(Transcript) Flashback: Interview with Storm Chaser Pecos Hank

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[00:00:00] Hey, everyone. You may have noticed that this is a flashback episode. Over the years, the number of people that listen to Chaser Chat has grown significantly, and I wanted to highlight some of the older podcasts so that all of you new folks have a chance to listen. There may be some dated references, advertisements, etc.,

[00:00:16] so just ignore those, and I hope you enjoy the episode.

[00:00:22] Gabriel: Howdy folks and welcome back to another episode of the Chaser Chat Podcast. I’m your host, Gabriel Harbor. I want to thank all of you who are tuning in, whether you’re listening on iTunes, Google Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, or anywhere else that you consume your podcasts. We appreciate you being here with us today. Today’s guest is somebody that I’m gonna go out on a limb and say you’ve probably watched some of his YouTube videos because he is one of the most prolific content creators on the platform. Pecos Hank. How’s it going, my man?

[00:00:50] Pecos: Hello, Gabriel. Hello, world. It’s great to be here.

[00:00:53] Gabriel: It’s very awesome to have you here talking with us today. I think that a lot of people have seen your videos, they’ve heard your voice, but they haven’t learned anything about the man behind the camera. We’re gonna dig into that a little bit today, if that’s alright.

[00:01:06] Pecos: Let’s talk about me!

[00:01:08] Gabriel: Yeah, I like it completely unabashed. So I’m just gonna go ahead and give you the floor and wherever you want to start telling us about, what got you into this, what allowed you to become one of the biggest, I’m gonna call you the biggest storm chasing stars on YouTube. How did this all come about?

[00:01:24] Pecos: Wow. Thank you for that. There’s a lot of amazing storm chasers out there. A lot of my friends. So if you hear me talking badly about a storm chaser. He’s probably a close friend of mine. So yeah, it started out it’s Oh, that’s a long one, man. I just love storms. How’s that?

[00:01:38] Gabriel: That’s good, but I’m not sure that’s exactly podcast caliber. So I’m gonna, I’m gonna urge you to go a little bit deeper than that.

[00:01:45] Pecos: Yeah, pry away. You might get some short answers out of me and you can just keep prying.

[00:01:49] Gabriel: Word. Let’s go back to where it started. What originally, ignited that passion for storms in you? Everyone’s got a story, whether it was a tornado that went through their hometown, or something they saw on the news, or being trapped in the basement during a tornado warning as a little kid. What was it that sort of fueled that fire for you to get into this? And how did that even happen? To basically become traveling singer songwriter slash storm chaser?

[00:02:09] Pecos: Yeah that’s a question that I’ve thought about a lot. And a lot of times, everybody has this story. Like when I was a kid, there was a storm that blew down the tree. It landed on my house, stuff like that. And so I caught myself doing the same thing, but the more I thought about it, like we all have these strange loves, these strange passions. I’m just fascinated with snakes. I don’t know why they’re just, I’ve always loved them. And be honest with you. I think it boils down to just the genetic jackpot or the opposite of the jackpot striking out where it just nature scatters out all of these crazy different factors, these tools and factors and things inside of us and mine just happened to land on: snakes, music and storms. It’s always been there. And I think that the really amazing things that happened in my life to keep me going down that path came secondary. I’ve just always been fascinated with storms. And I think a lot of people you are born with a fascination. It doesn’t have, you’re not this totally malleable piece of clay. You were actually born most likely to love dogs instead of cats type of thing.

[00:03:14] Gabriel: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense and would explain why when I was younger not to get too much into my past, but again, we’re not interviewing me here, but when I was younger, I remember being in a shelter when a tornado warning was going on, and all the other kids at the the gymnastics recital were scared to death. And I just wanted to go outside and see what was going on. And can’t really explain that other than, as a five year old kid, can’t really explain that other than there was just something built into me that wanted to go and check those out because I thought it seemed so cool.

[00:03:41] Pecos: Yeah, I see. I love that you responded with that. Another great example I have is I’ve got these two cousins and they grew up in Virginia and then they moved to Houston and I took them snake hunting when they were young. Very young. One was probably 9. One was probably 10. And so I caught this snake. We call it a diamondback water snake. It’s a non venomous, but rather aggressive snake or defensive, I should say when you grab it. It will almost always turn around and bite you. And so I caught this big water snake and I approached John Wesley, the older cousin. And I said, here, man, you want to touch it? And he backed away. No way. My younger, the younger one, Spencer said, let me have it. Let me have it. And I said, it’s going to bite. He goes, let me hold it. Let me hold it. And I handed him the snake, it turned around and bit him on the arm. A big snake, draw blood, and he looked up with a smile. It’s it was he’s a Shima, it’s in his blood. John Wesley didn’t get it. It was like, it was always there. And to this day, that kid is just a snake nut. And John Wesley, old one, could give a flying, you know what.

[00:04:38] Pecos: So just expand that out by orders of magnitude and make the snake hanging from a cloud and you’ve got yourself the tornado that you let bite you on regular occasions then?

[00:04:47] Pecos: Yeah. I think a lot of us probably, I’m guessing you loved monsters, Godzilla, atom bombs and these big giant, black holes, things like that were just so mysterious and fascinating. And I think the mystery plays a huge part in attracting us to it. What the hell is that? This is a story that I’ve said a lot. I grew up at that time I was living in Dallas and there would be tornado watches. And so we would run out. We lived on a hillside and you would run out to the backyard to watch tornadoes. They never appear. And it, it teased you, it was like where are they? So that might’ve done something. And then also I would always look at the clouds, the storm cloud. And I would say, how can that come down to the earth? I just don’t see how it’s possible. It just, when it happens, I want to be there to see it.

[00:05:32] Gabriel: So I have to ask just as a Harry Potter fan and a big time nerd, do you speak Parseltongue then?

[00:05:39] Pecos: You mean Parcel Meteorology Parcels?

[00:05:41] Gabriel: I’m definitely gonna call myself out here for being a huge nerd. Parseltongue is the language in the Harry Potter books of speaking Serpent Language.

[00:05:48] Pecos: Oh, yes. Then I speak that, yes.

[00:05:51] Gabriel: Okay.

[00:05:52] Pecos: I’ve watched the Harry Potter ones. I think I breezed through them once. They were fun, and then I never went back.

[00:05:57] Gabriel: Half the people listening are going to say, Oh, yeah, I know what he’s talking about. The other half are gonna be like, what is this idiot doing? He’s completely lost his mind. Speaking of losing your mind, there are some tornado videos that you have done where, I’m not exactly sure how you keep your composure. A couple of them come to mind. I’ve actually got them pulled up here. One is scariest tornado ever. Where you were in Canton, Texas, I believe. And you basically, I think, miscalculated where the the storm was actually going to be. And it was moving a little faster than you thought. And it seemed like you were a little startled, a little rattled after that one. And then there was another one that Chaser Hit by Tornado, Oklahoma Nightmare, where you escaped one tornado’s path, and only to be put in the path of another larger tornado that was coming your way. Give me a little bit of insight, what it’s like, what’s it like to be so close to these things, and, basically be flying by the seat of your pants when you see one of them coming at you what’s the feeling like?

[00:06:51] Pecos: It’s terrifying, you feel the, you feel death in your heart. And it happens the weird thing, and this is a bad thing is it happens so often with storm chasers that you start to get used to it. That’s, as terrible as that sounds, it’s okay, I could die. And you often, sometimes you chuckle because it’s like, the first time, of course, it’s the most terrifying, by the 20th time, you just laugh like this could be it.

[00:07:15] Gabriel: That simple, huh? Just, yeah, I guess you, you did say that. And I believe it was the the chaser hit by tornado video. You were just chuckling to yourself. I am going to die.

