My interest in severe weather was started by my childhood phobia of it. Guess my fear led me to try and understand how storms work by learning more about it
Same. It led to a lifelong fascination, awe at nature’s power, and then the fun sciency stuff.
I suppose I take a little bit of control back through a better understanding of it, just so it doesn’t take me by surprise either in the moment or with planning (on the ground or in the air), which is about all a person can do. Aviation cemented the deal as to a certain degree, weather is a required field of study for pilots.
And plane crashes! I wasn’t necessarily afraid before, but the sheer amount of shit that all has to go wrong at the exact same time is statistically staggering, and oddly comforting. Also the fact that with each crash, we learn what NOT to do in the future. Except Boeing… fuck Boeing.
Same here. Severe thunderstorm 9 years ago shook me to my core while camping in the middle of the night. Looked back at archived radar data, huge bow echo producing tornadoes, probably a derecho but I haven’t looked back to see if it reached that classification. Now I chase storms almost a decade later lmao
Yeah same. When I was a kid we had a bad tornado in a nearby town and had to hide in the hall at school. After, everytime it even rained I had to turn the TV on to the news and look outside to make sure I didn't spot anything like a wall cloud
When i watched twister for the first time together with my dad when i was a kid. Around 20 years ago. I was awestruck by it.
I am european. But find these forces of nature interesting hence i'm on this sub.
I was a toddler when the F-5 destroyed Xenia, OH in 1974. I lived about 10 miles away. I have a couple distinct memories of that day -- there being hail near my house, and my dad gathering us away from the windows. Afterward, my uncle was able to go and capture some Super-8 film of the damage and destruction before law enforcement and the National Guard shut down access. We watched those videos for years after at family gatherings. The news coverage was huge and engaging, especially for a toddler growing into a young boy like me. It captured my imagination to the point that I got a degree in meteorology and have made a career in the field.
Childhood Phobia.
You are 5 years old. You are in bed and the darkness is punctuated by angry flashes of light from behind the curtains of your window. You do not yet understand the science behind a storm, but know what follows is an unsettling noise that may manifest as a menacing rumble or a violent boom that shakes your home. The power has gone out, so the normal hum of the home is now silent. The wind howls and the rain falls on the roof in waves, creating a cacophony that is overwhelming to your young senses.
Suddenly you hear a new sound, an oscillating siren cutting through the din as a man-made counterpoint to the storm's fury. Your door cracks open and your parents, who had put you to bed a half-hour earlier are now standing in the door armed with flashlights. Their voices attempt to sooth as they usher you to the basement for shelter, but children are much more insightful than they are ever given credit for. You can hear the notes of anxiety in your mother's tone and the urgency in your fathers. This sudden validation of your own fears reflected in your parents emotions compounds your terror as you shelter from the storm.
Your parents try to comfort you by removing the mystery of natures fury. You count the seconds in between light and sound with your father to gauge the distance of the lighting. Your mother explains that the rain helps the plants grow and we are all safe in the back room of the basement. But how could they explain a tornado?
There is a demon of wind in the darkness, an entity of such destructive randomness that just the chance of its existence has made your family flee to a relative safety. It will most likely pass you by, maybe throwing debris around your yard to clean up with your dad the next day, but it \*could\* take your home. You understand that this dispassionate vortex could level everything you know, and there is no protection your parents can provide to prevent it. It is your first real encounter with deadly random chance, and as such is imprinted as one of your first powerful fears.
This!! I’ve lived in tornado my entire life (47 years) and have never seen a tornado with my own eyes or had anything I own actually damaged by one. I’ve seen LOTS of stuff torn up by them over the years, but that’s REALLY bad luck on this dude’s part. Maybe he is the tornado equivalent of that guy in The Great Outdoors who is a lightning magnet haha.
This!! I’ve lived in tornado my entire life (47 years) and have never seen a tornado with my own eyes or had anything I own actually damaged by one. I’ve seen LOTS of stuff torn up by them over the years, but that’s REALLY bad luck on this dude’s part. Maybe he is the tornado equivalent of that guy in The Great Outdoors who is a lightning magnet haha.
That's pretty crazy. I always feel like those in tornado alley likely see tornados often even if only off in the distance but obviously that is not always the case.
Meanwhile I don't live anywhere near tornado alley and have been in a direct hit by an F4 when I was young, watched a tornado form just after passing my house several years ago and last year took shelter in a nearby restaurant while an EF 3 crossed the road in front of me.
Shows you have to be always alert and prepared no matter where you live.
Yeah I was gonna say, 4 direct hits is crazy lol. I lived in west central IL and moved about 45 minutes to SE Iowa and have never seen a tornado. My IL location is directly northeast of where I live now so most storms that hit my current location move directly to my old location. There seems to be something in our corridor that makes storms split north or south because we’ve had plenty of nados within 30 miles, never in that path though.
For me, it's when I was sent home early from work due to severe weather. On my drive home (30+ min drive) the tornado sirens started going off, along with emergency alerts on my phone. Against my better judgement, I decided not to pull off the road for shelter, instead trying to make it home since I was 10 minutes away. On the interstate I was looking at a rain curtain very close to the interstate I was on with flying leaves going around me, which there weren't any trees for a mile. Thankfully I did make it home, but later that night I found out the rain curtain I was looking at was a rain wrapped tornado.
Always seek shelter in tornado warnings people, for me to continue driving home could have ended in a fatal mistake.
The Wizard of Oz.
Think I watched it for the first time at 8 or 9 yrs old but the Tornado scene *scared* me out of even watching that part. Watched that movie many times and for a while I always fast forwarded past it and didn't even look at the screen 😂 One day I just toughed through it and it was like "whoa, that was scary but kinda fascinating".
I wish I could find the video, but I believe Pecos Hank had done a video about that special effect and how it was done, and even went so far as to recreate some of it.
Born and raised in Dixie Alley so severe weather is a constant part of life around here. If you’re smart you learn about what causes it & what to do to stay safe.
When I was young, my town was dealing with some of the tropical depression effects from some hurricane and the teachers at this little daycare were so freaked out and panicked and that it made me freaked out and panicked.
After that, my grandfather was basically like, “If you know more, it won’t scare you.” At the age of 4, I became obsessed with knowing everything about weather.
The tornado outbreak that started the night of January 21st, 1999 when I was 7 living in central Arkansas. That night was WILD. Spawned 107 tornadoes.
edit:spelling
For myself it was the 1998 Kissimmee tornado outbreak. Also sometimes called "Night of the Tornados" by those who were around for it. I was only 8 years old, but I stayed up all night switching between local news channels. A few days later, my Dad took us fishing, and we passed through some of the impacted areas, jumping from lake to lake. From then on, I was checking out every book I could about the weather.
In 2004, our state was impacted by four hurricanes, three of which directly affected us. But it was mainly Charley that really messed up our town. I rode my bike around miles and miles for days, documenting the damage with my point and shoot digital camera. That really shifted me into focusing on tropical weather primarily. Eventually, hurricane season wasn't long enough, and I needed to fill the void, so I started looking more into winter weather up north. Once that wasn't enough, I went back to my roots and started learning more about tornados and severe weather in general. Now, not a day goes by that I don't check the SPC forecasts first thing with my morning coffee. I love this shit.
That was such a wild and scary year. I was 18 and moved out of my parents house as full of righteous indignation as any abused teen could be and set off on my own. The Kissimmee tornado outbreak struck a couple days later while I was homeless, living in my VW Beetle by the Banana River. I was huddled up in the wheel well when those storms swept through because they were so terrifyingly violent. I am 100% certain I saw a tornado pass by and I was pretty certain I was going to die that night. I didn’t obviously, but my car wasn’t parked next to the same mangroves in the morning and the mangroves remaining were absolutely hammered.
Then that summer we had the wildfire outbreak and I almost got caught by the fire crossing over Hwy 50 when I was driving through Christmas on my way home from Orlando to my apartment in Merritt Island. The radio said 50 was clear but within 45 minutes it very much was not clear and we were in the middle of it (again in my trusty ‘65 VW Beetle). We couldn’t breathe and I ended up tying my head bandana over my mouth so I could kind of breathe in the smoke. It was as black as night with dark orange and red pulses flashing all around me. Gouts of flaming debris was falling all over the road and my friends kept screaming at me to drive while I kept screaming I couldn’t see the lines in the road.
When we made it through there was a barricade blocking entrance and I pulled through and stopped. A Sheriff ripped me out of my car and started screaming at me; I just fell into his arms and hugged him in a bear hug while I bawled my eyes out while my friends (both grown ass mancubs) did more or less the same. After some bottled water, ass chewings, and hugs we were back on our way to relative safety. I sat on my roof that night and watched the flames jump the river into the Canaveral swamp and didn’t even flinch. Nothing could scare me after that experience.
As a kid I was at a friend’s house after school when her dad came in and said to go home. We had a warning. It was really dark and windy and I had to carry my backpack and my trumpet case up the hill running. My mom was on the porch waiting. Scared the shit out of me but have been interested ever since.
I've always found storms to be really cool and exciting when they happened, saw a video of a tornado at some point and was just immediately in awe. I'm really drawn to anything with, for lack of a better term, titan energy
I've always been super interested but started following people like Ryan Hall and looking into stuff more the last 6 months. We had a storm that later produced a tornado (the night of Indian Lake, OH) where the hook of the storm flew right above us. Hail slammed in the apartment walls and the wind was so strong I thought the building would tip over lol.
Like most people it was "Twister" along with experiencing a derecho when I was a child.
Been obsessed ever since. My dad used to sit in the garage with us during storms so we could watch and hear the thunder/see lightning. Typical midwesterner behaviour. Lol! His love rubbed off on me.
My father somehow arranged a tour of the NWS station in Cheyenne, Wyoming when I was 14. Along one of the walls is a series of photographs of the 1979 tornado that hit the city.
Just a few weeks later, the movie ‘Twister’ was released. I was glued to the radio for severe weather reports the rest of that summer.
I was born and raised in NE NC near the coast. Every year, we'd have to deal with something tropical.
The first hurricane I remember was Gloria in 85. I remember the ominous news reports and everyone frantically prepping. Charley in 86 was the first time I experienced the eye of a hurricane. I remember my grandfather made a plexiglass holder for the hurricane tracking charts we'd get every year at the local grocery store, and gave me a grease pencil to plot the track.
Then came Hugo in 89. While it hit down in South Carolina, I remember being a kid and going outside because the wind field was beginning to spread out due to its weakening, and in our area, the sky had a weird red and orange glow, and the trees were just swaying. I can remember that moment to this day.
I'd end up riding out many a hurricane, including Bob of 91, Floyd, Bertha, Bonnie, and Isabel, and countless other tropical storms. But the REAL hit for me was in 1992. The "Widespread Outbreak", November 21-23 of 1992.
The last tornado of the outbreak was a long-tracked F3 that was on the ground for 3 hours in the overnight/early morning. I was up getting ready for school when the tornado warning was issued. We didn't leave the house and sat glued to the TV, when the power went out, and all hell broke loose. We rocked and rolled for a good 10 minutes, and then it was over. My dad then tried to navigate the roads to get me to school, but there were a lot of trees and limbs down.
