STORM CHASING: A VERY EXPENSIVE HOBBY FOR ONE MAN
ICE CREAM STORE MANAGER LIVES TO TRACK TORNADOES
There’s a near-religious feeling that overcomes Braydon Morisseau when he’s standing in the presence of a storm.
It’s an “escape from reality,” a chance to observe forces “bigger than yourself,” he said.
“It’s like you’ve almost left this world and you’re somewhere else.”
The 24-year-old storm chaser has spent hours poring over satellite images, radar data and weather models to pinpoint where and when a tornado was going to strike Alberta.
This is the payoff: standing next to a canola field outside Granum, Alta., west of Lethbridge, bearing silent witness as the heavens perform a savage, mighty ballet. The landscape is empty and the view is unobstructed by rain; ideal conditions for a storm watch.
“We’re the only ones here,” he said, as menacing clouds twist over a landscape of neon yellow canola fields. “It doesn’t get much better than this.”
Morisseau is a founder of Prairie Storm Chasers, one of several Canadian storm chasing “teams.” A storm chaser ever since he got his driver’s licence at 16, he has tracked tornadoes from Louisiana to Manitoba.
He has seen 500-kilogram horses tossed over by high winds. He has been showered by insulation and shredded aluminum siding. Morisseau has even been inside a small tornado in Texas, an experience he called “overrated.” “It’s mostly just dirt and wind.” Morisseau’s vehicle is a veritable Batmobile of storm chasing. A weather station sits on the back, tracking wind speed, air temperature and humidity. A special coating on the roof and hood allows the vehicle to withstand hail the size of a softball.
Two bars of high-powered LED lights are mounted up front. They can light the way through a biblical torrent of rain, or help steer a path through a black-out-darkened community strewn with debris.
The jeep is also packed with emergency medical supplies. When a tornado plows through a prairie community, storm chasers are often among the first on scene to bandage up trauma victims and pull people out of collapsed buildings.
There’s no rain as the Granum storm forms. There usually isn’t. As a gathering funnel cloud sucks in every ounce of meteorological energy from the landscape, the sky overhead is blue. This is a literal calm before the storm. Fleetwood Mac is Morisseau’s favourite band, even if, as a meteorological stickler, he objects to their famed lyric “thunder only happens when it’s raining.”
On distant farm fields, wary cows are clumping together for protection. It will suddenly seem as if whole fields of livestock are being summoned together by some unseen energy.
Then, suddenly, the Granum storm breaks apart; it reaches funnel cloud status but dies before it reaches full tornado. The culprit is another storm that has crashed into it and upset its delicate balance of hot and cold winds.
The toppled storm spits out its accumulated energy in violent death throes of high winds, hail and rain. “It’s like it’s throwing up,” Morisseau said.
During the summer, there’s almost always a would-be tornado lurking in Alberta.
“It happens more often than you think,” he said.
Morisseau is the manager of a Dairy Queen in Cochrane, Alta. Storm chasing is not how he makes his living. No cheques from Environment Canada, no licensing royalties for videos and no sponsorship cash.
“It’s a really expensive hobby,” he said. He earns just enough money to keep chasing storms through the summer.
Storm chasing “teams” are scattered across every part of Canada that is home to tornadoes and electrical storms. Some do it in Priuses, others in armoured trucks.
It’s hard to understate how much of an effect the 1996 storm chasing blockbuster Twister has had on the tornado chasing community.
It’s common to find a storm chaser blaring the Twister soundtrack as they zero in on a funnel cloud. In the U.S., one storm chaser even has a perfect replica of the equipment-be-decked red pickup driven by Helen Hunt’s character.
Morisseau said he suspects he bought his own jeep purely because of its prominent role in the movie.
Alberta is a natural magnet for the chase community. The province lies at the north end of the world’s premier destination for storm chasing. Morisseau chases in the U.S., but usually sticks to his home turf because the traffic is lighter.
Today, there are about five storm chasers on the road. In the U.S., there could be dozens, leading to traffic jams as a tornado takes shape.
Storm chasers perform a service for society. Radar and satellites can tell only so much, and an experienced storm chaser is often the final link in reporting when a tornado forms.
Environment Canada knows these chasers by name. It monitors their Twitter feeds. When the Alberta government issues a tornado warning, it’s usually because someone such as Morisseau has phoned it in.
The night before meeting up with the National Post, Morisseau slept only two hours. He was up until 5:30 a.m., poring over weather models: RAP models, NAM models, GFS models, HRDPS models.
But in storm-battered rural Alberta, the weather nerd is king. When Morisseau pulls his jeep into gas stations, worried locals greet him like a prophet.
At the Country Corner store in Turin, Alta., Morisseau has barely parked before the owner calls her daughter to boast that she’s standing face to face with a storm chaser.
At any time, there are many as four trucks following Morisseau’s jeep. When the heavens darken, it is common practice for locals to pull in behind a storm chaser like some kind of climatological pied piper.
The impromptu motorcades are annoying to storm chasers. While they would never begrudge a fellow chaser, the amateurs worry them.
For Morisseau, he’s heading into areas and conditions that could shatter a windshield — or leave an average car stranded in the mud.
If he happens to make the wrong call and find himself staring down a tornado, the last thing he needs is a convoy of panicking pickup trucks behind him.
By day’s end, Morisseau has spent 12 hours on the road, burned 200 litres of diesel and seen one verified funnel cloud and chased down two other developing storms that broke apart early.
No tornadoes, but as the average chase goes, it’s a seven out of 10 day.
Said Morisseau, “it’s like driving 12 hours to see a one-hour movie that might not be all that good.”