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Capturing the Moment with Ryan Mauk

[00:00:00] Gabriel: Howdy folks, and welcome to another episode of the Chaser Chat Podcast. I am Gabriel Harber, and I’m joined today by Ryan Mauk. How’s it going, man?

[00:00:08] Ryan: Hey, good. Good, Gabe. Thanks for having me.

[00:00:11] Gabriel: Absolutely. This is a podcast about, what would you say, maybe 18 months in the making? You and I first started chatting late spring, early summer of 2023 and I was super busy with a ton of stuff but I never forgot about you and I was super excited when I saw that you had reached out to the Chaser Chat Twitter account a few weeks ago and I was like, yeah, tell that guy to text me, get his ass on the podcast right now.

[00:00:33] Ryan: For sure, yeah, I’m glad to be here. It’s I always, I’m always down to talk about this passion of mine and ours and many people like us. And yeah, I was just totally down to totally down for it too. And I think it’s a good podcast is picking up and it has a growing audience. So it’s super exciting.

[00:00:52] Gabriel: The coolest thing to me chatting with you when we first started talking was, and this was one of the things that first really made me think I wanted to have you on the podcast at some point, is you get to go out and chase storms with your son, which is really freaking cool.

[00:01:08] Ryan: Yeah. Yeah. On, on, on occasion. Absolutely. I guess I first, when did he, I was try – I was actually thinking about this. When did he first go out with me? And I think it was actually, it was a day that I honestly wasn’t even planning on chasing. I knew there, there was a marginal risk and the hodos looked good, but I really didn’t think anything was gonna happen. I thought the CAPE was way too weak and there’s an EML way up there, it’s too warm, and all the things. Thought ah, nothing’s gonna happen, and we’re actually out shooting – side note, I’m a huge Star Wars buff, nerd, I should say. I know things about Star Wars that, that may, perhaps normal adults maybe shouldn’t know, but I do. So I made a fan film and my son was basically playing this role of a Jedi, young Jedi escaping from whatever blah, blah. We’re out in the middle of the Cheyenne National Grasslands and Southeast North Dakota. And so we get our shots or whatever, and we’re driving back and, I notice a pretty nice super cell off the list and check the radar just, just to see. I’m like, huh. Hey kid, you wanna go take a look , and then, and it kinda, yeah. That was, and then it actually turned out to be way more than we thought it was going to. We got a, we, he, we got within whole mile of a mesocyclone that was trying like hell to spit one down. You get the final Genesis where the, he got to see pretty close with the the clouds appearing right wherever the vortex is from that, the transient low pressure and everything. And yeah, that’s it. And he’s been hooked ever since. I think our highlight day, hands down, was back in ’23 around June… Gosh, I forget the exact date. We were out in western North Dakota. It was a moderate risk day. He saw his first four legit tornadoes that day. Granted, from a distance. I had him on board. I wasn’t quite ready to go as close as I normally try to get, but.

[00:03:08] Gabriel: You weren’t going to try and zero meter with your children.

[00:03:11] Ryan: Oh no, definitely not. I no. We just said, and plus like the road zone, if anyone’s ever chased out in Western North Dakota, the roads are segmental to the point that, there’s roads, but then you might not be the best roads. The shale that they use for the class five out there are they’re heavy clay based just because it’s really cheap for them to make it that way, such as it is in Kansas. People might know this. When that gravel, that particular brand of gravel gets wet and slimy, it’s pretty ugly. So you really have to know the roads and know where you’re at. But we actually ended up on two different supercells near Alexander, North Dakota in the same, I swear, 20 square mile area. Like one earlier thrown out a tornado. A couple of them actually moved on through and then another one came in the exact same area. The vortivity or whatever, was just deadlocked in that area did it again. It was a crazy day.

[00:04:11] Gabriel: What was that like getting to re-experience chasing for the first time, but through your son? Because I’m sure that a sense of wonderment that he had? I’m guessing it would remind me a lot, at least, of when I first started chasing. ‘Cause anything gets a little monotonous and a little bit just regimented after times after a while. It’s always cool to go out chasing with new people because you really get that fresh perspective and, everything is wondrous and every supercell looks awesome. I imagine it’s even cooler when it’s your kid.

[00:04:38] Ryan: Oh, yeah. It’s, to see his… to see that spark within him. ‘Cause before that we had gone out various times, locally or whatever. I’ve never taken them on a big run out to Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa, whatever, but yeah, to see his eyes light up and just be so excited. And, finally all that windshield time had panned out. And, and it’s funny cause like he always talked about he actually said something to the degree of in the movie Twisters like why don’t they talk about the drive? I was like, yeah because that’s not exciting at all. If you, yeah, exactly. It’s there’s eight hours of windshield time for maybe two hours of woo! Eight hours more of driving the way back. But it was so cool to see him. It reminded me of the first time I saw a tornado. I was God, I was like 16. I was on foot. There is a what I knew was a wall cloud. It was, over South Fargo and there’s a bunch of scud getting sucked up into it like, Oh man, that’s gonna throw a tornado. I ran back to my house, got the VHS camcorder and we blasted on foot over to the Lindenwood Park nearby where I lived and to get a clear view of this thing. And yeah, I mean that magic to, to see that recreated in my kid’s eyes and really finally got it. He was like “whoa” , and yeah, it’s just you can’t even put words to it. And I think it really drew an interest with him to where like later on I’m out in the inside of the car and he’s like on top of the truck, get to getting his shot and everything. There’s CG everywhere. But get in the car, get in the car kid. Yeah. But he loves it. He absolutely loves it.

