(Transcript) Wejman Warning: Teamwork Makes the Dream Work

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[00:00:00] Rebecca: Hello, Chaser Chat. This is Rebecca Wejman, and this is the second episode of my show, and I have finally come up with a name. So everybody, I am introducing Wejman Warning. And for this episode, we have two very special guests, both people that I have met at the University of Oklahoma. Even though I’m taking a gap year, I still like to stay in contact with and I thought they would be great to bring on. I’m introducing to you Tristan Anderson and David Osimov. That’s how I say your last name David?

[00:00:31] David: No.

[00:00:32] Rebecca: Osimov? Okay, David, why don’t you introduce yourself for everybody then? I always mess up his last name. We call him Osmosis, so.

[00:00:40] David: Oh my goodness. Okay, if it makes you feel better, that has been the worst pronunciation I’ve ever heard.

[00:00:46] Rebecca: No way.

[00:00:46] David: Yeah, absolutely. I don’t even know what that was. But yeah, so hey guys, my name is David Usmanov. I’m a student of meteorology at the School of Meteorology from the University of Oklahoma, currently a sophomore. And yeah, that’s me.

[00:01:02] Rebecca: And then Tristan, if you want to introduce yourself.

[00:01:05] Tristan: Yeah. Hi guys. I’m Tristan Anderson. I’m also currently a sophomore meteorology major at the University of Oklahoma. Just a little bit of background info from me. I come from South Bend, Indiana. I am currently also a member or worker for the Institute for Severe and High Impact Weather Research Operations, SERO, and some field research campaigns.

[00:01:28] Tristan: Yeah. So we’re going to get into all that. I’m going to ask you about that. But first, I’m gonna go over how we all met. David, I believe we, you reached out to me on Twitter before the semester started and we, I don’t know, connected through that way. And then Tristan, we met through a group of friends that we don’t really talk to anymore, but you also were in my intro class. So that was pretty fun. I’m glad though that we all finally got to connect. But before anything, I do want to know how you guys got into chasing, storm chasing, or just meteorology in general. How And also your first chase story. David, if you want to go into that, because I know your first chase story was crazy and something that you explained pretty well to this day.

[00:02:15] David: My first chase if I can recall correctly, it took place on January 16th, 2023. I’m from essentially the Atlanta Metro in Georgia. That’s where I started chasing. That’s where I was raised. And yeah, so this first chase the morning of was upgraded to a 10 hatched tornado driven threat. And going out, we drove all the way down to approximately Peachtree City, Georgia. Now the mode of the storms were 55 mile an hour movers, heavily rain wrapped, high precipitation, and embedded in a QLCS. This being my first chase, I really just solely relied on my chase partner who I thought was experienced. Yeah, it turns out he wasn’t. And really we did pretty well of a job, I’ll say. The first storm we got on was a remnant of a tor-e storm. I can’t remember exactly what it was, but it continued to produce.

[00:03:12] Rebecca: Was this in Georgia?

[00:03:14] David: It was in central around the area of the central border between Georgia and Alabama. Around, I think, not, somewhere a little bit west of Birmingham.

[00:03:23] Rebecca: Got it, so Dixie.

[00:03:24] David: Yeah, hard in Dixie. As a first timer.

[00:03:26] Rebecca: Crazy.

[00:03:27] David: It was pretty difficult. We managed pretty well, though, to be honest. We were just dealt a poor hand. And, we were on a great storm, I will say. We were on the storm that produced the most prolific tornadoes. Unfortunately, a couple of them were deadly. But, we positioned ourselves properly. Up until RadarScope decided to step in and ruin something more. I’ve never seen this glitch. And I reported it to RadarScope. They didn’t know much. Unfortunately I reported it an entire year later for whatever reason. But, essentially what happened was that the location stopped updating, but everything else was just fine. Radar would automatically update without an issue. I had 4G LTE at the time. I was, all bars. I had no issue with connection. But for whatever reason, it just stopped updating. As we were trying to get out of out ahead of the storm moving at 55 miles an hour, heavily rain wrapped, so we can’t really see storm structure and our positioning relative to the storm outside of not knowing true radar data. So as we encroached upon the storm, my friend who I was chasing with, he started to notice something weird. There was few too many leaves and twigs and branches falling out of the sky. He tells me, hey, check your radar, check your location. I don’t trust it. I’m pretty sure we’re about to drive into the tornado. I’m like, okay, whatever, sure whatever you say. I’ll check. Oh, okay. Yeah, it turns out we were about to drive into a mile wide tornado. I, we turned around, we got very lucky. This was around the town of LaGrange and Five Points, Alabama. We got out of there just in the nick of time. We were within a mile of the thing, like moving northward at I don’t know, like 60 or 70. We were genuinely 40 seconds out from hitting it, but-

[00:05:14] Rebecca: It’s funny that you mention the leaves, sorry to cut you off, but it’s funny that you mention the leaves, because when we were listening to Sean Waugh, I believe is how you pronounce his last name discussing his involvement with the Twisters movie, at least I believe it was Sean, it might have been Kevin Keller? Keleher? I’m horrible with names, but, discussing his involvement with the Twisters movie, but at the rodeo scene, when the leaves were falling, they said that they did that because of past events experiences of people noticing leaves falling before a tornado was about to hit. So that’s really interesting that you noticed with the leaves at you two.

[00:05:49] David: But that wasn’t me.

[00:05:49] Rebecca: That was him.

[00:05:50] David: Thankfully. Luckily I, he was probably the reason I’m still around today. That was, it was rated EF3 the time was crossing north it was an Ef3. It was mile wide, but if, had we chased it into the night, which I know, next to impossible, it would, it went on to become like at peak with a two mile wide Fujiwara with three separate damage tracks all on damage assessment toolkits.

[00:06:10] Rebecca: At least you were on the right side. You were on the right side. David, why did you even get into chasing and meteorology?

[00:06:17] David: Goodness, I really can’t tell you. This has been forever. Genuinely. I’m originally from Canada. I lived there for a year. I’m from Mississauga. I don’t remember anything from there. All I remember is that we moved down to our first house. And after we moved from our first house to the second house still in Georgia, Alpharetta area My parents were trying to move closer to my elementary school. At the time, I’m four or five. My mother tells me that I was extremely adamant that we get a house with a basement. I don’t remember this, but apparently this started when I was four or five years old. And from there on, it’s just been an infatuation with weather and in 10th, 11th grade, it was really about meteorology. That’s when it started boiling the real nitty gritty signs that really just, tickled me. Tickled my little brain. But yeah, so it’s really just been an entire life thing. I can’t explain it.

