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| Storm chaser, videographer and musician Pecos Hank. |
It's what I and many others call "weather porn." You get a rise out of watching dangerous twisters and severe weather. It's a vicarious thrill.
As entertaining as many storm chase videos are, I do get a little tired of all the raw video on YouTube and Facebook and such in which the videographers can be heard screaming and yelling about multi-vortices, and their heated debates on whether they're too close to the tornado.
"Back up!
NO! We're OK1
Back UP!!!
Turn the wipers on!! What a BEAUTIFUL WEDGE!!!!!!
No, no, keep getting close to it!! Oh My God, the HOUSE blew away!
Oh GOD!! BACK THE FUCK UUUPPPP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
Yeah, I understand the emotion of the moment, but geez!
Pecos Hank takes a different approach in the videos on his YouTube channel.
He takes more time to edit and narrate his storm videos. I get the sense he writes the script beforehand. At least part of it. He's a good writer.
Bonus: Pecos Hank is a musician, having fronted the band Southern Backtones for about 15 years. He just released a solo album last year., too. Check out his web site.
Anyway, in his weather and storm videos, Pecos Hanks is a great storyteller. He injects a sense of humor into his deep Texas drawl. He creates an arc of a story as he conducts his chase, his supercell surprises, his tornado drops from the swirlling clouds.
He's just put out my favorite video he's done, and it explains better than anyone could why an East Coast amateur like me would never chase tornadoes. I go out to South Dakota to visit my relatives every late spring or early summer, but I let other people chase any tornadoes that begin to drop, thank you very much.
Sure, the weather can be entertaining as hell out there that time of year, but as Pecos Hank makes it clear in his latest, most entertaining and most informative video, there's a lot that can go wrong
It's worth watching the video at the bottom of this post as he describes tornadoes that literally turn on you, hide behind curtains of rain to sneak up on you, or are much bigger and more ferocious than they appear.
There's other hazards, like clots of dozens of storm chasers that get in each other's way when it's time to flee an approaching tornado, escape routes blocked by everything from stalled trains to missing bridges to oxen.
Tornadoes are most likely in the late afternoon. Rush hour. In urban areas, imaging getting caught in the gridlock on a jam packed highway amid panicked commuters as a tornado approaches.
So, yeah, I'll leave to the experts like Pecos Hank to watch and film the tornadoes and severe storms for me. I'll sit back in my Vermont house, far from tornado alley, and watch the adventures from the sidelines.
And be entertained and informed by the great Pecos Hank.
Here's the video.
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