Chasing storms, catching experience

A shout cut through the air. “Is that a tornado?”

The 15 meteorology students who made up the 2025 Hokie Storm Chasers were abuzz with excitement. Standing on a gravel road in rural Minnesota, they watched the core of a storm receding to the east when they saw the prize of the trip. A tornado had dropped from dark clouds above. 

Immediately, cameras and cellphones were pointed at the tornado as it moved away, soon to be hidden by trees.

“We just saw a tornado. Boom!” said Molly Busbice, a senior meteorology major who served as a teaching assistant on her second Hokie Storm Chase. 

Minutes later, a second tornado appeared a safe distance away and tracking in the opposite direction. The tornadoes were relatively small and, because they damaged no structures in the remote location, they were not rated on the Enhanced Fujita scale. 

Seeing tornadoes was the primary purpose of the Hokie Storm Chase, a field course established in 1992 in the Department of Geography, part of the College of Natural Resources and Environment. The summer trip to the Midwest allows students who have learned the concepts of meteorology to see severe weather up close.

The Midwest is a living classroom

Late spring and early summer feature tumultuous weather in the central United States, and the Hokie Storm Chase takes meteorology students directly to the source. The experience has students finding and pursuing the storms in the Great Plains, seeing how they form and function, and exploring the impact they have on the environment. 

The Hokie Storm Chase does not have a pre-determined end date. The duration is determined by the weather patterns and likelihood of severe weather in the near future.

The value of field work like the Hokie Storm Chase has proven itself time and again. Aaron Swiggett ’18, a trip leader for the seventh time this year who participated in three others as an undergraduate, said the experience helped him land a job at the National Weather Service (NWS).

“This trip is the reason I was so prepared to enter the workforce,” Swiggett said. “The NWS looked at that very favorably for moving into an operational forecasting role.”

Student Audrey White said the experience will help her as a forecaster.

“We can more quickly, thoroughly, and accurately understand models because of the real-time aspects of weather instead of looking at and reviewing previous case studies over longer periods of class time,” she said.

Seeing severe weather in person is an experience brings classroom concepts to life.

“This experience was a great reinforcement of the content covered in the Severe Weather class,” said student Anthony Caserta. 

White agreed. “Previously, most of us students had only studied on paper how to efficiently forecast storms and look for individual signs, whereas now we have practically two weeks’ worth of physical experience with the subject.”

Knowing where to look

The tornadoes dropped about a mile from the Hokie Storm Chasers just before 8 p.m. outside the tiny town of Grygla, Minnesota. 

Positioning themselves in a location to see the twisters was a matter of precision forecasting that began more than two days before, about 1,000 miles south in western Oklahoma. As the weather pattern there turned hot with strong, southerly winds and clear skies, the models showed no near-term severe weather threats. The next possibility was the northern Plains, two or three days in the future.

The 15 students and trip leaders – including Dave Carroll ’84, senior instructor of meteorology, and Swiggett - enacted a plan.

The Hokie Storm Chase moved north.

The group used models posted by the National Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center, along with satellite imagery and meteorological data streamed to the internet from ground stations, to track conditions across the U.S. Meteorologists in the Storm Prediction Center create models that show areas of likely storm development and write daily discussions that forecast storms for broad areas. As the day proceeds, the center will issue mesoscale discussions (MD) as storms develop.

“Think of it as an experienced forecaster discussing their thoughts on how they anticipate the severe weather to evolve over the next few hours,” Swiggett said.

“There’s a new MD out of NWS Grand Forks,” Carroll said over the radio as the group traveled through Minnesota. The students looked online to see the latest models. The town of Thief River Falls was identified as a target. About an hour away from the town, the storms were stronger than expected. Tornado formation was a greater possibility.

Stopping at a park in Thief River Falls, the radar, data, and atlas, were used to hone in on a location from a storm easily seen to the east. Selecting a route into the remote area, the chasers moved toward the storm, found a location that provided a clear vantage point, and watched as the cloud base passed over, then the tornados dropped on the back side of the storm.

