Latest / Tigs Bits Podcast / Storm Chaser Jeff Piotrowski

Transcript

Storm Chaser Jeff Piotrowski · Tigs Bits Podcast

• 0:00
  Welcome to Tigs Bits. This week we have the pleasure
• 0:02
  of interviewing an Emmy award-winning and social media
• 0:06
  superstar Storm Chaser. A man who has chased over 1000
• 0:11
  tornadoes and over 40 hurricanes, He's been
• 0:14
  interviewed by just about every major news outlet in America,
• 0:18
  and anytime we've mentioned the weather on this show, his name
• 0:22
  has come right up. If you want to watch the best,
• 0:25
  see the best footage of how violent and beautiful Mother
• 0:28
  Nature can be, then this is the guy to follow.
• 0:32
  We are thrilled to have Mr. Jeff Petrowski on with us today and
• 0:36
  we'll be discussing his journeys as a storm chaser, his most
• 0:40
  memorable experiences, and how he prepares to chase storms.
• 0:44
  Hang on to your hat, folks. This is going to be a good one.
• 0:52
  What's happening, man? Hey guys, doing doing good, man.
• 0:56
  Good. How you doing, my man?
• 0:58
  I've been all good. It's a it's, you know, it's
• 1:01
  another week. Another week.
• 1:04
  Hey, at least the weather is starting to get nice.
• 1:06
  It's starting to feel like fall. It's not smoking hot anymore, so
• 1:10
  you know that that's always good.
• 1:12
  Yeah, I was. I think it was like 7.
• 1:13
  No, it was about 65 here today and about a 30 dew point.
• 1:16
  So it's really nice. Yeah.
• 1:18
  Yeah, yeah. It's dude, it feels
• 1:21
  unbelievable. It feels as good as it's going
• 1:23
  to feel in Baton Rouge. And it did this weekend, too,
• 1:27
  especially for the for the LSU and Auburn game.
• 1:30
  I think it's the first time that I've gone to Tiger Stadium,
• 1:33
  spent the whole day tailgating and everything, and I didn't
• 1:36
  sweat. I didn't have.
• 1:38
  To bring a. I don't think I've ever been
• 1:39
  here. Ever.
• 1:40
  Probably been to Louisiana and spent like 90 / 80 with you
• 1:43
  know, 100 mount or a winds blower or something, right?
• 1:45
  You don't generally come at the best of times, Jeff.
• 1:50
  Exactly the extreme stuff, yeah. That's the fun part.
• 1:54
  Well, look, we'll we'll jump into it.
• 1:56
  We have Jeff Petrowski on with us tonight.
• 1:58
  We are beyond thrilled to have him on as everyone knows that we
• 2:04
  we talk about the weather occasionally on here and and all
• 2:07
  the stuff that we see. Chad and I are both weather
• 2:11
  geeks and so so. We are being beyond three.
• 2:14
  Oh, yeah, Oh yeah. For for.
• 2:16
  Sure. Come the realization that really
• 2:18
  quick. Yeah.
• 2:19
  Yeah. So so to have you on here man is
• 2:22
  a is a feather in our cap for sure and and we're honored that
• 2:26
  you'd take your time out to to come and visit with us man.
• 2:29
  So how, how have you been doing and and thanks so much for
• 2:32
  coming on. I know the seasons are kind of
• 2:35
  quietening down a little bit for.
• 2:37
  Quite as good. You know I like, I like quiet
• 2:39
  time to trust me. I really do because it's so it's
• 2:42
  so crazy. You know the spring and
• 2:44
  tornadoes and then you you have it.
• 2:46
  But this year we didn't have a break at all, right.
• 2:48
  It just, I mean got into June, July we are still chasing
• 2:51
  tornadoes in June. July in the High Plains was just
• 2:53
  it just did not stop. It's just like week after week
• 2:56
  it was just non-stop and then boom, here comes the Hurricanes,
• 2:58
  right. So yeah, it was it was it was a
• 3:01
  really crazy year. The patterns really ramped up
• 3:04
  and it's been a crazy year so far and looks like this fall
• 3:07
  winter is going to be crazy again, right?