[00:06:24] Gabriel: Now, when you and I had last talked about this about a year ago, I’d shared with you that my ex wife wouldn’t allow me to take our daughter storm chasing. She was 14 at the time and what I was joking about with you earlier about, Oh, you didn’t zero meter with your kid. That is what she and a lot of people – understandably so – that’s like their conception of storm chasing. So she thought, because of what on social media is the chasers getting completely blasted by tornadoes and bystanders posting videos of the tornado crossing the road, 50 yards in front of them. And so she thought that’s what it was going to be. So it took a lot of, it took a lot of me just hammering away about the actual safety of storm chasing, if you’re doing it like recreationally and correctly for her to finally but I am happy to say, and I think this is, I don’t think I’ve talked about this actually on the podcast yet since it happened. But earlier this year, I think it was back in April, I actually had a chance to go storm chasing with my daughter for the first time. And it was freaking awesome. Actually, it was her and her boyfriend at the time and two of his good friends. They all wanted to go as a little group. So I packed him into the car along with my brother It was a chase about an hour and a half to two hours away in western Ohio. I live in central Ohio near Columbus and it was one of those days where you have that corridor all the way up from you know the northwestern portion of the state down to Dayton, and things can fire off anywhere in between there. And so we went out and we’re watching some stuff and we didn’t even see a tornado, but you would have thought we saw like the absolute coolest thing on planet Earth the way they thought that the rotating wall cloud that we were about a mile away from observing, like they had never seen anything like that in their life. And like the CGs? Every single bolt the car was just like “Whoa! Did you see that? Oh my god!” So it was really awesome to think how do I consider this stuff mundane just because I’ve chased so many times? And then get to experience it with them, and that excitement, comes right back into it again. And yeah, it was just, it was a really awesome experience.

[00:08:25] Ryan: Yeah. Oh yeah. I, yeah, I hear you, man. It’s so cool to like, to get… when other people like see the stuff that we see on a regular basis, it is yeah, that’s rewarding. I have friends and coworkers and stuff like, Oh, you got to take me out. And first thing I’m like, are you sure? Positive. Really? Because you know what this is going to be, right? And then I always tell them it’s not going to be like, everything on TV and everything. But no, yeah it’s cool. You all, you all see like virgin eyes, so to speak, like you’ve never seen this stuff in real life and my son, now he knows why. I call it the Giants, it’s my thing how I describe there’s almost like an entity. I swear there’s almost like a presence there when it starts to throw down.

[00:09:11] Gabriel: It’s like an avatar of chaos.

[00:09:14] Ryan: It really is, yeah. There’s almost something, when you just stand out there, outside of the car, just you and the elements, and there’s just big, big meso, big wall cloud, just ripping… and I’ve, I guess the first time I saw that in its full splendor, up close and personal, I, it just felt to me like such a actual presence or even being, I dare to say, it was just something, there’s something there that’s just so alive. So huge, and so amazing.

[00:09:47] Gabriel: I think you absolutely have that right. You look at a lot of the world religions, everything from like Hinduism to the Greek and Roman pantheons, and a lot of times we get people who will talk about them disparagingly. ” Oh, how could these people have believed in like these, like omnipotent sky beings that, cosmically controlled our lives?” but in reality, when you start to actually dig into the history and the mythology, you understand that what they were really doing is they were creating like storylines around the very thing that you’re describing. These like just massive cosmic acts of nature that almost seem to have a presence and a consciousness in and of themselves. Like they were beings almost like you said. So like you have the Storm God. Gabriel Was it really a God creating all the storms? No, but like a storm is like an entity. Like once you’ve been enraptured by it, you know what that means. It’s… you’re up against something that’s so much larger than yourself. The only way you can really actually put some sort of description to it is to describe it as this like living thing that is just like incomprehensibly larger than you are.

[00:10:53] Ryan: Yeah that’s exactly it. It’s hard to describe it to people, and I guess what I do with my films I make out there, I really try to really hone in on that as much as I possibly can. Aside from the obvious: the tornado itself, or, the wall cloud or whatever in any given point, I try really hard to really show the actual motion and how alive that thing really is in it’s full splendor as much as possible, whether it be time lapses or just the absolute insane amount of structure that you get with some of these supercells out there that it’s just, yeah, it’s hard. Yeah. You nailed that though. You go back into history and how like people believed in gods and all this Gods of the sky and things like that. I totally understand it because yeah, once you see that in real life, it’s oh, yeah, it’s-

[00:11:41] Gabriel: Right?

[00:11:43] Ryan: That is pretty damn amazing right there.

