I remember when I first opened an encyclopedia on the dining table at home when I was a young inquisitive 8 year old. Flicking through the pages & left open mouthed at some of the pictures within. Spellbound by the lightning & tornado images I said to my dad “I want to see a tornado!”. The reply I got wasn’t very positive with being told that you only get them in America (not entirely true but might as well have been for all I knew) & America was a long way away for someone so small.

Somewhat disappointed I carried on turning the pages hastily to see what else there was to see in this mightily big & heavy book (which i still have). It didn’t disappoint as the page turned & I was confronted with grainy images of lava erupting spectacularly from a volcano followed by an audible “wow” from me. The next page had me wondering what I was looking at because it didn’t make any sense to me with green beams of light in a night sky & I couldn’t read what it was called as the words were really long but again my dad came to the rescue “they’re called the Northern Lights” which was far easier to say than Aurora Borealis.

Years went by & in 2002 I was headed across to the States for my first of many trips to go & chase storms, initially with an organised tour group (cloud9tours). No tornado but it didn’t discourage me, so I returned to chase every year with close friends until Covid stopped travel but by then I’d got to see a number of tornadoes some of which were of significant note. The first ever EF5 at Greensburg, Kansas in 2007 & the biggest ever recorded tornado at El Reno, Oklahoma in 2013.

Image (right) courtesy of Steve Lansdell who captured this moment of me in front of a huge supercell storm in Booker, Texas.