[00:07:23] Gabriel: Yeah. So this could be it, now it’s different for everybody else. I’ve always been a drifter, couch surfer, musician, no kids. It’s if I go, there’s not, there can be any children that are going to suffer out of this. I’m old now. I had a great life. So it’s not a tragic thing if I do, but now I’m married. So when you want to, if you have family that really amplifies the whole, now I have responsibility. And hopefully I’m trying to cut back on that. Whereas before I had a punk rock attitude of if I die. Who cares? We all die.

[00:07:56] Gabriel: Love it. Now, those two tornadoes that I just mentioned the Canton one and then I believe the the one in Oklahoma. I forget exactly where was that one. Was that Altus, Oklahoma?

[00:08:05] Pecos: Yeah, you did your homework. That was, I forgot the name of it too. Yeah, that was I remember the date. That would have been 2012, April 13th. It was the Friday the 13th.

[00:08:16] Gabriel: Yep, you nailed it. And now were those two, you think two of your closer calls that you’ve had or would you say that there’s even been a closer call than that you can remember?

[00:08:23] Pecos: The Canton one wasn’t as close as the other one and I’ve had closer calls. Actually in 2019, I had a much closer call. So I’m having on average one a year and I’m trying to cut that down where I think here I am again, you idiot, you’re going to die because you made a stupid decision. The 2012 one was, might have saved my life because following that was the El Reno storm chaser killer, the storm that was made to kill storm chasers. But I’d had the run in, in 2012 that said, okay, you’ve gotten way too cocky. You need to back off.

[00:08:56] Gabriel: Huh. That’s an interesting perspective. And it’s really cool to hear that sort of reflection to, to look back and think of what could have been . For all the flack that a lot of people get, you’re right I’ve watched the breakdown that Skip Talbot did and the one that Gabe Garfield did where they go over basically, like you said, this thing was made to deceive and then ultimately kill storm chasers and you just, you can’t say that if you were there, you would have done anything differently.

[00:09:18] Pecos: Yeah, no, not at all. Especially now. The one thing that I had going for me on El Reno 2013 is that I was there early. Like I had plenty of time to forecast. And so a lot of times, remember, you’re commuting day to day from state to state. And I had got up plenty of time or I didn’t stay out too late the night before because there were storms in the same area. So I was there prepared doing my homework, highlighting bridges and highlighting rivers, where am I going to get trapped? And so with me, with El Reno, it wasn’t scary at all. And then also I’m taking in, let me back up a little bit. So in 2012, let me back up even further. Here’s the storm that gets… it’s you’ve been chasing all day and it looks like it’s not going to warn. So you’re thinking. And then you think it’s, this storm is junk. It’s not gonna do anything. So I’m gonna, I’m gonna wait out a little deeper than I usually do. And then it says, guess what? It’s tornado time. That’s every time that I’ve gotten close to dying, it’s because I wasn’t expecting the tornado.

[00:10:15] Gabriel: Yeah. And I think the year the Altus Oklahoma video, you even mentioned that basically, you had a choice between going on to the other side of the mountains or basically staying in the RFD and trying to catch a last little bit of sunlight as the tornado was backlit. It matches up with exactly what was in that video.

[00:10:31] Pecos: Yeah, that’s the other thing is to factor in is don’t really think it’s going to do it. And then the other thing is all the work that you took off back then. I was still, a full time musician. So I took off all this time from work and drove all these miles, invested the little bit of money that I had. And so you want something to show for this trip rather than just a stormy rain clouds. So you have this hunger that makes you stay to the last second. And so usually I make it out in plenty of time, 20, 30 seconds, but think about that’s cutting it probably. Yeah. Life. Yeah.

[00:11:03] Gabriel: Yeah. That’s still a 20. People are probably listening at home right now. A 20, 30 seconds. This guy’s absolutely nuts. Like I’m hoping I have 10 minutes to get to my storm shelter when when I hear the tornado warning sirens going off. So I want to look at this from a little bit of a different angle though, because yeah it’s dangerous, and yeah, you do get really close, but I’m reminded of a compliment actually that Skip Talbot gave you on the last interview episode that I did, where he was talking about the project, I believe it was in Tipton, Kansas, where you two were working together for your video. What was that one called again? Wild Tornadoes Close Intercepted by Scientific Research Team.

[00:11:37] Pecos: Yeah.

[00:11:37] Gabriel: He gave the compliment and said that basically they were kinda looking at one location, and you being the navigational expert, and just knowing how to put yourself basically right in the path of the storm, you gave them the idea to to go where they eventually ended up. And it seems like the double edged sword of this is, yeah, you get close and sometimes you have these close calls. But the beautiful footage that all of us have been blessed with on your YouTube channel is a direct result of the fact that you seem to have a magic, a Midas touch for getting exactly in position to get the perfect shot. Would you say that’s a a fair characterization?

[00:12:07] Pecos: Yeah. Yeah. I lost you a little bit there, but I got it. So I just wanted to make sure you’re finished. And that’s, I can’t say enough about Skip for forecasting that I gotta back up here and talk about Skip. So I would’ve gone to the obvious storm position that, I’m sorry, this target that day, which would’ve been Lawrence, Kansas, which produced an EF4. And Skip was the lead forecaster that day and said, I don’t want to go there. It’s going to be a rain wrapped mess. And I’m thinking, man, this is the obvious bet. He goes, I think if we go West, which was a 2% storm prediction center outlook at the time I think this is going to be the place for the photogenic tornado and I, as being part of the team, you say, okay. And man, he nailed it, with beautiful photogenic tornadoes where most everybody else went to the Lawrence EF4 and didn’t get anything. It was so hard to see if it was to the rain wrapped ugliness. And then I think, so that’s really his talent, man. Him and Anton can forecast and it’s amazing. I guess I got to throw the the cheers back at Skip because he is really the guy that got us there at first.

[00:13:06] Gabriel: It’s a duo a real Dynamic Duo. And is that something that I didn’t actually look into the project anymore, and I didn’t ask Skip about it, but about how many times or how often have you guys gone out in that group to, to chase together, and just for people who are at home and wondering what you guys were doing, maybe get a little, give a little bit of an explanation as to what sort of brought this super team together.

[00:13:23] Pecos: Okay, great. Yeah. So Anton Simon, Dr. Anton Simon is an atmospheric scientist and he is doing basically taking the baton from Ted Fujita, where you can calculate wind speeds by following debris, small debris, like it crossed these two telephone poles. It took this much time. You can, get a good estimate of the speed. So he’s doing that by with these high resolution cameras that we have. We’re doing a dragnet around a tornado, all shooting, 4K, maybe 6K, maybe 8K next year, and he’s able to triangulate particle with that, able to recreate the tornado where no one else can see it. So even with radar, because of the tilt, nobody can see what’s happening on the ground. So this is the only thing going on right now, with the exception of the guys that are running over sensors, perhaps. And so that’s basically our objective is to gather surface data of near surface wind field around a tornado and developing tornado and strengthening tornado. So we all get in a line, we get in formation and we just shoot cameras, probably 200 meters apart and or, anywhere from a quarter mile, apart and then he goes back and recreates that. So that was the long answer to the first part of that.

[00:14:34] Gabriel: Good stuff. And I think that it’s going to be excellent if we get more information like that in the future because I’m hoping, and I think a lot of people are, that this is eventually going to lead to, if not a complete overhaul, then at least some significant changes to the rating system that we use for tornadoes.

[00:14:49] Pecos: And then the other part of your question was they’ve been doing that for several years. Anton used to chase with Tim Samaras back in, what, 2000, 2001, 2002. He’s a NatGeo storm chaser. So for him to, they, they’d lost a guy in 2018 who backed out of the, or stopped chasing for some reason, or is focusing more on the laboratory work. And so they needed somebody to fill in the third vehicle and said, that’s me. So 2019 and through 2020, we were out there a few weeks as a team. So I’ve been with them for two years.