• 3:09
  So yeah. It just never stops for you,
• 3:12
  does it? You know?
• 3:13
  So down here we get a break because, you know, for us it's
• 3:15
  hurricanes. I live on the Florida Gulf Coast
• 3:17
  down here. Near Santa Rosa Beach.
• 3:19
  And so it's always hurricanes, you know, for for you, man, it's
• 3:21
  just it's it's it's nonstop, right?
• 3:24
  Well, between that, between that and I, I do like a good Blizzard
• 3:27
  occasionally, right? A good ice storm or a good
• 3:29
  Blizzard. And we get all those here as
• 3:32
  well, right? So this winter looks like it'll
• 3:34
  be interesting. Yeah, I've had some good I've
• 3:36
  had some really good Blizzard stories to tell.
• 3:38
  Right. So, Oh yeah, we're going to need
• 3:41
  to jump into those. Oh yeah, for sure.
• 3:43
  Well, I and I remember one of the one of the first times that
• 3:46
  I ever saw you was it was in during that ice storm, that big
• 3:50
  ice storm in Texas or I've been following you for a little bit
• 3:52
  at before that, but but you were reporting on that that was as
• 3:55
  extreme as it freaking gets, man, dipping down well below 0.
• 4:00
  And all of that was it was 2 degrees in North Louisiana,
• 4:04
  where where I went up to, which is nuts.
• 4:06
  You know, we don't get that here.
• 4:09
  Yeah. Last year when that Arctic front
• 4:10
  came down, it was like, I mean when you see temperatures go
• 4:13
  from 70 and and you're talking about in 12 hours, temperatures
• 4:16
  going to be at 10 degrees and the roads are going to be a
• 4:18
  sheet of ice. People looked at it and they're
• 4:19
  like, are you serious? And it was like, yes, it's gonna
• 4:22
  drop by 40 degrees in about an hour.
• 4:24
  And it did, right? So it's just like, yeah, it's
• 4:27
  pretty crazy when that stuff happens, right.
• 4:29
  It is. It is.
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  And look at that. I think this is as good of a
• 4:32
  place to kind of kind of start and and jump into it.
• 4:36
  I know I've. I know your story.
• 4:38
  We we kind of know your your story of of where it all really.
• 4:41
  I believe your weather enthusiasm began whenever you
• 4:45
  were involved in a in a flood back when you were like 14 years
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  old. But tell that story for those
• 4:51
  that are listening that have never heard that that it's it's
• 4:54
  nuts man. It it's not.
• 4:56
  I could see why you would be into it after that.
• 5:00
  So, So when I was a kid, I was, you know, probably not much
• 5:02
  different than most kids today except I didn't have the video
• 5:04
  games, right. So we had to entertain
• 5:06
  ourselves. So back over Broken Arrow just
• 5:10
  other side. Tulsa is June 874.
• 5:12
  So there's a really warm, beautiful day and it's like mid
• 5:16
  80s and the wind was ripping out of the South in Oklahoma.
• 5:18
  It's like any other day, right? And so I remember going in about
• 5:21
  noon or 1:00 that day and we had there's a triple point coming
• 5:23
  out of Oklahoma City and I didn't know about all the finer
• 5:27
  details of weather at that time at 14 years old.
• 5:30
  And we, I mean there was a storm warning went out, so there's no
• 5:33
  warning. They used a Toronto warning
• 5:34
  there in Oklahoma City show after 1:00 and I just had a road
• 5:38
  McNally map, right. You just a little dot down and a
• 5:42
  ruler and it's like this northeast at 25 and put another
• 5:45
  dot down. And after about an hour or so, I
• 5:48
  was like, wow, hit the city, hit the city.
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  So I'm going around 132 o'clock. And I told my mom, hey, I said
• 5:53
  we're going to have tornadoes in Tulsa around 7:00.
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  It's clear blue skies outside. I mean, there's nothing outside.
• 5:58
  She goes go outside, play. It's a beautiful day.
• 6:00
  And I said, I said I'll go back to my room, I'll be waiting for
• 6:02
  the Tornadoes. I went back and I was plotting
• 6:04
  as listening KMG radio here in Tulsa AM 740.