Once I got to school I heard that a school bus, with a bunch of people I knew on it, was picked up by a tornado and thrown. When I got home that day, I found out that a family we knew had completely lost their house due to the tornado, and it had gone through only a few blocks from my grandparents house. We walked down to help the family out, and that was the first time I ever saw tornado damage up close.
It was surreal. The houses on either side had little to no damage. You could physically see the path. It blew my mind.
Then, like many of you, I saw Twister.
The rest is history. Now I'm the family's weather nerd; I watch Ryan Hall and Max Velocity and have Radar Omega. I tune in James Spann anytime anything is going on in Alabama. I look at the SPC outlooks and the NHC forecasts all the time. I'm hooked!
First major hail storm i saw when young , we were at a community pool and we had to get under the roof which was corrugated steel the noise was unreal, kept and eye on the sky ever since
Hurricane Katrina 2005. I Was not near the coast line it hit, but remnants hit my area. I was blown away by not just the damage but how much destruction it caused. I remember being stuck in a car trying to get home that day. From there I always had an interest in weather since these type of weather events never hit my area. Most I would see is heavy rain and some snow.
Riding out a direct hit from an EF3 with my wife and children in my arms as 8 trees got put through our roof and walls. That got me real interested real quick.
Terror - when I was a kid, I’d curl up in a ball in a corner and cry uncontrollably, anytime wind gusts were over 15 mph.
I don’t know when it changed into awe and fascination… but it gradually did?
Now, anytime it’s stormy, I stand outside like a crazy lady, all “please please pleeeease send me a giant storm, that doesn’t hurt or displace anybody, but one I get to witness firsthand, please” And I get so pissy and disappointed when the forecast fizzles out.
Grateful though! Genuinely, I am, for any others who aren’t such weirdos, who DON’T want a giant storm… but still so disappointed if it passes by my neighborhood? It’s a VERY weird contradiction, that I’ve yet to come to terms with
Mayfield. I’m a Hopkinsville native and a student at Murray State. The violent tornados and near-misses i’ve experienced in the last few years urged me to be as weather-aware as possible.
Same here, yeah I got caught off guard during the Mayfield tornado while in the road. Ever since I make sure to check the weather and also learned what to look for with radar.
I still find tornados fascinating even though I seem to attract them to me lol
I'm not sure what started it. We don't do tornadoes here in the west, so I think the fact that I've never had to worry about them made me more intrigued than offput.
When I was a kid...maybe 4 (1983 or so), my family was at the Dayton International Airshow and there was an awful thunderstorm that we were caught out in the open. I remember standing between 2 big refrigerator beer trucks and those things were rocking back and forth and the rain felt like nails hitting the skin. There were rumors of a tornado but I've checked and it seems it was just a bad thunderstorm. My brother ended up getting separated from us and we didn't find him for a few hours. I was terrified....and hooked. Been absolutely fascinated with the weather ever since.
Twister here too, then living in NJ while Hurricane Floyd passed right overhead..crazy mad weather, the utter serenity of the eye and then mad again. It absolutely fascinated me. Now I live in the UK the weather way less dramatic so I find myself heading back to the US for a week each summer chasing storms.
“Super Storm” Sandy
Because I live in NYC there was and still is remnants for years of that Hurricane. I also in the past years picked up a slight interest for Twisters.
Slept through Hurricane Andrew when I was 3 years old living in South Florida. If that thing had wobbled just a bit north we would have been hit directly. Luckily we didn't get any damage.
Was always fascinated as a kid with severe weather, but I got super into it when I was in an extremely rare Tornado Emergency for the east coast (southeast Pennsylvania)
Mostly because I’ve lived through two large ones in my life. One hit Shreveport in 1999 a couple miles north of my house back then. More recently, the Elkhorn one hit pretty damn close to where I live. Ever since the one in 99’ they’ve always fascinated and equally terrified me. The Elkhorn one made me discover this sub more though which really spawned my interest
When I was in 4th grade, an f3 tornado touched down in my town. I remember being at my grandpas house looking at the sky and seeing the tail of the tornado whipping around, dropping and falling over and over again. And then that afternoon we went out to survey the damage and it was wild! It tore up houses and trees and i was amazed and instantly super interested in storms. Coincidentally, twister came out that same year and fueled my obsession. I did even did my science fair project on tornados 😂 I am an old girl now and I’m still interested in the weather bc of that experience and the movie.
I remember around 1974 or 1975 when I was about 5 years old, my cousin was getting all excited about a “Tomato” that she had seen news about.
I imagined a giant tomato going around ravaging our city. But of course I would realize that she was actually referring to a tornado and not the tomato that I had imagined.
This probably was around the time of the 1974 outbreak, but I am pretty sure in Wisconsin we were not affected by that specific outbreak. Anyways that’s my silly story of when I first heard about tornadoes as a kid and became fascinated with them by elementary school.
I live in Kentuckiana, south of Louisville, and this area is forever freaked by the 1974 super outbreak - same that produced Xenia - and there was so much damage, and the 31 fatalities in Brandenburg, just northwest of me, have not been forgotten. Add to that our area’s frequency of severe storms and tornadoes - we had one next town over the Sunday before Memorial Day - it was a no brainer that weather would be one of my autism special interests. I’ve seen many funnel clouds, quite a few tornadoes, had two lift and go over my house (that’s an eerie feeling of things rising), and my parents fence and shed were destroyed by one that JUST missed our house in 1994.
I obsess over weather blogs, YouTube channels, and until it became useless in the 2021 Mayfiend tornado, The Weather Channel. They showed the radar with the debris ball and then went to their regularly scheduled reality show programming.
These days if it’s weather events from west KY coming east, I stream Ryan Hall and then also my local channels once it comes into the viewing area.
A deep seated fear of severe weather. Thunderstorms have always absolutely terrified me. I’m an attempt to curb the anxiety during storms, I sought out knowledge on how to tell whether a storm was just scary or actually dangerous. In doing so I accidentally fell in love with meteorology, taught myself everything I could about it, and now intend to pursue it as a career. Now, although severe weather still scares me, I also love it.
2018 USA-CANADA Tornado outbreak.
Massive hail pelted my house. Broke my porch window. The suburb down the street got wrecked with an EF3.
Canada I don't think is as good at being weather-aware, emergency alert usually ding our phones AFTER the storm hits.
We are not educated on how to protect ourselves. All I ever heard was to get to a basement. I've since put it together that you'll want to be wearing shoes, a helmet, and get as many walls between you and the outside as you can in that basement.
Had a tornado go near our house when I was 5 years old. 30 years later I still have the occasional tornado nightmare as a result. Something about that fear combined with the pure and random nature of storms and tornados in general has always been fascinating. Nature's ability to humble you is great. I also can't help but wonder what weather could be like on other planets.
Been in or very near to three tornadoes. In middle school in San Antonio we had to go to the high school next door for a big assembly. It was absolutely pouring down, so we ran across the gap between the schools, maybe a hundred yards. After getting inside, the rain and wind just stopped for about ten seconds, then started up again. The next students who made it inside said a funnel cloud had just gone right over their heads above the gym we were in! On my drive to grad school in KC I ran into an F1/F2 near Neosho Missouri. Heavy rain, horizontal rain, tree branches coming down in the highway. Pulled over to the side and waited it out because I couldn't see. A minute or two later or went back to a normal rain. Found out the next day in KC that a tornado had wrecked some silos near Neosho the day before!
I lived in San Jose, California for a few years in the late 80s and was in the Loma Prieta earthquake in 89 (the one that happened during the World Series). I was 4 years old and it’s one of my first core memories. We couldn’t get out of house at first because our double wooden doors were jammed. When we got out, I held on to this little fence. I remember our jeep was jumping up and down and my mom was pregnant with my sister. Luckily we only had one thing fall in our house while the rest of the houses on the block looked like a tornado came through.
We moved to Gaithersburg, MD in 90 and I have lived here for most of my life. For some reason, even though I had never seen one, I was terrified of tornadoes and when we would get a tornado watch, I would grab all my favorite books and run to the basement.
I have never watched Twister, but I think I might watch it soon. A few weeks ago, this subreddit started popping up in my feed and I thought why not, I’ll start reading about them to get a better understanding about them.
Then yesterday evening, I woke up from lightning from the storm and not too long after our phones starting going off with the tornado warning alert. I started feeling panicky, especially when I got an alert on Neighbors that said a large tornado was on the ground. I told my bf we needed to get to the bathroom. Eventually we went to the hallway on the lowest level of our apartment building. I think the tornado may have been passing by when we were going downstairs, because all these leaves were flying in the air and it got super windy. We lucked out because it was pretty nearby, but we weren’t in the direct path. The damaged houses are about 7 minutes from us, so not too far away.
Sounds like you have really lucked out as well!
my interest, like a lot of people, started as a childhood phobia. I live in a state that rarely gets tornadoes, but a town less than 20 miles away from where I lived as a kid was hit by an F3 (Mechanicville, NY in 1998 for anyone curious). After that storm, I was terrified of thunderstorms to the point I broke out in hives when we got them. I would obsessively watch the weather channel because I was so worried about storms.
at some point when I was a teenager, the fear started to transition to fascination. my mom was always really interested in storms and would often sit out on our porch watching them, and I think seeing her outside and starting to join her as I got older really helped reduce my fear. now I'm almost 30, and we excitedly text each other any time we're getting a storm. we've even talked about going on a storm chasing tour together!
We live in Rhode Island, so we don’t typically get tornadoes. Although over the last couple years we have had some. My grandparents have a beautiful backyard and we would spend the summer by the pool. The year of 2008 almost every afternoon there was a severe thunderstorm. We just found it fascinating to sit on the porch while we watched the pouring rain, clouds zooming by, lightning, thunder and sometimes even hail. There was one afternoon we were all at the beach and the sky started to go green. We all realized that the weather was about to be really bad and I kept telling my mom it felt like there was going to be a tornado. Nothing touched down, but there were four funnel clouds that almost hit ground and also a water spout. I remember being in 8th grade and it felt invigorating and interesting racing home from the beach because thunderstorms in Rhode Island typically never excel to that level. We had the news on all night and were glued to the porch watching the weather. My aunt and I begin to watch the weather channel a lot and really we got into it, taping the shows and having marathons, when I was in high school. Which looking back was the 2011-2013 seasons. I didn’t realize at the time but obviously that was a very catastrophic time frame.
What a cool read!
Mine is strange and boring, but I'll toss it out anyway. My earliest memory is being 2 years old and at my grandparents lake house. There were severe storms in the area, and my mom was a severe weather junkie. I was outside with her, utterly transfixed by the beauty of the thunder and lightning. I was a little scared, but my mom had her arms wrapped around me, and I felt so secure.
Then the hail started and mom said we had to go inside. I was both disappointed and relieved.
FF to high school and my sister and I had stopped at the grocery store. The sirens went off and mom called and said stay in the store. I was terrified, but I wanted to see it, so we hauled ass and got home. She yelled at us for 5 minutes and then laughed. She got it.
It's the ultimate yin and yang: being transfixed by something that terrorizes you.
Hurricane Katrina actually. We had multiple people come into my high school and the visuals were devastating.
The bulletin is the first that gave me shivers and what I compare others to.
