The thrill of the chase: Meet the Kiwis chasing storms across the US

Steve Burroughs remembers the day he was hit by a tornado.

It was 2014 and he and a friend had just tracked a tornado that had formed from the mouth of the Ashburton River. The couple watched it from the safety of their car as it spun and spun before crashing onto the shore.

“He hit us and you could feel the back of the car go up. It was broken up with pebbles and stuff and when the wind picked up we could feel the back of the car bouncing up and down.”

To most people, getting caught in a storm probably sounds like a nightmare. But for Burroughs, it was a moment of pure adrenaline – all part of the territory of chasing storms.

Burroughs has been chasing storms since 2003, capturing thunderstorms, tornadoes and lightning on camera and sharing it with his community on the NZ Stormchasers Facebook page. He will spend hours in the car tracking storms using weather data and radar to experience the beauty and power of nature.

“If you’re a decision maker, you have to be confident in what you’re doing,” he says.

“The ability to interpret data very quickly is important. You can have yourself and your chase partner, someone else with a laptop running the latest weather apps and then telling you where to go.

“Maybe you’re driving into a situation that you think is pretty dangerous, but somebody says, ‘No, by all means drive here, we’ve got a road two miles to the right and that’ll save us from danger.’ you definitely need to be someone who can process information very quickly and make decisions on a case-by-case basis.”

Burroughs’ passion took him all the way to the US, where he chased storms through America’s Tornado Alley – places like Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska where tornadoes occur most often.

“We saw 12 tornadoes in one day in Dodge City, Kansas. It was in 2016 and it was an incredible experience…

“Earlier this year when I was in Houston, I think they had one storm that did millions of dollars in damage compared to Hurricane Gabriel, but it was just an everyday storm for them.

“Going to America is just another fish. The storms are bigger, more and more.”

Burroughs has traveled to the US to chase storms almost every year since 2007, usually accompanied by people he met on the NZ Stormchasers page.

In the U.S., the storms are certainly stronger and the weather technology a little more sophisticated, but Burroughs says it’s not just an adrenaline-filled adventure.

“One thing you really need is patience. Most of the time it’s driving long distances and doing nothing. It’s sitting and waiting out the storm, just getting to the right place at the right time and doing your best to capture something.

“It can be a lot of miles, I think my last trip to America we did 8,000km in two weeks, that’s about as much as I do in a whole year in New Zealand.”

But when the storm is finally visible, the thrill begins.

“It’s like when you go hunting. It’s a walk in the mountains until you see your animal, then that adrenaline kicks in.

“You definitely get the thrill of the chase. The center of a tornado is one of the most powerful things Mother Nature has to offer. It’s incredible when you see it, it’s like the roar of a jet engine… there’s a sense of danger approaching it, but it’s a calculated excitement. You want to go home.”

Kim Watson has been fascinated by tornadoes and storms since childhood. Growing up, her mom always told her stories about where to go if there was a tornado in the house. She thought about it so much that she even began to dream about them.

“It kind of happened when I was growing up. (Mom’s) story was precautionary, I don’t think anything happened…

“(Later) I worked with racehorses in America and saw some storms firsthand, especially tornado warnings, and chasing storms piqued my interest.”

In 2017, Watson was planning a trip to the US to visit her friend and decided to book a storm chasing tour.

“I literally just Googled ‘storm chasing tours’ and booked the first one that came up. We ended up visiting four states: New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas, and Colorado.”

Since then, Watson has traveled to the US almost every year, usually during tornado season from April to July. Once she even ended up in Burroughs during a storm.

“I knew of him from the NZ Stormchasers page and had spoken to him a few times on Facebook.

“We were just watching the storm and the next minute Steve pulls up, we chat for a bit and then we have to take off because the storm is coming. It’s really cool that we actually met there for the first time.”

2024 was the first year Watson organized a trip to the US with Burroughs and his team. Together they witnessed “the best tornado she ever had.”

“We were in Eldorado, Oklahoma, and we just watched him from birth, letting him come up to us…we’d move down the road and let him cross the road behind us. This has never happened to me and then we continued to chase after him after he crossed the road. It was a tornado beast.

“You don’t focus on anything around you, you just take in this tornado, something so powerful in front of you that you feel small… You see Mother Nature in her raw form. , a powerful form, and it just makes you feel like you really can do anything.

“Every year you get a little closer to being a little braver … it’s an empowering feeling.”

Both Watson and Burroughs plan to travel to the US every year for as long as they can.

This year, Burrows expects increased interest due to the release Twisters (2024), a remake of the originalTwister (1996) a film that inspired many storm lovers.

“A lot of people find fault with the original movie, and you still see a lot of references to it now… It’s an iconic storm-chasing movie that has a lot of interest in people.

“We get a lot of people who say that’s all there is to do.”