• 6:08
  And I'm still doing here the teletype going off, you know,
• 6:10
  with the bell going off and you know there's new warning out.
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  It kept tracking the the warnings and the Tornadoes and
• 6:16
  it hit this. Town this town this town and
• 6:19
  about 6:30 I remember back in the living room and our house
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  face face the east. But the back of the house face W
• 6:26
  toward Oklahoma City the base 100 miles northeast of Oklahoma
• 6:29
  City. Here comes the big Able.
• 6:31
  Here comes the big good man. It's clouds and big pockets were
• 6:33
  hanging down. And tell my mom say tornadoes
• 6:36
  are on the way. They're only about 30 minutes
• 6:38
  out and. And by that time, a tornado
• 6:40
  warning had been issued. And you could see things were
• 6:43
  getting bad about that time. Here come there's a big, huge
• 6:46
  tornado in South Pole. So I can see from 20 miles
• 6:48
  Eastover, a Broken Arrow looking West.
• 6:51
  And I remember kept my mom looking down at me.
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  And she goes, how did you do that?
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  And then the part was like, feels like tell her at 1:00, you
• 6:59
  know, six hours earlier they were going to have tornadoes at
• 7:01
  7:00. That kind of freaked her out.
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  So I remember leaving. And it really did.
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  And so we left the house and went to church in town and went
• 7:11
  took shelter in the basement there.
• 7:13
  Then we had, you know, was a big outbreak of tornadoes, baseball
• 7:15
  hill flooding, the whole 9 yards.
• 7:17
  And that kind of set me on the path within the following year.
• 7:21
  We had a big flood in Tulsa, right?
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  Big flash flood. And we at that particular hotel
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  used to ingrained tombstones after school.
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  It was kind of interesting job, trust me.
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  So used to engrave, you know, you put the head markers and you
• 7:35
  put the stencil on and you put people's names and dates and and
• 7:38
  and all that and their last messages to their loved ones.
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  So anyway, there's a very interesting after school job,
• 7:42
  so. In that particular time in Maine
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  in May, your Memorial Day weekend delivering tombstones to
• 7:49
  cemeteries, right? So Memorial Day weekend, I met
• 7:52
  with my boss and his five year old son and we're in a two ton
• 7:54
  flatbed truck and we're out at all the different cemeteries on
• 7:57
  a Sunday delivering tombstones to different cemeteries.
• 7:59
  That's what I did for after school, right?
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  So it rains 10 inches in Tulsa and there's a big flood and my
• 8:07
  boss gets off the Expressway and goes on a service Rd.
• 8:10
  On Mingo Creek on Mingo Rd. And during that time the the
• 8:14
  Mingo Creek went out of its banks about, you know 6 or 8
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  feet above flood stage and it was flooding neighborhoods and
• 8:19
  flooding the straits. And we went over a bridge at
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  want to say 31st and and Mingo. And when we did, the water came
• 8:27
  all the way up to the windshield on the two ton truck.
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  You know, if you know anything about farm trucks, Lucy had you
• 8:31
  know talk about farm trucks, you know, hauling pay and stuff.
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  You know, it's they're up there pretty well so.
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  That happened and my boss rolled down his window, water was
• 8:39
  rushing up under the hood and he had his five year old boy with
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  him and I was very athletic in school junior high.
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  I was really thin and a great swimmer and I paid off this day
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  and we all got on top of the truck.
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  Well, about three blocks away was Hicks Park.
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  That has real ties. Road ties are now going coming
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  beyond the Creek. Boom.
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  Oh yeah, knocks my boss, knocks him off the truck.
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  They go floating down the the raging Creek at that point.
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  But just so happened the attitude, the Tulsa World
• 9:10
  tribute, the time he had a house that backed up to Amigo Creek
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  there and he's watched from the 2nd floor balcony watching
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  what's happening, that we're getting worse the way off this
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  off this bridge. He calls Tulsa a fire permit.
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  I swim over to the fence as fast as I can.
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  I'm hanging on to the fence. And here comes Tulsa Fire
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  Department and they're on the other side of the Creek.
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  They end up throwing a rope over the gravel hook and a fireman,
• 9:33
  they go across the Creek, They grab me, bring me back across
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  the Creek, pet me on top of the fire truck.