[00:15:22] Gabriel: And I had myself on mute like the professional podcaster that I am. What I was getting into was I see your video with called Tornado Science and Supercomputers where you have done some collaboration with Dr. Lee Orff, which I found absolutely fascinating. So could you share also a little bit about that as well and how that’s leading to a new understanding of tornado genesis?

[00:15:41] Pecos: Oh man, that’s, that, that is probably one of the things I’m most excited about is Dr. Lee Orff’s work. If you like looking at storms, this is a way to do it like you’ve never seen before. So basically, we’ve been simulating these storms for, a few decades now, but what’s happening is we used to simulate storms at a 10 mile resolution, at first, yeah, think of a tornado, how you can’t resolve a tornado inside 10 miles. So with, as the computers and the technology as Moore’s Law goes up and gets better and better, we’re able to do these simulations in finer and finer resolution. And so Dr. Lee Orff is an atmospheric scientist as well. However, he’s also a computer genius. So he was able to figure out, write the code to where we can simulate these storms at 10 meter resolution. And he’s basically putting a sounding into a cloud model on, on your computer and he just hits go. So it’s a cloud model. Just it, it makes clouds with your atmosphere to, to be really blunt about it. So he puts a sounding from a day, let’s say, El Reno 2011. There was an EF5 near El Reno in 2011 and he got the sounding of that day. He puts it into his cloud model and he puts go. Storm grows and it starts to swirl. It becomes a supercell. It drops a long track EF5, virtual tornado, but at 10 meter resolution. So it’s resolving all these little vortical features and all this vorticity. And now that it’s in a computer, you can do all these different looks at it. You can look at it in this vision and that vision. So you can strip away the skin and only look at vorticity or you can only look at humidity or you can only look at the wind field. And basically now we have these supercells inside a computer and we have a ton of data. And you got to just see that the simulations because they look so much like the real storm and with that he’s able, because you can peel back the skin of the storm and look at what’s happening inside the engine of it if you will, we’re discovering new things. He’s discovering new currents and this simulation is changing, it’s challenging our conceptual model that we had of tornado genesis because in these computers, it’s saying, no, this isn’t what’s happening. This is what’s happened. The question is, it’s in a computer. Is it real yet? Is that really exist in nature? And my answer to that is, of course, I’m not a scientist, but I say, yes, it is because it looks just like the real thing. So what I do is I validate simulations by comparing this angle of the storm with an angle that I got where it’s almost looks exactly the same. And so that validates, you have tiers or you have the mammatus clouds and you have turbulence here and then forcing here and it all is matching up. So I’m validating these supercomputers. If anything, you’ve got to watch because they’re just like Lava Lamps. They’re just like, Oh, wow. You can get lost staring at them.

[00:18:30] Gabriel: Now I have to ask the controversial question that has plagued the storm chasing community for a long time. Are you a ground up or a cloud down kind of guy? Cloud down without a doubt. Now of course there’s an area of chicken and egg here. Skip, is, we argue this all the time.

[00:18:46] Gabriel: Yeah, he’s ground up. Team ground up.

[00:18:48] Pecos: Yeah, so Skip’s got really good evidence and Anton and Jana Hauser that with the El Reno 2013 that they’re claiming that it went from bottom up. And I don’t believe that now. I’m not saying they’re wrong. I haven’t seen it. I haven’t seen all the data that they have, but that just doesn’t make sense to me. Like you and I earlier were talking about, when we first were getting to be acquainted, we were talking about the stock market and numbers and how this adds up and this doesn’t, it just doesn’t add up to me. Now, maybe if I saw their presentation, which I’m sure they’re going to release soon, it will make sense. But for now, don’t see how that’s possible. And now, yeah, you can get these little vortices. You can get like gustnadoes, some land spouts. But an EF5? I don’t think you can get ground up. And I might be wrong. These guys are more brilliant. These are brilliant people. They could be onto something.

[00:19:31] Gabriel: I’m fascinated with the whole iron sharpens iron aspect of it. So I’m glad that there are dissenting opinions that are willing to be discussed around the round table amongst one another. And I think that’s only going to bode well for the future of storm chasing science.

[00:19:45] Pecos: Agreed. Yeah, I was just, I was hanging out with these guys recently, a film crew from New Mexico and I told them they’re no fun to hang out with because we agree on everything.

[00:19:54] Gabriel: Yeah isn’t that true? That’s it’s always a dull occasion when you don’t have a little bit of verbal sparring going on back and forth.

[00:20:01] Pecos: Yeah, agreed.

[00:20:02] Gabriel: Moving over to something that is not tornado based, but in fact I think is one of the more fascinating things that you’ve released on YouTube. People know that you chase tornadoes, but they might be very surprised to learn that you have, in fact, discovered ghosts in the atmosphere. And with no additional context, I’m just gonna, I’m just gonna leave it at that and toss it over to you.

[00:20:21] Pecos: Yeah, I was skeptical. I don’t believe in ghosts at all. I think if anybody’s seen a ghost, I think they’re full of it and now-

[00:20:28] Gabriel: I should probably give a little more context. I was talking about your work with red sprites.

[00:20:31] Pecos: I know, I am too.

[00:20:33] Gabriel: Oh, gotcha. Oh I’m an idiot. You double fooled me then.

[00:20:36] Pecos: Yeah, I’ll back up. Yeah. Yeah, if you, I always thought, if you see a ghost you’re seeing something else. I don’t believe in ghosts. I don’t believe in any of that. And then here it turns out I actually discovered a ghost. But that was supposed to be funny, but it wasn’t.

[00:20:49] Gabriel: We can chalk that up to me. That was my fault. So I’m again, professional podcaster saves the day.

[00:20:53] Pecos: Right. So we discovered a new transient luminous event. So a transient luminous event or these bursts of that happen of lightning, if you will, even though they’re not lightning of light that you see above thunderstorms 100 from 40 to 100 kilometers up and you’ve probably heard of the popular ones or the more famous ones are red sprites and blue jets. There’s also elves, there’s also blue starters, there’s halos. There’s this array of these, this phenomenon that’s happening above thunderstorms. And I discovered another one. It’s green. So after a big giant jellyfish red sprite, there’s this green afterglow. So think of it in the shortest layman’s terms as possible, as lightning triggering a small Aurora Borealis. And we discovered that. I actually discovered it in 2019, and I have a collaborator, that I work with. His name is Paul Smith, and he came up with a hypothesis of what’s happening, but over the last year, we’ve been presenting it to scientists and enthusiasts, and we just announced that it is official. It’s a new discovery. And we named them Ghosts.

[00:21:58] Gabriel: And, in the spirit of botching that intro into talking about ghosts and red sprites and everything, we were discussing self deprecating humor and that sort of thing and how that sort of works its way into your videos. There’s just a lot of humor in general, sometimes people might say a lack of seriousness, and you were actually giving a few of your thoughts on that, I’m gonna go ahead and give you the floor on that one now and let me know what is it that inspires your videos to not be so serious as a lot of the the YouTube footage that you see out there.

[00:22:25] Pecos: Wow, I try to make them serious, but I thought I stopped all the self deprivation. I have a best friend, she’s a manager, and she’s, Hank, you’ve got to stop doing that. And this trickles down to the musician, so if I had a show and at this club, there’s always when you’re a musician, there’s just always terrible things that happen, every night after night. It’s just ludicrous, crazy. Obnoxious stuff that happens in it. And so if you ask me, how was your show? I’m gonna say oh man this happened and this happened, you know the guy did this the guy whereas the right answer you’re supposed to do is hype yourself up. You’re supposed to say it was an amazing show. It was a packed house and we rocked. And so I’ve always leaned towards the other side feels more real to me, and so maybe I thought I quit that because she’s always saying stop doing that. But apparently I’m still doing it.