[00:11:45] Gabriel: Yep, absolutely. And I like that you touched on like the cinematic quality of your videos because that’s actually something that has stood out to me a lot going through the content that you have on your YouTube channel. By the way, I also want to say pretty excited a couple of months ago to see that after you had taken a little bit of time off, it looks like the rear flank is going to be coming back strong here at some point in the future. So pretty cool to see that happening. But if you could actually just speak a little bit to what actually has inspired you to approach storm chasing with that more cinematic quality, because I like the Gonzo style as much as the next person. I think that there’s obviously a lot of appeal in that, and frankly, it’s easier to just edit your raw chase footage with people’s raw emotions and push it out there quickly to get the clicks and the views and the media buys and all that stuff. But there’s definitely a certain amount of care and thought that you put into your videos before you post them. So where did that come from?

[00:12:45] Ryan: Yeah thank you, first of all. I’m not entirely sure where… because I’ve taken all sorts of videos of what are maybe considered more of the traditional type like you would describe. Just hang a camera out there, get the shot, the wind noise, and the oh my god, and all the things, and boom, there it is. I guess with mine, really, I think this kind of goes back deeper to almost before storm chasing, before I really started taking storm chasing to a real serious level aside from just going out and seeing a severe thunderstorm or tornado warning locally. No, actually going out there and studying the science and reading the maps and going on these long journeys. Before any of that I was a musician, and I wanted… and that was a pretty, I was, that was what I wanted to do. I was pretty I guess I, in the minor leagues, I guess you could say of hip hop and stuff. I really wanted a music video. And the one guy in town that did music videos, for whatever reason, he just kept ducking and dodging me. And there was always some thing and whatever. So I’m like, yeah, I’m just going to take this money, get a camera and figure it out myself. And may I say those first music videos I made are just terrible. They’re just, ah, they’re all, they’re so bad. I just, I see them every now and then, I’m just like, oh God, why didn’t anyone tell me that was a bad idea? Anyway but I learned a lot, and I learned a lot about filmmaking. And so fast forward, I guess I was, I just looked at it and everybody does this particular little format, whether it be live streaming, which I’ve done, I’ve spent a lot of money on, all the different HDMI to USB converters and streaming and hosting and all that.

[00:14:29] But got to a level that like, I’m going to do something that’s about as story driven as possible with real life. Like I have a general synopsis of what I want to do story wise when I go out there. But, Ryan God or nature or whatever you call it, that’s the director. I’m basically taking what the props for lack of a better term that are given to me or not, and try to make some semblance of a storyline to where the basic subplot is, I’m just me. I chase tornadoes for fun and wish that there are thousands like me, I’m not special in every regard, but it’s just follows me to some degree, like more of the journey towards that amazement that, that sense of awe and wonder that we described earlier that when you see it for the first time, it’s like the most amazing yet frightening thing ever.

[00:15:24] Ryan: And I wrestled a long time with like how do I go about doing this. And some of the, like I said, I was inspired by, the, the greats, the G.O.A.T’s; Reed Timmer with the Storm Chasers series. There’s been a lot of guys that have done those types of things. That was more of a documentary type thing. I really wanted to make it just a little more on the story driven, like cinematic side of things more. So when I’m going out there, I just… I have a, like I said, I have a rough idea of, if nature cooperates, what if and how, what kind of shots, what the B roll is going to be. And then I just try to basically carve it out into 20 minutes – a short film basically, with like music and everything. That’s been my, that’s been my shtick for the last couple of, last few years here.

[00:16:16] Gabriel: Beautiful is not a word that is often associated with this podcast, but I have to say that explanation was absolutely beautiful. I’ve never heard the journey of storm chasing quite put in those terms. And I can already tell right now that the one quote you gave when you talked about nature being the director, it’s definitely going to stick with me. It’s one of those things where I just knew it as soon as I heard it. I was like, that’s going to be something that I will think of years down the road when I’m out storm chasing. It’s, that’s a really cool way to conceptualize like your relationship with nature while you’re trying to actually get these shots and create this like living thing with a cinematic feel.

[00:16:58] Ryan: Yeah, that’s the best way I can describe it. It’s just ’cause I’m not in charge, I’m out there just getting what I can get. If it’s great, if it busts, I, and I’ll even touch on that sometimes. I’ll throw in some B roll of, a blue sky bust and, cause that’s the reality of it. You go out there, go: oh my God, everything looks amazing. Look at that sounding. I’m not chasing. This is beautiful. I’ll even get a day off. You go out there and nature’s just nah. Not today.

[00:17:23] Gabriel: Not today.

[00:17:25] Ryan: Not today. You watch towers go up, they get up to the 15, 000, they choke, and you just, right away, you know that, Ah, gonna be one of these days. Maybe when the sun goes down. Maybe just get a little bit of cooling aloft. Nope. Nope, game over. Yeah, and that, that’s what it is, too. God, I’ve driven all the way to Western Kansas on a high risk high reward kind of gamble. And yeah, it didn’t turn out.

