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WHY CHASE
AFTER STORMS? -
A PERSONAL PERSPECTIVE
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I've always held a deep fascination with
the natural world "out there".
When I was a kid I had one schoolteacher
who enjoyed dragging me up in front of
the class to sneeringly point out my
failings, in that I was obviously too
"far too busy looking at rocks,
flowers and butterflies" to go to
football matches like "normal lads
did". Very constructive. If that was
what turned him on, I guess it was down
to his particular intellect. Anyway, I'm
glad I ignored him!
For many people, thunderstorms vary in
quality from unnerving to terrifying! I
can remember some pretty hairy moments
myself: hiding behind the sofa as a
ten-year old when lightning split a tree
in two in a nearby field; running in
blind panic down a glacier in the Otztal
Alps in 1980 when C-G lightning was
hitting all around every second like an
electrical artillery bombardment; and
feeling incredibly vulnerable on a small
angling boat a few miles out in Cardigan
Bay in a storm in which the VHF radio
masts started to make a demented buzzing
noise like a thousand bees!
Yes - caught in the wrong place and wrong
time, storms are both terrifying and
dangerous. So why actually go out seeking
them? No wonder some of my mates find my
hobby a source of amusement (to put it
politely)!
Terrifying and dangerous, yes - but I
would add another adjective to the list.
Magnificent. The art of the successful
storm-chaser is to watch what is going on
from a safe vantage-point, close but not
too close, somewhere where the beautiful
cloud-structures are revealed as they
develop, constantly changing, works of
natural art marching without opposition
across the landscape.
There seems to be a culture present in
today's society within which the natural
world around us is held in denial. The
poem written years ago, which begins with
"What is this life, if full of care,
we have no time to stand and stare"
seems to be more appropriate a commentary
on society now than when it was written.
Thus the plots of TV soap operas today
predominate in vast swathes of our
culture over the changes in seasons. When
did you last hear somebody come into the
pub and say they'd seen the first
celandines in flower? That sort of thing
belongs to the culture within which the
now elderly members of our society
existed, before television took over.
That's what they tell me, anyway, and I
am inclined to believe them.
Well it's not quite that bad, but you get
days when you feel that it is. My view is
that denial of nature is the culture that
leads to shock horror news headlines when
the natural world occasionally turns on
the heat to remind us that we are part of
it for all our detachment. Denial of
nature goes hand-in-hand with terms like
"freak storm". A drought is
when your lawn goes brown - a sanitised,
safe version of crop failure. Snow is a
nuisance because it slows up the traffic
and makes you late for work. And so on.
We storm-chasers and weather
photographers are a small but growing
community here in the UK. We're people
who don't talk vaguely about the weather
(you don't hear the term "nice
day" very often!), but understand
and forecast the workings of our climate
and get out there to witness and record
its fury, its tranquility, its
ever-changing beauty. We, like other
dedicated naturalists, are the exact
opposite of the denial culture. We make
time to "stand and stare",
whatever the other pressures of modern
life. And I, for one, have felt much more
a part of my natural surroundings as a
consequence.
Still, although this interest in severe
weather is growing, I can't quite see the
point when someone drains their pint
glass and says they have to go because
it's time for the 1200z GFS*
runs!
*GFS runs
are the batches of atmospheric data,
available online and updated every 6
hours, produced by the Global Forecasting
System. They are studied meticulously in
the run-ups to storm events. We make our
own weather forecasts using these and
other data sources - see my links page.
PHOTOGRAPHY
I got into landscape photography back in
the late 1980s when I got my first
"proper" camera. It didn't take
long to realise that the prevailing
weather was what often really
"made" a good landscape photo.
In the early to mid-1990s I lived on a
small hill-farm to the SE of Machynlleth,
with an unbroken view N and E across the
hills of Mid-Wales. The mid-90s included
some good thundery summers and many an
evening was spent sat outside watching
the lightning play about the hilltops
after dark. I don't know when it happened
but at some point during this time I
realised I was diving for my camera every
time there were storms about.
The early results were not that rewarding
but by 2000 I had started browsing around
the numerous chaser sites from the USA
and elsewere. In time I started to
appreciate the tactics required to up the
odds of good results: the importance of
local and synoptic forecasting, the
structure of storms and above all the
importance of finding clear slots where
the visibility permitted good
photography. The more you understand
storms, it seemed, the better your
chances of results, whether chasing a
tornadic supercell in Kansas or a
fast-moving single cell in Ceredigion!
The realisation of the importance of
studying the data bore fruit at last in
August 2000 when, on one of my earlier
chases, I ran straight into a photogenic
funnel-cloud and from then on I was
hooked!
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