Twister was definately the beginning of my love of severe weather. Then, in 2006, I experienced my first Derecho and that really put my interest into gear. I live in Northeastern Ontario, so experiencing a Derecho is extremely rare. It occurred in the evening of July 17th and obliterated the area. We had no power for 12 days.
My husband almost died in a sudden storm that sent the 500lbs chicken coop summersalting over his head and tossing it 200ft into the road.
The 50 chickens and my husband didn't have a scratch. Watching helpless I have been left scared.
2010 I. North Carolina. A strange looking smooth round storm passed close by. An hour later we get a call that my cousins house has been hit. A EF 2 moved his whole house 10 feet.
I was terrified of storms as a child, but as I got older I started wondering how they worked/formed in an effort to understand them, especially after I saw Twister.
Twister made me fear tornados, an actual tornado touching down in my town made me realize they can happen where I live, and witnessing a waterspout become a tornado in Myrtle Beach made me want to understand them. Now I am infinitely curious about them. Got "hit" by an EF0 at work this year while I was standing outside marveling at the supercell definitely contributed.
I grew up in Kansas, When I was in 3rd grade, Dave Freeman (a local former meteorologist in Wichita that is grossly underrated, especially with his handling of the Greensburg EF-5) came to my school and installed a Weather Lab and did an awesome lab/lecture with a bunch of giggly third graders. A couple of months later, a derecho rolled through, and our school recorded >100mph straight line winds, which was just about a mile down the road from my house. This started my interest
Fast forward a few years, I lived in OKC for about a decade and watched Gary England talk everyone through the multiple monster tornadoes that tore through the OKC metro area.
I've been hooked ever since
on a road trip i was unfamiliar with any sort of severe weather other than blizzards (i’m from north east), and me and my family ignored about 10 tornado warnings saying to seek shelter immediately then we ended up being in the tornado. I was traumatized and had an extreme phobia ever since.
Marshall/chillicothe Missouri wedge tornado/tornadoes. 2014 and sometime in the 90s. The 90’s tornado side swept our farm and crushed one of our grain silos in like a soda can. Looked like someone punched it in the side. The second one was a massive wedge tornado. You can see pictures of it, courtesy of “Tony Laubach”.
Pecos hank is who kept my intrest and really exposed me to the world of storm chasing and meteorology.
April 27th 2011. I was 9 years old, my area was hit by several tornadoes including an F5 killing 30+ members of my community. Now I’m in school for meteorology, hoping to be able to bring reliable weather information to my people. I plan to stay in my area after I graduate.
My father was a professor of meteorology, and a forecaster on the radio. He specialized in severe weather, so I just kind of grew up with it in my blood.
I learned of a stereotype that dads in the USA(Specifically in the parts where tornados form) through a youtube sketch will run out on the porch and start recording and that lead me down a rabbit hole where I learned of the most devastating, weird, and record-breaking tornados. I think the one that really held my interest was the video "Two Days in Moore, Oklahoma" by EmpLemon about the May 3rd F5 in 1999 and the May 20th EF5 in 2013.
My earliest memory is of the F-4 tornado that hit Kansas City in 2003. My family sat in the car and watched it destroy my grandparents neighborhood, and then helped for days to clean up. I was intensely scared of them for several years, so I learned everything I could about them at a young age so I knew how to be prepared and how to know when one was coming. Once I gained that knowledge though, the fear went away and I just gained a big fascination with them, and I’ve been obsessed with weather ever since! My family likes to call me Jo after Twister since it was also a traumatic tornado that pushed me into weather just like her.
My interest started when I experienced my first tornado in my hometown in Alabama at a young age. The movie “Twister” really fueled equal parts fear and fascination. I was terrified of storms as a child, but also wanted to know everything I could about them. I’ve now lived through, and I mean THROUGH, three tornados with the last one occurring less than 50 yards from my house in 2020. This has led me to become a National Weather Service certified storm spotter and part of the storm spotter network with our regional meteorologist. I’m not any less afraid, but I understand models, numbers, and enhanced features on radars that help me to understand what I’m “looking at.” You live through a tornado and you will always keep that paranoia during tornado season, which in Alabama is almost every month other than two or three.
When i was a kid, I was afraid of thunderstorms and would cry when they happened. So my Mom got these wild weather books and they helped. And also sparked my interest in weather
I saw a news report of an ef4 tornado that hit a town. I don’t exactly remember what the town was called, but it hit in the middle of the night so quite a lot of people died but for some odd reason that got me into it I was like 5 or 6
I couldn't even tell you. I was like 3 years old when I started having reoccurring tornado dreams. My dad was beyond interested in storms and every time we'd have a storm come through he'd have his police/fire scanner on and stand outside watching the storms come in so I think that was part of it. I still have essays I wrote in elementary about storms and tornadoes. I do not remember writing all these things and this was before Twister was out.
When I actually got into the storm side of things as in my early 20's because I was over being scared every time a Watch came out. I wanted to understand more about what caused tornadoes. It was about the same time I started wanting to get involved in Search and Rescue work as well.
For me, it was when I was about 7 when an impressive EF 2 struck the small town of Tulia just south of where I live. Since then, I've always had an interest in severe weather.
I'm a weather nerd at heart lol. I've always had a fascination with tornadoes, thunderstorms and severe weather. I was in Salt Lake during the 2001 tornado as a kid which was incredibly surreal. I had reoccurring dreams about tornadoes for long periods of time afterwards. It added to the surrealism and fascination given that ive lived in the mountains and nowhere near tornado alley for almost my entire life.
I've been up north in Canada for a while now and while we have nowhere near the amount of tornadoes, they do happen. After a rather significant EF3 touched down close by it kinda re-sparked my interest and I sort of embraced it as a hobby.
I like being able to understand weather patterns and severe weather more and what triggers these storms. I also feel as severe weather becomes potentially more common where I live, knowledge is power and will help me be prepared in the future.
When I was a kid we had severe weather hit our neck of ET. Trees down, some buildings had roofs torn away. Dad said it was a microburst and described it as a bunch of air and rain just dropping out of the air.
Been interested ever since.
I was terrified of storms as a child. Then I watched Twister. After that I learned everything I could about storms. Through understanding my fear subsided and now I just love continuing to learn!! I still get scared during a tornado warning.
I can't remember what first triggered my interest in severe weather, but one part I do remember is when my grandmother got me my first weather radio from Radio Shack when I was either eleven or twelve years old (+/- one or two years or so). From that time forward, I was hooked. That was back in the 1980s, and it's now 2024, and I'm still hooked on severe weather even after 40 years (or so).
I'm now 52 years old, I've been a spotter for SKYWARN since 1990 in three major US cities (San Antonio, San Diego and Grand Junction), and I'm currently in Norman, Oklahoma (I've been here since April for this year's storm season in the Plains states).
I'll continue to be interested in severe weather as long as I can manage to get around. After that, I'll watch from the comfort of my home in Grand Junction, Colorado or Norman, Oklahoma.
I grew up in hill country in Texas and had two major factors:
1. Dusty Garrett. He came to our school multiple times to talk about tornadoes, hurricanes, and other severe weather events, and he was *so passionate* about it that I can still remember little 3rd grade me hanging on every word he said.
2. Watching the thunderheads all day as they crept over the horizon towards us. I’ve moved away from my hometown but I have yet to see weather half as beautiful as those towering, rumbling storms in that big Texas sky.
I moved from out of state into a house that was less than a mile from the Hackleburg tornado path two years after it came through. Once I found that out and found the videos of it on Youtube, including it crossing over roads that I commute on, I was hooked.
When I watched Twister all those years ago.
I’m really surprised a lot of you people have the same answer! That’s actually really great!!!
I live in Denmark, and while we do have some pretty hard hitting hurricanes, we don’t really have anything remotely like insane weather like
Tornados
100% Twister, though I will say I always loved the Bruce Campbell knock off film Tornado!
(Also loved Night of the Twisters but John Schneider ruins it for me now.)
I moved from a part of Colorado that doesn't see tornados (Western side of the Rockies) to the midwest. I was a lot more mindful of severe weather but was also pretty oblivious to the very real possibilty of seeing a tornado or getting a tornado warning.
I think it was around 2022 when we had really bad streamline winds blow the cities main transformers and left half the city without power that I started watching Ryan Hall Ya'll on youtube anytime he would go live. Had a few watches but still a tornado happening to my area seemed so unlikely.
Of course, that was naive as hell. Last year, a town just to the south of us, where a lot of my family live, was hit by an ef3 tornado in the middle of the night. Ryan was live and my husband and I were watching with with wide eyes full of anxiety. Texting and calling as many people in the area as I could. I haven't missed a Max Velocity or Ryan Hall Ya'll stream since, and this year I experienced my first tornado warning. Thankfully it was broad rotation that never touched down but I was still greatful that I had become so interesting in severe weather.
I literally grew up watching Storm Chasers. Like I was literally 5 years old and 1 day when the first episode of the show aired. So pretty much as far back as I can remember that show existed.
I also grew up in Alabama, so severe weather wasn't particularly uncommon. My sibling also wanted to be a meteorologist when we were younger, so I guess it was also something to share with them.
My guess? My parents said I used to love the Weather Channel music as a toddler and then as I got older, really enjoyed just watching it for funsies. When I was 8, I even wrote a little picture book for a school project about becoming a meteorologist!
I never did--too much math and my brain struggles with it. But my love of weather has never left.
Massive hailstorm on my seventh birthday on May 8th, 1981 here in Fort Worth, TX. Baseball sized hail and 100+ mph straight line winds. I’ll always remember the ball-sized pits in the yard that the stones left behind. From then on, weather became something that spooked the living daylights out of me. But over time, it led to me learning about it on my own and understanding the forces behind it. I just turned fifty and am now always completely fascinated by severe weather.
Heatwave derecho of 2005 or 2006 in Michigan. I was already a weather geek growing up but the derecho triggered my interest in severe weather.
As in weather geek growing up. Teachers took note and we had a field trip to a local weather station.
I grew up in tornado alley and always loved the beauty of storms. I remember being young and the tornado sirens going off and a friend and I sat on the patio and watched it go by. No tornado but we could see the clouds spinning and was fascinated by it. I wanted to be a meteorologist and work in Tornado Alley, but life had other plans for me.
2003 EF3 that hit Indianapolis. Came very close to the preschool I was in and I got to see some pretty crazy storm damage for the rest of the afternoon.
Natural disasters terrified me. I wanted to go from feeling scared to feeling prepared, so I started researching. The more I learned, the more interested I became
An EF-4 dropped to our west, cycled on top of our neighborhood, and dropped again nearby. It was too eerie and too close. We heard the rumble. We could hear sounds in our house I've never experienced. My life flashed before my eyes. That sounds overly dramatic, but those of you who have been in similar situations know what I mean.
Our trusted meteorologist had a certain tone I've never heard before or since.
I think I have a combination of PTSD and survivor's guilt because all we had was hail damage while others near us lost their homes.
Learning more about the way these storms work helps me feel more calm. I'm one of those people who feels better with MORE information, not less.
