Well, Discovery Replied

It's not much. It's a pretty canned response that basically tells me that they're not going to do anything. But at least it's a little bit of acknowledgement. I guess.

Dear Ms. Fogel,

We sincerely appreciate you taking the time to contact us and for bringing this matter to our attention.

The production crews on Storm Chasers follow strict safety protocols for themselves and those around them.  If one of their vehicles is operated in an unsafe manner, we take those issues seriously and take appropriate action to address, which may include replacement of the driver involved. Please know that your letter has been forwarded to the production team for
consideration.

Again, we appreciate your interest in Discovery Channel.

Sincerely,

Viewer Relations
Discovery Channel

Open Letter to Discovery Channel Regarding Incident with the TIV

I sent the following letter off this morning to the executives at Discovery Channel, Executive Producer of Storm Chasers, Ronan Nagle, and posted it on Facebook in multiple places. I have little faith that anything will come of this, but I think it's important to get it out there.


------------------------------

“Discovery's leadership is dedicated to upholding the highest standards of professional and ethical conduct.”

This is a direct quote from www.discoverychannel.com. In my experience, the people who represent the Discovery Channel brand are not upholding these standards.

As a fellow storm chaser and photographer, I understand Sean Casey's passion for finding and filming the best storm, for getting the perfect shot. I can even understand bending a few rules to ensure that he is in the best possible position to get that shot.

I do not, however, understand how he and his Discovery Channel film crew can so recklessly endanger the lives of other chasers and local motorists. In the past I've heard stories of irresponsible behavior on the part of Casey and his crew. This also is not the first time I have witnessed them practicing hazardous behavior. In fact, Casey and the Discovery Channel personnel that accompany him are now well known in the chase community as a collection of menaces who show no regard for 

human life.

May 30, 2011 was something different, though. Something much worse.

In the car with me were three other chasers, a total of 40 years of chasing experience between us. With limited road options, we found ourselves fleeing deadly hail up to the size of grapefruits. The TIV and Discovery crew were driving very slowly on a two lane road and refused to let us pass them. The Discovery crew drove for an extended period of time on the wrong side of the road, filming the TIV and completely blocking our ability to pass. When they decided to fall in behind the TIV and I attempted to pass them, they sped up and aggressively blocked us. Finally, I was able to get around one of the Discovery film crew vehicles. Immediately, the driver flew up behind us flashing his high beams. He passed me again, cut me off in doing so, and slammed on the brakes so that they were doing 20-30 MPH below the speed limit.

At a major intersection in O'Neill, Nebraska, the Discovery crew stopped and intentionally blocked the road so no one could get past them. I was forced to drive off the road on their right to get east, so I could continue to try to get away from the hail. Again they raced up behind me flashing their high beams. This time, they were so focused on our car that one of the Discovery crew Suburbans nearly crashed into the TIV.

Does Discovery actually advocate this outrageous, unacceptable, and downright dangerous behavior? Regardless of the answer, you must put a stop to it. There should never be a shot that is so important that the lives of the people around the Discovery Channel crew are put at risk. There should never be so much blind recklessness that the dangers to others are totally discounted. Will you not do anything until someone is killed as a direct result of Sean Casey and the Discovery Channel’s dangerous and maniacal behavior?

I understand that there is inherent risk in storm chasing. That risk was significantly compounded for us on the cited day by Sean Casey and the Discovery Channel film crew. While they have the luxury of driving a tank-like-vehicle and trucks with custom hail protection, we are not so fortunate. Their actions were directly responsible for hail damage sustained by our vehicle. We were lucky, this time, that it wasn't much worse.

I urge Discovery Channel to take a close look at your mission statement and your claims to “uphold the highest standard of professional and ethical conduct.” Is it truly your policy to adhere to these standards, or are these just empty words intended to portray an image you have no honest interest in ‘upholding?’ By employing individuals who do not honor that mission statement, it speaks volumes about the network as a whole. There is nothing professional or ethical about behavior of this kind. Please do not condone it by allowing it to continue.

Thank you for your crucial attention to this matter.