[00:07:06] Rebecca: Tristan, what about you? How’d you get into meteorology and storm chasing, and then, you can dive into your first chase, but first, let’s talk about how you even got into it.

[00:07:15] Tristan: Oh my gosh, yeah, so I, I really do have this saying of which I never really found meteorology, it’s more of meteorology found me. I was about six, seven years old when I was in kindergarten, and I always have this little funny story to tell. So the whole time, being a little six, seven year old, the one thing on my mind is seeing other kids learn how to snap their fingers. Okay, just snapping fingers. And that’s the one thing that was on my mind. And it’s so corny. But they rolled out, the teachers rolled out the little VHS TV, and popped in a National Geographic film. And it was over natural disasters. And I kid you not, I kid you not, they started showing, severe thunderstorms and tornadoes. And like I said, it’s the corniest thing ever. But in that moment, I actually started learning how to snap. And ever since I started just snapping, like instinctively, like it’s not even I was thinking of snapping. My mind was just on those storms. Tristan And so ever since then, I’ve had this unwavering kind of fear curiosity, this fascination to understand, how do tornadoes form, how do you get the severe convection? How can these, how can a sunny day turn into, a nightmare for so many people? So that’s where my fascination found me.

[00:08:33] Rebecca: It’s always at school. It’s always at school, when they roll out the most, it’s always at the most random times that they decide to play natural disaster tornado videos, or shows.

[00:08:44] Tristan: It is! Oh my gosh.

[00:08:45] Rebecca: I’m glad they did.

[00:08:47] Tristan: Yes, it was just one random day, I believe in October, or something like that. And they were like, you know what, we’re gonna roll out a TV show for you guys. And, that’s how it started.

[00:08:56] Rebecca: In Indiana, you got to. Especially because Indiana, I don’t know, Indiana to me, like for me personally, I have always had the greatest love chasing there, tornadoes obviously still occur there. It’s probably for the best that they were showing it, but what was your first chase ever?

[00:09:11] Tristan: So my first chase ever, and I know it’s not too, not too far into the past, but my first chase ever was actually the August 10th derecho of 2020. I remember having, it was like the first or second day of school and me over here being a high school freshman, just, looking at the weather, I’m like, okay, it’s the first or second day of school. I’m not gonna miss too much. And at this point, this is where we were in I don’t know, slight risk> and the 16 z day one outlook came out and instant moderate risk just a little west of us. And so here I am talking and begging to my mother, Hey, let’s go out to Lake Michigan. Let’s go look at the storm. Let’s see what we can see. And let’s say that I had a lot of persuading to do with my mother, but eventually, yeah, she set out with me and we went to go to New Buffalo Beach on Lake Michigan. And we intercepted the derecho there. We were at the point where we saw it over the beachfront and we still saw, families in the water with lightning striking everywhere. I’m like, get out of there. And eventually I’m just like, Hey mom we gotta go. I love to stay here, but we’re going to get hit. So we raced back home and the rest is kind of history. That was my first chase.

[00:10:31] Rebecca: Yeah. At least you were safe with it too, though. Like you knew how to get out of there. That probably gained, you gained a lot of respect from your mom too. And also trust for future chases.

[00:10:41] Tristan: Yeah. I love storms that come over Lake Michigan. They’re so beautiful, especially at sunset.

[00:10:48] Rebecca: Yes. Yeah. No, I when there was that water spout outbreak a couple weeks ago over Lake Michigan, I think? I was so jealous and I wasn’t able to go and catch a flight back.

[00:10:59] Tristan: I was actually messaging my mother who now lives on the eastern side of Indiana. I’m like, oh my gosh, if you just had the chance to go out to Lake Michigan, you would see so many water spouts.

[00:11:10] Rebecca: It’s crazy.

[00:11:11] Tristan: She told me, I, she’s hey, I bet you’re fuming right now. And I’m like, yeah, I am fuming right now.

[00:11:17] Rebecca: I don’t know why it’s like, whenever we moved down to Oklahoma for school, because I moved at the same time you two did, it seems like the weather just of course it’s been, there’s been crazy storms and we’ll get into one that we chased but I don’t, it seems like it’s been a little more milder than, a little more calm than I expected it to be in some aspects.

[00:11:36] Tristan: It definitely has.

[00:11:37] Rebecca: Maybe I’m just like, I don’t know, forgetting, but I thought it was gonna be a lot crazier.

[00:11:42] Tristan: Same time we’re college students, we’ve had a lot going on in life, so. Maybe there’s some events that we just haven’t had our minds on. No, I totally get what you’re saying.

[00:11:50] Rebecca: Speaking of college, I wanted to ask both of you what your favorite meteorology classes you have taken at OU so far. Mine personally, I really enjoyed the Intro to Atmospheric Sciences. That was like the first one, but it was partially because I already took that class. But I was curious on what you guys have taken so far and what you guys, if David, you want to go first?

[00:12:13] David: Yeah, I’ve taken two entire courses currently on my third one first one being intro, second one being Programing for Meteorology, and third one being Atmospheric Circulations. If I had to choose, I really think I love Programming for Meteorology. While circulations, I’m truly interested in, like this is the stuff that really gets me going. The programming and just seeing the, applications of programming into meteorology was so interesting. It also doesn’t, hurt that I got to meet my professor, Dr. Schwartzman, who I’m trying to get into a research position with unfortunately fell through recently due to funding issues But no less. He has been a great somewhat mentor for me. I’ve learned so many skills from just spending time outside of classes with him. And it has been overall great class. I really enjoyed it.

[00:13:04] Rebecca: Yeah, you helped me a lot in that class, too I will say. But yeah, you always, you always knew what you were doing though. Tristan. I feel like your favorite class was also programming . I just remember you studying for the final and you like I don’t know man you had it in the bag. You really did.

[00:13:20] Tristan: You hit the nail on it. Yeah, definitely my favorite class was Programming for Meteorology. I won’t lie, I was going into the class, I was scared to death about trying to learn how to program because, everyone says it’s like learning a new language, and me over here, the most I could ever learn from a language is, I can’t speak that language, no hablo espaniol.

[00:13:42] Rebeca: Yeah, literally.

[00:13:42] Tristan: But throughout that time, I was incredibly challenged in that course. I had a lot of assignments where I tried to really break through that ceiling and break through my doubts on it. And I think the moment where I had my comeback phase is when we had our midterm. And, oh my gosh, this midterm, like only a 45 minute midterm and you cover half the stuff in a whole semester trying to write program, trying to write programs, trying to code everything. And, I think everyone can speak from experience when we say that we all bombed that midterm.