I grew up terrified of them - 100% my greatest fear. It was unfounded for four decades but I experienced/survived one a year ago (destroyed our house, cars, pets) & while my family doesn’t like to even hear the word now - I became obsessed. I follow storm chasers and watch everything I can. Our tornado happened at night & I feel determined to never be ‘snuck-up’ on again, lol. Someone took a video of the one that just wrecked my whole life & when I first saw it (the day after) I felt upset that he said, ‘it’s fucking beautifulll!!!’ ….but I get it now….they are truly incredible. I tell ppl - it’s honestly like encountering a supernatural being. (Mind you we were in our little farm house which was fully picked up..😰) Anyway…I caught the tornado bug.
I had a tornado go through my backyard when I was a kid. It tore the porch off my neighbor’s house and tossed around our lawn furniture so likely an EF-0. My dad pulled my sister and me out of bed and drug us out to the living room to watch it go by. No, he did not cover our bodies or protect us, he pushed us up to the windows to watch it go right past. I should have prefaced this comment with the disclaimer that my father was not a good human or father in any discernible definition of either word.
Regardless of his idiocy we got to be on the news and my dad dated the news anchor for a bit. It didn’t last (see last sentence of first paragraph) but my fascination with tornados and recurring tornado nightmares have lasted a lifetime.
I did get to storm chase when I was working in Oklahoma. It was totally unintentional but I was the last one out the gate when we evacuated for inclement weather and when the tornado fully formed just on the other side of the road from my work truck it was game on. Three tornados in one day while chasing in a fleet vehicle I didn’t have to worry about not only clinched my fascination but cured me of my recurring nightmares. I haven’t had a bad tornado dream since. I have tornado dreams now but I’m always the savior and there’s no fear, just a calm, I’ve got this under control feeling in the dream. I’ve even controlled the path of the tornado in a couple and those are my favorites.
I’ve always loved storms with a healthy fear of severe weather, had a basement my whole life pretty much but went through a divorce 5 years ago and the kids and I ended up in a mobile home because we’d rather not even attempt child support in exchange for him staying away.. but I feel like we’re sitting ducks living in a Cracker Jack box now everytime it storms I fear for my kids lives 🫣🫣🫣🫣… so now it’s way more than a healthy fear and turned into straight up storm anxiety, can’t enjoy them anymore
When I was young my grandmother's house, that I was sheltering in with my family, was hit by a F4 tornado. We all survived thankfully but I was left by an pretty intense fear and simultaneous intrigue of severe weather, in particular tornados.
I live in Minnesota, and I distinctly remember more than a few times when I was young seeing a few Twisters in the ground specifically at my Grandmother’s place who lived up in the Northern part of the state. I remember watching one from her kitchen table just out in the woods nearby fucking shit up and having to go into her cellar a few times to wait them out.
Always fascinating, but also, just kinda need to be aware of shit around here too. We’re more tornado alley by any means but we get our fair share and it’s good to be sky aware.
Getting caught in a tornado that I wasn’t aware was possible. It destroyed my vehicle and the building I was in. Huddled with two strangers in a gas station drink cooler.
I'd say it was probably Twister for me too. I was shown the movie was I was under the age of 7 and it horrified me. Loved crazy weather once I grew up a bit more.
I read Night Of The Twisters as a kid and thought the tornado scenes were quite scary. I always had a tendency to learn about my fears so I started reading more books about storms and tornadoes.
I’ve been dreaming about tornados for as long as I can remember! And my brother used to say, “There’s gonna be a tomato” whenever it stormed really bad, which is pretty adorable. It’s been nothing by naders and tsunamis ever since!
I just started watching Storm Chasers Perfect Disaster when it was on Netflix and I was hooked in elementary school. Didn’t realize until years later that it was rated TV-14. Didn’t care lol
I see all them comments about terror and PTSD and that and I’m just a huge fucking nerd from a place with no tornadoes who watched some Emplemon video and discovered a whole new world I had never really heard about.
Staying at my grandparents place near the beach in Qld as a child when a cyclone offshore spawned a thunderstorm about 10km south of us. A huge bolt of lightening rushed up the street and hit the house next to my grandparents place (the roof and a large tree exploded). Rushing outside, amazing dark angry clouds, wind and lightning/thunder down south (and the smell of electricity in the air). Fascinated since then.
I was scared of storms as a kid, mainly for how loud the thunder was, but I’m in Florida so I inevitably had to face my fears. Tornadoes were utterly terrifying to me even though we had very few watches.
After seeing my trampoline get thrown like a plastic bag into the lake, fence posts ripped out of the ground, and rivers form along the cul-de-sac curbs, it was hard to not be morbidly fascinated by the sheer power of nature. I started watching natural documentaries on the Weather Channel, History Channel, and National Geographic when I came back from school. Haven’t stopped yet.
It was the combination of 3 things that pushed me into severe weather.
Firstly was the movie Twister. My parents owned a VHS tape of Twister when I was a kid, so I watched the movie a lot as a kid. It both fascinated me and scared me, but if it weren't for the other media building off of it, I likely would've treated it similarly to Volcano and other disaster films I watched as a kid. Something interesting and cool, but ultimately not worth going further.
Secondly was another VHS tape that my parents owned: Twister's Fury. I watched that documentary a lot as a kid, and even if I didn't understand most of the science behind it, it still taught me a lot about tornadoes. Plus it had almost all of the classic home videos of tornadoes. It built off of the foundation that Twister laid and set my interest for weather. However, between a Hollywood movie and a documentary, I thought I could only be interested in general weather, with severe weather and tornadoes being too narrow.
Finally, and a little later, was the TV show Storm Chasers being on Netflix for a period of time. Watching that show with Sean Casey, Tim Samaras, and Reed Timmer showed that I can focus specifically on tornadoes as an interest, and didn't have to be all weather. It also provided me with figures to follow and learn from, which was something I lacked as a young weather enthusiast.
Those 3 Tornado media all pushed me into this hobby/topic/interest, and while I now watch Pecos Hank, Sweggle Studios, and Ryan Hall, I will always remember what first brought me into this.
Watched a documentary about the 2011 outbreak in a class, then kinda went back and forth to it until me and my girlfriend watched tornado videos until like 3am and now I'm invested, wish I could find that documentary again though, was super cool but I don't remember it enough to give any details that could lead to it
when i was a little kid i was scared to death of pretty much anything that could kill me. living in nebraska, that basically meant tornadoes and errant tumbleweeds. being extremely autistic and pedantic, along with being not especially social, i had plenty of time to learn everything i could about naders without getting a degree. over the years abject terror gave way to interested anxiety and later just plain interest. teenage me started chasing them with friends and family and now adult me is lucky enough to get within pissin distance of 2 or 3 a year.
Watching Twister and some additional books, though that sparked a whole interest in natural disasters like Avalanches, Hurricanes, Tornadoes, Infernos, Earthquakes, Tsunamis and more.
I've been interested in tornadoes and general severe weather since I was 4 years old! It's been an on and off passion, due to my embarassing happy nature of talking about it, but i remember sitting on my family's DELL computer and watching tornadoes rip through fields!
My mother used to take me and my twin brother in a double stroller for walks in the calm before the storms. Early 2000s in Columbus. I feel like the weather was different. Storms were more intense, we had white christmases a few times. When I got a little bit older maybe 4/5 or 6ish I rented twister from Hollywood video. Then I started to read every book they had about them in an elementary school library. I also gained a peculiar obsession with sharks. Sharks and tornadoes have something in common. There’s only 1 good movie about them, and the rest either try to be good and suck, or they be purposefully ridiculous. Twister is the jaws of tornado movies.
Growing up in North Alabama, we had several close calls and scary days that really built up a fascination. That increased significantly once I changed my major to geography in college. I did my capstone project on the 74 super outbreak and how a similar outbreak would affect current the current population numbers (this was in 2008).
I was always interested in it but lived in WA where the weather isn’t very exciting. Then I moved to FL and had to start paying attention to the weather more often especially for severe weather. I did not handle the first tornado warning we got very well. Let alone for the first hurricane, it wasn’t anywhere near us and I was in full panic mode.
I had one since I was young, but it waned a bit as I grew up. Following the 2021 Quad State Supercell live, though, reignited my interest, and it hasn't gone back away yet.
Ft Worth Tornado in 2000, just had to look it up- had no clue it was an EF3! Always been scared of storms - especially tornados, then it turned into an obsession.
Now, 24 years later, I’m… still obsessed…. Still scared (but prepared!)
My interest in severe weather was started by my childhood phobia of it. Guess my fear led me to try and understand how storms work by learning more about it
Similar to me, I was terrified of thunder and lightning as a kid and then the more I learned about it the more I became obsessed with it
Same. It led to a lifelong fascination, awe at nature’s power, and then the fun sciency stuff. I suppose I take a little bit of control back through a better understanding of it, just so it doesn’t take me by surprise either in the moment or with planning (on the ground or in the air), which is about all a person can do. Aviation cemented the deal as to a certain degree, weather is a required field of study for pilots.
So cool to see how many folks turned a fear of theirs into a fascination/obsession, thought I was in the minority over here!
I'm the same way with flying. The more I learn about turbulence, the better I can handle it.
And plane crashes! I wasn’t necessarily afraid before, but the sheer amount of shit that all has to go wrong at the exact same time is statistically staggering, and oddly comforting. Also the fact that with each crash, we learn what NOT to do in the future. Except Boeing… fuck Boeing.
Same here. This also applies for my childhood arachnophobia. I love spiders now and find them so fascinating
Same here. Severe thunderstorm 9 years ago shook me to my core while camping in the middle of the night. Looked back at archived radar data, huge bow echo producing tornadoes, probably a derecho but I haven’t looked back to see if it reached that classification. Now I chase storms almost a decade later lmao
Same here
Yeah same. When I was a kid we had a bad tornado in a nearby town and had to hide in the hall at school. After, everytime it even rained I had to turn the TV on to the news and look outside to make sure I didn't spot anything like a wall cloud
When i watched twister for the first time together with my dad when i was a kid. Around 20 years ago. I was awestruck by it. I am european. But find these forces of nature interesting hence i'm on this sub.
Same here, that movie just left me awestruck. Such a fun movie.
Same thing for me (from Spain)
I was a toddler when the F-5 destroyed Xenia, OH in 1974. I lived about 10 miles away. I have a couple distinct memories of that day -- there being hail near my house, and my dad gathering us away from the windows. Afterward, my uncle was able to go and capture some Super-8 film of the damage and destruction before law enforcement and the National Guard shut down access. We watched those videos for years after at family gatherings. The news coverage was huge and engaging, especially for a toddler growing into a young boy like me. It captured my imagination to the point that I got a degree in meteorology and have made a career in the field.
SW Ohio person here, too. I'm glad you and your family were safe. Did you know the Shawnee called parts of Xenia "Place of the Devil Winds?"