[00:17:49] Gabriel: And, humans, we really do connect with a story in a way that nothing else can compare to. One of the examples I like to give to people when I’m talking about that concept, because it’s actually a theme that comes up quite a bit in my life, is if you try to tell somebody exactly like how you built your Ikea shelf with its myriad of instructions and many frustrations along the way, they’re not gonna really care or even take in any of that information if you’re just like telling them and then I had to put you know Peg B into Slot F and you’re going on and on about that. But if you actually create like a story of how you like You know decided to roll out of bed Even though you were hung over from last night and you know It was raining like terrible and on the way there you almost got ran off the road by a semi because you were in their blind spot and then you arrived at the ikea and you couldn’t find a single person to help you out and you walked around aimlessly for, on and on. If you frame it in something like that, then you get that instant connection with people to where it’s actually something that they’ll internalize and remember it. Even if they’re don’t think they’re remembering like instructions on how to put the shelf together. If you put it inside of a story, they will retain part of that, at least like the essence of it. So that is one of the things that I think is so cool about taking things like these and putting them into coherent storylines.

[00:19:09] Ryan: Yeah, that’s it. It’s crazy to say Ikea, I I have lots of my marbles trying to put something together from Ikea.

[00:19:17] Gabriel: Is that a new video idea maybe in the future?

[00:19:19] Ryan: Maybe, yeah. Here’s what I do at home. Try to put in Ikea furniture to get it home. Yeah. Once I found it, which I guess I had been before the rear flank series, episode one, which was out in Selden, Kansas before that was like official, I was experimenting with that kind of format before that. And just trying to find what works, what doesn’t, and then finally, like that was like that day. Okay, this is it. This is going to be the one because for one thing, it was like the, it was the best day to that point that I had ever had. It was, I, we went north, we were on a cell. I can’t remember I was. Selden, Kansas is, for people that don’t know is in kind of north northwest Kansas, right under, under Nebraska and all that. And I just wanted to get on the east side of this rather nebulous blob of supercell, wait for it to get its act together. I didn’t want to go through this really slimy road that looked like it could have been okay. Maybe it wasn’t. I don’t want to gamble on a bad road. I’m going to go north. And as I’m going north, there is this dry line or this outflow boundary rather than, these tight little supercells. Every scan of the radar, they get tighter, nicer, 40, 45, 000 feet in no time at all. Okay, and then that was the show, so like it was just such a an amazing day and I wanted that was the first one that since then I’ve tried to carry it on okay episode two boom and try to try to carry on the that story somewhat you know and involving my son and with a with light narration here and there to describe like my thoughts and feelings you know before and during and after the event, sometimes, to really try to personify, my own personal experience with it. Yeah people have really enjoyed it so far.

[00:21:17] Ryan: It’s tricky too, because, sometimes it… in this day and age of the very it’s very, the videos that get the most views obviously are the quick and fast, right now boom, like you, you touched on earlier, there’s a tornado event or whatever. So then, you’re who is chasers, the guys are live streaming all the time, Reed, Brandon, all these guys are out there and they’re getting it up on the server within minutes, and they soar. And that’s really the algorithm, the algorithm that YouTube is just that it is, especially with the, the invention of the reels and the shorts that they have on there now, it’s even more, it’s even more so of that quick, right now, ADD, I don’t want to pay attention for more than 30 seconds kind of thing where that is more favored in the algorithm more than mine. And it’s been frustrating sometimes, to not maybe garner the the view count, the subscriptions and a lot of people that have been, and out of fairness, a lot of these folks have been doing this for a lot longer and they’re well, way more well established, but that has been frustrating as far as, putting out what I think is probably like just an amazing episode, like the last one I put out, which was the best chase I’ve ever had ever period point blank. August 28th. Actually a good friend of mine, Shane was out with me that day. He got the hodograph from that day tattooed on him. It was that good of a day. Oh yeah. It was just like, it was just tornado fest, man. It wasn’t that far away. It was in South Dakota, which was like, I think it’s personally still to this day, my favorite state to chase. And yeah, it was just just an amazing thing.

[00:22:53] Kay: Hey everyone, Kay here from Rough Skies Ahead and Chaser Chat. I wanted to give a quick shout out to the new Chaser Chat YouTube page, where you can find all your favorite episodes uploaded in video form with a transcription to follow along with. The link is in the podcast description.

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[00:23:40] Gabriel: I was just going to say, normally when we start off these episodes, I like to ask people about their background to lead up to stuff and we definitely have gone about it in the opposite direction, but I felt like the conversation was really just flowing that way, but I really am interested also in learning about how it is you actually got interested in storms in the first place and ended up jumping into this crazy little hobby that we all have.

[00:24:05] Ryan: How? How did I? I’ve thought about this for so long. I guess I’ve always been the kid… I can remember being in, like a Lasky program of sorts, or no, it was like basically elongated daycare for after I got done with elementary school and like right here in first grade where, where I either be like a tornado drill, a tornado warning, and I’d be the kid who’s outside there really trying to I want to go, I want to see and they literally have to be like dragging me inside no, Ryan, we have to go inside now. And I, it’s funny how you remember things when you’re young, seeing wall clouds and yellow and green skies and all these things when you’re younger and I just remember like just being so enthralled and fascinated. I think it was a combination perhaps of that mixed with a little bit of Wizard of Oz, and that, and we’re talking like this is like in the late 80s or so I’ve always been enthralled with it. Later on in life, before, way before I even decided to Let’s go storm chasing. It was more of a thing like, we, this is before anybody had weather apps on their phones or anything like that. I was just, you listen to the radio, there’s a severe thunderstorm morning for Western Cass county until X, Y, and Z. And you just throw on the NOAA’s national weather repeater on up here at 1660 AM and drive towards the dark spot and hope for the best. But I never saw anything. I guess the one time when I was about 20, I got home from work and my buddy’s Hey, man, it’s a tornado warning. Let’s go. I’m like, yeah, say no more.