[00:14:17] Rebecca: Dude, I was just thinking that midterm killed me. Killed my grade. Oh my gosh. It was It dropped me from an A to a C. And it stayed that way. I just could not get it back up.

[00:14:27] Tristan: I definitely feel that’s the same way. It was hard when so much weight was put on the midterm, but, it really, motivated me to really step up to the plate and finish the second half of the semester. And boy, did I. I got a 95% on my final which I was super happy and super grateful for. A quick shout out to Dr. Aaron Hill, thank you so much for being such a good professor to that class.

[00:14:50] Rebecca: There was good professors. Appreciate you answering that.

[00:14:53] David: I’ve only heard of good professors for programming and not really just programming. My intro professor was Dr. Amanda Kiss. I took it over the summer, so it was online. Didn’t really get to interact with her, but she’s now my physical mathematics professor. And I’m having a blast. She also teaches Atmospheric Dynamics and Unusual Weather and Climate: Severe and Unusual Weather. I had an issue with submitting my work today and she was responding within, 10 seconds to my emails after hours, which is crazy, but I’ve really only heard of good professors for the meteorology program at OU.

[00:15:26] Rebecca: No, I honestly agree.

[00:15:27] Tristan: They definitely go through a lot, and I think, we’re easily so grateful for that.

[00:15:32] Rebecca: It took a lot for them to get here, too. It’s like a world class program. We have professors from Brazil, we have professors from all over, that come to OU because they know that it’s the place to be. To even teach, or get Masters, PhDs. It’s a really great program. It’s definitely pricey, but it’s worth the money, and that’s something I try explaining to my parents. And they, yeah. It’s, I don’t know, unless you’re involved in the weather world, I don’t think a lot of people get it until they really get to see in person like the National Weather Center and the ARC and you know just everything that actually goes on. Tristan with your involvement with with SERO and also how programming has helped with that go into because I want to know a little bit about that because you’re also on an academic paper, right? You’re a part of that.

[00:16:22] Tristan: Yes. I’ll get to the academic paper a little bit later. But I’ve been working for SERO, actually the ARM division, it’s a cooperative effort between ARM, which is the Department of Energy’s Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Division, and SERO. And so what I do is essentially week from week, I’m a Data Quality Analyst. So I have a group of instruments from, all over the world, we’re talking about instruments up in the North Slope of Alaska. We have some instruments off a small Atlantic island in the North Atlantic. I also have a collection of instruments off of Tasmania, which is amazing to see, how weather impacts so many different regions all at the same time. But moving into kind of our summer project, it, which is, what we have a kind, a paper kind of being pushed towards the AMS for, the summertime project is essentially a research project looking at how certain aerosols affect cloud droplet radius sizes and just how they interact with clouds within mixed boundary layer case days. So throughout that time, I’ve been working with trying to, find good modelers to use, trying to apply these modelers with ARM data and, push them out so that, hopefully this can become, a wider use d method to understanding how air parcels and just different aerosols affect our weather and climate.

[00:17:48] Rebecca: I’m going to ask a dumb question because I, just for the people that, because I know like my grandma likes listening to these, describe what like an aerosol is and also how that would potentially impact- go a little bit deeper into it. Dumb it down if that makes sense.

[00:18:03] Tristan: One of the best examples of aerosols are just different chemical compounds that you see. So CO2 is an aerosol, Sulfur is an aerosol. So almost anything you can think of that can be, not necessarily evaporated, but more lifted up with say updrafts or just anything within that convective circulation, those are considered aerosols. And because of different properties of said aerosol, CO2 could be a lot thicker, they can affect a lot of things such as, trapping warmth, trapping energy. Higher amount, higher amounts of energy or affecting raindrop radius sizes, which is something that we’re really looking into in this project. So hopefully that’s a good definition of kind of aerosols for you.

[00:18:49] Rebecca: Yeah. No, that, that was perfect ’cause now I’m like, I’m wondering how that may relate to even climate change and just a bunch of different factors and drought and even how you stated like, all over the world too. How some, because , there’s different air pollutions and different aerosols in the atmosphere. All around, I’m thinking India, Bangladesh, just places that are a little bit-

[00:19:09] Tristan: Think of the like, highly densed, populated areas, even just within, our own country. Let’s look at cities like, maybe Detroit or Baltimore, there’s so many state cities in this country that can produce, so much aerosols that are just, thrown into the circulation. So by understanding what these aerosols do in our atmosphere, we can better our predictions and better our forecasting and maybe better our preventions for certain health related issues. The list goes on and on.

[00:19:39] Rebecca: Yeah. It’s like the little things cause that could also potentially, I would assume lead to acid rain. No, or is that kind of in some areas?

[00:19:47] Tristan: There could definitely be a chance. I know that when it comes to our research, we’re definitely not necessarily looking in that frontier. We’re at this forefront of, it’s more of a broad thing right now, but our biggest point is yeah, our biggest point is looking at, how droplet radius sizes are affected looking at stuff with albedo. Which, even though I’m a student in meteorology, it takes me a moment to really understand what albedo is. That’s another thing.

[00:20:11] Rebecca: Yeah, that was in my intro class at Joliet Junior College, and I was dumbfounded. I still have, like, all the definitions and stuff written down, we had to make calculations regarding albedo and albedo effects, and it just, yeah, I don’t even, I don’t even remember half of it.

[00:20:25] Tristan: Most of the time, I think it’s just in the name, it sounds like a complicated name, so it can make it can make you think that it’s too complicated to understand.

[00:20:32] Rebecca: So many words in meteorology. Even just the abbreviations, I still struggle with remembering some of them. I’ve gotten a lot better, but SRH, obviously, that’s now Storm Relative Helicity, but when I was first getting into it, people would be like, talking like, “Oh, the SRH and the LCL, they’re this and this”. And I’m like, what are you talking? Can you like dumb it down? I just, I need you to slow down and take a back seat. Like it just, please explain to me. I don’t know. I don’t know, man. It was just weird. It was just weird. David, I know Dr. Schwartzman was discussing like how he was doing his project with what was it? It was with the, how can I think of the one radar, it was in the movie and how he took it out. Yeah. And he took it out into the, like the Lloyd Noble parking lot during when rainstorms would come by. Do you remember anything from that? And to actually scan rain droplets, I believe it was something like that. Cause I wonder if that research is, if they’re like working together with that or something. Do you remember anything from that or no?

[00:21:41] David: Yeah, so they weren’t scanning raindroplets. They were trying to, yeah no, it’s okay, good effort, so what they were trying, sorry, what they were trying to do, they were going out and trying to detect lightning with Phased Ray Radar. Now, the way this works is, they’re, I don’t know, so the way this works is, You, ah, I’m trying to remember, okay, now my brain fog is coming in.

