My First Real Storm Chase: Mapleton, Iowa - April 2011

Let's take a journey down memory lane, shall we?

It's 2011. I was a fresh high school graduate, a freshman in college at Colorado State-Pueblo, and a freshly-minted drinker thanks to some wonderful friends who were in a fraternity. I had a new little red sporty car, an ego the size of Pike's Peak, and a view of that storied mountain from my college dorm. Life was good.

Cut to springtime, and my somewhat picturesque college campus was coming back to life. We had heavy snows in January and February that year, which was sort-of unusual for southern Colorado but later helped welcome a gorgeous start to spring in mid-March. By April, the atmosphere was primed for some severe weather, and I had made some new friends who just so happened to live in Colorado and chase storms.

My pattern of chasing in hybrid vehicles started in 2011.

Back at the start of high school in 2006, I seriously thought I wanted to be a professional storm chaser, either for science or media or something. My interests in journalism and photography were just beginning to bloom in 2007, and then the Greensburg EF-5 tornado happened in May that year. I so badly wanted to travel two hours with the juniors and seniors of the Garden City High School newspaper, "The Sugar Beet," to see the damage firsthand. I wanted to go because I was quite familiar with the town, having grown up in the tiny burg of Coldwater about 30 minutes south of Greensburg, and because I was obsessed with storms.

I wasn't allowed to go in 2007 because I didn't have a full driver's license yet and the Kansas Highway Patrol wouldn't let anyone in who didn't have an ID. I got to go a year later, though. My mother (who drove) and I stopped in Greensburg on our way to Pratt for the "Storms of 2007" DVD release and watch party. I took photos of stripped trees, empty lots, and the new water tower with nearby playground. I felt like a real journalist, even with my mom driving. Plus it was still shocking to see a town I knew from memory as a lush, "green" place to be swept barren of most everything. Later, at the DVD watch party, I got to meet a few notable folks from the Greensburg storm, like NWS Dodge City meteorologist Mike Umscheid and chasers Darin Brunin and Dick McGowan. Survivors of the massive tornado were also at the watch party. It was an amazing and emotional experience. I still have my copy of the DVD somewhere.

That entire trip led to several slow-burning epiphanies, the largest of which was that I could make a living out of writing about severe weather and its impact. That one took a few years to realize. The most immediate epiphany was that storm chasing was accessible to me. With my mom at the wheel, my little sister and I would chase storms that came near our home in Garden City. Once I got my driver's license and made more friends in school, I'd go out "chasing," which really just amounted to following storms around with no real idea of what I was looking at. That approach luckily brought me into contact with my first-ever tornado in 2009, on the southwest edge of Garden City, but most of the time it didn't really work.

Thanks to social media and (terribly managed) early severe weather forums online, I had made a few weather nerd friends, and by 2011 I was in a position to go with them on a chase.

On the morning of Friday, April 8, I was awake early, waiting on my new chase buddies to pick me up. I packed light but felt prepared with my Canon Powershot camera, small tripod and loads of spare batteries. Severe weather was in the forecast across much of the Plains Friday and Saturday, but we all had to get back to school and work Monday morning, so it was going to be a quick blast no matter what. I had no idea what to expect, I was just excited. This was definitely worth skipping class for.

Dawn in the college parking lot as I waited for my ride.

The trio of Mark, Sean and Matt, all from Denver, arrived in a Ford Escape Hybrid. It was a tight fit, but we made it work, and that little car actually performed pretty well for us. It also started an unintentional trend of me chasing in hybrid vehicles, but that's another story.

We zoomed east on Highway 50 out of Pueblo through my home territory of southern Kansas before arcing south into Oklahoma. It was a bust for us down there Friday evening, seeing no storms, so we drove up to Salina (I think) and got a motel room for the night. That Saturday morning, we drove north into Nebraska and ultimately toward Iowa.

We stopped for lunch at Jimmy Johns in Blair, Neb., to assess the situation. Iowa was the new target, with storms firing along a dryline, so we snarfed our sandwiches and hit the road. As we crossed a strange mesh bridge over the Nebraska border into Iowa, storms were rapidly becoming severe and rotating.