[00:23:14] Gabriel: Yeah, and I believe you have a few video titles that lend themselves to the lack of serious nature. I’m gonna, I’m gonna read off one of them here that’s off the top of my head: Breaking Wind in Texas, tornado vlog.

[00:23:25] Pecos: The YouTube crowd, there’s it, they seem, they respond to it, they get it. So unlike the musician club cloud, where you have to constantly hype yourself up with guy liner and hairspray, the YouTube crowd they seem to appreciate the realness. So thank you guys for seeing the humor in it.

[00:23:40] Gabriel: Yeah. Top comment pinned on your your video where we talked about it earlier the Altus, Oklahoma tornado ” LOL, this has got to be simultaneously the scariest and the funniest video that Hank has ever made.” I think it takes a special breed of talent to be able to produce not only the scariest, but also the funniest video you’ve ever made at the same time.

[00:23:57] Pecos: Yeah, that, but that was just so ridiculous. And at what point does almost dying in one day become ridiculous?

[00:24:05] Gabriel: Amen to that. Let’s switch gears a little bit and ask you, we talked a lot about the research that you’re doing, the projects you’re working on. I want to hear about the most noteworthy or memorable, and you have so many of them, so don’t feel the need to narrow it down to a specific one, but what’s one of the most noteworthy or memorable experiences you’ve had with chasing? Doesn’t have to be the biggest or the most violent tornado you’ve witnessed.

[00:24:25] Pecos: Yeah, I’ve got a lot now discovering something. So discovering the ghost is pretty giant. That’s like who, who’d have thought that an ordinary guys like, you and me, could discover something new in this world? That’s something that scientists have to do generally with, years and years of math. That’s how you discover something new. You sit at your computer and look at numbers for two years and then you figure it out. And you just I’m just observing the sky and said, what the hell was that? That was huge for me. That was extremely rewarding on that end. Also tornado wise though, I have to say, man that Oklahoma nightmare video that we talked about earlier in 2012, because I got sandwiched between two tornadoes. I couldn’t escape the tornadoes. I ran, I relocated over here, the tornado, it was following me. It was the, and then once I finally lost the tornado, that’s circling doing, circles following me, another tornado is born and almost clobbers me. So that probably I’m going to go with that.

[00:25:19] Pecos: And I’m going to just for posterity sake here, I’m going to mention a couple of other ones that I absolutely love. And I think the listeners would love to go check them out on YouTube. The first one being the Coleridge Tornado. I don’t know where that one ranks as far as your favorite tornado experiences go, but there’s something about the eerie hellscape of the greenish gray sky and that massive tornado swirling, a few houses on that country road, and then you’ve got you, your silhouette standing in front of the storm. It’s… just to me it’s one of the most surreal tornado videos I’ve seen.

[00:25:48] Pecos: Man, I’m so glad you said that, because to me, that one is extremely special. The day before that was the twins, two, two EF4s on the ground. But the Coleridge situation, the day after, this one tornado was more special to me. And what made that tornado so special is it was hardly moving. The twins were traveling, what, 30 miles per hour, all the way up. And so this one is just stationary. So what you got to do is you got to park in front of it and just gawk. Like you got the picture, you got the footage and it was just sitting there. So it was the first time that I got to set my cameras down and just gawk at this beast that’s, a mile, a kilometer away from you. And this is a big tornado. And really take in, not driving, not listening to beeps and cameras and alarms just to sit there. That’s, and that’s the dream scenarios where you can just sit there close enough to observe it and just stare.

[00:26:38] 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. All right, back to the episode.

[00:27:02] Gabriel: Yeah. It’s just, it’s, I’m looking at the, I’m actually fast forwarding through the video right now, just as hearing you explain it, while I look at some stills from it again. And yeah, it’s just, it’s so cool. And I think you nailed it is that it’s just sitting at the end of that road. Just not doing anything.

[00:27:15] Pecos: For a long time. Yeah. For a long time. I was actually thinking about, I should probably upload the raw footage of that. So you get the time where it gets, it’s almost becomes again, like a lava lamp, like you just get mesmerized. And that’s, some people appreciate that, but a lot of times you cater your video to the ADHD Society that we’re all part of now. Okay, they got it cut, they got it cut, moving along, and that’s what I did with that video you’re saying, which tells a great story. But another story is that, and I want, I’m thinking about uploading where you just sit there, for that ten minutes of it just sitting there and not moving.

[00:27:48] Gabriel: I know I would watch it, so I think you should definitely consider doing that. But the other video that I wanted to bring up is, and this one, I think it’s, I haven’t looked at all your view counts on your videos, but I’m going to go ahead and venture on a limb and say that this is probably one of your highest viewed videos, Close Tornado Tears Through Town. And I think it’s, is that Mattel or Mattel, Oklahoma from earlier this year?

[00:28:07] Pecos: Yeah, Mattel. I said Mattel. I said it wrong. So first, yeah, I got on Google to check, okay, because I was saying Mattel and Google told me no, it’s Mattel. And so I said, Mattel, then all the locals and Madill are saying it’s Madill, but we forgive you. This is an amazing video. Yeah, that was crazy. It was a weak tornado relative to the other ones we’re talking about. This was-

[00:28:27] Gabriel: But you’re so close.

[00:28:29] Pecos: Yeah. And so that’s a situation where it’s diff- completely different from the other tornadoes. The scary ones, because the scary ones, are all rain wrapped and big and you can’t see. This is small. Sunlight is shining on it. I’m able to gauge the perimeter of where large debris is falling and where smaller debris is falling and park inside the small debris perimeter and shoot straight up as this thing’s ripping apart this town.

[00:28:54] Gabriel: And then the rainbow shot at the end to like you can’t buy footage like that. That’s incredible.

[00:28:59] Pecos: Yeah that that was one of, that, actually, that was the only good tornado I got this year. This year, May and June, broke records, or came very close to the least amount of tornado activity. It’s, yeah, we’re way under, which is interesting, because the previous year, 2019, we broke some records with tornado activity.

[00:29:17] Gabriel: And, keeping it to the disappointment that is 2020 and basically the lack of visibility, we’re going to go to another point I had here that I wanted to talk with you about, which is search and rescue. And for that, we’re going to go to the Bassfield SoSo, EF4. And like you said, there was just no visibility on that storm really whatsoever. Unfortunately I was actually, that was one of the few chases I made it out to this year. I didn’t see it.

[00:29:38] Pecos: Oh, you were there?

[00:29:38] Gabriel: Yeah, I was there. I didn’t see a damn thing. Everybody told me as a new chaser, because this is my first year really getting into chasing. Everyone said, don’t chase Dixie, it’s dangerous, you’re not gonna see anything until the storm is on you. I, being the idiot I am, had to try it out for myself, much to my girlfriend’s chagrin. But we we went down there, her and I and, yeah, we didn’t see a damn thing. We were in, basically within half a mile to a mile of two tornadoes. The one that passed, I think, just north of Macon. It was either Macon or Macomb down there. And then also the Bassfield one. But, nope, couldn’t see a damn thing. But what I wanted to get at with that one is that you had some really awesome, and I don’t want to say awesome in the sense that I’m glad it happened, but some really cool footage of some search and rescue that you did afterwards. And you do that in a lot of your videos, so I was hoping maybe you could share with the listeners, what’s it like to have that sort of situation where you’ve seen the Beast, your adrenaline is pumping your absolutely jacked up but then you realize you got to completely do a 180 and change your entire focus of the mission to something else, and maybe even give a few tips on what some newer storm chasers could prepare themselves for if they’re going to try to contribute to that effort.