[00:22:09] Rebecca: If you don’t, that’s fine, but I was just curious, because I was like, I could have sworn, because I know he, I know why I thought of rain, because he said he had to take the radar inside when rain started happening… started falling. I think that was the reason why. But he wanted to be close enough to a storm to detect the lightning and read that data. But when it rained, he would have to reposition or go inside and I don’t know. I think that’s why I put those connections together, but I don’t know.

[00:22:36] David: Probably has to do with some sort of sensitivity thing with the rain being too close because what they were trying to do was they were scanning this product called differential reflectivity. Essentially what you’re looking at is the difference in the average I think it’s width of a particle in the air, like a rain droplet, hail, sleet, debris, whatever it is-

[00:23:01] Tristan: Is it the height ? Sorry.

[00:23:03] David: It’s the width minus the height. Almost not the ratio. It’s minus. Now what this can tell you is essentially is the shape of a raindroplet, if you have a very positive value, then that means you’ll have a more wide, if you will, particle of rain than it is taller, which indicates a powerful updraft. So people look for these things called ZDR, or differential reflectivity, arcs, and storms indicate a powerful updraft. What my professor was doing with this was instead he was actually looking at above the freezing layer or the above the freezing level in the atmosphere where water freezes into ice. And at this point, you will get sometimes little icicles, just points of ice. Now, generally, they’ll be scattered all over with whatever direction they feel like they’re pointing at, but they have found that in a building electrical field, right before, you’re about to have a lighting discharge, you will see that slowly, they will be polarized. The icicles will start pointing up, straight up to the sky. And this will eventually, in turn, make a more taller than wider differential reflectivity data. Therefore, increasing the negative value. And once, right as it reaches 90 degrees pointing straight up, you would have a massive lightning discharge. And they were able to, even on some cases, plot the lightning between the two fields. They were seeing the fields build again because Phase Ray, the way it works, it scans like once every, I don’t know, two, five seconds? You were able to get very constant flow of data and you were able to literally see sometimes the lightning travel through the sky over multiple scans. So that’s how, now. That was one of the projects, but I know he went out for the Norman Tornado on April 27, 2024.

[00:24:56] Rebecca: Yeah, we’ll get into, we’ll talk, we can even get into that next, but yeah, continue with w hat he found with that.

[00:25:03] David: It was just one of his deployments, which is I really, he didn’t say much about it, but it’s cool because he… while we were in his class he would just offer if anyone wanted to go on a deployment with him just, I don’t know, or, Hey, I’m, taking the radar, 40 miles east to look at some, thunderstorm. Who wants to join me? Just to sit in the back and see how stuff goes. I just really like that about Dr. Schwartzenbaum. Yeah, this is the kind of data that he uses Phase R adar for.

[00:25:28] Rebecca: The fact that after one of our classes, he just was like, you guys want to see the ark? You, I’ll give you a tour. I have a meeting but I’ll show you around we can I can show you what I’m working on. And I was like this dude’s freaking great. I love this guy He has two hairless cats random, but I thought that was cool too.

[00:25:45] David: I forgot about that.

[00:25:46] Rebecca: Yeah, he’s just a pretty cool guy. Were you the one who saw his license plate? What is his license plate? Okay, maybe we shouldn’t dox.

[00:25:51] David: Oh my goodness. It’s just really cool. It’s a custom plate. I don’t know if I should say it. I probably won’t.

[00:25:58] Rebecca: It has something to do with the arc though, but I don’t know. Cool guy. It’s really cool guy. But yeah, no, April 27, 2024. That’s why I decided to put you guys together for this podcast because I just, it was a dream team. And unfortunately, one of the members, Jason, is not here, but I’m hoping to bring him on for a different episode. I’m gonna kinda narrate the beginning, and then I’ll hand it off to you guys. But we woke up that day, personally and myself. It was a group of eight people and we had two separate cars. There was a my Toyota Rav4 and then we rented a Volkswagen Taos from Enterprise and this was rented under my name because I was the only person who was above 21. Although looking back I think enterprise allows above 18. I’m not 100 percent certain. Anyway, originally I was in my Rav4. I wasn’t driving. I was in charge of the radar, which if you know me I’m, I like driving, personally. I like being in charge of radar, but I was still learning some things. I didn’t feel as confident, and I don’t know what happened, but about halfway through I started driving the Taos with David and Tristan and Jason. And I started, I was driving, and I forget where we were up north, because Storm Initiation started pretty early on in the day, and you guys can hop in here. Do you remember where we were in the initiation process?

[00:27:25] David: So I don’t remember the exact time stamps, but we started heading, westward, don’t remember the highway, but through Yukon towards El Reno. Then we caught on one of the first little storms that popped up throughout the day. We tracked it north, northeastwards. Went past Edmond.

[00:27:39] Rebecca: And it just kept recycling. It just kept recycling. And it was a, apparently it did drop, and I think Cameron Nixon was the only one to have actually seen it.

[00:27:46] David.It was a very brief.

[00:27:47] Tristan: Very brief.

[00:27:47] Rebecca: Yeah, but it just kept recycling. And just not doing anything. And I remember just driving and these two were cooking. And I was this is where I’m going to head it off to you guys. Because you guys are plotting and scheming and you’re like, I really think we need to drop south.

[00:28:04] Tristan: I’ll give my thoughts on it real quick. Like I said, we had two cars, we had two kind of teams of people. And the first team, was the team that initiated this effort, trying to go a little Northwest, which I get. That’s where models were saying convection was supposed to be discreet and start ramping up a little. And so yeah, we went west a little, and this cell just kept on recycling to the point where we got we got lost on a road, if I remember correctly, trying to meet up with the other group and by that time, it’s just, the cell was just-

[00:28:35] Rebecca: It was so jam packed, too, with chaser convergence.

[00:28:37] Tristan: Oh my gosh.

[00:28:38] Rebecca: It was just, yeah, not fun.

[00:28:39] Tristan: Not to mention that cell was moving so fast to the northeast. And so I think this is around the time, because we got past, I think it was like a small casino area, and we stopped at a gas station. And I think me and David were starting to get this thought process of oh shoot, there hasn’t been really any convection south of us yet this whole time. And I think that’s when me and David really started to look into some things. If you want to say anything on that, David, go ahead. But, oh man, the moment we had that oh my gosh, there’s no convection here. Skew-T’s are looking good, hodographs are looking good, it’s just it was like alarm bells going off.

[00:29:18] Rebecca: That environment was still untouched.