This incredibly dark photo from my passenger window is what greeted us as we entered Iowa. Shortly after this photo, we'd pull over alongside the road to view a brief weak tornado. It didn't last long enough for me to get a clear photo or video of it. Storms were cycling and preparing to form more tornadoes, so we kept driving further into Iowa through oddly-cut hills and rolling farmland. We kept our eyes and ears peeled for falling hail but encountered none, just heavy rains and severe wind gusts. We thought we'd lost the storm when we crested a hill and were met by a dusty apparition less than a mile from us.

It was officially the first big tornado I'd ever seen and my first successful tornado intercept on a long-distance chase. We pulled over and all hopped out of the car, cameras in hand, to capture the beast. We had no idea it had struck the town of Mapleton in southwest Iowa. 

Looking back on it, I should've recorded more video of this tornado, but it was getting close enough where the other guys wanted to reposition. We left this location and backtracked around the storm. Night fell quickly, and we realized these storms were impacting small towns and rural farms. Our attitude became a lot more serious as cell signal faded in and out while we snaked through the hills, trying to get back perpendicular to the storm.

I was recording video out of my window, in the dark, hoping for lightning to illuminate whatever was going on just across the road. We pulled over again, hopped out, and within moments were blasted by rear flank downdraft winds of about 100 miles per hour. Somebody lost their hat. I was shoved into the road by the gust. Luckily no cars were coming -- they were all stopped because of the tornado.

Through the wind and light rain, I recorded video, hoping for a nice lightning strike to show whatever lurked in the blackness. To our surprise, it was a gorgeous tornado on the ground near the town of Arthur, Iowa.

If this tornado had formed just an hour earlier, we might've had an extremely photogenic scene. Still, I'm proud of myself for that shot. The above image is a video still.

Photo by Sean Mullins

My chase buddy Sean captured this longer-exposure image of the tornado and us viewing it. We'd eventually get back into the car and try to follow the storms as they cycled and tracked further into Iowa. The tornado that hit Mapleton would later receive an EF-3 rating, with winds of about 130 mph. It destroyed 60% of the town's buildings and injured 14 people, but thankfully there were no fatalities. In total, 49 tornadoes were reported across the Midwest and Southeast from April 9-11, 2011.

In our roamings-around near the Mapleton area, we came across damage to rural homes and downed power lines. This was the first time I'd ever encountered lines down across the road, and our butts were firmly clenched as we trudged over those. One home we stopped at had the garage blown down on top of the vehicles but the house was mostly spared. We got up to the front yard when the residents poked their heads out the door. They were unhurt.

We eventually ended our chase and drove north to Sioux City to get a hotel room. I almost got my footage of the Mapleton tornado used in a local TV broadcast with the potential for an interview as well, but my chase buddies convinced (or pressured) me into seeking payment for my video and not budging when the station said "we don't pay for contributed weather footage." I don't regret not contributing my video for free, but I also bet it would've been fun to appear on the news with a chyron labeling me as a "storm chaser." Oh well.

That Sunday, April 10, we managed to fenagle our way into Mapleton as media and saw the destruction firsthand. It was sobering, slightly chilling, and important for us to see. After a quick tour through town, we hit the highway for the long drive back to Colorado. I learned a couple of things along that trip, mostly about situational and geographical awareness. Biggest of all, I learned that tornadoes didn't make me freak out and shout at everyone. I kept my calm and contributed with tracking the storm, even in the dark. I finally felt like a real storm chaser.

I'd chase with those guys a few more times in 2011 but we experienced a drought of tornadoes until the following year. By then I had moved back to Kansas -- home territory -- and in April of 2012 I felt like a true chaser again, this time with my friend Mira. We were in her Honda Civic Hybrid, following storms through central Kansas on April 14. It was a rare high-risk day, and the forecast verified, to say the least.

Ten years later, my chasing tactics have evolved. I've learned so much more about how severe storms function and how I function while observing severe storms. I've also gotten pickier about who I chase with and how far away from home I'm willing to venture. I also plan on taking the class to become a certified storm spotter.

Now I just need a solid chase vehicle and a couple of GoPros to mount on it. One thing at a time.

=)