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  By now, the fire trucks underwater, right?
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  We're on top of the fire truck. So really long.
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  There's a four or five hour ordeal.
• 9:45
  I saw furniture going by, cars going by.
• 9:47
  So somebody got bit by a snake that was, he came out of the
• 9:50
  water and this snake was attached to the back of his
• 9:51
  calf. He was screaming, yeah, it was
• 9:54
  just horrible, freaky stuff. And it was like.
• 9:56
  So when you're 14 years old and you witness all this, it's like,
• 9:58
  oh man, that this is crazy. So I remember the fire
• 10:02
  department called my the Police Department.
• 10:04
  The police said, hey, you got to take this, this this boy back to
• 10:08
  his House of Broken Arrow. They call it parents says hey,
• 10:10
  your son's alive, almost got drowned, but he's alive.
• 10:13
  So I got home like one or two in the morning.
• 10:15
  So the next morning the police called me and they said, hey,
• 10:18
  did you ever find your boss? And they said no.
• 10:21
  And they said seriously they found his clothes but they
• 10:24
  didn't find him and but he he. He ripped all his clothes off
• 10:28
  and the way he got out of it's kind of it's it's it's kind of
• 10:31
  scary but it's what happened He he me sudden they they he
• 10:35
  actually was able to get out of the Creek by grabbed over a
• 10:39
  thorn Bush and of course he had thorns all the way through the
• 10:41
  sand. He'd start naked.
• 10:43
  He had to climb over a fence and they go up and walk on
• 10:45
  somebody's door and go hey I got washed down the Creek right.
• 10:48
  So you can imagine being start naked on the front door and
• 10:51
  stuff like hey, I just got got washed down the Creek, I'm
• 10:54
  alive. I'm alive.
• 10:56
  Exactly, exactly. So that was, that was how that
• 11:00
  whole thing transpired. And so that had huge, profound
• 11:03
  effect on me, right? Almost drowning, seen the big
• 11:06
  tornado the year before. So after that I was like, hey, I
• 11:09
  I really think weather's pretty cool.
• 11:10
  I think I want to kind of understand it a little bit
• 11:13
  better, right? It almost cost my life twice.
• 11:15
  It's like, hey, I better, I better get on top of this.
• 11:18
  Thing a little bit, yeah. I better, I better check this
• 11:20
  out, right? So that's how I got, that's how
• 11:23
  I got hooked on weather. I'll tell you dude you that
• 11:26
  fight or flight reflex comes in and ain't no doubt Jeff
• 11:30
  Petrowski's a fighter. Yes, you.
• 11:35
  Yes you have, man. Yes, you have.
• 11:38
  Of course we'll we're going to dive into some of those stories
• 11:40
  and all of that. But that brought you bring up
• 11:42
  something interesting. Something that I wanted to ask
• 11:44
  and before I forget it let's go ahead and get it out there.
• 11:48
  Animals and doing things in in hurricanes, tornadoes, floods,
• 11:52
  stuff like that with the snake biting that that guy.
• 11:54
  I mean, what are some of the crazy things that you've seen
• 11:57
  the ways animals react? Animals.
• 12:00
  Yeah, animals. Definitely.
• 12:01
  If you, if you've watched, I mean, you didn't hear people
• 12:04
  tell you different things. And I've watched the animals and
• 12:07
  the cows and the horses over the years, the things I've
• 12:09
  officially witnessed and got video of which is even more
• 12:11
  important. One of the time, May 15th, 91,
• 12:15
  up in central Kansas near Wichita, Clearwater, KS, there
• 12:19
  was a about 15 horses on top of a ridgeline.
• 12:24
  And there's just quite open pasture, and there's a big wall
• 12:27
  cloud spinning. No tornado yet.
• 12:29
  And all of a sudden the horses take off running.
• 12:31
  And about about a minute after they left that ridgeline, here
• 12:35
  comes the tornado sets down on top of the ridgeline, right with
• 12:37
  the Rab and then the tornado. Proceeds to take off northeast
• 12:41
  is chasing the horses through a section line and I'm watching
• 12:44
  the horses gallop through the field and they keep turning
• 12:46
  around and they're watching the tornado.