[00:25:47] Let’s get out of here. We went just west of town big wall cloud up in the sky. And it was, just rip, roaring, fast, rotating, so like idiots we let it come right over the top of us, which was like the worst… now I know that’s the worst place you could possibly be, but and it looked like, Ryan I remember, it looked like almost a big snake coiling up in the sky, like how it was just turning and contorting and twisting and everything, and then There was a big wall of gray and a roar to the west, and we were looking at it, and what is that? That’s not a tornado, is it? No, I can’t be. What it was is it was torrential downpour rain that ended up flash flooding Fargo. It was six and a half inches of rain in, geez, I don’t even know, like maybe an hour? We waded back to my town home, like up to our knees in streets that otherwise don’t ever flood. It was quite ridiculous. But I think it’s always been an absolute just obsession of mine, but I can never really, I never really know how to, I didn’t even know like storm chasers really existed outside of, the movie Twister. And I just thought it was, something that only like certain people from the weather service or the university laboratories went out and did. Later on, I think I, me as well as everybody was really watching Reed Timmer and the Storm Chasers show, it really made me think God maybe I can, this might actually be something I can do. So I, I took a Skywarn class. I learned that, all the basics of it. And then I really started learning, diving deeper and learning all the basic weather, severe weather meteorology, even going through Rich Thompson’s webinar, the tornado forecasting, which was so above my head.

[00:27:38] Ryan: I, what that looked like is that, play a little bit. I don’t know what he’s talking about. I don’t know what that term is. So I, pause it, look it up, understand, okay, and then just go through it. And I used to fall asleep to episodes one through, gosh, what is it, like nine or something like that. Just really trying to absorb every little bit of it. So that way I can, to the best of my ability anyway, look at things aside from what the SPC says and look at things and be like, all right, I’m going to be within 50 miles, and let’s hope it’s here. And from that, just a combination of learning about the actual science behind it and the meteorology behind it and going and actually panning out your hunch and your forecast and your chase plan and it pans out and it’s just, it’s grown into such a log that it’s yeah, I guess it’s been about a decade in the making, my real, like actual love for storm chasing. But I think, yeah, to answer your question, I ran on there, but I think it was rooted on seeing this stuff when I was a young child and I was wanting to get a little closer and really see it and that, yeah, that even can carry on today. I think I push it just a little more each time I’m out there.

[00:28:50] Gabriel: So when was the first time you went out and chased with all of that sort of newfound knowledge and learning about, how to create your own forecast and things like that?

[00:29:01] Ryan: I would say Father’s Day 2015. Yeah, that was the day that I actually made the effort, read up on it, decided where I’m going to be, and it panned out. That was out near Bison, South Dakota. Gosh, it was about 4:30pm when it really started picking off and the supercell put down a family of I think… I saw three reportedly there were five total the other two I did not see. But that was the first day that had really sunk home all the planning, all the hopes and all the, everything. And it finally just stuck. And yeah, that was the, I would almost say that was my first official storm chase where I was like taking it seriously and going a distance and it panned out.

[00:29:46] Gabriel: So while all of this interest in storm chasing and videography are brewing in the background from talking to you earlier, it sounds like you were also pursuing a professional career. If you want to maybe talk a little bit about that, and I’m guessing also because of the nature of the work that you do, it probably has some crossover implications for people who are out storm chasing, particularly when it comes to search and rescue and giving first aid.

[00:30:11] Ryan: So I work as a registered nurse in a critical care unit. I’ve been there for… oh, geez. I’ve been with my particular company now for five years. I’ve been within the critical care realm for almost nine now almost eight years, but I’ve been a nurse since 2008. That, yeah, that’s my day job. I get to participate in the, at least, effort of saving people’s lives and being a small part of a larger whole in that regard. A lot of times being the front and center, like that one person right there making it all happen. I try to describe to people that if you look at medicine, the science of medicine is, the military, the doctors, with the exception of surgeons who are actually doing things, the doctors are diagnosing the generals and then the nurses are the lieutenants and sergeants at the front line actually doing said things and in the intensive care realm, that’s very it is very life and death. It’s very fast paced. It’s sometimes very sad, sometimes, cause people do die. But it’s, I found it to be a very rewarding career and taking that out. Taking that, God forbid, taking that out into the the chasing world, hopefully that never happens. Hopefully I never have to see anything like that, but I am prepared to do first aid. And I have a small trauma bag with me that I can do some basic things and yeah. I’ve yet to actually be where there’s actual casualties, I rolled up on debris a few times. But hopefully that never happens, but it, God forbid, if that doesn’t happen, I can at least help help save a life.

