There\u2019s a lot of luck involved when you\u2019re chasing monsoon storms in Arizona during July or August. This was taken on a very frustrating day when I kept missing everything. When I thought it was all over, I called it a night. I was taking a shower when I heard the rumbling and I rushed to the window. I had washed the sand out of my teeth and ears, from being in the stormy desert all day, and I didn\u2019t want to go back out, so I thought: \u201cI\u2019m just going to take a shot from my motel room.\u201d<\/p>\n
I fancy myself as an artist but Mother Nature does all the work. If there\u2019s a tornado on a flat horizon, how do you make that artistic? It\u2019s something I constantly struggle with. Maybe you capture the flowers bending into it. But ultimately you just go: \u201cClick, got it.\u201d So any time I can do something different, like this, is rewarding.<\/p>\n
The type of thunderstorms that were happening that day are called pulse storms, which seemingly randomly go up and come down in a cycle that lasts about 30 minutes. One will pop up and you\u2019ll drive over, but by the time you get there it\u2019s died, and then one pops up over the spot you just left. It\u2019s like Whac-a-Mole.<\/p>\n
When you have a big open sky you can see the distant storms, but I also use a radar because you might have mountains or other clouds blocking your view, and this type of storm is chaotic and unorganised. Chasing tornadoes is different. Those last for hours, and you can sometimes forecast promising conditions four or five days in advance.<\/p>\n
A storm blew up, a tornado embedded in rain \u2013 I drove in, risking my life<\/p>\n
I have been obsessed with storms for as long as I can remember. At four years old I was sketching tornadoes and scouring library books for them. I think the reason is, I loved monsters: Godzilla, the Loch Ness monster, UFOs. I grew up in Texas where we had tornado drills at school, but never Godzilla or UFO drills, so maybe for me tornadoes were the only monsters that actually existed.<\/p>\n
Most people don\u2019t want to see a tornado. Pursuing them disrupted school or family get-togethers, because I always had this ridiculous craving for storms. I\u2019m happy when I\u2019m around them. It\u2019s not about adrenaline, which makes me shaky and uncomfortable. It\u2019s about beauty. But I have had horrible near-death experiences. Every time it happens, I tell myself: \u201cI never want to feel this again.\u201d When you\u2019re driving away fast because of a stupid error, thinking at any moment the car may become airborne and you will probably not survive, that feeling is terrible \u2013 and I\u2019ve had it too many times.<\/p>\n
The last time was in 2023, when hubris got the best of me and I drove too close to a stupidly ugly rain-wrapped tornado in Nebraska. Earlier I had missed a beautiful white tornado in the middle of nowhere \u2013 all my friends and competition were there, but I was an hour late because we were driving up from Texas. I went into catchup mode. Another storm went up, a tornado embedded in rain, so you couldn\u2019t see it. I drove into the rain, risking my life. These rain-wrapped tornadoes are so ugly and hard to see that they do almost nothing on social media. They\u2019re just not photogenic. Maybe 50 buddies will say: \u201cDamn, dude, you\u2019re brave,\u201d and then it\u2019s forgotten.<\/p>\n
My friends and I debrief after storms, and in this debrief I realised: \u201cWow, I\u2019m more susceptible to ego, hubris and competition than I thought.\u201d Understanding that about myself has helped me during dangerously tempting moments to think: \u201cBack off, dude, live to fight another day.\u201d<\/p>\n
My favourite storm ever? There\u2019s a type called a cyclic supercell. It\u2019s like a relay racer handing a baton to the next person who then hands it on to the next. These storms do that with tornadoes, and you can have multiple tornadoes on the ground as it hands on the power to the next cycling updraft. All the old chasers talked about these legendary days when a cyclic supercell travelled over open country and there were 10 or 12 photogenic tornadoes throughout the day. I had always missed them until finally, on 24 May 2016, I got the ultimate cyclic supercell over open country, well lit, crazy-beautiful tornadoes, two, sometimes three for most of the event. And it didn\u2019t kill anybody.<\/p>\n
Storm: Chasing Nature\u2019s Wildest Weather by Hank Schyma is published on 28 October (DK Travel)<\/p>\n
Photograph: Jennifer Brindley UblHank Schyma\u2019s CV<\/p>\n
Born: Houston, Texas, year of the rat
Trained: Self-taught
Influences: \u201cJim Morrison, Stanley Kubrick and Mother Nature.\u201d
High point: \u201cDiscovering a new transient luminous event coined the green ghost.\u201d
Low point: \u201cCan\u2019t think of one. It\u2019s been nonstop adventure. However, I did eat terrible sushi last night that tasted like rice and mayonnaise.\u201d
Top tip: \u201cAim for what you like, not what you think others will like.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There\u2019s a lot of luck involved when you\u2019re chasing monsoon storms in Arizona during July or August. This…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":232245,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[76,354,355,49,48,356,75],"class_list":{"0":"post-232244","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-ca","12":"tag-canada","13":"tag-design","14":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=232244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232244\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/232245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=232244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=232244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=232244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}