• 12:48
  It's a tornadoes gallon, you know it's they get into a
• 12:50
  section line, they have to stop. So it's it's a weak tornado, but
• 12:53
  the tornado goes over the horses.
• 12:55
  I got video of that but getting watching get the corral and
• 12:58
  they're all on top of each other.
• 12:59
  Their legs are out and they're on top and they're stacked on
• 13:01
  top of each other. So that was a very unusual deal,
• 13:05
  right? You see that every day?
• 13:07
  There's all crazy that. That the horses, though, knew
• 13:10
  that was about to happen before it happened.
• 13:12
  Right, right. Pressure, the pressures
• 13:14
  dropping, right. Sending cows do something
• 13:16
  similar. Cows will do that too as well,
• 13:20
  you know. You'll see birds, you'll see
• 13:23
  sometimes you'll see birds just take off in a big flock.
• 13:26
  Like what's what's spooked them, right.
• 13:28
  There's no light here some. And next thing you know, maybe
• 13:30
  there's a big hailstone comes, hits the ground, They heard it
• 13:33
  five. They heard it 5 miles away.
• 13:36
  And all of a sudden boom, it's on top of it's right.
• 13:38
  So yeah, the animals definitely will give you a clue that
• 13:40
  something's about to happen, right?
• 13:42
  Not always been a lot of time. So if you just watch the
• 13:44
  animals, the animals will tell you.
• 13:46
  Yeah, the animals will tell you what's going to happen.
• 13:48
  Yeah, we use birds a lot whenever we fish.
• 13:50
  You know, you can see the birds, you know they're feeding and go
• 13:53
  find the food. You're gonna find the fish and
• 13:55
  similar things. Mother Nature will talk to you
• 13:58
  if you just are willing to listen, you know.
• 14:00
  That's a good way to put it, yes.
• 14:03
  When you're out storm chasing and Mother Nature gives you all
• 14:05
  kinds of clues and pieces of puzzle.
• 14:07
  And if you'll just watch the sky and watch what the birds just
• 14:11
  watch around you, you're just when you're outside in the
• 14:13
  element. If you just watch around you, a
• 14:15
  lot of times they don't give you clues what's going to happen
• 14:17
  before it happens. You just got to watch for it,
• 14:19
  right? You got to be in tune.
• 14:21
  You got to be in tune to that, right?
• 14:22
  It's not all about laptops and iPads and iPhones.
• 14:25
  It's all, hey, what's what's going outside my winter right
• 14:28
  now? Yeah, just look out there and
• 14:31
  look, yeah. Use your eyeballs.
• 14:34
  Exactly. That totally makes sense.
• 14:36
  It totally makes sense. Well, well that that gets you
• 14:39
  started. Of course you you catch the bug
• 14:41
  only early on which you could have ran from that very easily
• 14:44
  or run into it and and then what happens there?
• 14:48
  I know that you've sold you, you sold building materials, is that
• 14:51
  right? And you kind?
• 14:52
  Of no. I built.
• 14:53
  I built houses you built. Yeah, so I came right out.
• 14:56
  I came right out of high school and after job work.
• 15:00
  I was really blessed when I was younger and we had an old been
• 15:03
  going on in Tulsa, OK, back in the 70s and energy crisis.
• 15:07
  So we couldn't back in 74737475, we couldn't find enough
• 15:11
  construction workers. There was like 2 to 3000 houses
• 15:14
  a year being built in Tulsa metro residential houses.
• 15:17
  Plus we had 10 or 15 apartment complexes being built.
• 15:19
  There was literally not enough crews I used to insulate houses
• 15:23
  for living. And there's foam.
• 15:24
  You probably. Filming walls and doors that are
• 15:27
  more popular today, but back in the 70s with the energy code,
• 15:29
  the Southern Baka code, and in order to get a frame inspection
• 15:33
  you had to plug all the wires and and holes and electrical
• 15:35
  outlets like in the outside cheating and out the top plate
• 15:38
  and the inside. And same thing for commercial
• 15:40
  well. We were so busy that at that
• 15:44
  time builders would call me because they knew I did really
• 15:46
  good work and they'd call me and says hey, we got a A6000 foot
• 15:50
  house for you over here or we got this apartment complex ready
• 15:52
  for you. In this building we got 7
• 15:54
  buildings ready and they had to have the frame inspection.