Sincerely,

Samara Fogel

Day 13: The Perfect Ending

We headed out early because Dave and Keith both believed that our best chance of storms was in northern South Dakota.

As we crossed the border into South Dakota it became clear to me that this was a special place. The terrain changed and the grass became greener and the sky seemed bluer. Even the air smelled sweeter. Of course the mosquitoes were also like little helicopters, but you can't have everything, right?

One of the most interesting things about driving into South Dakota is that you have to drive through the Rosebud and Pine Ridge Indian Reservations. The dichotomy between the luscious and beautiful landscapes and the extreme poverty is startling. I had always heard stories about the conditions on the reservations, but this was the first time I ever witnessed it firsthand. It's very clear to me now that the White Man totally fucked the Native Americans. One has to hope that the extreme beauty in some way makes up for the extreme living conditions. It was eye-opening and heartbreaking.

After driving through the reservation we continued north on US Highway 83. We stopped for hours in Selby, South Dakota at a teensy little gas station. Selby is the county seat of Walworth County and has a population of 642. It's mind boggling to me that this is considered a big town! This is the heart of downtown Selby!

After spending several hours at the gas station we were thisclose to giving up and heading back south to a hotel and dinner. As we were about to make hotel reservations, Emily says, "look over there! some convection!" Sure enough, after a glance at radar we made the decision to head north to the border of North Dakota. 

During this drive I completely fell in love with the Dakotas. I have never, ever, been to a place so beautiful. The terrain became more rugged and rocky. The colors became brighter and the air became even sweeter. 

As we made our way north the storm came into view and it was back lit by the sun starting to set in the west. It looked like spun silver and gold. It was indescribably beautiful. The entire time I was driving I was just staring out the window and saying, "wow" every few seconds. Whenever I thought it couldn't possibly be any more beautiful, it was.

By the time we got to the storm, any danger had passed and we hopped out to take pictures and video of such an incredible scene. The colors were outrageous. I've never seen anything like it anywhere in the world. It was so incredibly beautiful that I nearly cried. I've never had such a visceral and emotional response to a landscape. 

Emily took some video:

We finally decided to leave this incredible place, but the sunset made us stop to take more photos.

Once we were finally able to tear ourselves away, we dropped back south and spend the night in Murdo.

Day 12: A Skinny Tornado

After spending a couple of days in the Nebraska Sandhills we headed south toward Interstate 80 to do some actual storm chasing. Our first stop of the day was the gas station in North Platte. Most people don't realize how much time is spent sitting in and around gas stations when storm chasing. It's a LOT. After hanging around for awhile storms started to go up southeast of North Platte.

I was more nervous during this chase than previous chases because for the very first time on an official chase, I was not driving. Dave was driving, and while I know that he has done this a zillion times and knows what he is doing, it was still scary for me. It was a loss of control that I've always had while chasing. It was interesting to give up that control.  To entirely put my life in the hands of someone else (albeit someone I trust implicitly) in a situation that for years terrified me. Yet another lesson learned on a chase trip.

So we chased this storm through the town of Lexington, Nebraska and came through some tiny little hail. As the hail got bigger we decided that we didn't want a repeat of O'Neill and the softball hail so we left that area and headed out of the core. From that area we had a pretty good view of the storm approaching.

We moved further east to allow the storm to come to us and sat on a dirt road for awhile. The storm didn't look great and none of us were particularly hopeful.

But then, all of a sudden, through the rain, appeared a skinny little funnel.

That skinny little funnel eventually (we think) became a weak tornado. 

It only lasted a minute or two, but it's still a tornado. 

I just really like this structure shot. No particular reason why.

At this point the storm completely evaporated and we headed back to North Platte for the night. While we were at dinner another cell formed due east of us along Route 80. We opted to let it go and have dinner. 

Day 11: Driving through the Sandhills

I love Nebraska. Really. I know it's weird. When I mention that Nebraska is my favorite state people look at me like I'm crazy. But that's because all they see is the flat stuff on Route 80 as they go speeding through the state. When you head north things change. When you go north on Route 83 things become really interesting.