[00:30:40] Pecos: First off, don’t chase Dixie Alley if you’re new. The odds of you seeing anything are slim, even for me. For me, it’s like I, I can sit on the couch or I can drive to Mississippi and for the slim chance of seeing anything. So second, moving on to moving on to that day this year in April. I hate that happens. I can’t, I hate when the damage happens, because as soon as I come across the damage, I said, that’s the end of the chase for me. Like I’m done. And you’d be surprised how often that does not happen. I hardly ever happens where you come across damage. And of course that’s going to be the video you’re going to see. It’s going to rise up and I hate it, man. It’s I’m just dreading it with every bone in my body of what I’m going to see. You don’t want to see what you’re about to see. People’s lives are just, destroyed. And, but what if somebody needs your help? What if there’s some little girl trapped? That’s what I always, for some reason, I always think of a little girl, not a little boy, but a little girl trapped, and can’t, I just, I, and I’m there to help her out, what, instead of driving by. And so as soon as there’s damage, that’s when the storm chase ends. And yeah, on that one was really. And I need to roll cameras. I just, I feel like it’s so invasive, like to film people’s lives that are damaged. So I never filmed that. I just point the camera in the direction. And this one I was able to capture three seconds of after the event, but what happened was this house was, so we, I came to the damage perimeter, and there was an officer that was there telling everybody to turn around. Go back. There’s damage. And I said, man, I can help. First off, there’s another tornado coming and it might track right here. Let me tell you what’s about to happen because yeah, there was two tornadoes training and EF4 followed by an EF3. And so I started talking to this officer about where the next tornado was going so he could. I talked to the officer and then this woman runs up and said, have you checked that house? And we look and there’s no house there. And we said, “There’s a house there?” And so we immediately thought, Oh man. So we just, we, I jumped out of the car. All of us ran over this little hill of vegetation climbed over the trees. And there was just a pile of rubble. And it was this woman’s husband was in that house. And so this is where I wish I had a fireman. It was me, a sheriff. And a fireman. Then the two women were just standing there in horror, the daughter and the wife watching, and this fireman got on his belly and squeezed into that house on his belly, crawled, wedged himself, and we were all yelling his name. His name was James. We were all going James. And I wish I got that on video to show the heroics of how those people respond. And so I can just tell this story. Anyway we couldn’t get in and I’d given up. I’m like, there’s no way we’re going to get this guy out. And I started telling the woman and the daughter, I said, there’s plenty of room. I was lying to them. I said, I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what to tell him. I said there’s plenty of room to live in there. It’s, at least it didn’t blow it away. An EF4, if you get a direct kid from the house is gone, at least there’s a pile of rubble. And then I realized people were starting to pull up, more and more storm chasers were starting to show up. I was the first one there, and I have all my cameras just laying around all my seats with the door open and the windows. So I run back to my car to secure all my cameras, and I see this guy, straight out of Walking Dead, walking down the street with blood, on his arm and mud, covered in mud, and he has that zombie look. And I say, are you James? And he says, yes, but he’s so out of it. I don’t trust him yet. I said, is that your house right there? He said yes took me 20 damn minutes to crawl out of it.

[00:34:07] Gabriel: Jesus.

[00:34:08] Pecos: So now I’m just like, oh, I can’t wait to tell the wife and the and the daughter and so I run back you know just yeah, screaming and yeah, so then I had my phone and I took a quick three second video shot of them, standing around, dazed. And now I’ve, I chat with James now. He’s unfortunately he was not insured on his house. Grandfather built that house and he lost everything. So on that video, I put a link in, and he’s old school cowboy, man. It’s he doesn’t have email. He does, or he, you have to talk to him on his phone. He’s not going to give out his phone number, but he has a PO box. And so anytime I meet people and I try to say, Hey, if you want to send them $20, you can send them $20. Here’s that. And so I call him every now and then to see how he’s doing. And he’s not doing well. He still hates that day. Hates to talk about it. He doesn’t have the attitude like Vicky had where she was just like, I lost everything, but who cares? I’m alive. Woo. He bummed, he’s really bummed out about it.

[00:35:07] Gabriel: And Vicky of course refers to the the woman that you helped during the Canton EF3, right?

[00:35:12] Pecos: So Canton was, this was just awesome. This – not awesome cause she’d lost everything but she didn’t lose her lives, but same thing. I’m the first guy there. I’m running around in circles and I find this woman, same thing, standing there in a daze. She’s got a concussion and she’s got blood all over her head. And so I ended up taking her to the hospital and the whole time she’s in my car, it takes us an hour to get to the hospital. ‘Cause I, first off, I have to get her out of the way of the training storm. There’s another storm coming. And. I’m thinking like, Oh my gosh, I need to stay calm. I need to act like it’s no big deal that she’s got this huge open gash on the side of her head. And so I’m joking around with her like you’re bleeding all over my car. What are you doing? And we’re joking. Like we’re doing that tough guy. And she, and looking back at the video, she’s the one keeping me calm. Like she’s the one cracking jokes, laughing at everything. So again, she and I are buddies, I just hung out with her a month ago.

[00:36:05] Gabriel: Oh, really? That recently, huh?

[00:36:07] Pecos: Yeah, we see each other all the time. We bump into each other here and there.

[00:36:10] Gabriel: That is so cool. That is just, that’s too cool.

[00:36:13] Pecos: And she’s awesome because politically we disagree about everything. So she’s fun to argue with.

[00:36:19] Gabriel: Always a fun conversation there. Absolutely.

[00:36:21] Pecos: And like most people in the world we control how much we get worked up and we laugh because that’s, here’s the greatest thing I got to throw this in about Vicky is she gave me this little gourd that I put in our little patio garden and it’s this reminder that even though we politically and think just the complete opposite, like we’re the same people. It’s, we’ve just bought into a different belief system. And it’s there’s very little difference between the polar political opposite of me. It’s just how they grew up and who taught them and what leader got to them first, in a way.

[00:36:55] Gabriel: Yeah, and it’s almost too, the, the most harrowing experiences in life build bonds that can transcend that sort of ideology or whatever system a person buys into, which is always really cool to hear as well.

[00:37:05] Pecos: Yeah, all these people on the other side of the river , we’re the same in that they think they’re doing the right thing. And even though we know they’re wrong-

[00:37:13] Gabriel: Haha, careful now.

[00:37:15] Pecos: Yeah, they’re all, even though we know they’re wrong, it’s but they mean they’re the same in that, they think they’re doing the right thing. And the reason why we’re all getting so angry is because they think we’re screwing everything up and we think they’re screwing everything up, but their goal and their incentive is the same. And that’s, they want the world to be a better place. And that’s what we have to remember when we’re arguing.

[00:37:36] Gabriel: Yeah. Very few psychopaths out there who wake up in the morning and actively think about how they’re going to ruin everything for everyone. So probably very helpful if we all stop to view other people through that lens. Absolutely.

[00:37:47] Pecos: So what the Dalai Lama or the one of one of the Dalai Lamas, or maybe it was Buddha said, you can’t bully somebody into being compassionate. And that’s so true. It’s like yelling and it doesn’t ever work. Maybe that’s the fringe case. If it does work, if you really want to reach people and I get angry, I’m kind of counseling myself here, it’s we’ve got to figure out how to do it in a more clever way. We’ve got to reach them, on, on their ground almost.

[00:38:11] Gabriel: Yeah. I like that a lot. And I’m going to actually go to some lyrics by a band that I really liked named Thrice. Have you heard of them?

[00:38:18] Pecos: Nope!

[00:38:18] Gabriel: Alright they have a line here and says we can’t medicate man to perfection again. We can’t legislate peace in our hearts. Kind of going to the side of things that you were just mentioning there. You can’t you can’t force people to be the way you want them to be. You just have to be understanding and know that if you have a conversation, everything can reach an equilibrium, which is, I think, what we need to search for more now than ever, I would say, in this this day and age.

