Pat Timmons saw hailstones the size of baseballs and a storm that lit up the sky. She faced winds so strong she couldn’t even stand and also encountered multiple tornadoes.
“My friends and family think I’m crazy, but I’m having the time of my life,” said the 76-year-old, on her second storm-chasing trip this year with Tempest Tours. He spoke on a roadside in Texas. .
Timmons is one of thousands of people from around the world who flock to Tornado Alley to get as close as safety allows to the massive storms that batter rural America from March to June. As the atmosphere warms due to climate change, the number of storms will increase and crowds will only increase.
There are now more than a dozen companies operating storm-chasing tours in the U.S., and that number has grown slowly but steadily over the past few years, he said, after catching the storm-chasing bug in 2009 and now offering websites. said Christopher Björkwall, a Swedish man who runs StormChasingUSA. Track your travel agency.
Alan Feore, Visit Orlando professor of tourism marketing at the University of Central Florida, is not surprised by this. Adventure tourism has grown in popularity over the past few decades, especially in the last 10 to 15 years with the rise of social media, he said.
“This is a bigger market than people realize,” Faial said. “People want the thrill and the adrenaline rush.”
Storm chasing tours are part of that market. These are not your typical bus tours. No tourist traps for quick photo ops.
Most travel companies operate one to three small vans with perhaps six people per van. We rarely have more than 20 guests on a single trip. The group drives as far south as Texas and as far north as the Canadian border, following radar screen footage and patiently waiting for a storm to develop.
“They find a high spot for us to sit for 30 minutes and we just keep looking at it and taking pictures,” Timmons said.
Costs vary between $2,000 and $4,500, depending on trip duration, luxury, and number of people traveling. The season usually runs from April to August, but May is usually his busiest month.
Björkwall estimates that between one-quarter and one-third of the people who participate in these types of tours come from outside the United States.
“Weather like this only exists in the United States,” he said. Add to that an excellent system of highways and country roads, accessible weather data and views of endless plains, and you have the perfect recipe.
It’s something you won’t find anywhere else.
How safe are storm chasing tours?
The National Weather Service doesn’t really support people going out during bad weather, and would rather people stay home safely.
“The NWS does not encourage the pursuit of dangerous storms for reasons other than public safety (spotting) and facilitating official investigations,” the NWS says in its severe weather FAQ.
But authorities acknowledge that despite the danger, people are still at risk. So I’m cautiously suggesting that a tour is the better way. “It’s probably safer to join a professional tour group than to go out on your own without proper training.”
That’s the trick to this kind of extreme travel, Faial says. “The key to adventure tourism is to make it look as dangerous as possible, but at the same time eliminate as much risk as possible.”
Roger Hill of Silver Lining Tours, based in Denver, Colorado, said tour operators can never guarantee safety, but they do everything they can to keep customers happy while staying safe. He said he was making it clear.
“There’s always a risk when you’re near a severe thunderstorm, especially a supercell thunderstorm. It’s impossible to keep anything 100% safe. That’s why every travel company advises their guests that these “We make them sign a waiver saying they are,” he said.
The tour provides detailed safety information at length before boarding the van.
“The first night they talked about safety and how everything worked, from how to get in and out of the van to who was responsible for moving the back seats so the last person could get out quickly.” Samantha Ashby, 33, said. Earlier this month, I went on my first Arashi chasing tour.
And unlike movies, tours are quite a distance from the center of the action. They want a good vantage point, not a goal.
“We try to position ourselves several miles away from the storm so we don’t get in the way of large hail or lightning. And if a tornado does occur, we always plan an evacuation route. We need to keep it that way,” Hill said.
If the storm gets too close, it will move away.
The thrill, Burns said, is not in seeing things destroyed like in the movies, but in seeing something so powerful and beyond human control.
“The best storms for us are in the middle of nowhere. They don’t do any harm. There might be hay bales on the fence, but it’s right in front of us. And it feels really insubstantial,” he said.
But there are also dangers. A few years ago, lightning struck one of his vans and destroyed it. However, no one was injured as electricity passed through the van and into the ground.
To my surprise, it was well received by the guests. “Almost every guest who came back said they had a great time,” he said.
A typical day on a storm chasing tour
A typical day on tour involves driving hundreds of miles. Tours typically begin around 9 or 10 a.m. after the tour guide has determined the storm-prone areas.
“We look at the data the day before the chase and make predictions, and then we plan the logistics,” said Eric Burns, owner of Tornadic Expeditions in Whitesboro, Texas.
To get to your next location, you might have to move half a state and be prepared to wait and see what happens.
Although Twisters gets a lot of press, many tour participants say that’s ultimately not the most awe-inspiring part of it.
“We all come to see tornadoes, but we all go home obsessed with supercells,” Timmons said. These are massive storms that can reach 10 miles in diameter and 50,000 feet in height, according to the National Severe Storms Research Institute.
“If you get them in the late afternoon when the sun is shining, they’re really incredible and they just bloom and grow. Sometimes there’s lightning and the light hits them from the inside and covers the sky. ” she said.
Another thing she fell in love with was seeing parts of this country that most people never get to see. Even though she lives in Iowa, this tour gave her a new appreciation for the country.
“Just rolling down the street and looking at small town America,” she said. “America is beautiful. We met the kindest people.”
traffic hazard
Tour leaders say that while being crushed by a tornado may seem like the biggest danger, traffic jams are a bigger threat.
“The traffic problem is getting worse, there’s no question about that,” Hill said. May, the month when tornadoes occur the most, is especially bad.
“When we first started touring in the late ’90s, there was often no one around. But now, if you have an area in Oklahoma or Kansas where there’s a very significant threat, every storm chaser , storm spotters, and local residents. They can form convoys more than a mile long,” he said.
“It can be a little confusing,” says Björkwall, who currently has 11 tours under his belt. “I have a friend who was in El Reno, the biggest tornado in the world, and he got stuck and couldn’t get out because there were too many cars on the road.”
Social media, radar, weather forecasts, and weather sharing apps can draw hundreds of people into areas where major storms and tornadoes are expected. Björkwall said travel companies and journalists accounted for the smallest percentage of cars on the road at that point.
“There are thousands of storm chasers, and their numbers continue to grow every year, and everyone comes out onto the plains in May,” Hill said.
With the release of new storm-chasing movies this summer, that trend may become even more prevalent.
New movies could increase interest
Hollywood plays an amazing role in the storm chasing business.
Silver Lining Tours started a year after the release of the 1996 film “Twister,” about a group of Oklahoma storm chasers.
“I really feel like that movie started the storm-chasing industry,” said Hill, who has been with the company since 2000.
A new standalone sequel, “Twisters,” is scheduled to hit theaters in July, and he expects even more interest.
“People underestimate the power of movies to influence people’s behavior. It’s a huge driver of tourism,” Faial said.
If 1996’s Twister was any indication, tour groups may be inundated with new customers this summer. But it’s not clear whether there will be space for them. There are not that many travel agencies, and most of them are sold out a year in advance.
Tornadic Expeditions’ Burns said, “Next year’s schedule is already 70% full.”
Tourists can form bonds while chasing storms
The experience was so profound that Ashby just finished the tour the first week of May and has already booked another one.
The Northern Virginia 911 dispatcher said her group saw eight tornadoes in seven days that were “incredibly powerful.”
“We had four guests in our van and it was so amazing that we all wanted to do it again,” she said.
The 2025 tour was already full, so they had to reschedule it for 2026. “She had never planned a vacation like that before,” she said.
“These four people have never met before, but we’re going to spend the next 10 days together and do it all over again,” she said.