The Sandhills are a part of Nebraska that used to be covered by a large ocean. What remains is the sand and the dunes. There's a peacefulness that exists there that I just can't describe. It's all cattle ranches and wild landscapes. The photos don't do it justice.

After leaving the sandhills we drove to Valentine, Nebraska and spent the night. On the way we encountered this old abandoned house that appeared to have a newish roof. Since my new photographic obsession is old abandoned houses, we had to stop.

Day 10: A Ticket, Hail, Tornado, and RAGE

Yesterday's chase day was intense. We experienced softball sized hail, tornadic circulation at close range, and some ugliness on the part of other "chasers."

We headed Northwest to O'Neill, Nebraska from Omaha. I was driving and cruising along at 80 MPH when I was pulled over for speeding. Sigh. Into the glove compartment with the other ticket. It's part of the cost of chasing, I suppose. 

We finally get into O'Neill and continue northwest into Atkinson. We weren't hopeful because the storms started off looking like they were going to merge into a squall line almost immediately. That didn't happen and a couple of them began to look like messy supercells. We stopped to take a bunch of photos and video, but when we started getting hit by cold outflow instead of warm inflow we decided to leave that storm, let it go past us, and wait for the next one.

As we're driving down this narrow country rode toward Highway 11 at a decent speed (though nothing excessive), I see a GIANT hailstone hit the road in front of me and explode into a zillion pieces. I say, "uh, was that hail?" Keith says, "I suppose it could have been," as we both see another GIANT hailstone hit a pond and produce a splash that went at least 3 feet in the air.

Oh shit.

I start flying down the road and huge hail is falling all around us. I just want to get the hell out.

But I can't.

I can't because Sean Casey and the TIV and the Discovery Channel Crew are blocking the whole road. They refuse to let me pass because (I assume) that it will ruin their shot. When I finally get around one of  them, they come flying up behind me flashing their lights and freaking out and generally trying to run us off the road. By this point everyone in the car is screaming obscenities, I'm leaning on the horn, and we all want to KILL the discovery channel fuckers.

As we finally make it to the intersection of Highway 11 and Highway 20, the TIV and crew are blocking the intersection. Large hail is still falling around us. I say "fuck it" and go around them on the grass. They get so pissed off that one of the Discovery film crews nearly drives right into the TIV. It would have been poetic justice.

Hail is still falling all around us so we decide to take cover. The only place we could find was a under a tree on someone's front lawn. It was our only option. I would have driven right into a random person's garage had it been open. This hail was huge.

Once the hail danger passed, we decided to head back into town to see what was coming next.

We decide to go after the next cell in the line and take this road that appeared paved on the map. It would have been fantastic, except the pavement ended. I had to drive us on muddy, rutted, dirt roads as a rotating supercell heads our way. Dave and Keith tell me to turn left, and as I do, we all see a disorganized tornadic circulation kicking up dust right in front of us. 

 We backtrack and get the hell out. 

At that point the storm began to lose strength and show signs of becoming outflow dominant. We decided to let it get away from us and shoot pictures of the outflow sky. It was really incredible. 

All in all, this was one of the tougher and more stressful chases that I've had. 

Days 5-7: Goodbye and Bust

I don't have much to say here. We haven't seen a storm cloud in days. It's been pretty rough. There's been a whole lot of staring at the sky while parked at various gas stations around Oklahoma and Kansas.

I said goodbye to Ellie and Ella yesterday. Sadness. I love my girls.

 While waiting for storms to initiate we were parked outside of a gas station in Arkansas City, KS. People were working on the roof of a house across the street. The entire family was sitting in this truck for hours watching what was happening. At one point it looked like the mother and son were having this serious conversation on the back of the truck so I snapped a picture. It tells a story.

Days 4-5: Down Days and the Flint Hills

After the intense storms earlier in the week, the moisture was scoured from the plains and storms were unable to initiate in the drier air.

We were all sick of being in the lovely state of Oklahoma, so we decided to take a trip north to the Flint Hills of Kansas, one of my favorite landscapes in the country.