[00:38:40] Pecos: Yeah. I don’t know if you want to go down this rabbit hole, but we can. I can keep going. The one thing that we need to do is, and this is what all the scientists, I don’t, I’m sure there’s- scientists are people too. So there’s going to be those fringe cases, but in the world of science, like the truth is the real truth. The facts matter. We don’t argue, we’ll look at a fringe case and that’s interesting. But if we’ve, once we’ve covered that we move on where we’re past. So it’s like we need. To if 90 percent of this world scientists think this, that’s probably the closest we’re going to get to the truth of anything. So we if people can think, in other words, if you’re a scientist and you’re wrong, you want to find out you’re wrong. The sooner you find out you’re wrong, the sooner you can get on the right path. Because if you publish some crazy numbers, you’ve sold your reputation. So all the scientists that I know are so aware of biases that they say, am I. Biased? Am I seeing the numbers right? Because they are so aware of biases. If we can get the rest of the world on that scientific way of thinking, and it’s so simple. We’re taught it in the first grade and, but we don’t, we’re not taught of how profound it is. So if we can get people to follow data, regardless of where it takes, like they say, the truth is going to hurt. It’s going to kick you in the nuts at first, but over the long run, you’re going to be better off knowing.

[00:40:00] Pecos: I’m glad you brought that up. And I have to ask because it’s my due diligence here as the host. I had a Stas Spiranski, a storm chaser on the show. I haven’t released that episode yet, but it was last week. And he talked about how, maybe a little bit further down the road, he was thinking about running for a local political office. Could this be the beginning of Pecos Hank’s political run at some point down the road?

[00:40:21] Pecos: Oh, hell no. I’ve got so many skeletons in the closet. It would be ended on day one.

[00:40:26] Gabriel: Okay. Okay. I was gonna say, cause that was a pretty impassioned speech. I could see you up on the stump talking that.

[00:40:30] Pecos: Oh, hell no. No, no, I’ve got, there’s so much stuff, video of me doing crazy stuff, I can’t wait for it to surface. It’s going to, I was a musician, I’m still am, 25 years on stage, yeah, I can’t wait for that stuff. It’s out there. It’s not hard to find.

[00:40:45] Gabriel: So you’re saying every once in a while, people should Google search TMZ Pecos Hank, just to see what comes up.

[00:40:50] Pecos: Yeah. I’m waiting for it to happen on its own. I can easily nudge that along, so yeah. The shots of me sitting very unladylike in lingerie on, stuff like that.

[00:41:00] Gabriel: But just to put a punctuation mark on the talking about search and rescue, do you have any advice that you would give to people who are newer chasers, especially what they might do to stay calm or is there anything even basic, should you keep a pair of, boots in your car with you when you’re chasing? Should you have a first aid kit? That sort of stuff.

[00:41:16] Pecos: Yeah, all that is great. Everything you said, and then I’m terrible. The guy to really go to Daniel Shaw, it to me is one of the most important storm chasers we have because he, he is so passionate about helping people. He’s a trained medic. He’s always Hank, And when was the last time you’ve been certified for first aid? And he’s always hounding me about all of that. So all of those things, but I would say for the first thing you’ve got to throw out is man, when those power lines are down, they can kill you, especially in that water. So there’s some video of me, jumping over power lines and I’ve tried to, I don’t want to sit there. That was, you, you can be killed from a power line on the ground, a great distance away from it. So just stay away from the downed power lines, first of all.

[00:41:54] Gabriel: I think that’s really good advice. I was actually thinking I think it was the Canton video where I saw you, you were trying to navigate and maneuver around some down power lines. I was on the edge of my seat for that more than I was for the tornado portion.

[00:42:04] Pecos: Yeah. So I’d seen so many people just jump over that power line that I followed suit, and I thought, man, I need to make sure that I don’t, there’s so much to video you can with editing, you can make anybody look like a hero and you can make anybody look like the idiot, just by what piece of the story you’re giving them. And that’s a really I made sure that I cut it out, but I actually run and jump over that power line because I’d seen so many other people to do it and he, and then after doing more research, I have some stories like, I was like, man, you can, that, that could have killed me. And then here you are, now becoming a casual, it goes back to that Lawrence, Kansas EF 4 where the storm chasers were hit by the EF4, the tour group. And the host the ambulances all have to come rescue storm chasers that are already overwhelmed, so that’s the worst thing we can do is add. And I don’t want to be that guy.

[00:42:52] Gabriel: Yeah I think Skip and I discussed that a little bit because of course he has the really cool video where he broke down that entire event and couldn’t be more in agreement with you there.

[00:43:01] Pecos: Yeah. Skip, I can now call him a good friend. We spend a lot of time together. And you know what, I tell you what, if I get hit by a tornado, he’s gonna nail me. He’s gonna, I already know that.

[00:43:11] Gabriel: You’re getting crucified, my friend, absolutely.

[00:43:14] Pecos: Yeah, he’s gonna make the video of all the stupid stuff I did because he does it about himself. If he does something stupid, he’s way more passionate about policing and the the, like he really is scared for people’s lives, like he’s afraid, I think there might be some, I don’t know, there might be some guilt that he feels like he’s going to lure somebody into, they’re going to see what he does.

[00:43:34] Gabriel: Yeah.

[00:43:34] Pecos: And so he really tries to hammer home the dangers of you, you could die.

[00:43:38] Gabriel: Yeah, I know that when we were driving down earlier, like I mentioned how I went down to Dixie Alley for that Easter Sunday chase I had my girlfriend while we were in the car, I had her watching all of his storm spotting and storm safety videos and she thought they were absolutely incredible.

[00:43:52] Pecos: Yeah, I’ve never made that video because Skip made it. It’s like he retired it.

[00:43:56] Gabriel: Yeah. No more needs to be said about that. And I actually I have to say, I have to give you a shout out from my girlfriend Melissa, by the way, because she wanted me to say that she she watches all your videos on YouTube. She thinks you’re awesome. And she particularly liked the video where, I think she said you were talking to some EMS folks about how to to storm spot.

[00:44:14] Pecos: Yeah. That was at at COD.

[00:44:16] Gabriel: Yep, College of DuPage.

[00:44:17] Pecos: Melisa, did you say Melisa, not Melissa?

[00:44:20] Gabriel: Yeah, it’s not Melissa, it’s Melisa. Very different pronunciation.

[00:44:23] Pecos: Yeah, tell her I said howdy.

[00:44:24] Gabriel: Hank said howdy, honey!

[00:44:26] Pecos: Hey!

[00:44:27] Gabriel: Yeah, I guess I can fanboy out a little bit, too. I recently watched your video Storm Chasing for Photography, I think is what it’s called. It’s the one where you basically taught people how to salvage those giant MCS cluster messes, and get something pretty cool out of them, and I thought that was an awesome video.

[00:44:43] Pecos: I was torn between doing that, because that’s a secret. Most storm chasers go home once the storms line up into an MCS. And, that’s just such a wonderful time to chase, because the tornado threat has really been mitigated. And it’s again, it’s that time for me where I can just kick back and enjoy the storm and not look at it through a viewfinder or through a speeding window.

[00:45:05] Gabriel: Yeah, the Coleridge tornado. You just get a chance to soak it all in and enjoy nature and what it is you’re passionate about.

[00:45:11] Pecos: Yeah, that’s ultimately that’s what we all have in common, I think, is we just love Mother Nature.

[00:45:17] Gabriel: Absolutely. We’ll go a little bit lighter as we close out the podcast here with these last couple of little questions I have for you. What, and I ask this to everybody, what’s a hidden gem area to chase? This can be terrain, local attractions, you just like the way the people there are and the way they interact with you. What would you say is a place most people don’t talk about, but you love going there?

[00:45:37] Pecos: That’s a secret.