• 15:57
  They had had the house sealed. Well they couldn't get the frame
• 15:59
  inspection. You don't get the frame
• 16:00
  inspection. You can't insight, you can't
• 16:01
  sheetrock. You're stopped.
• 16:02
  The job stops. Right.
• 16:03
  So anyway, I'd get called I I go out on Saturday and I'd take a
• 16:07
  1520 pound tank of foam and I'd go out and do 4. 05 houses on a
• 16:12
  weekend, right. At that time you're probably
• 16:16
  billing, I don't know, 5, seven, $800 a day.
• 16:20
  But you know, again, I'm I'm, you know, I'm 16 years old still
• 16:23
  going to school and and and I'm just, I'm huffing and puffing
• 16:26
  blowing. So I saved up enough money over
• 16:28
  a couple years that I went out and bought some lots in South
• 16:32
  Tulsa in the corners of Cul sacks.
• 16:34
  Well, right after I bought those there was a flood in Tulsa.
• 16:37
  Again, imagine that. And there's a building
• 16:40
  moratorium witness. Effect.
• 16:42
  So there's no more new set of this has been approved.
• 16:44
  So I just bought these. No, you see, you see the picture
• 16:47
  now. So I just bought these lots now
• 16:50
  building more term wins. In effect now there's no more
• 16:52
  lots available because addition on volume was one of the very
• 16:55
  few in South Tulsa. So the same builders I bought
• 16:57
  the lot from came back to me and says hey Jeff, you want to sell
• 16:59
  your lots and it said sure, they.
• 17:01
  So they basically almost doubled, doubled my money, and
• 17:05
  about five to six months. Took that money and then and
• 17:08
  then I went to Broken Arrow and I started building houses, Start
• 17:11
  building houses right when I got out of high school.
• 17:14
  So I found a band, a banker to back me and I started building
• 17:17
  custom homes when I was 18 years old.
• 17:19
  Right out of it, right out of high school I was building
• 17:21
  custom homes. So I did that for about 25 plus
• 17:24
  years in Tulsa and then built an average about 20 to 25 houses a
• 17:28
  year. Started off with smaller homes.
• 17:30
  You know the the 15102 thousand footers called the beginner
• 17:33
  homes. And then the the last four or
• 17:35
  five years have built, I, I, I was been in the seven, 10,000
• 17:38
  footers the biggest state. Oh wow.
• 17:40
  So yeah. So yeah.
• 17:42
  So anyway I I understand construction real well.
• 17:45
  So when storms of bad weather happens I understand what causes
• 17:48
  them to come apart and how to rebuild them and all those kind
• 17:50
  of things. Right.
• 17:51
  So well and even more importantly you know how to get
• 17:53
  in position in those storms and and you know you you put your
• 17:57
  that's the thing that's the the the most fun of watching you and
• 18:01
  how we've all discovered you is you put yourself in position to
• 18:06
  intercept whatever it is that's coming in and you're there.
• 18:09
  But you do do it safe you do it safely.
• 18:12
  You you explain that you know when you're in the in the heat
• 18:15
  of the moment. But I'm not going to lie there's
• 18:16
  times when I'm watching like good Lord Jeff what are you
• 18:18
  doing here. I don't this this is scary.
• 18:21
  There's a lot. There's a lot of times you
• 18:23
  can't, whether it's a tornado chase or if it's a, you know,
• 18:25
  hurricane chase, you can't always see things around me
• 18:28
  like, you know, like if I'm on the second floor of a parking
• 18:31
  garage or third floor, even though I know it's going to
• 18:33
  flood underneath me like. You know, Hurricane Ike, you
• 18:36
  know, down in, down in, you know, Corpus Christi, we knew it
• 18:39
  was going to have a 1520 foot storm source.
• 18:41
  We got a five story parking garage, right.
