In pursuit of Ma Nature’s spectacle
Stormchaser talks about thrills, dangers of the hunt
Todd Shoemake laid eyes on his first tornado when he was 11 years old in Amarillo, Tex.
“I can remember my dad calmly, yet still enthusiastically, pulling me over to a window on the north side of the building to take in Ma Nature’s spectacle,” the 39-year-old says now. “The tornado was not an overly violent one, but it certainly commanded the attention of anyone taking a glance.”
That original sighting “planted the seeds, so to speak” for his decades-long interest in weather.
“It just turned into an addiction,” he told a room of about 25 people at Loma Colorado Library in Rio Rancho on Monday night.
Shoemake, a National Weather Service meteorologist, delivered a talk titled “Chasing Mother Nature,” shedding light on the excitement and dangers of storm chasing and how to chase a storm safely.
Shoemake called storm chasing a “repetitive leap frog” that often involves 12-hour driving days, fast food and crummy hotels. But, sometimes, it pays off.
”You’re basically putting yourself ahead of the storm,” he said.
Through photos and video, Shoemake recalled one of his favorite chase days as he and his wife, Jennifer, shadowed a storm on May 31, 2010.
“One of those days that we’ll remember forever,” he said.
The storm started in southeastern Colorado and produced four tornadoes by the time it crossed the Oklahoma panhandle.
“Just a beautiful storm,” he said, a picture of a gray bullet-shaped tornado
touching down in a green wheat field behind him.
The job of chasing storms also involves making tough decisions in potentially dangerous situations.
“We know when to let it go,” he said. “There’s no image or video that’s worth your life.”
And things can go wrong for even the most seasoned chasers.
“You don’t always know what Mother Nature is going to throw at you,” he said, referring to the 2013 El Reno tornado that hit Oklahoma. “That tornado was one for the books.”
The El Reno tornado — nearly three miles wide, with 295 mph winds and moving at 45 mph — took the lives of storm chaser Tim Samaras, his son, Paul, and partner Carl Young.
“It just caught everybody off guard,” he said.
At the time of his death, Samaras was a pioneer researcher with 20 years’ chasing experience. Samaras developed probes, called “turtles,” made out of hardened material and containing instrumentation to be deployed into a tornado for research.
“He took risks like no one else because that’s what his research required,” Shoemake said.
People chase storms for different reasons, he said. Some do it for research or to sell their photos and video, while others just do it for the thrill.
Shoemake, who considers himself a fairly safe chaser, said there are precautions any chaser should take to stay safe.
They include watching for flying debris, being aware of a tornado’s motion, having an escape route or staying near an intersection, using a telephoto lens to keep distance, and pulling off to the side of the road.
Shoemake said one of his pet peeves is how some chasers stop in the middle of the road and create traffic jams, particularly in Oklahoma and Kansas where chasers flock.
“It takes away the fun when you have to deal with that much traffic,” he said.
Shoemake said tornadoes are not the only storm dangers to watch out for, calling lightning “nature’s most underrated killer” and comparing baseballsize hail to a 100 mph fastball, before focusing on a danger we face particularly in New Mexico: flash floods.
People should not cross roadways when they don’t know the water depth or road surface beneath the water, he said. It only takes 12 to 15 inches of water to sweep away a vehicle.
Shoemake said when all is said and done, the most important thing is to stay safe.
“That makes the chase even better,” he said. “When you know nobody is getting hurt.”