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It actually happened rather by accident. I spent some time reading about thunderstorms,
I don't remember where... probably off of the Weather Channel's homepage... and I got hooked.
My curiosity is something close to insatiable, and I'm afraid for a while I got rather focused
on the weather. I decided to learn as much as I conveniently could, and I discovered that
there's a lot of convenient information available to one with an internet connection, as you've
no doubt deduced by now. So I began trying to learn how to forecast weather. Which means I had to learn how the weather works. Sounds easy, right? The weather is an unbelievably complex machine, with forces and influences and laws and trends that are much more numerous and subtle than you'd ever expect. At least, it was much more than I expected. Did this stop me? Hell no! I dug right in. And bogged right down. Who would've ever thought that you'd need math to understand the weather? Normally this would be no problem for me, but this isn't elementary school math. We're talking fluid dynamics. We're talking horribly complex mathematical models to describe and predict weather behavior. I must admit, I was in over my head. Fortunately, it didn't turn out to be as big a roadblock as I had initially feared. While it's true that I cannot fully appreciate exactly how the ETA or NICMOS models are generated, I could learn to use them and get a better idea of what was going on behind the scenes that produce the pretty pictures on my TV screen. Thus began a wonderful adventure into the world of weather. It's a strange and beautiful place, our atmosphere. After the initial brick wall of mathematics, I stepped back and tried another (much more humble) approach. I started with clouds. You know, those big white fluffy things up in the sky. They can provide an amazing amount of information to the person who knows exactly what they are, where they are, and what causes them to form. Besides that, they're pretty. Learning about clouds necessarily taught me about convection, humidity, pressure, dewpoints, fronts, and air masses among other things. This was much more like it. All this studying, not surprisingly, led me into the study of storms. The simple definition of a storm would run something like "Mother nature gets interesting." Seriously, storms fascinate me. Big ones, like hurricanes. Small ones, like a summer shower. And terrifying ones, like supercell thunderstorms that spawn tornados. Naturally, learning all this stuff about the weather and atmosphere instilled in me a desire to go out there and see it happening. Like most things in life, not all weather is exciting. The most exciting and interesting weather phenomenon to watch is, of course, the storm. Most people nowadays, when they hear the phrase "Storm Chaser" think of crazy yahoos out chasing tornados. This image is one that's been popularized in the media of late, especially with movies like Twister. While there probably are people like that, I'm not one of them. I'm quite uninterested in getting hurled up against a tree (or similar obstacle) by 200+ mph winds, thank you very much. Besides, I've seen plenty of tornados. I grew up in Texas, inside Tornado Alley. When I saw tornados getting too close, I got under cement. I'm no fool. However, I do like to chase storms. I do not like to get under them. That's a dangerous place to be, and visibility is terrible. Speaking primarily about thunderstorms, I prefer to stand off a few miles where I can observe the formation, development, and death of the cell(s). Truthfully, it's quite awe-inspiring to see how much power is released in even a "little" thunderstorm. |
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