• 18:43
  And an elevated parking garage and the water did flood around
• 18:46
  us, right. And but a lot of times you can't
• 18:48
  see everything you want to see on a live shot.
• 18:51
  But you're always thinking about if the worst happens, can I
• 18:54
  escape? Can I?
• 18:55
  Hurricane Katrina as on the I-10 bridge on the northeast side of
• 18:59
  New Orleans, Right. And I knew the storm search was
• 19:02
  coming because I dated. Just tell me.
• 19:03
  Hey, I got a 3040. Storm surge just South of me
• 19:05
  coming to shore right. So we knew it was going to be
• 19:07
  really bad. So you can be waiting for the on
• 19:09
  ramp and as soon as the storm starts coming in and start to
• 19:11
  went up the on ramp about 30 foot in the air and then went to
• 19:14
  the north aisle walls is the Hurricane Katrina made landfall
• 19:17
  right. That was that was insane right.
• 19:20
  So it's all those kind of things you.
• 19:22
  Yeah. Prepping getting ready for being
• 19:24
  safe is is 90% we call it scouting.
• 19:27
  It's no different than the fishing or golfing or anything
• 19:30
  else. You're scouting.
• 19:31
  You're out scouting. It's like, oh, I know this
• 19:33
  structure's going to come. I'm down at the winds out of the
• 19:35
  east, and this is not really well built.
• 19:37
  This is going to go fly in this direction.
• 19:39
  So you put that in the back of your mind as you're driving
• 19:41
  through and you're assessing what area am I going to be safe,
• 19:43
  What area is not going to be safe?
• 19:45
  You you put a middle note like, hey, if these big trees on this
• 19:49
  road here are going to come down, this road's going to be
• 19:51
  blocked. So I know as Susan winds going
• 19:53
  to Hunter out of the east, this road's going to be impassable
• 19:55
  and I don't want to be on this road, right.
• 19:57
  So you're making middle notes of all that stuff while you're
• 19:59
  driving, right? That.
• 20:02
  That was a question that I had for you.
• 20:04
  How do you scout, which that's the proper word that totally
• 20:07
  makes sense. How do you scout those areas?
• 20:09
  Do you have, like if you're looking at a map of the the, the
• 20:12
  Gulf S, you know anywhere that where the most of the Hurricanes
• 20:15
  come in. I'm sure you know where your
• 20:17
  little hot spots are, where you have the best cell service.
• 20:20
  And you, you know, not always, not always.
• 20:24
  You're learning. I guess you're putting it
• 20:26
  together. You've been doing it a lot
• 20:27
  lately. Down.
• 20:28
  Here scouted out. Well, you scouted out, but those
• 20:31
  days you know with the Starlink now, which I have Starlink and
• 20:35
  that is a huge deal. Okay, that's.
• 20:37
  Awesome. Yeah, you got to have Starlink.
• 20:40
  So yeah, find those places. And there's some things.
• 20:43
  There's some apps that use ones called elevation.
• 20:46
  Which I'll personally love. It's like 5 bucks or something.
• 20:49
  Anyway, wherever I'm driving on the road, I just start the app
• 20:53
  and it knows where I'm at. On the road was the center of
• 20:55
  asphalt and says your elevation right here is either in meters
• 20:57
  or in feet. So I know how far I'm above
• 21:00
  elevation wise. I'm 1 foot above elevation or
• 21:02
  five feet. So I know if the storm surge,
• 21:04
  they're forecasting that, you know, 7 or 10 foot storm surge,
• 21:06
  then I know, hey, the storm surge and I get, I download the
• 21:08
  local maps as far as where the storm surge is going to get in
• 21:11
  the back bays of what inlets are going to be cut off.
• 21:14
  And so you're looking at all those things, right?
• 21:16
  And so, yeah, yeah. How do you go?
• 21:19
  How do you go from building houses to knowing how to read
• 21:23
  stuff like that? I mean, there's a transition
• 21:26
  somewhere. Right, right, right in between.
• 21:28
  How does that happen? Right, so I went to work.
• 21:32
  So after I got a building business in 94 I went to work
• 21:35
  for a company I worked for now called Baron Weather and they
• 21:38
  had a Huntsville AL. We build radars and storm
• 21:40
  tracking equipment and for television and government and
• 21:43
  and we do things digital apps for companies worldwide, right.