[00:31:53] Gabriel: One comment I do want to make on that and feel free to not provide an answer because I don’t want to put you on a spot saying anything that you might not be comfortable addressing, but at least for myself, and I know a lot of other people who are in the weather or storm chasing communities; You see a lot of talk on social media where people are, I guess for lack of a better way of describing it they say the reason they chase storms is because they want to save lives, which to me always feels like, just a little contrived. I’m not saying that anybody actively wants anyone to get hurt or that if a person pulls up on damage, they’re not going to help out, ’cause we see instances of that from pretty much any storm chaser that you see streaming or making content. Like, they’re going to help if a situation that they roll up on requires help. The degree to which they’re able to help is obviously dependent upon each individual person’s abilities. But I like that, have you ever heard that like that Eastern proverb that it’s it’s better to be a warrior in a garden than a gardener in a war?

[00:33:01] Ryan: Yes. I love that quote. God, I love that.

[00:33:05] Gabriel: Yeah. It’s a great, it’s a great quote. And it reminds me of like you, here you are, like you actually have all those skills, like a person like yourself has the ability to claim that like I’m going out there and I know like exactly how to render the first aid. I have a trauma bag. I know how to do all this stuff. And so like you could actually get away with plausibly saying that that is your like main or sole reason for going out and chasing storms is you want to help save lives and people that have been impacted by disaster and stuff. But I find it interesting that like even though you obviously would do that if the situation ever called for it, and I have no doubt you would do it without hesitation, you are clearly like storm chasing because you see its inherent beauty because you want to actually take that beauty and you want to share it with your audience that you’ve built on social media on YouTube and stuff like that. And so it just reminds me of that quote because it’s like here’s the person with the ability the person who’s the quote unquote warrior and understands that going out and chasing storms, that’s not the most productive use if that’s what your primary motivation goal is in life, that’s not always going to be, like the number one way to do it. I know that I’m probably, I’m not doing this topic great justice, but it just struck me as very interesting that a person who probably more capable than 99.9% of people out there who might say something like that. That’s not like the main thing that you brought to the table when you were talking about your motivations and the reason that you go out storm chasing.

[00:34:29] Ryan: Yeah, no, and it’s not. My main focus is to capture to the best of my ability Hollywood quality footage of real life events. Unfortunately, these real life events sometimes do hurt people. It’s not my goal to, because I hope I never, I hope I never find myself in a position where I have to render any first aid. I used to even be one that, I would ascribe to the thought that, actually, no I’m not going to just be diving in a pile of debris where there’s power lines, maybe, gas lines, whatever, to make myself yet another problem for EMS, just because I want to help. Of course, my heart would be in the right place, but now I might actually be making things worse, but I experienced debris in Minnesota this last July, and I was right out of the car, right away, right up in there and luckily everybody was fine. I guess I think that storm chasers obviously are the first people to confirm or deny, and I’ve said this sound know how many times and I’ll still die on this hill that anytime anybody hears the term confirmed tornado, it was probably because of us. There’s been many false. There’s been many false calls by law enforcement, local fire, things like that, or even Novi storm chasers that are seeing things in the dark that they’re, not sure what they’re seeing. But so in that regard, yeah. But that’s not the why for me and I think honestly so some people take that a little too far as their primary goal. I wouldn’t go as far as to say that the folks are really beating that horn about saving lives and going out there and that’s their primary mission more like. Okay, so what are you going to do, God forbid, if you find somebody who has a tree through their lung, what do you do?

[00:36:34] And for me, as a registered nurse, there’s this kind of a line that I toe that I do not pass that line either, because I’m not a paramedic. I’m not a paramedic, nor do I have the authority under a physician or a medical entity to render certain types of care. Like I can do maybe a little more than the than your basic first aid, but I’m not gonna be out there starting IVs or you know putting neck braces on people. I do have an AED in the car, but that’s something that anybody can use and they design them so anybody can use them. It’s tricky because, you don’t want to just going to show up and say, Oh, I’m a nurse and this, that, and the other no, I really like, because as far as what that goes as a nurse, I’m really only as good as the tools I have available to me and the tools that I have that are authorized for my use. It’s an entirely different deal in the pre hospital setting, what we call it. In the hospital, yeah, I work under a doctor’s license and a hospital’s prescriptive authority. I can do this, that, and the other protocols and whatever, but when I’m out in the field, that’s a whole different thing.

[00:37:44] Gabriel: And I think I was trying to think of a good way to tie everything together that I was trying to say. I think, and I think you did a great job of talking about how that’s not the primary motivation. I think that’s the main thing is that I think a lot of people are uncomfortable just saying that they enjoy storms. That they like storms, because you can’t have storms without some destruction. It’s just a fact of life. They cause some destruction. Some unlucky people are going to have the worst days of their lives. It’s terrible. We all wish it didn’t happen, and it almost strikes me as like a guilty conscience thing of sorts, where a person has to find a justification for why they enjoy storms even though they cause all this mayhem and chaos and injury and sometimes death and that’s how they’re able to come to grips with it themselves and I guess if there’s one takeaway from this that I really like the way you framed everything is that like you can enjoy storms just for storm’s sake and if you incidentally find yourself in a position to just be a human and help other people that’s awesome, too. But like I don’t think there’s any need to parade that out as the the primary virtue of what it is you’re doing when I think we all know deep down if you were really into saving lives, there are much more effective ways to do it in other fields or other areas of expertise. And if that was your primary motivation in life, you probably would have been drawn to one of those fields. It’s more of an incidental thing You’re here because you love storms. And that’s awesome. We all love storms. We don’t need to, we don’t need to frame it that way.