[00:29:20] David: I’d never seen a more powerful environment, truly. I’ve only seen a better forecast once. But me personally, I haven’t seen anything. Of course, April 27, 2011 outdid it, but. Yeah, so we were like, I think somewhere just north of Guthrie, off the highway, on some gas station, I was looking at it. I can’t remember the exact synoptics of what was going on, but I realize, like, why it was failing to produce and condense a tornado. So I said, it’s just going to keep doing this. The environment’s not going to get any better. This is essentially peak thermodynamics and, we’re going further and further away from optimal kinematics where just the winds and how they change with the height and how they behave and the nature of them. So I was looking over at it and I’m like wait a minute. This is a moderate. What’s going on? I feel like there’s gonna be more. And I started looking at it with Tristan. Tristan tells me like, what about south, south of us? What’s gonna go you know, almost on the border of Texas and Oklahoma? I started looking at it and I’m like, Ah, that actually could be something. At the point, at this time I was really, not that confident in myself with forecasting so I said, you know what, whatever, forget it. I’ll just, make up a forecast.

[00:30:22] Rebecca: I think that was all of our problem. We were not very confident in ourselves. And so it was hard to also, and this is no hate to anybody in the other car, but it was hard to like, really put our foot down, I feel and be like, we want to go this way. You guys can go that way. Come on let’s trust our guts. I feel like that was hard for all of us.

[00:30:42] Tristan: Plus, I do think there was a conflict of interest going on. Tristan The first team that wanted to race a little more northeastward and try and follow that cell. They were trying to hope for more of a daytime slash evening time tornado, where we were shoot, if anything happens, we need to be on it. As long as we’re safe, we need to be on it. If there’s any damage, we need to make sure that we’re close enough to at least document something.

[00:31:06] And I think that was a really big driving factor for us because I, I was on the phone with the guy in the other group and he’s yeah, I just, we want to get something that’s in the daytime. We want to get something that’s photogenic, even if there’s no tornado. And I’m like, shoot, man, you guys can go off on that. I think we need to make this choice for ourselves.

[00:31:25] Rebecca: Because everyone in our car, we were down to abandon it. We were like, let’s do it. Let’s roll the dice a bit.

[00:31:31] David: I had a little bit of my own bias as we’ll get into a little bit later. It was starting to get closer to sundown and without sun you can’t get through the day. Oh my goodness. I will get into that a little bit later.

[00:31:41] Tristan: Let me say something real quick. Let me say something real quick about it. I think the biggest kind of sign to go down south was definitely that mesoscale discussion talking about how a new tornado watch was going to be issued because things are starting to go upscale a little more. And I think that was the moment where shoot, this is an all in kind of opportunity. We need to get down here.

[00:32:04] Rebecca: Yeah, we booked it too.

[00:32:07] David: Oh my goodness. You just reminded me. It was one of the most painful… earlier in the day, yeah, I just want to mention this is painful. Earlier in the day we had a mesoscale discussion for the, I think, Red River, Texas, Northern Border, down south? And then there was, it was the most go here if you want to see tornadoes kind of discussion.

[00:32:25] Tristan: Oh my god, yes! Because that was the theory, that was the theory of storms that just kept on producing those, beautiful photogenic tornadoes the whole time.

[00:32:36] David: That’s true. It was like a beautiful mothership, tilted, or whatever it was gorgeous. And we’re like, nah, let’s go north for whatever reason. Saw, I think maybe to be honest, was closer.

[00:32:47] Rebecca: I don’t know. I don’t know what now we know.

[00:32:49] Tristan: And that’s the other thing about chasing too, trying to make those decisions. It’s like you’re trying to predict the future. That’s the whole thing, literally. Forecasting, chasing, it’s where do you think your best judgment’s gonna lie? And I’m glad that we made that, decision to go south. Better late than never kind of mentality. If we would have kept up north, I don’t think we would have had the best day up there.

[00:33:11] Rebecca: Yeah, I think we would have, yeah, I think we would have probably, I don’t know, because at the time, which I’ll get into later, we weren’t even sure, because it was nighttime when we did get down there, we weren’t even sure if we did see something until we later on verified it and the National Weather Service verified it. And so it was like we left I feel like we left that chase like It was honestly, we just had a good time. Like it wasn’t even yeah, we packed something It was just like I had a lot of fun. This was really fun. I’m glad we stuck to our gut and actually chased our forecast.

[00:33:44] Tristan: I think it was more satisfaction of getting onto a target location.

[00:33:48] Rebecca: Yes.

[00:33:49] Tristan: That we as a group made, rather than than, I don’t know, maybe depending on someone else’s, , I wouldn’t say ego or anything, but their, willingness to, try and get something in a quote unquote, better daytime environment.

[00:34:01] Rebecca: I don’t know, it was just, it was a fun chase, but once we got down there, ’cause where did we like first, cause I remember this was also the day of the Norman Tornado, like Northwest Norman too. And I just remember I don’t know, cause I was watching my friend’s dog at the time, my friend Anna, who was on my last episode but I was watching her dog and my dog were both left alone at my apartment and I just remember freaking out and because I was driving and I’m like you guys need to tell me where is this tornado? Like where is it Norman? And I remembered that but Was that before? I don’t, I feel like you guys would remember more the actual timeline of what storms happened when because this was also the night of the Sulfur tornado for everybody listening.

[00:34:43] David: There was a lot of tornadoes, man.

[00:34:44] Rebecca: Yes. We were on that storm.

[00:34:46] David: Went down to Guthrie and we, said whatever. We are like multiple hours late, but you know those two cells from earlier, they’re still kicking. Let’s go for that, right? And. If it doesn’t do anything, we’ll still be in target area for the, actual forecast that we had forecasted. We were, I was, Tristan and I, we were, coming up with the craziest ideas in the backseat and I thought about it and I’m like, whatever, let’s do it. So we go down there. These two storms eventually, they go upscale and this, while we are, down facing the real stuff two lines of confluence we’ll get into a little bit later. That’s when, the MCS continued. And started going Fujiwhara-ing and dropping two tornadoes sometimes at the same time, and Norman a little bit more past there. But yeah, so once we got through OKC, Norman we were still flying down I 35. And we tried to play the now upscale MCS system that eventually went into Norman. We couldn’t really chase it. It was upscale. We got on it. We stayed on it for a little bit, but then we gave it up after we saw confluence bands. Here’s when it started beginning, right? So along, the QLCS, the MCS was moving or by the way, QLCS stands for Quasi Linear Conductive System, or just a squall line for layman’s term. But as we were sitting there, the forecast beginning or began to verify, we started seeing these things called confluence bands or just bands of enhanced lift, meaning storms will be able to form and propagate off of these. So we realized this and we started playing more eastward to catch these that were just east of the QLCS, but so when we got on them, we started deciding, okay, which one are we going to play? Because early on into these storms like when they were just beginning to show on radar, it was very clear to me at least, how which one was gonna be prolific. You would have very similar looking, almost kidney bean storms. And then one of them would, look like Ed was eating 20 other kidney beans and that was, those are the ones that went on to do insane things.

