Extreme Adventure: Storm Chasing with Olivier Staiger

What is storm chasing?
Planning a trip for a day, week, month or longer to be at the right spot, at the right time, to witness and document tornados produced by severe thunderstorms. The tornado is the cherry on the pie, but many storms won’t have one. If there’s no potential for tornado, then we look for other kinds of storms such as dust storm, lightning, hail, ‘mother ships’ , dust devils and so on. It’s easy to see a storm, but difficult or even rare to see a tornado, especially a well lit, high contrast and photogenic one.

How did you get hooked to this adventure?
I visit my twin brother in New York, every year. During my visit in 1994, I witnessed a solar eclipse, and chasing it became a passion. I’ve seen over 25 eclipses and have been halfway across the world, to places such as Siberia and Antarctica for it.

There was none in 2000, so I wondered ‘what should I do this vacation? Already inspired by the movie ‘Twister’ and having of Tornado Alley USA (area of the US where tornados are most frequent), I started planning for it. But I never knew storms can be predicted and chased, and that people actually do it.

Icy windstorm at Lake Geneva

The movie had you excited about storms, but weren’t you afraid?
No, it just gave me an adrenaline rush. People have a tendency to fear the unknown, which doesn’t make sense to me. Everything that can harm, will not necessarily do harm. If you’re very unlucky the thunderstorm will hit you, but if it doesn’t you’ll witness beautiful life. People are also afraid of storms because only killer ones make the headlines. Oklahama city and its vicinity see about 1200 tornados annually, do you ever hear of the others? Storm chasing can be dangerous if you don’t know storms, just as driving a car can be dangerous if you don’t know traffic laws.


Lightening over Lake Geneva Switzerland

Not knowing other storm chasers existed, how did you prepare the first time?
I went alone in 2000, no friends wanted to come with me. I bought a ticket to Texas, rented a car and tried to get my hands on all the information available—books, movies, local radio, the weather channel. I also joined online storm chasing groups, hoping to meet people, but it didn’t work out till the last day.

Tell us about your best experiences so far
After two weeks of chasing I missed the tornado in 2000 because I took a wrong turn. By 2001 I had subscribed to a storm chaser hotline and saw my first storm thanks to them. It was in Yukon, west of Oklahoma City. I called the hotline because it was foggy; they told me to look westwards because a dryline—that separates cold air and warm, tornados occur when they collide—had fired, and indeed I noticed a line of storms rapidly grow in the sky.  Two storms kept getting bigger, and one of them had an obvious rotation, I followed it for an hour zig-zagging on the dirt road, driving with the storm’s base in front of me.

Suddenly the sky became 3-D, the storm’s funnel reached half-way down, lifted back up and as its base crossed the road a new funnel formed, which reached all the way down. The tornado was born. It stayed on the ground for about ten minutes, the contrast was excellent with blue skies in the background and it wasn’t raining so I could take photos. It was great because I had read so much and knew that people chase storms for years and don’t get to see it from start to finish because storms don’t last for so long. This one was just out of the text book with dryline, funnel, size, velocity.

Another amazing one was the tornado that I saw in 2010. We had driven 800 km for eight hours to chase the Campo storm, despite only a 2% probability. After having slowed down and backed up, the storm picked up new energy, seemingly gaining strength and speed. Lightning in the distance increased and I could see the wall cloud form a funnel cloud, it grew longer and longer and reached all the way to the ground and then the tornado was born.

It lasted half an hour! It was big and beautiful with a very high base on the storm and excellent visibility. We later caught up with the storm again, the tornado had disappeared into the precipitation, appeared again, and then one more appeared, till it completely roped out.


Olivier's first tornado in southern Oklahoma

Do you have any advice for those who want to start?
These days you also have storm chasing communities, you tube videos etc. But I don’t recommend going solo, unless you’re an amateur in your own country, because you can lose a lot of time and money in finding a storm. For chasing in Tornado Alley as beginner, I highly recommend joining storm chasing tours such as Cloud9 Tours, Silver Lining Tours, and Tempest Tours; it’s a lot more fun when you travel with other enthusiasts and learn from them, because everyone has different perspectives and experiences.

The basics are: try to know where explosive thunderstorms will develop and look for one that is likely to rotate (super cell) and produce a tornado. Try to get there before it happens and stay close to take pictures. Observe things like the direction in which the grass or tree is bending for guidance because the vehicle creates its own wind channel. You should carry a camera that allows you to take both photographs and videos, a laptop or tablet with a mobile hotspot and binoculars, although I’ve rarely used them.


Thunderstorm later turned into tornado

How do you find time and manage the expense for such hobbies?
I worked with a car rental company for 20 years and then left after a disagreement. Despite offers from other companies I didn’t take up a full time job because I wanted to work less and travel more.

Now I drive as a VIP limousine chauffer on a freelance basis. It is good work and good money. I have chauffeured politicians, music artists and several celebrities, but it’s rarely planned. I had joined several tours for storm chasing, as the organisors got to know I’m a good driver and know French, German and English, they asked me to join. It is a big economic advantage because even though some operators don’t pay, the stay and fuel are taken care of and clients give tips as well.

It’s been 13 years of storm chasing, what do you look forward to now?
For some time I’ve been thinking chasing tornados is routine, now what else? I want to do something spectacular with it, add an element of culture. So I recently carried my violin playing my violin in front of a tornado and capture it. I almost succeed many times.

Cremona in Italy is the world’s capital for violin and will inaugurate a Violin Museum this September. Before they do, I plan to go Italy, play the violin in the storm and capture it before it the museum opens.

HOW DO YOU SUBSCRIBE TO THE HOTLINE?
For storm chasing in USA Olivier reccommends hotlines such as www.chasehotline.com, www.twisterdata.com, www.spc.noaa.gov, http://www.spc.noaa.gov/exper/mesoanalysis/, http://weather.rap.ucar.edu/ and http://virga.sfsu.edu/ .For most websites, all you have to do is enter your name and email id to subscribe and you’ll get alerts in your inbox.