One of the things that I have discovered as a result of chasing for the past three years is an intense love for the Great Plains of the United States. There's something truly magical about golden wheat swaying in the wind backed by either a bright blue sky or intense dark storm clouds. There are so many people who believe that the Plains are a featureless landscape of flat corn and wheat fields. They couldn't be more wrong.

The Flint Hills are an area that spans from Eastern Kansas into Eastern Oklahoma. The rolling hills and green grasses look like an expanse of lush green velvet from a distance. If I could transplant this landscape closer to the ocean, I'd live there in a second.

We visited the Tall Grass Prairie National Grasslands and decided to take a short hike through the grass. It was beautiful. I took a bunch of photos, most of them I don't love. Ella and Ellie did yoga on a bridge that goes over  a small creek. Porthos tried to hide from the sun.

After our hike we sat on the porch of this mansion that's in the grasslands for awhile just looking at the prairies and watching the bluebirds dart around. Porthos was finally starting to cool off. What a pretty boy.

Day 4: A Stressful Day of Chasing

Yesterday, May 24th, was a "High Risk" day in Oklahoma.

To the people who live in the area, it's time to hunker down and prepare for the worst. For those of us who are fascinated with the violent beauty that mother nature can display, it's incredibly exhilarating and exciting. Because a high risk day offers the promise of violent tornados, more storm chasers than usual are out and about, clogging the roads and committing general ass-hattery.

In order to avoid the hordes, and because Dave felt it would give us the best shot of seeing a tornado, we headed north and west of Oklahoma City.

Unfortunately, things did not go as planned. Storms went up to our south and produced large, violent tornados in populated areas. Normally, we would have been able to get to them, but they very quickly morphed into a line of embedded high precipitation (HP) supercells so we couldn't find a good way to view any possible tornadic activity. Also, the storms were moving east at  50-60 mph and we were trying to stay out in front of it because we did NOT want to get rolled by a big fat tornado.

We began stair-stepping south and then east looking for a break in the storms so we could punch our way through the line and get west of the storms without getting hit by the core. Every single time we got far enough south, the storms had already caught up and we were no longer far enough east. It was incredibly frustrating and incredibly stressful. The driving was exhausting. I was pushing myself and the car as hard as I could, but it was fruitless and futile.

We finally were able to get to a break in the storms, but the storm to our south was moving so rapidly that while we were driving between the two supercells, we got hit by the rain core of the one to our south. The driving became hectic, stressful, and at one point, downright scary. Although Dave didn't tell us at the time, I knew that I was looking at atomized rain spinning around the car. The wind was shifting in all different directions and I was sure that we were driving underneath a rotating meso. Eventually we just stopped and let the storms pass over us.

We'd lost our shot to see a tornado, but we were safe.

We decided to head back down to Norman, OK and spend the night in a hotel. We were pretty bummed that we'd missed storms like this one, many chasers had the same issues we did.

On our way back to Norman we stopped at an intersection to figure stuff out. There was this abandoned building on the corner with the sun setting behind it. It was incredible so I decided to snap a few pictures. 

Only one was decent, but it made the whole day worthwhile. 

Day 3: A Brief Tornado and Some Beautiful Structure

Yesterday we headed northwest into the Plains of Oklahoma (finally!). We started chasing a cell near Watonga, OK that had beautiful structure early on. The RFD caused a clear slot in the clouds that looked like a hole into sunshine.

Ella thought it was pretty too.

We headed closer to the storm to get a better view and mother nature was kind enough to provide us with a brief tornado. It was really interesting because there was this skinny horizontal funnel cloud that had a debris cloud that was pretty far displaced from the funnel itself. This is caused by the RFD pushing the debris cloud away from the funnel itself. It was a very brief, weak tornado, but a tornado nonetheless. 

As the storm was dissipating, created this beautiful scene

Once that storm died, another storm began going up right in front of us. We started heading southeast to get to a different cell, but the incredible convective motion of the closer storm was too hard to ignore so we stayed on it. It was spectacular.

