PUSHING THE LIMITS
This Jeep’s a storm-chaser
Jeep is celebrating its 75th anniversary this year. The story of its birth in the early 1940s is a convoluted tale involving three different automakers and the race for a U.S. government contract to build a utilitarian vehicle for the military.
The short story is this: manufacturers, including American Bantam, Ford and Willys, each designed and constructed quarter-ton four-wheel drive prototypes in the late 1930s.
These machines were submitted to the Army for testing, but in 1941 it was the Willys-Overland Co. that got the nod to produce 16,000 of what it called the Willys MB. Early on, the Willys MB was referred to as a ‘jeep’ and the name stuck.
As a vehicle designed for rigorous use, Jeeps have seen some atrocious conditions.
Over the decades, Jeeps have continued to see service as utilitarian devices, used for chores as tame as hauling people around cities or as punishing as chasing prairie storms.
Twenty-four-year-old Braydon Morisseau of Cochrane routinely pushes the limits of his four-door 2007 Jeep Wrangler Unlimited as he tracks and follows some of the worst weather conditions nature dishes out.
“When I was young, I was always interested in weather,” Morisseau says. “Storms didn’t scare me at all, and when bad weather came I’d be staring outside, watching it roll in.”
His family would regularly visit relatives in Saskatchewan, and that’s when he’d see some really active weather. “I’d get really excited,” he says of the violent systems that often produce tornadoes, hail, lightning and heavy rain. Then he saw the movie Twister.
“After seeing Twister, I realized when I got my driver’s licence at 16 that I could go out and follow storms,” Morisseau says.
His first “storm-chasing” vehicle was a Dodge Dakota pickup truck. Then, partly in homage to the Jeep driven by Dr. Jo Harding (Helen Hunt’s character in the Twister movie), Morisseau bought his own.
Morisseau figured the fourdoor Wrangler with the 3.8-litre V6 gasoline engine was his best choice. But there were practical reasons for purchasing a Jeep, too.
“There are so many aftermarket companies making accessories for Jeeps, it’s easy to customize the vehicles,” Morisseau explains, and chuckles. “Many people call it an SUV, for sport utility vehicle. I call mine an SUV, but that stands for storm utility vehicle, in my opinion.”
Morisseau nicknamed his Jeep the Predator (“tor” for tornado, get it?) and has installed a heavyduty roof rack.
Made in the U.S.A., the Gobi Jeep JK Stealth roof rack bolts directly to existing frame mounting points, and provides something of an exoskeleton for Morisseau’s Jeep.
“It’s got steel mesh panels in it, and when hail hits that, it just breaks apart and doesn’t harm the roof,” he says. “I’m sure the Gobi folks never anticipated this use, but it works great.”
To protect the hood of the Jeep, Morisseau coated it with sprayon truck bedliner material, and not the usual application, either.
The storm chaser says the hood has withstood being pelted by softball-sized hail.
Mounted on the back of the roof rack is a portable Campbell Scientific weather station that monitors wind speed, temperature, humidity and dew point, and that information is displayed on a screen inside the vehicle.
Morisseau has also equipped the Jeep with a bumper-mount winch and recovery straps, and several first aid kits.
“I’m out there just as much to help other people if they go off the road due to hail or flooding,” Morisseau says. “Often, we’re first on the scene to some devastating sights.”
Part of a three-person collective called the Prairie Storm Chasers, Morisseau says they often travel in convoy in separate vehicles. The partners study weather data, and do a tremendous amount of research before heading out. Morisseau doesn’t get paid to track and monitor storms; he refers to the practice as a really expensive hobby.
To finance his passion, Morisseau manages the Dairy Queen in Cochrane eight months of the year, and takes a four-month sabbatical to chase storms.
Now in its fourth storm-chasing season, his Jeep has more than 250,000 kilometres on the odometer. He’s added 10,000 km just in the past two months. There are no hail dents on the sides of the vehicle, and he’s only once had to replace a windshield because of hail damage.
“The Jeep holds up well, and I keep the oil changed and tune it up regularly,” Morisseau says. “Ideally, I’d like to upgrade to a newer model Jeep four-door Wrangler. This one’s never let me down.”