“Most people are surprised how close we can get to the storm in relative safety, as long as you have a good bead on the storm motion, the road network,” Carroll said. “Knowing where you are, in the inflow region of the storm, where the best features of the storm are visible, that’s where we try to locate.”

A storm and a mad dash

For some of the students, the tornadoes were the highlight of the trip, but others said it was a severe storm in Kansas that unknowingly featured a tornado shrouded in rain.

Like the Minnesota storm, the Kansas storm was predicted more than a day in advance. At the start of day two of the chase in Iowa, the signs pointed to the atmosphere being capable of storm creation the next day in western Kansas. The day’s travel ended in Topeka, Kansas, with the first real chase expected the next day. 

Day three began at 9 a.m. with a laptop and projector showing current satellite views, courtesy of a website run by the College of DuPage, frequently used by the chasers. By analyzing data from the Storm Prediction Center, they identified atmospheric boundaries.

Winds, temperatures, moisture levels, and a value called CAPE — the convective available potential energy — came into play. The models predicted western Kansas would see storm formation. Now, the students had to narrow that to a specific location. 

The target they set was Medicine Lodge, Kansas, 220 miles and four hours to the southwest. 

The chase was on.

Entering Harper, Kansas, roughly 35 miles east of Medicine Lodge, the western skies were dark. High above, an anvil cloud soared high and bright, indicating storm formation. The caravan pulled into a parking area to gather current conditions. The storm was forming east of Medicine Lodge, just west of Harper. The chasers were in the perfect spot. 

As the group moved to the entrance of a small airport with an open view of the west, the clouds grew. A strong wind blew toward the storm. The storm’s central updraft was sucking in air from the surrounding area at a rate that made a constant wind at the backs of the chasers.

The students saw a shelf cloud form.

Graden Shoemaker said watching the storm develop provided a lesson he could not get in a classroom. 

“I was shocked to see how fast the motion of clouds in rotating thunderstorms can be, which was especially apparent with the supercell in Harper, Kansas,” Shoemaker said. “That storm in particular made me realize seeing a rotating wall cloud in person is completely different than seeing one on video.”

As the storm strengthened it passed over the airport. Driving east from Harper parallel to the storm path, the chasers encountered dozens of other chasers, a growing concern as more amateurs think of severe weather as a hobby.

All 18 Hokie Storm Chasers had a job to do while the vans were actively chasing storms.

“Each van has six seats and each has a job,” Busbice said. “The driver, obviously, and the navigator are in the front. The middle two seats are the ‘hot seats’ because they are actively forecasting, working on the computers. The back two seats are the spotters, our eyes on the sky, watching the storm and watching other traffic around us.”

The vans were equipped with a laptop, hotspot, CB radio, and a handheld shortwave radio. The navigators handled maps and radios, relaying directions and observations between the vans so all three would be moving with one purpose toward a single destination.

After outrunning the storm, the chasers found a spot a Kansas farm road where they could safely observe the storm approach. Radar showed a tornado was within the storm, but there was no way to see through the rain.

As the group moved out of the storm’s path, Carroll pointed out an eerie feature of powerful storms: the color of the clouds. There’s a greenish, aquamarine glow from sunlight filtered through thick storm clouds. 

Homeward bound

After the tornado sightings in Minnesota, combined with the experiences in Kansas and another in Oklahoma, Carroll gathered the group and presented a choice: head home or keep going. 

As the group considered its next move, there were two areas of possible future storms. One system was spawning storms in Illinois and Indiana, which were on the route to Virginia. Meanwhile, atmospheric instability was starting in the Rocky Mountains, but targeting Wyoming or Colorado meant two days driving west and two more returning. 

The 15 students decided to go west.

Two days later the chase was in eastern Wyoming, heading south to Colorado where storms were firing. 

While the storm intercepted in Colorado did not spawn tornadoes, it provided an exercise in the process of picking a target but re-assessing as conditions change.

“It was an awesome experience being able to learn the mechanics of what storm chasing really entails,” said student Bella Lisowski. “While it can be mesmerizing and beautiful, it also reminded me that the weather can be unpredictable, no matter how many models you look at or how much research you do.”