The thrills and excitement of chasing violent thunderstorms and tornadoes were explained to the students and staff of Assiniboia Park School on Sept. 22, complete with photos and videos of storms.
Chris Chittick, the videographer for the “Tornado Hunters” team based out of Regina, was the guest for the presentation, and he was asked a number of questions by the students, curious about the experiences he’s had on the team.
One student asked why he hadn’t been sucked up by a tornado with all of the funnel clouds he’s seen, and he answered that it’s largely due to physics.
“If you are on the south to southwest side, you get strong winds but you don’t get sucked in,” said Chittick.
Asked how tornadoes end, he noted if there is too much rain in a storm, or if the storm front runs into cold air, these factors will cause a tornado to end, plus if it’s not a strong tornado and goes over water, such as a lake.
One student asked if a pair of tornadoes can become combined as one, and Chittick said this does happen, usually with the stronger one absorbing the weaker one.
Asked how many tornadoes he’s seen, Chittick responded that prior to this year he has seen 435, and wasn’t sure how many he had seen this year.
Explaining some of the facts about tornadoes, he noted their season usually runs from March to July, starting in the southern U.S. and becoming more prevalent in the northern States and Canada by June and July, with “tornado alley” running up the centre of the continent.
Tornadoes are formed when there is a combination of cold, dry air meeting warm moist air, and warm dry air, “to create a storm system we can chase,” said Chittick.
There are three members of the “Tornado Hunters” team, led by Greg Johnson, who takes the still photos, while he does the video, and both do weather forecasting. The goal of the team, which has a TV show on the CMT channel, “is to get as close to a storm as possible, safely, and then sell the images and video.”
As they are often the first persons on a scene after a tornado has gone through, often they end up doing search and rescue, helping out emergency responders.
The team is constantly monitoring real-time radar images of storms, and checking their GPS, so they can see how large it is and what direction it’s going in.
Chittick showed videos of a number of storms, including one of North America’s largest recorded tornado on May 31, 2013.
They were live-streaming it at the time with around 40,000 people watching it live. During this tornado, they drove into the ditch and a two-ton farm truck dropped out of the sky and landed right in front of them, calling to mind a scene from the movie “Twister”.
He explained that the truck they use, which was brought to Weyburn for the Festival of Leaves craft and trade show, and again on Thursday to be on display at Tosczak Auctions, is bullet-proof and covered in a special protective paint, and the glass has a security film on the inside so if large objects or hail breaks it, the windshield won’t fall in on them, as happened after one particularly heavy hailstorm in Montana.
