Each year, at least 1,200 tornadoes batter the United States. While most occur in Tornado Alley--a vast, weather-beaten swath of middle America-in truth, tornadoes can occur almost anywhere. And where there are tornadoes, there are storm chasers. They come in all shapes and sizes, from hobbyists to researchers to professional chasers. There is one, however, who stands well above the rest: Roger Hill. Hunting Nature's Fury tells the story of Roger Hill and his love affair with storm chasing, taking you on a suspenseful and dramatic ride across the Great Plains, into the Deep South, even into…mehr
Each year, at least 1,200 tornadoes batter the United States. While most occur in Tornado Alley--a vast, weather-beaten swath of middle America-in truth, tornadoes can occur almost anywhere. And where there are tornadoes, there are storm chasers. They come in all shapes and sizes, from hobbyists to researchers to professional chasers. There is one, however, who stands well above the rest: Roger Hill. Hunting Nature's Fury tells the story of Roger Hill and his love affair with storm chasing, taking you on a suspenseful and dramatic ride across the Great Plains, into the Deep South, even into the eyes of such recent hurricanes as Katrina. You'll accompany Hill as he braves close calls, makes history, and gains insight into the science of severe weather. This is a story of a storm chaser obsessed with the storms that almost killed him; of resiliency in the face of disaster; and of humility in the presence of the awesome power of nature. Includes eight color pages of jaw-dropping photos taken by Hill showing many of the storms chronicled in the book.Hinweis: Dieser Artikel kann nur an eine deutsche Lieferadresse ausgeliefert werden.
As a professional storm chaser, Hill has witnessed some 400 tornadoes and hurricanes in his lifetime and has captured them on film for every major TV network, plus National Geographic, The Weather Channel, The Discovery Channel, and The Learning Channel. He is co-owner of Silver Lining Tours, America's leading storm-chasing tour company. Peter Bronski is the author of At the Mercy of the Mountains: True Stories of Survival and Tragedy in New York's Adirondacks and the Wilderness Press guide Powder Ghost Towns: Epic Backcountry Runs in Colorado's Lost Ski Resorts.
Inhaltsangabe
Chapter Five: Tornado Therapy My first tour as a guide for Silver Lining began on May 9, 2000, in Oklahoma City. It was a ten-day tour, scheduled to conclude on May 18. I arrived from Denver a day early to finally meet David Gold face to face. Until that point our relationship had been restricted to emails and phone calls. Early on the morning of May 9, there was a knock on my hotel-room door at the Holiday Inn near the Oklahoma City airport, our base hotel; it was David. He greeted me in tennis shoes, shorts, and a Silver Lining Tours T-shirt, his usual chase attire. A wide grin extended from ear to ear, and his right hand extended out in a preemptive handshake. I took his hand in a firm grip, thanking him for the chance to be a tour guide on his tours. Extremely intelligent and highly proper, he articulated each word that came from his mouth. We talked about chasing, about family and friends, about this tour, and about our respective thoughts on the forecast and severe-weather outlook for the next ten days of chasing. "We're also going to be joined on this tour by National Geographic Europe," David explained. "They're filming a program called Twister Tours, and an English couple with us for this tour-David and Sheila Winn-are going to be the focus of the show." The National Geographic crew was headed up by Executive Producer Alister Chapman, David continued. Alister had made a name for himself as a professional cameraman and editor, producing programs for not only National Geographic but also CNN, the Discovery Channel, and the BBC. He ran a United Kingdom-based storm-chasing group and was even an internationally competitive motor-rally driver in his earlier years. Later that morning David and I walked down the hall to the Holiday Inn's conference room, where the tour clients were all expected to gather. Bill Reid, our driver for Van 2, was there, as were the National Geographic crew, headed up by Alister and his Sony Betacam video camera, a huge and expensive shoulder-mounted behemoth that ran on half-inch tapes. Alister planned to shoot the orientation meeting. As the clients gathered together, I soon realized that each of us in that room chased for different reasons. Some came to get out into the wide-open plains, where they could watch majestic supercell thunderstorms roll across the countryside. Others came for the camaraderie, to meet other people with the same passion, to talk about storms they've seen, and about the prospect of storms yet to be seen. All came for the ultimate prize, the tornado. Most people will never summit Mount Everest or swing a baseball bat on the hallowed grounds of Yankee Stadium, or fly a fighter jet at Mach 2. But in storm chasing anyone can experience the ultimate prize firsthand. Tornadoes are within anyone's grasp, and the job of Silver Lining Tours-my job on Tour 1 in 2000-was to deliver that ultimate prize safely. They, the clients, came for different reasons, but they all shared a fundamental goal-to see one of the most awesome and phenomenal forces on the face of the earth and to be able to live and tell their stories of an encounter with a tornado. Like the clients on the tour, I had my own reasons for storm chasing. Some of it was simply indescribable, as if the desire to chase was genetic instinct or subconsciously imprinted in me in some way. And yet other reasons were clear as day. Some of those reasons were linked to that defining moment when I was nine years old in Topeka and a true monster tornado nearly took my life. Some of my desire to chase stemmed from my fascination with weather. And I wanted to meet the people who lived on the plains, as I did in my youth, and hear their war stories of survival in the face of atmospheric adversity. But if one thing haunted me about my storm chasing, it was the death and destruction often left in the aftermath of a tornado. It was the dark side of the profession. People felt that storm chasers thrived on such macabre scenes. That was never the focus for me. I chased for the beauty of the storm and the adrenaline rush of getting close to a big tornado. I wanted to see the storm in all its majesty, not what it left behind. But too often, a tornado did leave something behind-a tale of lives and communities forever changed. The good and bad of storms were thus inextricably linked. Like a yin and yang, they coexisted and were inseparable. And every storm chaser wrestled with balancing a storm's angels and demons.