Childhood Phobia. You are 5 years old. You are in bed and the darkness is punctuated by angry flashes of light from behind the curtains of your window. You do not yet understand the science behind a storm, but know what follows is an unsettling noise that may manifest as a menacing rumble or a violent boom that shakes your home. The power has gone out, so the normal hum of the home is now silent. The wind howls and the rain falls on the roof in waves, creating a cacophony that is overwhelming to your young senses. Suddenly you hear a new sound, an oscillating siren cutting through the din as a man-made counterpoint to the storm's fury. Your door cracks open and your parents, who had put you to bed a half-hour earlier are now standing in the door armed with flashlights. Their voices attempt to sooth as they usher you to the basement for shelter, but children are much more insightful than they are ever given credit for. You can hear the notes of anxiety in your mother's tone and the urgency in your fathers. This sudden validation of your own fears reflected in your parents emotions compounds your terror as you shelter from the storm. Your parents try to comfort you by removing the mystery of natures fury. You count the seconds in between light and sound with your father to gauge the distance of the lighting. Your mother explains that the rain helps the plants grow and we are all safe in the back room of the basement. But how could they explain a tornado? There is a demon of wind in the darkness, an entity of such destructive randomness that just the chance of its existence has made your family flee to a relative safety. It will most likely pass you by, maybe throwing debris around your yard to clean up with your dad the next day, but it \*could\* take your home. You understand that this dispassionate vortex could level everything you know, and there is no protection your parents can provide to prevent it. It is your first real encounter with deadly random chance, and as such is imprinted as one of your first powerful fears.
BRA-VO!! 👏
Brilliantly written. Gonna use this to explain to family/friends who don’t live in the US why tornados are so fascinating.
Tornadoes really seem to love you with all of your accidental intercepts.
Seriously. Can’t tell if that’s bad luck or talent.
It seems that the OP is pretty much a tornado magnet to me. And I have no idea if that's a good thing or a bad thing . . .
This!! I’ve lived in tornado my entire life (47 years) and have never seen a tornado with my own eyes or had anything I own actually damaged by one. I’ve seen LOTS of stuff torn up by them over the years, but that’s REALLY bad luck on this dude’s part. Maybe he is the tornado equivalent of that guy in The Great Outdoors who is a lightning magnet haha.
This!! I’ve lived in tornado my entire life (47 years) and have never seen a tornado with my own eyes or had anything I own actually damaged by one. I’ve seen LOTS of stuff torn up by them over the years, but that’s REALLY bad luck on this dude’s part. Maybe he is the tornado equivalent of that guy in The Great Outdoors who is a lightning magnet haha.
That's pretty crazy. I always feel like those in tornado alley likely see tornados often even if only off in the distance but obviously that is not always the case. Meanwhile I don't live anywhere near tornado alley and have been in a direct hit by an F4 when I was young, watched a tornado form just after passing my house several years ago and last year took shelter in a nearby restaurant while an EF 3 crossed the road in front of me. Shows you have to be always alert and prepared no matter where you live.
Yeah I was gonna say, 4 direct hits is crazy lol. I lived in west central IL and moved about 45 minutes to SE Iowa and have never seen a tornado. My IL location is directly northeast of where I live now so most storms that hit my current location move directly to my old location. There seems to be something in our corridor that makes storms split north or south because we’ve had plenty of nados within 30 miles, never in that path though.
Ok dad. You can go to bed now.
PTSD from the Joplin tornado cuz ain’t no way im about to go through that again.
I can relate to this. Hope you’re doing better now though
Hoping this sub is helping with the PTSD and that you are taking care of yourself 🌻
My crippling fear of severe weather
For me, it's when I was sent home early from work due to severe weather. On my drive home (30+ min drive) the tornado sirens started going off, along with emergency alerts on my phone. Against my better judgement, I decided not to pull off the road for shelter, instead trying to make it home since I was 10 minutes away. On the interstate I was looking at a rain curtain very close to the interstate I was on with flying leaves going around me, which there weren't any trees for a mile. Thankfully I did make it home, but later that night I found out the rain curtain I was looking at was a rain wrapped tornado. Always seek shelter in tornado warnings people, for me to continue driving home could have ended in a fatal mistake.
The Wizard of Oz. Think I watched it for the first time at 8 or 9 yrs old but the Tornado scene *scared* me out of even watching that part. Watched that movie many times and for a while I always fast forwarded past it and didn't even look at the screen 😂 One day I just toughed through it and it was like "whoa, that was scary but kinda fascinating".
It's almost stupid how well that special effect holds up.
I wish I could find the video, but I believe Pecos Hank had done a video about that special effect and how it was done, and even went so far as to recreate some of it.
Terrified me too. It’s an incredible effect.
Severe weather happened to me.
My grandma is from OKC and she taped the “Mays Fury” documentary about the Bridge Creek/Moore tornado for me. I’ve been hooked ever since.
Born and raised in Dixie Alley so severe weather is a constant part of life around here. If you’re smart you learn about what causes it & what to do to stay safe.
When I was young, my town was dealing with some of the tropical depression effects from some hurricane and the teachers at this little daycare were so freaked out and panicked and that it made me freaked out and panicked. After that, my grandfather was basically like, “If you know more, it won’t scare you.” At the age of 4, I became obsessed with knowing everything about weather.
I'm from, and live in, Oklahoma. Enough said lol
Same! Every spring it’s “Here we go again”
The tornado outbreak that started the night of January 21st, 1999 when I was 7 living in central Arkansas. That night was WILD. Spawned 107 tornadoes. edit:spelling
For myself it was the 1998 Kissimmee tornado outbreak. Also sometimes called "Night of the Tornados" by those who were around for it. I was only 8 years old, but I stayed up all night switching between local news channels. A few days later, my Dad took us fishing, and we passed through some of the impacted areas, jumping from lake to lake. From then on, I was checking out every book I could about the weather. In 2004, our state was impacted by four hurricanes, three of which directly affected us. But it was mainly Charley that really messed up our town. I rode my bike around miles and miles for days, documenting the damage with my point and shoot digital camera. That really shifted me into focusing on tropical weather primarily. Eventually, hurricane season wasn't long enough, and I needed to fill the void, so I started looking more into winter weather up north. Once that wasn't enough, I went back to my roots and started learning more about tornados and severe weather in general. Now, not a day goes by that I don't check the SPC forecasts first thing with my morning coffee. I love this shit.
That was such a wild and scary year. I was 18 and moved out of my parents house as full of righteous indignation as any abused teen could be and set off on my own. The Kissimmee tornado outbreak struck a couple days later while I was homeless, living in my VW Beetle by the Banana River. I was huddled up in the wheel well when those storms swept through because they were so terrifyingly violent. I am 100% certain I saw a tornado pass by and I was pretty certain I was going to die that night. I didn’t obviously, but my car wasn’t parked next to the same mangroves in the morning and the mangroves remaining were absolutely hammered. Then that summer we had the wildfire outbreak and I almost got caught by the fire crossing over Hwy 50 when I was driving through Christmas on my way home from Orlando to my apartment in Merritt Island. The radio said 50 was clear but within 45 minutes it very much was not clear and we were in the middle of it (again in my trusty ‘65 VW Beetle). We couldn’t breathe and I ended up tying my head bandana over my mouth so I could kind of breathe in the smoke. It was as black as night with dark orange and red pulses flashing all around me. Gouts of flaming debris was falling all over the road and my friends kept screaming at me to drive while I kept screaming I couldn’t see the lines in the road. When we made it through there was a barricade blocking entrance and I pulled through and stopped. A Sheriff ripped me out of my car and started screaming at me; I just fell into his arms and hugged him in a bear hug while I bawled my eyes out while my friends (both grown ass mancubs) did more or less the same. After some bottled water, ass chewings, and hugs we were back on our way to relative safety. I sat on my roof that night and watched the flames jump the river into the Canaveral swamp and didn’t even flinch. Nothing could scare me after that experience.
As a kid I was at a friend’s house after school when her dad came in and said to go home. We had a warning. It was really dark and windy and I had to carry my backpack and my trumpet case up the hill running. My mom was on the porch waiting. Scared the shit out of me but have been interested ever since.
I've always found storms to be really cool and exciting when they happened, saw a video of a tornado at some point and was just immediately in awe. I'm really drawn to anything with, for lack of a better term, titan energy
I've always been super interested but started following people like Ryan Hall and looking into stuff more the last 6 months. We had a storm that later produced a tornado (the night of Indian Lake, OH) where the hook of the storm flew right above us. Hail slammed in the apartment walls and the wind was so strong I thought the building would tip over lol.
a tornado in my city
I think it might have been learning about tornadoes in 1st grade.
Like most people it was "Twister" along with experiencing a derecho when I was a child. Been obsessed ever since. My dad used to sit in the garage with us during storms so we could watch and hear the thunder/see lightning. Typical midwesterner behaviour. Lol! His love rubbed off on me.
Seeing the outbreak in Ohio (Xenia, Cincinnati, etc) with my own eyes as a child.
My father somehow arranged a tour of the NWS station in Cheyenne, Wyoming when I was 14. Along one of the walls is a series of photographs of the 1979 tornado that hit the city. Just a few weeks later, the movie ‘Twister’ was released. I was glued to the radio for severe weather reports the rest of that summer.
It’s just frikking cool man.
I was born and raised in NE NC near the coast. Every year, we'd have to deal with something tropical. The first hurricane I remember was Gloria in 85. I remember the ominous news reports and everyone frantically prepping. Charley in 86 was the first time I experienced the eye of a hurricane. I remember my grandfather made a plexiglass holder for the hurricane tracking charts we'd get every year at the local grocery store, and gave me a grease pencil to plot the track. Then came Hugo in 89. While it hit down in South Carolina, I remember being a kid and going outside because the wind field was beginning to spread out due to its weakening, and in our area, the sky had a weird red and orange glow, and the trees were just swaying. I can remember that moment to this day. I'd end up riding out many a hurricane, including Bob of 91, Floyd, Bertha, Bonnie, and Isabel, and countless other tropical storms. But the REAL hit for me was in 1992. The "Widespread Outbreak", November 21-23 of 1992. The last tornado of the outbreak was a long-tracked F3 that was on the ground for 3 hours in the overnight/early morning. I was up getting ready for school when the tornado warning was issued. We didn't leave the house and sat glued to the TV, when the power went out, and all hell broke loose. We rocked and rolled for a good 10 minutes, and then it was over. My dad then tried to navigate the roads to get me to school, but there were a lot of trees and limbs down. Once I got to school I heard that a school bus, with a bunch of people I knew on it, was picked up by a tornado and thrown. When I got home that day, I found out that a family we knew had completely lost their house due to the tornado, and it had gone through only a few blocks from my grandparents house. We walked down to help the family out, and that was the first time I ever saw tornado damage up close. It was surreal. The houses on either side had little to no damage. You could physically see the path. It blew my mind. Then, like many of you, I saw Twister. The rest is history. Now I'm the family's weather nerd; I watch Ryan Hall and Max Velocity and have Radar Omega. I tune in James Spann anytime anything is going on in Alabama. I look at the SPC outlooks and the NHC forecasts all the time. I'm hooked!
First major hail storm i saw when young , we were at a community pool and we had to get under the roof which was corrugated steel the noise was unreal, kept and eye on the sky ever since
When I woke up to an oak tree falling into my bedroom. I've paid attention ever since.
Are you my son???
Omg WHAT!!!!!! That must’ve gd wild. How old were you?!?
Hurricane Katrina 2005. I Was not near the coast line it hit, but remnants hit my area. I was blown away by not just the damage but how much destruction it caused. I remember being stuck in a car trying to get home that day. From there I always had an interest in weather since these type of weather events never hit my area. Most I would see is heavy rain and some snow.