[00:45:38] Gabriel: I’m gonna have to reword this question, because every single person I ask this question comes back with the same smart ass reply. “If I told you, then it wouldn’t be a secret anymore.”

[00:45:46] Pecos: I love Nebraska, and South Dakota, and North Dakota in June and July. Like it’s all the chasers have gone home. The road network is fantastic. It’s it, South, the Dakotas are the most underrated states, that we have. They’re just really beautiful, especially on the Western side. I love it out there. May is pretty hairy, man. It’s like a lot of times, you can’t wait for May, but when it’s over? You’re like, okay, whew, made it through that. Now let’s go back into that slower paced June and July.

[00:46:15] Gabriel: Yeah, I actually made it out there for the first time this year. I think it was the June 6th derecho that happened up in North Dakota. Yep. North Dakota and South Dakota. And actually, sorry, I think it was… was it June 6th that was the derecho and the next day, the 7th, was the big busted set up?

[00:46:29] Pecos: So last year, I’ve been all over the world storm chasing. And I actually folded up and came home, I think, the 5th. And then 3 days, and just after sitting out there day after day. Cause what you do is there’s all these, we’ll call them a 2% day. There’s always this one day a year where it looks like nothing’s going to happen. It’s yeah, everybody just stays home and it surprises you with the most amazing tornado outbreak. And Skip and I were like, when is that day going to happen? And we just stayed out there and I was with Skip all this time. And we stayed out there and Anton and Jennifer and Tracy, that’s the rest of the team. And on July 5th, we said, okay, we’re going home. And then on July 8th, the Twister Sisters nailed it. The tornado, probably one of the beautiful tornadoes I’ve ever seen. It was moving slow. It was well lit. It was on the ground forever. It was a cone. It roped out. I think, no, actually, I think that one did kill somebody. I’m not positive, but it got an EF4 rating. So yeah, that was, I’m thinking the 8th or the 7th, I forget.

[00:47:30] Gabriel: That kind of sucks that you weren’t able to stay out there for that one.

[00:47:34] Pecos: Oh, there’ll be many more.

[00:47:35] Gabriel: Always another storm.

[00:47:36] Pecos: I’ve seen so many it’s, at first you’re really hungry, like those first, have you seen your first tornado yet?

[00:47:42] Gabriel: I have seen three tornadoes, one of them was a land spout, but actually, strangely enough, none of them when I’ve went out chasing. So I’ve actually left Columbus, Ohio to go chasing four times, came back empty handed all four times, but over the last two years I’ve seen just a couple piddly little pathetic things, just random local tornado warnings.

[00:47:58] Pecos: See that’s the thing is most people think when they go storm chasing, they’re going to see that beautiful tube, that skinny writhing tube, lit from a high base. That hardly ever happens relative to how much the nebulous gooey, rainy tornadoes happen. That’s the more likely scenario. So when you see that first tube? You’re hungry for that. I want to see that tornado. When you see it on Twitter that you picked the wrong storm and that happened, it eats you up. But after you’ve seen, 190 or so you can let go.

[00:48:28] Gabriel: Yeah. It’s going to say it’s probably a little easier when you have a body of work, if you want to experience that again, you can just go back into your own archive and reminisce about some of the storm chases you’ve had previously.

[00:48:37] Pecos: And this goes back into our conversation we had before we were recording about the numbers. If you’re in it for the long haul, the numbers will catch up to you.

[00:48:44] Pecos: Yep. That’s what I’m thinking. So I’m not too worried about it. Thankfully, I already had that background from the sports betting background I had, and then also trading markets now. So I was able to, have that sort of long game aggregation view of everything, but I can definitely imagine some newer chasers getting really frustrated, especially in the year like 2020, where you might go out 10 times and come back empty handed every time.

[00:49:03] Pecos: Oh, yeah back when I started in the late 90s, if you saw one tornado in a year, that was amazing. Usually I would, you’d see one every other year, even the pros would go without seeing tornadoes.

[00:49:12] Gabriel: Is that just because of a lack of data and forecasting products that were available?

[00:49:17] Pecos: That, and we’re also much more hungry. Now we chase everywhere. We’re chasing in Kentucky, we’re chasing in Ohio, we’re just, we’re chasing it. Whereas before you you thought, “Nope, you got to stick to Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas. Maybe I’ll go crazy and go to Nebraska.”

[00:49:31] Gabriel: That is interesting because I do see a lot of people, Skip especially, I don’t know if you know this, but he actually has an email that he puts out every day during the, Prime tornado season for people who have donated to his ALS fundraiser that he runs. He calls it his Chase Cast, and that’s probably one of the- he’s basically like the grumpy old man of forecasting. Every setup, there’s something wrong with it, which is perfectly fine, because I know what he’s trying to do. He’s trying to help people to not waste their hard earned cash and their time off of work, and he’s, basically saying here’s why this setup might fail, but big thing he’s always talking about is the terrain and how, basically once you get out of those areas that you just mentioned, a lot of times the terrain can get really dicey.

[00:50:06] Pecos: Yeah, that’s funny. I’m so glad Skip, because that’s where we’re Polar Opposites. Like, and we’re on the same team, and I know he’s like that. So when I was joining his team as the new guy, I was like scared, like, how am I I’m going to have to, let go of all of this control that I have. And I’m going to have to hand it over to Skip who is very different in storm chasing and outlook on storms. I just go I do not do heavy forecasting. I approach it like the box of chocolates. I give it the five, a good five, six parameter brush over glance. This is the obvious spot. I don’t care if the tornadoes or not. I’m sure there’s gonna be a big storm. Let’s see what happens. And I’m always surprised what happens.

[00:50:46] Gabriel: You’re a lot like Stas Bransky, then. He’s the same way. He just he goes where the wind blows and he just waits around and he plans on the fly. And yeah, you’re right. Skip is like I said, I always joke around with Skip now. Basically, please tell me why this forecast is going to fail today.

[00:51:01] Pecos: And he jokes at himself too. He’s I’m always like just yesterday, I was talking to skip just yesterday and he’s ” you know me, I’m the ever skeptic and ever pessimist.” and this is a funny Skip story and I just I just can’t stop cracking up and it’s going to be hard to convey of course, so without being in context, but we were chasing, it was the end of the, and towards the beginning of July, we’ve been chasing and chasing all year. Every storm system didn’t produce a tornado, which is a disappointment to a lot of people not to me. And Anton is very optimistic he’s even more optimistic than I am. Like if there can be a shelf cloud an elevated shelf cloud and Anton will say ” Hey, look, it’s starting to lower a little bit. It’s a little-” and so Anton we’re all talking on the radios and there’s this storm and Shoot what did Skip call it? I’m totally botching it And so maybe it’ll come out. So we were driving and I said, wow, look at that storm. It looks like I forgot. Sorry. I just delete all that. I forgot what he said. It’s not going to work. Basically, I said, look how beautiful that storm is. And he said, Oh, I got it. Okay. So we’re driving. I go, man, that storm looks like like stacked plates, so you know what stack think of plates stacked on top of each other.

[00:52:04] Gabriel: Sure.

[00:52:05] Pecos: And Skip and the radio goes it looks like a cow patty and this is at the end of the year at the end of and I just couldn’t stop laughing because he was just… Like Anton and I are still, usually he doesn’t, he tries not to let his pessimism destroy our optimism in that time. He just let it, it’s like it’s a, and he was right, like it was just the biggest piece of crap storm and we were trying to find beauty in it.

[00:52:26] Gabriel: To his credit, I have to say that being from Columbus, Ohio, and meaning that generally I have to drive at the minimum six to seven hours, and that’s to central Illinois, if I’m gonna get a decent setup to play. And much farther than that, if I’m gonna go to the, anywhere in The Plains. I appreciate his grumpy chase casts a lot, because they have saved me, as a new chaser especially, a lot of wasted trips where, hey, it looks like there’s a lot of CAPE out here, and the cap doesn’t look too bad, and then I get out there, I would’ve got out there, and there would’ve been absolutely nothing happening, so I do appreciate him in that regard.

