbon tornadoes. They were able to launch two weather balloons before the storms hit southwestern Iowa, giving the National Weather Service data they otherwise wouldn’t have had, because the Omaha station couldn’t launch its balloons because of the weather.
Gallus said they had a view of the Carbon tornado that very few others had because they were so close and the visibility was so poor that people further away couldn’t get a view. The crew traversed devastated landscapes and roads blocked by trees and other debris as they tried to find their way through the damage.
“It’s kind of fun to see a wind turbine get knocked down by a tornado because I’ve never seen that before, or seen it on fire,” Fowkes said.
One student had family in Greenfield whose home was damaged and a tornado traveling through Ames passed close to where Gallus’ son was, so the group decided to take the rest of the day to recuperate at home or in Ames.
There were no hunts for the next two days. The first was spent driving and the second was filled with visits to the national Storm Prediction Center and Twistex Memorial, both in Oklahoma. The memorial commemorates storm chasers who died during a tornado in El Reno in 2013.
While down south, the group couldn’t resist making a stop in the town made famous by the movie “Twister,” Wakita. They visited the film museum and, on behalf of the storm forecast center, launched two weather balloons, which Gallus said nearly reached the stratosphere.
When chasing storms later in the day proved unsuccessful for spotting tornadoes, the crew decided to head to Joplin, where they would ultimately spend their last day. Although the group had a rule not to chase storms at night, they witnessed a lot on their contentious drive to Missouri. Supercell storms and tornadoes cut the cars off from their planned routes and even from each other for a while. They could not reach their hotel until four o’clock in the morning
Remembering the aftermath
With a physically and mentally exhausting week behind them, the students and instructors decided to spend their last day visiting a memorial in Joplin built to commemorate the more than 150 people killed in an EF-5 tornado in 2011 passed through the city. Gallus, who had visited the city just a few days after the tornado, ordered a lockdown.
Maudlin said it was also a very emotional experience for the students, which the instructors helped them through.
Maudlin had taken a decade-long hiatus from chasing the El Reno tornado and another tornado resulted in destruction and death. She said she struggled with the dichotomy of how beautiful and fascinating the phenomenon is, while still being so destructive. A few years ago she started hunting again.
“Our best chasing days are someone else’s worst days, and really trying to facilitate and talk through big emotions around what they saw and what they experienced is something new for me as an educator,” Maudlin said.
When the class is held again, as instructors hope, the memorials will be a permanent stop on the group’s itinerary.
This trip provided new experiences for both students and instructors, from launching weather balloons to chasing multiple cars and even finding beds to sleep in along the way. Although he had seen many tornadoes before this trip and will continue to haunt them in the future, Fowkes said each tornado he witnesses makes him realize how small we are and how much further we have to go to understand this phenomenon.
“I think everyone has a different experience outside of a tornado and every tornado I see now just reinforces the fact (that) we have to spend the time, we have to make the effort and figure out what’s going on. with these things,” Fowkes said.
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