[00:36:51] So we decided to play the easternmost convective system or convective confluence band, excuse me. And fortunately to no avail, I now look back at Trey Greenwood’s breakdown of this and We mainly decided to play it because we saw no one else was on it, and knowing the parameter space, and just how insane of an environment it was, I thought it would be better to have eyes put on this storm that almost no one’s on.

[00:37:15] Rebecca: That was one of the main reasons we went on it. We were, cause I remember, I think we were parked, and we were looking at both of them, and watching lightning, and we were like, okay, which one do we go for? And I feel, it might have been you, David, but it might have also been-

[00:37:29] Tristan: I was the one, I was the one who called it out.

[00:37:30] Rebecca: Yeah, you were like, I feel like we need to get on this one because nobody else is on it. And it’s more kind of for a, a just reporting standpoint, not even just a content standpoint. Because it was pitch dark. We wouldn’t really even be able to see it. But it was just more for in case we did happen to somehow come across damage. Which I mean, just more of a reporting standpoint. All right, let’s get on this storm instead. It wasn’t really… we tried to stay, reasonably safe with it. We knew that other people were going to be on the other storm, let’s go with this one. And I’m still glad that we did even though Sulfur at the time turned out to be bigger in headlines and in you know the chaser community, but I think that’s also because the storm that we were on, we didn’t really know what we were looking at the time. Like we, it was I don’t know. But yeah, after we decided that, if you want to go for it, you left the parking lot.

[00:38:23] 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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[00:39:10] David: And this is where Jason comes in. I was just processing the data and Jason just took his phone and stuck it to the window and held it there for, I swear to God, like an hour straight.

[00:39:21] Rebecca: Yeah, we all had different roles. That was why this was a dream team. We all assigned each other different roles. And I feel like if we didn’t do that, it wouldn’t have been as good. I was like I’m, just gonna focus strictly on driving because it’s nighttime. It’s there’s heavy rain. We just need someone to drive. Passenger seat, I believe yeah, David you were in the passenger seat. I’m like you need to-

[00:39:42] David: No, Tristan.

[00:39:43] Rebecca: Oh, Tristan! I’m like one of you two need to I need somebody to at least give me directions. It’s okay if it’s a little delayed, just, I know you guys are cooking, someone give me directions. So it’s an alternate between you guys, and you guys are both looking at radar, data, navigating where to go. And Jason, yeah, like you said, his phone was recording, stuck to the window. And that was basically, I don’t think I heard like a peep out of him, because he was so focused on just getting the shot. Which paid off in the long run.

[00:40:14] David: Except for that one time when he did get that shot he immediately realized what it was. Which no spoilers we’ll get to that in a second but yeah. What really was just amazing it was the synergy, especially between me and Tristan. Tristan when we were like in a town where there’s you know many turns that you have to do, Tristan would throw the radar data to me like all right take over and then he does navigation. It was just a beautiful first time I think this was my first time chasing with you and it was so fluid. Like butter. I never, worked with someone like this. It was amazing.

[00:40:45] Tristan: We, there’s another big thing about that. We, obviously when you’re chasing, you have to rely on cellular service. Okay. And that service can, very much vary, due to different carriers. So for example, I’m on Xfinity, I don’t know which one, David or Rebecca’s on. But, during those times, when I’m trying to give directions, sometimes phone would cut off. And it’s okay. Time to transition. David, you’re up. And just instant switch, instant lock in. It just, it was beautiful. It was such a good time.

[00:41:14] Rebecca: I know. Next time, we have to like, I want, I wish we were like live streaming or recording. I might, no, that wasn’t my car. I was like, darn, I thought I had the dash cam. But yeah, that was in the rental too, which was even crazier. But yeah, it was so good.

[00:41:29] David: Oh my god, I, yeah. David And a little sidetrack this is why I love chasing and it’s because it gets me in such a headspace where I am just laser focused. I’m locked in and I do so well. I have ADHD, I take medication for it, but no kind of medication is better than the adrenaline that just pumps whenever you’re on a storm. And these were some wicked storms. Looking at Radar, they all looked beyond belief. It was heartwrenching. I’m thinking about it right now. I’m getting chills down my back. It was seeing multiple storms.

[00:42:00] Tristan: Now I’ll say something about that real quick. So going back to the whole, concept of the confluence bands that happened. Around the same time, those confluence bands were just about to develop, I think it was like yeah, about right around the, that time we got the 0z soundings in. And they actually took a sounding from the Red River area. And they showed that cap, just completely eroded. Because the whole, the whole point of, chasing down South was like, okay, is this EML gonna, erode is this, is store our storms going to fire up or not. And so the moment we saw those confluence bands plus the, sounding data, it’s like, Oh my gosh, we’re like in a prime position. So once again, the sounding data was such a crucial player to that too.

[00:42:43] David: And I’ll tell you, the second the follow up mesoscale discussion, I think it was issued out 3Z. There’s this thing called SRH, as Rebecca mentioned a while ago. It’s, I, it’s, what was it called? It’s Storm Relative Helicity. Essentially, just to characterize it, or how much spin there is in the atmosphere. In general, a good amount of SRH is three to four hundred between the surface zero and three kilometers above the ground. And we were looking at values in excess of 600 from zero to one kilometer above the ground. Just beyond belief. Which actually served to hinder the Holdenville cell, which is why the storm that were on the westernmost cloud influence band, closest to the QLCS, did the best because of their proximity to the actual MCS. Allowed for that little balance to occur between extremely strong inflow and extremely strong outflow to produce those long track significant and even one violent tornado. Eventually when the MCS did catch up, at Holdenville cell, it did produce a violent, not, sorry, excuse me, a strong tornado, an EF3 unfortunately. That was quick, too. As it caught up, out of nowhere, just a little inflow merger flew right inside the storm’s inflow. And it just blew up, which yeah, when we were on that, we knew it was there. On radar, it was very clear. We were trying to see it. We actually-

[00:44:06] Rebecca: We parked on a hillside. And I remember we were like, just watching the storm illuminate as it was being illuminated by lightning, trying to see if we could see anything. And it was pretty difficult because it obviously was dark. And yeah, we kind of distance. Yeah, at a distance. And we saw on radar, we’re like, there was the tornado warnings, everything was there, but we were just still, unsure if we as a team actually saw it or not. And we’re like can we count this? Like what- and we left and we were like you know what we still cooked this was so much fun. Like we were on a storm that was tornado warned. If this was daytime we definitely would have seen it. You know we left and then i think it was the next day that or a couple days later that Jason was going through the footage and he started because if people don’t know For whatever reason, iPhone quality when filming at night, it’s just crazy. I don’t know what it is, but yeah, he sent this one screenshot. He’s guys, I think this was it. And it would just look like it might’ve been, it was probably rain wrapped, but I don’t know. It just looked like this big wedge. And then further on with more reports and confirmations coming out, we were like, yeah, we saw something. We, we saw it. It was, yeah.