[00:52:56] Pecos: Yeah, me too. And now that I’m part of the team, here’s remember how I said I was afraid to release all that or to get and not have all the control. And now that I’m part of the team, here’s the, so I usually chase lightning late. As soon as it’s dark, Skip is pretty much done. He’s lodging him and Jennifer. I get caught up in the lightning. So by the time I wake up, Skip’s already got full analytics, done this huge forecast. And it’s like, why forecast when Skips done it? And so it’s I just, I love it. I love chasing with Skip. He does all the work! I don’t have to. And I laugh like he is carrying the whole way. Of all the storms that we got are all the weight of Skip’s forecasting.

[00:53:36] Gabriel: Yeah. He’s so talented again, both of you, neither of you coming from necessarily educated meteorological backgrounds, which is really cool.

[00:53:43] Pecos: Yeah. Definitely. For those who are listening, please, you definitely want to check out and subscribe to Skip Talbot’s Storm Chasing Chronicles on YouTube, and you want to subscribe to Daniel Shaw. Daniel Shaw’s from Australia and he does a lot of other things like news breaking news stuff, but just, when he’s doing his storm stuff, you want to make sure you watch it.

[00:54:02] Gabriel: So the last set of questions here that I ask everybody, a fun little game to play the podcast out. If you had only five parameters to forecast a chase location, and it sounds like you only have about a handful of parameters anyway, which ones are you going to go with and why? And they can’t be like the combo products, like Skew T’s, hodographs, that sort of thing. You basically can only pick five things.

[00:54:21] Pecos: Oh yeah, that’s easy. You go to the 500 millibar heights, you go to that 850 millibar winds and heights, and then you go to dew points after that. And then you go to temperature after that, and that can pretty much get it done. And then you want to look at the 700 millibar temps for the, that’ll give is a great indication of the lid strength, the cap. And man, after that, you can talk to CAPE, SRH. You can get a good idea. So with those five, bam, you’ve got it.

[00:54:47] Gabriel: Really? That simple?

[00:54:48] Pecos: Yeah, that’s all I do. You can add CAPE, but you, when, what, so I write, I plot out mine on paper and it’s yeah remember if you’re writing, trying to memorize lyrics, if you write them down, that helps you memorize them. So I carry my I carry my maps and I plot out the dry line and I plot out the winds and that really helps me remember the system. I think through the day. That’s just something I like to do. It helps me. I can remember. And then of course I’ve got that sheet. So where Skip just looks at a computer, comes up with his analysis, closes his computer. I’ve got mine written down. I can, look at it. Oh yeah. That’s what I was thinking. Oh yeah. Then, the low level jet’s going to arrive at, about eight or nine. PM. I forgot where I was going.

[00:55:25] Gabriel: No, we’re that’s totally fine. I don’t think we’re going anywhere in particular anyways. I think you were talking about basically how you only need those five parameters really and you draw up your own maps and that’s about all you need.

[00:55:34] Pecos: Yeah. So when you draw the maps and you look down, you can see here’s where the CAPE is going to be. You can see, wow, there’s a, you can see the temperature dew point spread. And then, so all the other stuff is just reinforcement and more and more reinforcement and you can go, and go, and go. Like you could spend all day. People ask me, how do you forecast? Why don’t you make a video? How to forecast a tornado? It’s like Rich Thompson already did that. Okay. It’s eight videos that are an hour and a half long. Go watch.

[00:56:01] Gabriel: You’re not trying to make a series like that?

[00:56:05] Pecos: I’m like the violinist who’s, who found a violin in jungle and just picked it up and is doing it all wrong, but can still make pretty music out of it. Whereas Rich has the training, he has the technique. I don’t want to show people out of forecast because I’ve got this. I don’t know my techniques, or I’m not trained like Rich Thompson is.

[00:56:21] Gabriel: I think that’s been one of the coolest things, maybe the coolest thing, talking to you and all the other storm chasers that this project has allowed me to speak with, is that there’s such varying and different, yet, in the end, effective styles that people use to actually forecast and get into the right position. It makes me think that a lot of these parameters just end up being redundant. And at the end of the day, a lot of it just comes down to instinct and feel when you’re in the fields. Looking up at the sky, looking at the terrain, and then just getting ahead of the storm and knowing how to get into that perfect spot.

[00:56:52] Pecos: I think you nailed it. I think that’s where all comes down. Who cares what’s going to happen three days from now? The only reason why you care is you’re trying to save gas, but if you’re already out there anyway. Who cares what’s happening now? I’m going to chase poor storms if they happen. I’m going to chase supercells if they happen. Ultimately, I think it’s the pattern recognition and observation. If you can look at like the day of the event between your goes and between your surface ops and between your radar scope, that’s all of it. And then you have an understanding of where the jet streams are. That’s pretty much where it all matters, I think, perhaps.

[00:57:24] Gabriel: Yeah, and just to take it back to the sort of trading and financial markets, the analogies we’re making, there’s so many different styles out there, and I, personally have gotten to know a lot of people who are very successful traders and I wouldn’t touch their trading strategies with a 10 foot pole because not only is it just not my style, it’s also something that requires a lot more expertise than what I’m actually qualified to do. And so I keep it simple, stupid and have a very, easy going pattern recognition like you just mentioned style where if it ain’t there, but I’m not going to stress too much about it and I’m just going to take what the markets or the storm gives me on a day to day basis.

[00:57:59] Pecos: Yeah, I think that’s a great parallel.

[00:58:01] Gabriel: That’s about all I have for you Mr. Pecos Hank. I really appreciate you being here. And before we close out the podcast, I want to give you a second to plug any of your social media channels. People, of course, know about your YouTube channel, but do you have any other networks that you’re pretty active on, people can follow you?

[00:58:17] Pecos: Yeah, but that’s no fun. I want to close with a question. Why Crazy Gabey?

[00:58:21] Gabriel: Oh, man. Okay when we first got into this getting acquainted thing before we started the podcast-

[00:58:25] Pecos: Did he used to wear lingerie and sit un ladylike on stage as well?

[00:58:28] Gabriel: No, not used to. Still do. But, anyways that’s a different story. That’s a different podcast. Back in the day, I used to be a professional sports broadcaster. Fantasy sports in particular. And before I even got into that, I was big into fantasy sports. I was always into poker and sports betting, anything that had to do with analytically oriented gambling. I was a big fan of it. And so I decided one day, you know what, I’m going to make some crappy WordPress blog where I give out my picks for fantasy football for this week and all that jazz and I needed a name because you can’t just be your own self Pecos Hank, right? You had to pick a name that people are gonna associate with so I was like, you know what? How about Crazy Gabey? And I didn’t think anything of it. This was probably like 10 years ago. I just slapped it on a crappy blog and from that crappy blog I just accidentally fell into a career as a sports broadcaster, which I did for about six, seven years, and I just decided to keep that after I, I left sports broadcasting, and that’s where we are now.

[00:59:24] Pecos: Alright, man, I like that. I still want to hear the dirt. I think you’re hiding the dirt from us.

[00:59:28] Gabriel: Oh, there’s plenty of dirt if you can speak to my old colleagues. You’ll have to, you’ll have to get in touch with them, though. I’m not going to give it up that easily.

[00:59:33] Pecos: Alright I’ll do some digging and see what I can find.

[00:59:36] Gabriel: All right, Pecos Hank, thank you again so much for joining us, and to all of the listeners, remember you can subscribe wherever you happen to be listening to this at, and I will be back in a couple of weeks with another new episode. Take care, folks.

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