Day 2: Busted

On our second day out chasing we decided to head northeast out of Norman toward the Ada, OK area. It wasn't the best area to see storms, but the better area was in rough terrain near the Oklahoma-Missouri border. It's really tough to chase there because of all of the trees and hills. When you have trees and hills it makes it very difficult to see the storms so we avoid chasing those areas as much as possible. The Joplin, MO tornado was in that type of terrain so we were nowhere near that area. My heart goes out to the people of Joplin.

Day 1: Not a bad first day

We arrived in Norman, Oklahoma at Roger and Elke's late Friday night after picking Ellie up at the airport. At that point we assumed we would have to travel a few hours on Saturday to find supercells, but no one was hopeful that we'd see anything.

On Saturday morning we woke up to have breakfast with my friend Amanda, who lives in Oklahoma City. After an awesome breakfast we headed back to the house and found out that Dave and Roger had done some forecasting and determined that our best shot for storms would be north central Texas. Our target city was Gainesville, just over the border of Texas from Oklahoma.

Storms were popping up south of us, Near Waco, but we knew that there was no way we could make it that far south so we decided to sit tight and wait. As we watched tornado reports and warnings show up for those storms we started getting a little disappointed, but remained hopeful.

At about 4:30pm clouds started forming to our northeast, so we decided to head back in that direction. As we made our way to the brewing thunderstorm Ellie and Ella began to get excited about what the evening hours held in store for us. We watched the clouds get bigger and taller. As we approached the storm it became a supercell.

We then watched as one brief tornado touched down after another. They were mostly wispy little things that only stayed on the ground for a moment.

And then we hit the jackpot. The entire storm was spinning like a top. The mesocyclone was spinning so fast it was like a merry-go-round. And then, there was a multiple vortex tornado on the ground. The vortices were dancing around each other. It was other-worldly. 

All in all, it was a spectacular first chase day. Roger had his first ever birthday tornado. Ellie and Ella saw their first ever tornadoes. We had reasonable road options. And we got to see the storm from it's birth as towering clouds all the way to the end of the cell as it was ingested into the storm to its north. 

Truly a great first day out on the plains. 

There are no words

There are no words to describe the horror that the tornadoes wrought upon the people living in Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia. I'm not sure that words are even necessary.

I don't normally use this blog to post about anything other than chasing, but I felt that this warranted a special post.

I spent all afternoon on Wednesday glued to my computer, iPhone and television. I was watching the weather channel, watching the news, watching chaser cams online, checking radar and storm reports, and text messaging my cousin about what we were both seeing and hearing.

The excitement generated by my armchair chasing when the first tornadoes hit was quickly replaced by dread and terror. As I watched the tornado go through Cullman, I thought "wow, those poor people are going to have some serious damage, but they'll get through it." However, as the storm progressed, as it gained momentum and became more violent, it became clear to me that there were many people who would not get through it.

I began to cringe as I saw the radar getting more and more ominous. I began to cry when I realized that it was passing right over the University of Alabama. I was stunned into silence and gasps as I saw the storm heading right for  Birmingham.

Perhaps one of the most gut wrenching moments was when I watched a meteorologist describing the debris falling from the sky 20-30 miles ahead of the actual tornado. He said, "pieces of people's lives are raining from the sky." My heart began to break for those people and their pieces of debris.

I've been unable to tear myself away from both footage of the storms, but also images of the aftermath. It's sobering and devastating.

It's also provided a pretty stern reality check for me. I am a storm chaser. I love the thrill of the chase. I love the rush of seeing a tornado or a bad ass supercell bearing down on me. But I've never had to watch a tornado destroy a city.

I'm left wondering whether hoping for tornadoes is ethical and moral. I'm left wondering how I will react if I witness an event like the one in Alabama. I'm left wondering how I will align the two parts of myself. The part of myself that hopes beyond hope that destruction from tornadoes never affects anyone, and the part of me that hopes to see something as awesome and powerful as a tornado. How they will mesh together. And do I really want to handle it? I'm even left wondering if chasing storms is ethical and moral.

I'm still going to go this year. I wouldn't miss it for the world. But I like to believe  I'll think more about  how the "hope" for a storm might affect others.