Chapter Five: Tornado Therapy My first tour as a guide for Silver Lining began on May 9, 2000, in Oklahoma City. It was a ten-day tour, scheduled to conclude on May 18. I arrived from Denver a day early to finally meet David Gold face to face. Until that point our relationship had been restricted to emails and phone calls. Early on the morning of May 9, there was a knock on my hotel-room door at the Holiday Inn near the Oklahoma City airport, our base hotel; it was David. He greeted me in tennis shoes, shorts, and a Silver Lining Tours T-shirt, his usual chase attire. A wide grin extended from ear to ear, and his right hand extended out in a preemptive handshake. I took his hand in a firm grip, thanking him for the chance to be a tour guide on his tours. Extremely intelligent and highly proper, he articulated each word that came from his mouth. We talked about chasing, about family and friends, about this tour, and about our respective thoughts on the forecast and severe-weather outlook for the next ten days of chasing. "We're also going to be joined on this tour by National Geographic Europe," David explained. "They're filming a program called Twister Tours, and an English couple with us for this tour-David and Sheila Winn-are going to be the focus of the show." The National Geographic crew was headed up by Executive Producer Alister Chapman, David continued. Alister had made a name for himself as a professional cameraman and editor, producing programs for not only National Geographic but also CNN, the Discovery Channel, and the BBC. He ran a United Kingdom-based storm-chasing group and was even an internationally competitive motor-rally driver in his earlier years. Later that morning David and I walked down the hall to the Holiday Inn's conference room, where the tour clients were all expected to gather. Bill Reid, our driver for Van 2, was there, as were the National Geographic crew, headed up by Alister and his Sony Betacam video camera, a huge and expensive shoulder-mounted behemoth that ran on half-inch tapes. Alister planned to shoot the orientation meeting. As the clients gathered together, I soon realized that each of us in that room chased for different reasons. Some came to get out into the wide-open plains, where they could watch majestic supercell thunderstorms roll across the countryside. Others came for the camaraderie, to meet other people with the same passion, to talk about storms they've seen, and about the prospect of storms yet to be seen. All came for the ultimate prize, the tornado. Most people will never summit Mount Everest or swing a baseball bat on the hallowed grounds of Yankee Stadium, or fly a fighter jet at Mach 2. But in storm chasing anyone can experience the ultimate prize firsthand. Tornadoes are within anyone's grasp, and the job of Silver Lining Tours-my job on Tour 1 in 2000-was to deliver that ultimate prize safely. They, the clients, came for different reasons, but they all shared a fundamental goal-to see one of the most awesome and phenomenal forces on the face of the earth and to be able to live and tell their stories of an encounter with a tornado. Like the clients on the tour, I had my own reasons for storm chasing. Some of it was simply indescribable, as if the desire to chase was genetic instinct or subconsciously imprinted in me in some way. And yet other reasons were clear as day. Some of those reasons were linked to that defining moment when I was nine years old in Topeka and a true monster tornado nearly took my life. Some of my desire to chase stemmed from my fascination with weather. And I wanted to meet the people who lived on the plains, as I did in my youth, and hear their war stories of survival in the face of atmospheric adversity. But if one thing haunted me about my storm chasing, it was the death and destruction often left in the aftermath of a tornado. It was the dark side of the profession. People felt that storm chasers thrived on such macabre scenes. That was never the focus for me. I chased for the beauty of the storm and the adrenaline rush of getting close to a big tornado. I wanted to see the storm in all its majesty, not what it left behind. But too often, a tornado did leave something behind-a tale of lives and communities forever changed. The good and bad of storms were thus inextricably linked. Like a yin and yang, they coexisted and were inseparable. And every storm chaser wrestled with balancing a storm's angels and demons.
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