[00:45:22] David: Wait. Was this the it was, I think that big wedge was the one I found a couple days ago.

[00:45:29] Rebecca: Yes. That’s the one that you saw, but like the one that Jason saw too,

[00:45:34] David: It was twins.

[00:45:34] Rebecca: Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yes. Do you think it was, like, is recycling the right word for that? Or, where it’s a handoff. What, do you think it was handing off or do you actually think it was twins or we don’t know?

[00:45:48] David: I think it was a satellite because I was looking at the damage assessment toolkit and I never saw any major deviation in the tornado path to indicate an occlusion. But I also didn’t really see a path of a satellite, which often goes unnoticed considering that they had a lot of data to go through, a lot of damage reports to go through. They really couldn’t spend that much time.

[00:46:09] Rebecca: Especially when Sulfur was a EF4, correct?

[00:46:11] David: Yes. I don’t know if it was Sulfur. It was oh, of the name’s about to come to me.

[00:46:15] Tristan: Was it Marietta? Marietta, Sulfur.

[00:46:18] Rebecca: It might have been Marietta.

[00:46:19] Tristan: We had a lot of, yeah, there was, we had a lot of tornadoes in such a close, proximity that night.

[00:46:24] Rebeca: But there was one that was just, yeah, Ardmore was an EF4, but I know that Sulfur, the downtown took a direct hit, like the downtown area, so that’s why, I don’t know, it seemed like just. I don’t know. It seems like our storm got put on the back burner a little bit just in terms of media and social media and some reports and you know I don’t know. Maybe that’s just a personal thing that I saw and felt like but yeah. It was-

[00:46:51] David: That is true because it was the it was associated with the western confluence band, which was able to meet that balance between strong inflow and strong outflow to produce those ones and the chasers at, oh, by the way, 90 percent of whether Twitter was already calling off today and saying it was a bust, whatever, they all sat out. And now they’re watching, multiple really powerful couplets with large correlation coefficient values popping up all at the same time over populated areas. They’re going to be looking at that one and, that’s what’s going to be going in their heads. And it’s gonna stick with that since it’s the, the first thing they see. Yeah. So I imagine that’s likely why, and also it was just such a chaotic event. It was. Frankly, Holdenville was one of the last significant tornadoes of the night.

[00:47:35] Rebecca: Yeah. Yeah. It was just, it was crazy. And I think part of the reason too, that, the reason why we kept sticking around is that we were already dedicated. We were already in it. We’re like, I don’t care how late we have to go, I’m trying to remember what time we got home. I don’t feel like it was even that late. But maybe I’m wrong.

[00:47:52] Tristan: I think it was about 2:30ish. But I could be wrong. We weren’t too far away from Norman, but at the same time we also had to drive, through that complex. That big MCS. Yeah. So that, that took a big, hit on our time.

[00:48:06] Rebecca: When I returned the rental to Enterprise, there was, I think, 756 miles that we racked up. So I remember when I was going to, pick up the car. They’re like, Oh, what are you doing today? And I’m like, Oh, just taking a tour around Norman because my license was from Illinois. And yeah, we were taking a tour around Norman, all right. Around all of Oklahoma chasing storms. Cause yeah, I didn’t want to get blacklisted or, they asked that question for insurance purposes and I just, we were like trying to be very low key about it. But yeah, that was quite the fricking chase, man. It was something that I will always look back on, and we gotta get this team together soon. The next good setup that we can actually all do, we have to. We just have to.

[00:48:52] David: You’re driving.

[00:48:54] Rebecca: Yeah, no, it was way, that was too much fun. I had a blast driving. That’s when I realized that when it comes to chasing, I really, cause I was really enjoying listening to you guys. And just learning. Because I remember even as you guys were talking, you’re like, I feel like I don’t know what I’m like, what I’m saying, but it’s all coming together right now. I don’t know. You guys like we’re pulling terms out. Yeah. Like David, you’re like, I feel like I’m pulling terms out that I’ve never really used or understood before, but now I feel like I get it, and it was just really cool to like, listen to as the driver and yeah.

[00:49:28] Tristan: It’s a big thing that just a traditional classroom cannot teach you. A classroom can teach you terms and definitions, but when you’re, actually in the field, trying to predict and trying to target a location where you could potentially, at least document something that is changing so many lives and, property and everything, it’s like those terms and definitions, they just come out instinctively. And it’s just, oh man it’s a beautiful thing.

[00:49:56] Rebecca: It’s difficult too because, we, one of the main things that David has gotten onto me about was, having my OU license plates. And, license plate covers. Because OU is obviously, for good reason, they don’t like to allow students to storm chase, considering that they did unfortunately lose students a couple years ago. And we I feel we’re just trying to be as safe as possible and I think that is something that a lot of chasers need to start taking away, especially with the new Twisters movie that came out. I feel like it’s just gonna cause a big uproar. And one of the things that Sean was once again talking about when he was, You know discussing how he was getting involved with Twisters and one of the things he mentioned, He’s like it’s I’m doing this for research and at the time we may not have had the instruments but we were doing it for our own personal research and just to better understand the storms and we were very safe with it and it’s hard to do when it’s nighttime chasing that’s not the case for everybody as we know you have to be very careful. But yeah like I felt like we were pretty safe with it and that was our own personal research and I hope that we could take this experience and other chasers can take similar experiences to later go into actual research. Like like how Tristan’s doing, right now, like with professionals with data and equipment to actually truly make a difference as well. Because, that’s really what it’s all about. I’m currently reading have you guys read Tim Simaras’ autobiography? Yes. I’m currently reading it right now. It’s great. I’m currently about 60, 70 pages in, but just the way that like he got into research, cause he wasn’t even a meteorologist. He didn’t even really have an engineering degree. He just knew that-

[00:51:47] Tristan: He didn’t necessarily even go to college. It was just straight out of a high school thing.