[00:39:12] Ryan: Exactly. I’ve touched on this before in a doc I did, it was on Amazon actually, called The Chase. I said, it’s a, it’s like the biggest paradox ever. I love going out and seeing these things. And I, yes, I hope for these things. And yes, we cheer for these things when we’re out there. In the middle of a field, like screaming atop my lungs. Yes, and and yeah, I’ve had people on YouTube, like basically accost me like how could you be so excited for something. So you know, and yeah, and right, I get it. As much as we love the to see these things and hope to see these things, on the flip side, we hope that they are out in the middle of nowhere, not hurting anything, and God forbid, if they do, then that’s the last thing we want to happen. But it’s and sometimes, even, I guess I’ve been doing this long enough to also see, to live with, I guess I call the way to witness where you were out there shooting the tornado, things were great and, this is everything you strive to do, then things happen, and people got hurt or people did lose their home and you drive back and that excitement? It dwindles. And it gets changed when you think of a person’s like right now trying to figure out the rest of their lives and I’m just driving home like thinking about how quick I can get this footage on. So sometimes there’s a way to witness to and that’s something that I’ve really like struggled with, is a human being and just is, obviously none of us want wish for destruction. And I think that there’s a kind of sad perception with some people in the regular world, so to speak, that, they they think they were, we’re just some sadistic ghouls out there just hoping for destruction. And no, that’s not it at all. Actually, none of us wish for that. Like my best day, like 8/28 this last August, and there was, it was a great day because I saw multiple tornadoes in all the forms, all the shapes, no one got hurt. There was like EF2 damage, I think someone’s quonset got smucked or something like that. And that was as bad as it got. Could have been way worse. Cause that thing was, that thing threw down. And if that would have been in a populated area, I gotta forget, it would have been a lot worse. It’s like the ideal situation. It does its thing. No one gets hurt. And there it is, but yeah, when people do get hurt, it’s a. It’s a thing. I think Mike Scantlin talked about it to some degree. I remember once on Twitter, I can’t remember the exact conversation, but they’re just talking about how once you witness something like that, it changes you. And it I think for me, like this last July in Minnesota, like it didn’t, it didn’t change my drive and it didn’t change my motivation and it didn’t attenuate that either. I guess the best way I can describe it is that I have a lot more respect for these things now. Seeing firsthand what they do, feeling the the terror and the quivering voice of a mother whose two children and herself is just got out of a cabin that was completely destroyed by a tree that got dropped in the middle of it? Seeing that was like I respect this a lot more than I maybe did when I was brand new, just out there trying to get the shot.

[00:42:40] Gabriel: What was it you called it about the witness?

[00:42:42] Ryan: The way to witness.

[00:42:45] Gabriel: The way to witness.

[00:42:46] Ryan: It’s heavy. It puts a really heavy smoky blanket on otherwise metaphorically a sunny day at the beach. And it’s something I think about a lot. I know there’s been a lot of other storm chasers that have… they came up on death, and came up on really terrible things that no one ever wants to see. And I think that’s something that a lot of us are… lot of us are maybe even haunted by. But I think that those of us that keep doing it regardless, is, I guess for me right now it’s a love and is, I’m enthralled by it and I don’t see my love for it dying, but there’s definitely there’s a bit very loud yang to that yin.

[00:43:27] Gabriel: That’s a good way to put it.

[00:43:29] Ryan: There’s ‘s you know, there’s just a real there’s a dark side to this that is real it is present and I don’t think anyone’s ready for it when they see it. But I guess maybe I’m a little, I’m excited. This isn’t, I’ve seen all sorts of injuries and even worse death, in my professional career as a nurse. But it’s a lot different when you’re going out there, witnessing something and it throws down and you’re driving back, like I was saying ugh.

[00:43:53] Gabriel: Yeah, like you said earlier, there’s a big difference between, what you’re authorized to do in a clinical setting with the proper tools and the proper authority and everything else versus what you can do if you just happen to come across somebody and I imagine that mentally the same thing is there, right? Like when you’re in that hospital setting, you’re expecting and there’s a protocol and there’s even within the chaos and orderliness to everything, but to have that visceral experience of witnessing it out in the field, like in real life, it has to be different. It couldn’t be the same. It has to be different.

[00:44:27] Ryan: Yeah. Oh yeah. It’s just something that’s… I think once you get to that point that happened but I don’t know. I think and who knows? Maybe next year I’ll roll up on something that just bothers me so much that I just I take a break or I never come back again. And I think maybe that’s even happened to a lot of chasers too. That, and aside that, aside from the burnout, the money, the countless hours, all the wear and tear on your vehicle, bad gas station food, there’s so many, I think there’s so many things that, deter somebody.

