GUYMON -- Oh, what a beautiful evening it is in the Oklahoma Panhandle. The sunset blazes orange, cattle graze on yucca flowers, and prairie grasses wave serenely toward the horizon. At least, on one side of Highway 412. On the other, a massive supercell rotates low over the land. Black and purple, with a bright green heart of softball-sized hail, the circular thunderstorm uncannily resembles a spaceship in the movie "Independence Day." Vans, Doppler radar trucks, and emergency vehicles zoom along its periphery like ants rimming a giant carousel. On the storm's underbelly, ragged clouds start twisting into a drill-bit shape. Over the CB radio, on "chaser channel" 146.520 megahertz, meteorologist Bob Conzemius tells four vans of hopeful listeners, "It's reorganizing." Sure enough, the drill bit elongates into a crooked finger pointing toward the ground. All along 412 breath is collectively held. If that snaky green funnel touches down, it will become the most feared and destructive weather phenomenon in the Great Plains: a tornado.
A perfect storm
Tornado chasers go to extremes for up-close encounters with wicked weather on the Great Plains
That is precisely what the clients of Tempest Tours, an Arlington, Texas-based storm chase company, have traveled five days and almost 3,000 miles to see.
The "Glossary of Meteorology" (published by the American Meteorological Society) defines a tornado as "a violently rotating column of air . . . pendant from cloud to ground." The weakest twister boasts 85-mile-per-hour winds; the strongest is a plus-250-mile-per-hour blender that liquefies everything in its path -- which is what happened in Greensburg, Kan., in May.
Who would willingly seek out these vicious vortices? As Helen Hunt said in the 1996 movie "Twister," "Who are these people?"
First you have your specialists: There are approximately 200 professional storm chasers in the United States and five of them led Tempest's Memorial Day tour this year. In the off-season, the Tempest guides hail from Pennsylvania to California and range from a cabinet salesman to a wind specialist. Kinney Adams is a Wisconsin graphic artist, insurance analyst Keith Brown has a bachelor's degree in meteorology, and tour director and seven-year Tempest veteran Bill Reid is a climatologist with a master's in geography. What do these men share? In most cases, a meteorology degree, and in all, an extreme love of extreme weather. Every storm season, from May to July, they're cruising the Plains, guiding one of Tempest's tours or chasing solo during downtime.