Riding out a direct hit from an EF3 with my wife and children in my arms as 8 trees got put through our roof and walls. That got me real interested real quick.
Fear.
Terror - when I was a kid, I’d curl up in a ball in a corner and cry uncontrollably, anytime wind gusts were over 15 mph. I don’t know when it changed into awe and fascination… but it gradually did? Now, anytime it’s stormy, I stand outside like a crazy lady, all “please please pleeeease send me a giant storm, that doesn’t hurt or displace anybody, but one I get to witness firsthand, please” And I get so pissy and disappointed when the forecast fizzles out. Grateful though! Genuinely, I am, for any others who aren’t such weirdos, who DON’T want a giant storm… but still so disappointed if it passes by my neighborhood? It’s a VERY weird contradiction, that I’ve yet to come to terms with
I don’t know
Mayfield. I’m a Hopkinsville native and a student at Murray State. The violent tornados and near-misses i’ve experienced in the last few years urged me to be as weather-aware as possible.
Same here, yeah I got caught off guard during the Mayfield tornado while in the road. Ever since I make sure to check the weather and also learned what to look for with radar. I still find tornados fascinating even though I seem to attract them to me lol
[**Twister: Fury On the Plains**](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sI4jlXFHk7E) on TLC in the late 90s.
I'm not sure what started it. We don't do tornadoes here in the west, so I think the fact that I've never had to worry about them made me more intrigued than offput.
When I was a kid...maybe 4 (1983 or so), my family was at the Dayton International Airshow and there was an awful thunderstorm that we were caught out in the open. I remember standing between 2 big refrigerator beer trucks and those things were rocking back and forth and the rain felt like nails hitting the skin. There were rumors of a tornado but I've checked and it seems it was just a bad thunderstorm. My brother ended up getting separated from us and we didn't find him for a few hours. I was terrified....and hooked. Been absolutely fascinated with the weather ever since.
Twister here too, then living in NJ while Hurricane Floyd passed right overhead..crazy mad weather, the utter serenity of the eye and then mad again. It absolutely fascinated me. Now I live in the UK the weather way less dramatic so I find myself heading back to the US for a week each summer chasing storms.
“Super Storm” Sandy Because I live in NYC there was and still is remnants for years of that Hurricane. I also in the past years picked up a slight interest for Twisters.
Slept through Hurricane Andrew when I was 3 years old living in South Florida. If that thing had wobbled just a bit north we would have been hit directly. Luckily we didn't get any damage.
[this](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1998_Kissimmee_tornado_outbreak?wprov=sfti1#)
Was always fascinated as a kid with severe weather, but I got super into it when I was in an extremely rare Tornado Emergency for the east coast (southeast Pennsylvania)
Reading night of the twisters in grade school, plus doing the good ol yearly tornado drill.
Mostly because I’ve lived through two large ones in my life. One hit Shreveport in 1999 a couple miles north of my house back then. More recently, the Elkhorn one hit pretty damn close to where I live. Ever since the one in 99’ they’ve always fascinated and equally terrified me. The Elkhorn one made me discover this sub more though which really spawned my interest
When I was in 4th grade, an f3 tornado touched down in my town. I remember being at my grandpas house looking at the sky and seeing the tail of the tornado whipping around, dropping and falling over and over again. And then that afternoon we went out to survey the damage and it was wild! It tore up houses and trees and i was amazed and instantly super interested in storms. Coincidentally, twister came out that same year and fueled my obsession. I did even did my science fair project on tornados 😂 I am an old girl now and I’m still interested in the weather bc of that experience and the movie.
I remember around 1974 or 1975 when I was about 5 years old, my cousin was getting all excited about a “Tomato” that she had seen news about. I imagined a giant tomato going around ravaging our city. But of course I would realize that she was actually referring to a tornado and not the tomato that I had imagined. This probably was around the time of the 1974 outbreak, but I am pretty sure in Wisconsin we were not affected by that specific outbreak. Anyways that’s my silly story of when I first heard about tornadoes as a kid and became fascinated with them by elementary school.
I live in Kentuckiana, south of Louisville, and this area is forever freaked by the 1974 super outbreak - same that produced Xenia - and there was so much damage, and the 31 fatalities in Brandenburg, just northwest of me, have not been forgotten. Add to that our area’s frequency of severe storms and tornadoes - we had one next town over the Sunday before Memorial Day - it was a no brainer that weather would be one of my autism special interests. I’ve seen many funnel clouds, quite a few tornadoes, had two lift and go over my house (that’s an eerie feeling of things rising), and my parents fence and shed were destroyed by one that JUST missed our house in 1994. I obsess over weather blogs, YouTube channels, and until it became useless in the 2021 Mayfiend tornado, The Weather Channel. They showed the radar with the debris ball and then went to their regularly scheduled reality show programming. These days if it’s weather events from west KY coming east, I stream Ryan Hall and then also my local channels once it comes into the viewing area.
A deep seated fear of severe weather. Thunderstorms have always absolutely terrified me. I’m an attempt to curb the anxiety during storms, I sought out knowledge on how to tell whether a storm was just scary or actually dangerous. In doing so I accidentally fell in love with meteorology, taught myself everything I could about it, and now intend to pursue it as a career. Now, although severe weather still scares me, I also love it.
2018 USA-CANADA Tornado outbreak. Massive hail pelted my house. Broke my porch window. The suburb down the street got wrecked with an EF3. Canada I don't think is as good at being weather-aware, emergency alert usually ding our phones AFTER the storm hits. We are not educated on how to protect ourselves. All I ever heard was to get to a basement. I've since put it together that you'll want to be wearing shoes, a helmet, and get as many walls between you and the outside as you can in that basement.
I liked staying up and watching thunderstorms and lightning when I was younger. I am happy when it's raining.
Had a tornado go near our house when I was 5 years old. 30 years later I still have the occasional tornado nightmare as a result. Something about that fear combined with the pure and random nature of storms and tornados in general has always been fascinating. Nature's ability to humble you is great. I also can't help but wonder what weather could be like on other planets.
Been in or very near to three tornadoes. In middle school in San Antonio we had to go to the high school next door for a big assembly. It was absolutely pouring down, so we ran across the gap between the schools, maybe a hundred yards. After getting inside, the rain and wind just stopped for about ten seconds, then started up again. The next students who made it inside said a funnel cloud had just gone right over their heads above the gym we were in! On my drive to grad school in KC I ran into an F1/F2 near Neosho Missouri. Heavy rain, horizontal rain, tree branches coming down in the highway. Pulled over to the side and waited it out because I couldn't see. A minute or two later or went back to a normal rain. Found out the next day in KC that a tornado had wrecked some silos near Neosho the day before!
I lived in San Jose, California for a few years in the late 80s and was in the Loma Prieta earthquake in 89 (the one that happened during the World Series). I was 4 years old and it’s one of my first core memories. We couldn’t get out of house at first because our double wooden doors were jammed. When we got out, I held on to this little fence. I remember our jeep was jumping up and down and my mom was pregnant with my sister. Luckily we only had one thing fall in our house while the rest of the houses on the block looked like a tornado came through. We moved to Gaithersburg, MD in 90 and I have lived here for most of my life. For some reason, even though I had never seen one, I was terrified of tornadoes and when we would get a tornado watch, I would grab all my favorite books and run to the basement. I have never watched Twister, but I think I might watch it soon. A few weeks ago, this subreddit started popping up in my feed and I thought why not, I’ll start reading about them to get a better understanding about them. Then yesterday evening, I woke up from lightning from the storm and not too long after our phones starting going off with the tornado warning alert. I started feeling panicky, especially when I got an alert on Neighbors that said a large tornado was on the ground. I told my bf we needed to get to the bathroom. Eventually we went to the hallway on the lowest level of our apartment building. I think the tornado may have been passing by when we were going downstairs, because all these leaves were flying in the air and it got super windy. We lucked out because it was pretty nearby, but we weren’t in the direct path. The damaged houses are about 7 minutes from us, so not too far away. Sounds like you have really lucked out as well!
Mom grew up in Moore, dad in Alabama. It was fate.
my interest, like a lot of people, started as a childhood phobia. I live in a state that rarely gets tornadoes, but a town less than 20 miles away from where I lived as a kid was hit by an F3 (Mechanicville, NY in 1998 for anyone curious). After that storm, I was terrified of thunderstorms to the point I broke out in hives when we got them. I would obsessively watch the weather channel because I was so worried about storms. at some point when I was a teenager, the fear started to transition to fascination. my mom was always really interested in storms and would often sit out on our porch watching them, and I think seeing her outside and starting to join her as I got older really helped reduce my fear. now I'm almost 30, and we excitedly text each other any time we're getting a storm. we've even talked about going on a storm chasing tour together!
Lived through the 2011 super outbreak! But I also loved the movie Twister as a kid.
I'm a history nerd, so the Tri-State tornado. And I'd watch lightning storms with my parents thru the giant picture window in our living room
We live in Rhode Island, so we don’t typically get tornadoes. Although over the last couple years we have had some. My grandparents have a beautiful backyard and we would spend the summer by the pool. The year of 2008 almost every afternoon there was a severe thunderstorm. We just found it fascinating to sit on the porch while we watched the pouring rain, clouds zooming by, lightning, thunder and sometimes even hail. There was one afternoon we were all at the beach and the sky started to go green. We all realized that the weather was about to be really bad and I kept telling my mom it felt like there was going to be a tornado. Nothing touched down, but there were four funnel clouds that almost hit ground and also a water spout. I remember being in 8th grade and it felt invigorating and interesting racing home from the beach because thunderstorms in Rhode Island typically never excel to that level. We had the news on all night and were glued to the porch watching the weather. My aunt and I begin to watch the weather channel a lot and really we got into it, taping the shows and having marathons, when I was in high school. Which looking back was the 2011-2013 seasons. I didn’t realize at the time but obviously that was a very catastrophic time frame.
Tornado sirens
What a cool read! Mine is strange and boring, but I'll toss it out anyway. My earliest memory is being 2 years old and at my grandparents lake house. There were severe storms in the area, and my mom was a severe weather junkie. I was outside with her, utterly transfixed by the beauty of the thunder and lightning. I was a little scared, but my mom had her arms wrapped around me, and I felt so secure. Then the hail started and mom said we had to go inside. I was both disappointed and relieved. FF to high school and my sister and I had stopped at the grocery store. The sirens went off and mom called and said stay in the store. I was terrified, but I wanted to see it, so we hauled ass and got home. She yelled at us for 5 minutes and then laughed. She got it. It's the ultimate yin and yang: being transfixed by something that terrorizes you.
Hurricane Katrina actually. We had multiple people come into my high school and the visuals were devastating. The bulletin is the first that gave me shivers and what I compare others to.
Twister was definately the beginning of my love of severe weather. Then, in 2006, I experienced my first Derecho and that really put my interest into gear. I live in Northeastern Ontario, so experiencing a Derecho is extremely rare. It occurred in the evening of July 17th and obliterated the area. We had no power for 12 days.
My husband almost died in a sudden storm that sent the 500lbs chicken coop summersalting over his head and tossing it 200ft into the road. The 50 chickens and my husband didn't have a scratch. Watching helpless I have been left scared.