[00:44:59] Gabriel: It’s not a hobby for the gastrointestinally weak.

[00:45:03] Ryan: No, definitely not. I had a spiritual experience in a bad way from a deli express, freaking Chuck Wagon, whatever the hell burger it was, it tasted fine. Oh man that that took me for a ride. I never wanted to die so bad in my life, it was so bad.

[00:45:20] Gabriel: Oh man. As we close out the podcast here, and you’ve alluded to it a couple of times on this episode, so I’d just like you to maybe take a minute or two and give the listeners a preview of what they can expect when they head over to your channel and watch that video from August 28th from the South Dakota tornado, because I was just pulling it up on YouTube and looking at it, it seems like that video has performed really well for you. That thumbnail is an absolute monster. It looks just like absolutely crazy tornado. I want to watch it. Without giving away too much of the plot, give them a little sample of what they can expect.

[00:45:55] Ryan: Oh, that thing was looking better and better as the time to clock ticking down to zero, the days coming up to her looking better and better. And side note, there was one of our friends up in the Dakotas, Minnesota, we’re a tight knit little group, and someone we knew had a pretty bad health scare and they were maybe not going to be able to chase for too much longer after. So this was like the last for a long time. So there was a lot of Okay, God, this has to work today. Like this has to be, this has to overperform. It just has to for all of us. This is probably the last chase of the year too. And it was right in the middle of it’s titled the Death Ridge. People that have been doing this long enough know what that is. It’s the big nebulous Hell blob of heat that just parks itself right in the middle of the country and nothing happens and it sucks and it’s just the worst thing ever. But dynamics prevailed this day and it finally threw down. It starts off very, very cinematic, some aerial shots going into the first tornado was near gosh, what’s that town? New, no, not New Salem Like Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota was out there, and then it ducked, the supercell dove south into South Dakota, and that’s when it really got interesting. There’s a lot of different close range shots. There’s actually my first successful aerial shot of a tornado on the ground that actually ended up being two at the same time.

[00:47:26] One of those was the main parent tornado and there’s a satellite vorticity to its north or to in the frame would have been to the right. And I’m trying to get that framed, actually, that exact shot. And it’s just, yeah, it was one of the, one of the better days ever and the positioning worked out well. Some of the most. ridiculous obscene structure I have ever seen in my entire life. I’ll say that much. I’ve never seen structure like this and like six, seven different tornado genesis’s. It was just the best chase I’ve ever had so far. So yeah, highly encourage everybody to go check that out. It’s it’s about 22 minutes long.

[00:48:06] Gabriel: I know. I’m definitely going to be watching that later this evening. Everybody that’s listening to this podcast should go and do the same, and also Ryan, if they want to connect with you on social media, just let them know where can they find the YouTube channel, how about Twitter, Instagram, that sort of stuff?

[00:48:22] Ryan: Oh, sure. Yeah. So the YouTube channel is Ryan Mauk Storm Chaser. Otherwise you can just, if you Google The Rear Flank, THE, The Rear Flank You’ll definitely find it’s right at the top there. Ah, Twitter, I guess my handle’s @CharlieMiza. That’s left over from my music days, but I just kept it just because, I don’t know, I didn’t feel like making a new Twitter and that’s where we’re at. Facebook, you can find me at just Charles Ryan Mauk. And Instagram is also Charles Ryan Mauk. I do have TikTok, I’m never on there. Yeah, kinda it. Oh, I got a blue sky account, it’s Charles Ryan Mauk. I just got that yesterday.

[00:49:08] Gabriel: Seems like a lot of people are flocking over that way.

[00:49:10] Ryan: Yeah, it’s no negativity. I like it.

[00:49:13] Gabriel: I have to ask before I let you go, if I go to the YouTube channel, are there any Easter eggs of those old music videos you were talking about?

[00:49:20] Ryan: Oh, no, that’s on a different channel. That’s a way different channel. If you Google Charlie, it’s a C H A R L I E. And then there’s a M I Z A, pretty sure some of those are still on there. Some of the earlier ones, they might still be on there. Oh, they’re terrible. Yeah. That was a totally different YouTube channel altogether. They’re not all bad though. Some of them actually turned out pretty good.

[00:49:42] Gabriel: Hell yeah. So you have two assignments then listeners.

[00:49:44] Ryan: For sure. Yeah. Give a thumbs up and share all the things, but most definitely. Yeah. If you want to give me a sub on Ryan Mauk storm chaser, I’d really appreciate it and yeah, I think I think you’ll like it. There’s 17 episodes on all of us. So if you want a serious tornado video binge, I highly recommend it.

[00:50:00] Gabriel: Hell yeah. Ryan, thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me today, man.

[00:50:04] Ryan: For sure. Thanks for having me. Glad to do it.

[00:50:06] Gabriel: Thanks for listening. If you’re not already subscribed, hit that button right now and then make sure notifications are turned on so you never miss an episode again. There are lots of ways to show your support for Chaser Chat. You can pick up something from the merch store, leave a rating and a review on your favorite podcast app, leave a comment and a like on YouTube, or just share the link to this episode on your preferred social media platform. Thanks again for listening, and I’ll catch you on the next episode.