[00:51:52] Rebecca: He just knew that he wanted to make a difference and find a purpose with the weather because it was still so unknown. And the reality is that there’s still so much that we don’t know. And so even just the personal chases, because sometimes I’ll be like, I feel like way too many people are going to be on the storm, that chaser convergence, I’ll take a back seat and sit out some chases. And I feel like that’s what we did that night. We were like, let’s go to a storm that nobody is really on, just in case we can like somehow document something. So I don’t know, I feel like hopefully that’s in the kind of what OU is trying to get at and influence, because, they have to know that they can’t, people are going to be chasing, especially because of Storm Chasers. What happened, but I just hope that everybody can do it in a responsible way. That’s my personal advice to future chasers and future meteorologists. Do you guys have anything like any advice? I don’t know. Doesn’t have to be research related? Just even just like little things like make sure you have a first aid kit, walkie talkies. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

[00:52:59] Tristan: So biggest thing for me is firstly, yes, if you’re especially chasing with multiple vehicles, have some way to communicate with them. I remember correctly on that chase that we went for the Holdenville storm before we separated, we actually did have walkie talkies and we were actively communicating with the other vehicle team. Biggest thing for me is safety is top key. If you have anyone in the vehicle who doesn’t feel safe, I don’t care how close you are to getting that dream tornado, you have to put brakes on and make sure everyone is comfortable. We’re not here. Obviously, yes, it’s a dream to chase tornadoes for us meteorology students. We may be weirdos because of it, but it’s a true dream. It’s the point where, you have to sacrifice that for, people you care about. And, making sure that they feel safe before you take that risk because it is a risk. Like it or not, every time you go out on that road, you’re putting your life on the line. . And it’s not just because of severe weather, it could be just anything, being hit by oncoming traffic or, someone just, running a stop sign or something. People can die just like that. So making sure that everyone is safe and understanding of the situation is top key. It’s top notch in my book.

[00:54:16] Rebecca: Yeah. And I feel like that night, I believe I do remember us constantly checking in with each other. Like, how are we feeling? Do we feel good? Feel safe? Do we want to pursue this? Do we want to keep going? Please speak out if you don’t, I promise nobody’s gonna get mad. And that’s the main thing. Making sure you’re with people that you know you can trust and aren’t gonna get mad and, resent you or possibly not invite you back for another chase or something. Safety is so important. And the people that you surround yourself with, too.

[00:54:43] Tristan: It’s a big thing, and I feel a lot of chasers, because I’ve seen a lot of chasers feel uncomfortable, but they don’t say anything because of it, because, let’s be real, the energy when you have four or five people in a car all looking at, weather data, trying to get video equipment out, getting ready to go into a big storm. The energy is high. They’re everyone’s, I wouldn’t say stressed out in a bad way. More like excited stress. Stress is stress no matter what you think about it. It could positively affect some people, it can negatively affect others. So no matter what, make sure you’re constantly communicating with your team. Make sure that everyone feels safe before you fully commit to something.

[00:55:22] Rebecca: Even we saw on our chase that the probably the biggest danger to us was actually like things in the middle of the road. Whether it be debris, animals, like the amount of times we got so close to hitting something was crazy. That was probably honestly during that chase for us the most dangerous part of it.

[00:55:40] David: And really, communication is key for such a overlooked concept is Respecting, your chasemate’s autonomy. Their ability to make decisions. Because imagine, you’re in a car. You don’t know what’s going on. You don’t know what these terms are flying around. Now you’re being told there’s a violent tornado on the ground. You’re a little uncomfortable. Hey, can we leave? They’re not going to listen to you. That’s, you have no control over what’s going on. And now you’re barreling down, that’s a horrible feeling. You have to imagine yourself without that kind of autonomy. And that’s what I was going into. That mindset I was going into throughout this chase and every single chase from now on. I was trying to respect everyone’s autonomy, make sure they felt heard. Because I have heard through my friends, when they did not feel heard, they did not feel like they had a sense of autonomy and they were terrified. And they don’t want to chase anymore. Like it’s a very serious thing. And also another thing, chase for safety. You always see people doing search and rescue, but don’t do search and rescue if you don’t know what you’re doing, first off, you’ll, of course, very dangerous to yourself, you may even, add to the casualties and leading into the second point, you may spread resources thin, having to, this may sound very cruel, but they now have to spend time with you as opposed to the other disaster victims and that may result in a loss of lives. You may also just, your presence there may be getting in the way of people trying to, rummage through debris, knowing exactly what they do, trying to find people. You may just physically be in the way with your car or your body. It’s important that if you do want to do search and rescue, you have to get trained in first aid, at least know some basic first search and rescue principles, know when you are and aren’t needed, right? And yeah, that’s what I think about chaser safety.

[00:57:23] Rebecca: And I feel like personally if you are like, let’s say the tornado just hit and you are the first one on the scene before any emergency services arrive, I think get out of the way, do what best you can to help. But as soon as emergency services pull up, Step out of the way, see if they say anything, they say get out of here, listen to them, and then it’s time to leave, I think personally, that’s what I think. But if you don’t know what you’re doing, don’t try to tourniquet someone’s leg, don’t try to move somebody if they say they can’t feel certain things at least just stop and record what has happened and what damage, and be like, so when emergency services do come up, you can be, tell them, Hey, I think somebody’s stuck in this house over here. Or, hey, I think, someone might be completely uninjured that walks into the street from a tornado shelter and just be like, I’m not sure about my neighbors down there. I know they don’t have a shelter. Just taking in information so when emergency services do arrive, then maybe you can assist more in that way rather than more of a hands on. And then after that, get out of there. Let them do their thing. That’s my personal thing. If you’re the first one on the scenes Like immediately after that’s what I think and this might be controversial, which is fine. But that’s what I was taught with like even the College of DuPage, you know. If you are the only ones there just collect information so you can help in that sense.

[00:58:46] Tristan: I’ll give I’ll get one more, big tag, you know tab bit of advice on my end If you’re really dedicated and really want to go into chasing, be mentally prepared. I don’t think I can stress it enough. You’ll see death. You’ll see destruction. Thankfully, I haven’t really seen death, which I’m thankful for, but I have seen destruction. I I’ve seen terrible destruction and it’s not a fun sight to see. It makes people walk away from the profession, forever. And it’s a sad thing, but it’s a very real thing. These storms kill people. This is something that A, you’re putting your life at, you’re putting your life at risk for, but you’re also watching other people’s lives, involuntarily be put at risk, just because of where they’re living. So be ready for that. It’s a terrible thing to say, but it’s a very real thing.

[00:59:36] Rebecca: It’s real and it’s goes more into just being mindful of what you’re doing.

[00:59:41] 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.

[01:00:02] Thanks again for listening, and I’ll catch you on the next episode.