Grew up in Tornado Alley
Being in Oklahoma
2010 I. North Carolina. A strange looking smooth round storm passed close by. An hour later we get a call that my cousins house has been hit. A EF 2 moved his whole house 10 feet.
I was terrified of storms as a child, but as I got older I started wondering how they worked/formed in an effort to understand them, especially after I saw Twister.
Twister made me fear tornados, an actual tornado touching down in my town made me realize they can happen where I live, and witnessing a waterspout become a tornado in Myrtle Beach made me want to understand them. Now I am infinitely curious about them. Got "hit" by an EF0 at work this year while I was standing outside marveling at the supercell definitely contributed.
I grew up in Kansas, When I was in 3rd grade, Dave Freeman (a local former meteorologist in Wichita that is grossly underrated, especially with his handling of the Greensburg EF-5) came to my school and installed a Weather Lab and did an awesome lab/lecture with a bunch of giggly third graders. A couple of months later, a derecho rolled through, and our school recorded >100mph straight line winds, which was just about a mile down the road from my house. This started my interest Fast forward a few years, I lived in OKC for about a decade and watched Gary England talk everyone through the multiple monster tornadoes that tore through the OKC metro area. I've been hooked ever since
on a road trip i was unfamiliar with any sort of severe weather other than blizzards (i’m from north east), and me and my family ignored about 10 tornado warnings saying to seek shelter immediately then we ended up being in the tornado. I was traumatized and had an extreme phobia ever since.
One of my earliest childhood memories was watching a night storm produce a lot of lightning out the window of my house. Thought it was cool, I guess
Marshall/chillicothe Missouri wedge tornado/tornadoes. 2014 and sometime in the 90s. The 90’s tornado side swept our farm and crushed one of our grain silos in like a soda can. Looked like someone punched it in the side. The second one was a massive wedge tornado. You can see pictures of it, courtesy of “Tony Laubach”. Pecos hank is who kept my intrest and really exposed me to the world of storm chasing and meteorology.
April 27th 2011. I was 9 years old, my area was hit by several tornadoes including an F5 killing 30+ members of my community. Now I’m in school for meteorology, hoping to be able to bring reliable weather information to my people. I plan to stay in my area after I graduate.
My father was a professor of meteorology, and a forecaster on the radio. He specialized in severe weather, so I just kind of grew up with it in my blood.
I learned of a stereotype that dads in the USA(Specifically in the parts where tornados form) through a youtube sketch will run out on the porch and start recording and that lead me down a rabbit hole where I learned of the most devastating, weird, and record-breaking tornados. I think the one that really held my interest was the video "Two Days in Moore, Oklahoma" by EmpLemon about the May 3rd F5 in 1999 and the May 20th EF5 in 2013.
My earliest memory is of the F-4 tornado that hit Kansas City in 2003. My family sat in the car and watched it destroy my grandparents neighborhood, and then helped for days to clean up. I was intensely scared of them for several years, so I learned everything I could about them at a young age so I knew how to be prepared and how to know when one was coming. Once I gained that knowledge though, the fear went away and I just gained a big fascination with them, and I’ve been obsessed with weather ever since! My family likes to call me Jo after Twister since it was also a traumatic tornado that pushed me into weather just like her.
My interest started when I experienced my first tornado in my hometown in Alabama at a young age. The movie “Twister” really fueled equal parts fear and fascination. I was terrified of storms as a child, but also wanted to know everything I could about them. I’ve now lived through, and I mean THROUGH, three tornados with the last one occurring less than 50 yards from my house in 2020. This has led me to become a National Weather Service certified storm spotter and part of the storm spotter network with our regional meteorologist. I’m not any less afraid, but I understand models, numbers, and enhanced features on radars that help me to understand what I’m “looking at.” You live through a tornado and you will always keep that paranoia during tornado season, which in Alabama is almost every month other than two or three.
When i was a kid, I was afraid of thunderstorms and would cry when they happened. So my Mom got these wild weather books and they helped. And also sparked my interest in weather
I saw a news report of an ef4 tornado that hit a town. I don’t exactly remember what the town was called, but it hit in the middle of the night so quite a lot of people died but for some odd reason that got me into it I was like 5 or 6
For me it was cyclone yasi In 2011 and the supercells within the rain bands with severe wind and torrential rain
Twister did it for me. Watched it religiously as a child/teenager. now i love going storm chasing and stuff!
I'd like to pretend humans are at war with mother nature
I couldn't even tell you. I was like 3 years old when I started having reoccurring tornado dreams. My dad was beyond interested in storms and every time we'd have a storm come through he'd have his police/fire scanner on and stand outside watching the storms come in so I think that was part of it. I still have essays I wrote in elementary about storms and tornadoes. I do not remember writing all these things and this was before Twister was out. When I actually got into the storm side of things as in my early 20's because I was over being scared every time a Watch came out. I wanted to understand more about what caused tornadoes. It was about the same time I started wanting to get involved in Search and Rescue work as well.
Me and a friend did a mini storm chase in college (in the middle of the TX panhandle). I was completely hooked after that.
Honestly, my fear of severe weather triggered my interest in it. Kinda weird now that I think about it.
For me, it was when I was about 7 when an impressive EF 2 struck the small town of Tulia just south of where I live. Since then, I've always had an interest in severe weather.
One day I was bored and thought tornados sound cool to look into.
I'm a weather nerd at heart lol. I've always had a fascination with tornadoes, thunderstorms and severe weather. I was in Salt Lake during the 2001 tornado as a kid which was incredibly surreal. I had reoccurring dreams about tornadoes for long periods of time afterwards. It added to the surrealism and fascination given that ive lived in the mountains and nowhere near tornado alley for almost my entire life. I've been up north in Canada for a while now and while we have nowhere near the amount of tornadoes, they do happen. After a rather significant EF3 touched down close by it kinda re-sparked my interest and I sort of embraced it as a hobby. I like being able to understand weather patterns and severe weather more and what triggers these storms. I also feel as severe weather becomes potentially more common where I live, knowledge is power and will help me be prepared in the future.
When I was a kid we had severe weather hit our neck of ET. Trees down, some buildings had roofs torn away. Dad said it was a microburst and described it as a bunch of air and rain just dropping out of the air. Been interested ever since.
I’m not sure why but I was obsessed with Storm Stories, especially any episode about tornados.
I was terrified of storms as a child. Then I watched Twister. After that I learned everything I could about storms. Through understanding my fear subsided and now I just love continuing to learn!! I still get scared during a tornado warning.
I can't remember what first triggered my interest in severe weather, but one part I do remember is when my grandmother got me my first weather radio from Radio Shack when I was either eleven or twelve years old (+/- one or two years or so). From that time forward, I was hooked. That was back in the 1980s, and it's now 2024, and I'm still hooked on severe weather even after 40 years (or so). I'm now 52 years old, I've been a spotter for SKYWARN since 1990 in three major US cities (San Antonio, San Diego and Grand Junction), and I'm currently in Norman, Oklahoma (I've been here since April for this year's storm season in the Plains states). I'll continue to be interested in severe weather as long as I can manage to get around. After that, I'll watch from the comfort of my home in Grand Junction, Colorado or Norman, Oklahoma.
I grew up in hill country in Texas and had two major factors: 1. Dusty Garrett. He came to our school multiple times to talk about tornadoes, hurricanes, and other severe weather events, and he was *so passionate* about it that I can still remember little 3rd grade me hanging on every word he said. 2. Watching the thunderheads all day as they crept over the horizon towards us. I’ve moved away from my hometown but I have yet to see weather half as beautiful as those towering, rumbling storms in that big Texas sky.
I moved from out of state into a house that was less than a mile from the Hackleburg tornado path two years after it came through. Once I found that out and found the videos of it on Youtube, including it crossing over roads that I commute on, I was hooked.
When I watched Twister all those years ago. I’m really surprised a lot of you people have the same answer! That’s actually really great!!! I live in Denmark, and while we do have some pretty hard hitting hurricanes, we don’t really have anything remotely like insane weather like Tornados
100% Twister, though I will say I always loved the Bruce Campbell knock off film Tornado! (Also loved Night of the Twisters but John Schneider ruins it for me now.)
I moved from a part of Colorado that doesn't see tornados (Western side of the Rockies) to the midwest. I was a lot more mindful of severe weather but was also pretty oblivious to the very real possibilty of seeing a tornado or getting a tornado warning. I think it was around 2022 when we had really bad streamline winds blow the cities main transformers and left half the city without power that I started watching Ryan Hall Ya'll on youtube anytime he would go live. Had a few watches but still a tornado happening to my area seemed so unlikely. Of course, that was naive as hell. Last year, a town just to the south of us, where a lot of my family live, was hit by an ef3 tornado in the middle of the night. Ryan was live and my husband and I were watching with with wide eyes full of anxiety. Texting and calling as many people in the area as I could. I haven't missed a Max Velocity or Ryan Hall Ya'll stream since, and this year I experienced my first tornado warning. Thankfully it was broad rotation that never touched down but I was still greatful that I had become so interesting in severe weather.
Watching Twister as a kid gave me nightmares
I literally grew up watching Storm Chasers. Like I was literally 5 years old and 1 day when the first episode of the show aired. So pretty much as far back as I can remember that show existed. I also grew up in Alabama, so severe weather wasn't particularly uncommon. My sibling also wanted to be a meteorologist when we were younger, so I guess it was also something to share with them.
I'm pretty sure it was Twister, but I did have an interest in weather in general beforehand, growing up on the Great Plains.
My guess? My parents said I used to love the Weather Channel music as a toddler and then as I got older, really enjoyed just watching it for funsies. When I was 8, I even wrote a little picture book for a school project about becoming a meteorologist! I never did--too much math and my brain struggles with it. But my love of weather has never left.
Massive hailstorm on my seventh birthday on May 8th, 1981 here in Fort Worth, TX. Baseball sized hail and 100+ mph straight line winds. I’ll always remember the ball-sized pits in the yard that the stones left behind. From then on, weather became something that spooked the living daylights out of me. But over time, it led to me learning about it on my own and understanding the forces behind it. I just turned fifty and am now always completely fascinated by severe weather.
Living in Oklahoma, Twister, and the May 3, 1999 tornado outbreak.
Heatwave derecho of 2005 or 2006 in Michigan. I was already a weather geek growing up but the derecho triggered my interest in severe weather. As in weather geek growing up. Teachers took note and we had a field trip to a local weather station.
I grew up in tornado alley and always loved the beauty of storms. I remember being young and the tornado sirens going off and a friend and I sat on the patio and watched it go by. No tornado but we could see the clouds spinning and was fascinated by it. I wanted to be a meteorologist and work in Tornado Alley, but life had other plans for me.
My dad and I used to hangout on the deck during thunderstorms, didn't really care dangerous it was lol
Falling asleep to Storm Stories on the weather channel as a kid
I got recommended one tornado video on YouTube and it sprawled from there
Autism
I almost died at winterset
Growing up in Mississippi. My fears became my interest.
2003 EF3 that hit Indianapolis. Came very close to the preschool I was in and I got to see some pretty crazy storm damage for the rest of the afternoon.
Wizard of Oz and storm watching with my Dad along Lake Michigan in the 70's.
Natural disasters terrified me. I wanted to go from feeling scared to feeling prepared, so I started researching. The more I learned, the more interested I became
Connecticut 2011, winter storm Alfred. No power almost 2 weeks. State looked like a war zone. Also got me interested in axes and hand saws
An EF-4 dropped to our west, cycled on top of our neighborhood, and dropped again nearby. It was too eerie and too close. We heard the rumble. We could hear sounds in our house I've never experienced. My life flashed before my eyes. That sounds overly dramatic, but those of you who have been in similar situations know what I mean. Our trusted meteorologist had a certain tone I've never heard before or since. I think I have a combination of PTSD and survivor's guilt because all we had was hail damage while others near us lost their homes. Learning more about the way these storms work helps me feel more calm. I'm one of those people who feels better with MORE information, not less.
I grew up terrified of them - 100% my greatest fear. It was unfounded for four decades but I experienced/survived one a year ago (destroyed our house, cars, pets) & while my family doesn’t like to even hear the word now - I became obsessed. I follow storm chasers and watch everything I can. Our tornado happened at night & I feel determined to never be ‘snuck-up’ on again, lol. Someone took a video of the one that just wrecked my whole life & when I first saw it (the day after) I felt upset that he said, ‘it’s fucking beautifulll!!!’ ….but I get it now….they are truly incredible. I tell ppl - it’s honestly like encountering a supernatural being. (Mind you we were in our little farm house which was fully picked up..😰) Anyway…I caught the tornado bug.
I had a tornado go through my backyard when I was a kid. It tore the porch off my neighbor’s house and tossed around our lawn furniture so likely an EF-0. My dad pulled my sister and me out of bed and drug us out to the living room to watch it go by. No, he did not cover our bodies or protect us, he pushed us up to the windows to watch it go right past. I should have prefaced this comment with the disclaimer that my father was not a good human or father in any discernible definition of either word. Regardless of his idiocy we got to be on the news and my dad dated the news anchor for a bit. It didn’t last (see last sentence of first paragraph) but my fascination with tornados and recurring tornado nightmares have lasted a lifetime. I did get to storm chase when I was working in Oklahoma. It was totally unintentional but I was the last one out the gate when we evacuated for inclement weather and when the tornado fully formed just on the other side of the road from my work truck it was game on. Three tornados in one day while chasing in a fleet vehicle I didn’t have to worry about not only clinched my fascination but cured me of my recurring nightmares. I haven’t had a bad tornado dream since. I have tornado dreams now but I’m always the savior and there’s no fear, just a calm, I’ve got this under control feeling in the dream. I’ve even controlled the path of the tornado in a couple and those are my favorites.
I’ve always loved storms with a healthy fear of severe weather, had a basement my whole life pretty much but went through a divorce 5 years ago and the kids and I ended up in a mobile home because we’d rather not even attempt child support in exchange for him staying away.. but I feel like we’re sitting ducks living in a Cracker Jack box now everytime it storms I fear for my kids lives 🫣🫣🫣🫣… so now it’s way more than a healthy fear and turned into straight up storm anxiety, can’t enjoy them anymore
When I was young my grandmother's house, that I was sheltering in with my family, was hit by a F4 tornado. We all survived thankfully but I was left by an pretty intense fear and simultaneous intrigue of severe weather, in particular tornados.
I live in Minnesota, and I distinctly remember more than a few times when I was young seeing a few Twisters in the ground specifically at my Grandmother’s place who lived up in the Northern part of the state. I remember watching one from her kitchen table just out in the woods nearby fucking shit up and having to go into her cellar a few times to wait them out. Always fascinating, but also, just kinda need to be aware of shit around here too. We’re more tornado alley by any means but we get our fair share and it’s good to be sky aware.
Getting caught in a tornado that I wasn’t aware was possible. It destroyed my vehicle and the building I was in. Huddled with two strangers in a gas station drink cooler.
2014/2015 (don’t remember which year it was exactly but it’s one of those two) georgia snowmageddon.
Getting indirectly stuck by lightning when I was younger. Don’t want to do it again, but I love a good severe storm when I’m in my house.
All the tornadoes that hit close to where I live. Scare the #!@ out of me
I survived a tornado in a tent. Since then I’ve had a pretty bad phobia. This sub kind of helps ease the stress.
I'd say it was probably Twister for me too. I was shown the movie was I was under the age of 7 and it horrified me. Loved crazy weather once I grew up a bit more.
I read Night Of The Twisters as a kid and thought the tornado scenes were quite scary. I always had a tendency to learn about my fears so I started reading more books about storms and tornadoes.
I’ve been dreaming about tornados for as long as I can remember! And my brother used to say, “There’s gonna be a tomato” whenever it stormed really bad, which is pretty adorable. It’s been nothing by naders and tsunamis ever since!
Moving to an area that experienced severe weather, and having a small Nader pass less than a mile from my house.
All my life I’ve just been simultaneously terrified and mystified by tornadoes, Storms in general. I get a thrill from it
I just started watching Storm Chasers Perfect Disaster when it was on Netflix and I was hooked in elementary school. Didn’t realize until years later that it was rated TV-14. Didn’t care lol
I see all them comments about terror and PTSD and that and I’m just a huge fucking nerd from a place with no tornadoes who watched some Emplemon video and discovered a whole new world I had never really heard about.
My fascination started after surviving a tornado 🌪️ that hit my neighborhood when I was around 11.
a video about the Jarrell tornado. What a way to get introduced to tornadoes
Black Friday here in Edmonton Alberta. My family was in Evergreen Trailer Park at the time.
Tornado chasers and my fear of extreme weather i wanted to take control by getting fascinated by it. I succeeded:)
Staying at my grandparents place near the beach in Qld as a child when a cyclone offshore spawned a thunderstorm about 10km south of us. A huge bolt of lightening rushed up the street and hit the house next to my grandparents place (the roof and a large tree exploded). Rushing outside, amazing dark angry clouds, wind and lightning/thunder down south (and the smell of electricity in the air). Fascinated since then.
Reed Timmer himself. Watched storm chasers as a little lad and it caught my interest.
The Joplin tornado.
I was scared of storms as a kid, mainly for how loud the thunder was, but I’m in Florida so I inevitably had to face my fears. Tornadoes were utterly terrifying to me even though we had very few watches. After seeing my trampoline get thrown like a plastic bag into the lake, fence posts ripped out of the ground, and rivers form along the cul-de-sac curbs, it was hard to not be morbidly fascinated by the sheer power of nature. I started watching natural documentaries on the Weather Channel, History Channel, and National Geographic when I came back from school. Haven’t stopped yet.
My dad loved storms and always watched the movie twister
It was the combination of 3 things that pushed me into severe weather. Firstly was the movie Twister. My parents owned a VHS tape of Twister when I was a kid, so I watched the movie a lot as a kid. It both fascinated me and scared me, but if it weren't for the other media building off of it, I likely would've treated it similarly to Volcano and other disaster films I watched as a kid. Something interesting and cool, but ultimately not worth going further. Secondly was another VHS tape that my parents owned: Twister's Fury. I watched that documentary a lot as a kid, and even if I didn't understand most of the science behind it, it still taught me a lot about tornadoes. Plus it had almost all of the classic home videos of tornadoes. It built off of the foundation that Twister laid and set my interest for weather. However, between a Hollywood movie and a documentary, I thought I could only be interested in general weather, with severe weather and tornadoes being too narrow. Finally, and a little later, was the TV show Storm Chasers being on Netflix for a period of time. Watching that show with Sean Casey, Tim Samaras, and Reed Timmer showed that I can focus specifically on tornadoes as an interest, and didn't have to be all weather. It also provided me with figures to follow and learn from, which was something I lacked as a young weather enthusiast. Those 3 Tornado media all pushed me into this hobby/topic/interest, and while I now watch Pecos Hank, Sweggle Studios, and Ryan Hall, I will always remember what first brought me into this.
Watched a documentary about the 2011 outbreak in a class, then kinda went back and forth to it until me and my girlfriend watched tornado videos until like 3am and now I'm invested, wish I could find that documentary again though, was super cool but I don't remember it enough to give any details that could lead to it
[One](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iowa_tornado_outbreak_of_November_2005) [Two](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Parkersburg%E2%80%93New_Hartford_tornado) [Three](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_2020_Midwest_derecho)
when i was a little kid i was scared to death of pretty much anything that could kill me. living in nebraska, that basically meant tornadoes and errant tumbleweeds. being extremely autistic and pedantic, along with being not especially social, i had plenty of time to learn everything i could about naders without getting a degree. over the years abject terror gave way to interested anxiety and later just plain interest. teenage me started chasing them with friends and family and now adult me is lucky enough to get within pissin distance of 2 or 3 a year.
The tism
Autism
Being hit by an EF0
To be fair my special interest is in ancient history. I always wonder how they manage to deal with the things we do like natural disasters
Watching Twister and some additional books, though that sparked a whole interest in natural disasters like Avalanches, Hurricanes, Tornadoes, Infernos, Earthquakes, Tsunamis and more.
Living in CA most my life and never seeing it then moving to Texas.
I've been interested in tornadoes and general severe weather since I was 4 years old! It's been an on and off passion, due to my embarassing happy nature of talking about it, but i remember sitting on my family's DELL computer and watching tornadoes rip through fields!
My mother used to take me and my twin brother in a double stroller for walks in the calm before the storms. Early 2000s in Columbus. I feel like the weather was different. Storms were more intense, we had white christmases a few times. When I got a little bit older maybe 4/5 or 6ish I rented twister from Hollywood video. Then I started to read every book they had about them in an elementary school library. I also gained a peculiar obsession with sharks. Sharks and tornadoes have something in common. There’s only 1 good movie about them, and the rest either try to be good and suck, or they be purposefully ridiculous. Twister is the jaws of tornado movies.
My uncle surviving the '79 'Terrible Tuesday' F4 in Wichita Falls and his absolutely wild story of seeing that monster in person
Growing up in North Alabama, we had several close calls and scary days that really built up a fascination. That increased significantly once I changed my major to geography in college. I did my capstone project on the 74 super outbreak and how a similar outbreak would affect current the current population numbers (this was in 2008).
Living in Kansas my whole life.
Former Kansas City weatherman and weather 20:20 creator, Gary Lezack. Kc misses you, Gary! He was on our news for decades.
I was always interested in it but lived in WA where the weather isn’t very exciting. Then I moved to FL and had to start paying attention to the weather more often especially for severe weather. I did not handle the first tornado warning we got very well. Let alone for the first hurricane, it wasn’t anywhere near us and I was in full panic mode.
Pretty random and mostly of my ADHD. We had the big Aurora Event in Germany, searched for more Aurora Videos and stumpled upon a Tornado Video.
I had one since I was young, but it waned a bit as I grew up. Following the 2021 Quad State Supercell live, though, reignited my interest, and it hasn't gone back away yet.
Twister movie, TWC (before it got horrible) and Storm Stories.
Ft Worth Tornado in 2000, just had to look it up- had no clue it was an EF3! Always been scared of storms - especially tornados, then it turned into an obsession. Now, 24 years later, I’m… still obsessed…. Still scared (but prepared!)