• 21:47
  So which worked for them in 94 and I've been working for them
• 21:50
  ever since. So take care of sales and sell
• 21:54
  broadcast and sell you know 500 fortune companies different
• 21:57
  types of technology and the digital world software side and
• 22:01
  that's what we do. That's what pays the bills every
• 22:03
  day, right. The storm chase is kind of the
• 22:05
  hobby side of things. It does pay its bills as well,
• 22:07
  but it's a yeah because it can't get expenses.
• 22:09
  Like golfing or hunting or fishing, right?
• 22:11
  It's you got to spend real money.
• 22:13
  You're having to stay somewhere. You're spending money on gas.
• 22:16
  God knows what your equipment cost.
• 22:18
  You also have the Starlink subscription now that you that
• 22:21
  you pay for. I'm glad to know we've talked
• 22:23
  about Starlink on here. Our Co host, another Co host Jr.
• 22:27
  the handler that's usually with us.
• 22:29
  He's out on the road right now touring with with Justin Moore
• 22:33
  and they have, they have Starlink on their tour bus, so
• 22:36
  they're able to stay connected and and do all that, all of that
• 22:40
  stuff, man. That has to be a complete game
• 22:43
  changer for all of you guys that are out.
• 22:45
  There huge chasing. You know a lot of people don't
• 22:49
  know this. I'll take myself, I'll tell you
• 22:51
  this, a lot of people don't know this that back before we had
• 22:54
  cell phone technology. I was involved with a another
• 22:57
  individual we developed technology called store and Ford
• 23:00
  where you can take pictures or video of something and they
• 23:03
  recorded on a a computer and then have another receiver at
• 23:06
  the other end and actually use cell phone technology analog
• 23:09
  back then and and actually transmitted the video.
• 23:12
  And take 234 lines outbound and 3-4 lines inbound and the analog
• 23:16
  phones and you put all the video together and the lines drop off,
• 23:19
  it would still reconnect on the remaining lines and finish the
• 23:22
  video clip and be anywhere in the world to do that.
• 23:23
  We did that before we invented cell phones.
• 23:26
  Yeah. So didn't you you have a, don't
• 23:29
  you have a patent out there on some type of on that?
• 23:32
  Yeah, that's that's amazing. You've always been on the
• 23:35
  cutting edge of how this is even possible.
• 23:39
  You know, I've always been, I've always been a technical nerd.
• 23:43
  You know, I tell people when it comes to technology and whether
• 23:47
  everything, if you got the money in the science, we we know
• 23:50
  there's a lot of things we can do anywhere in the world, right?
• 23:52
  If you got the people and the knowledge, we've got the skill
• 23:54
  set to do the unthinkable, right.
• 23:58
  So, right. So we can, we can do a lot of
• 24:00
  really cool things that people not dreamed of today.
• 24:03
  Right, so there's a lot of cool fit technology.
• 24:05
  And of course, Darling just announced here were two weeks
• 24:07
  ago, a week ago, two weeks ago. They're coming up, two more V3
• 24:11
  receivers now. So this can be their next
• 24:13
  version of satellite. They're even smaller ones, can
• 24:14
  be about the size of a MacBook. Okay, let me say this again.
• 24:18
  The new star links in the size of a MacBook Okay don't don't
• 24:22
  have any specs on it yet. As far as those rumors that
• 24:25
  exactly might be powered by 12 Volt.
• 24:27
  You might be able to, you know, put it in your briefcase, go on
• 24:29
  a plane, go to your cabin, go hunt and go fishing, go to
• 24:33
  another, go to another country. Right, right.
• 24:36
  And so yeah. Did you use Starlink for Idelia
• 24:40
  when you were down? Dude, that was so awesome
• 24:44
  because Brantley just turned me on to you then and I woke up
• 24:46
  early that morning and. I watched you the the afternoon
• 24:49
  before. I think you were down around
• 24:50
  Clearwater or Tampa somewhere. Yeah, I think you're near
• 24:53
  Clearwater and you were heading up to Perry.
• 24:55
  So that morning I woke up and saw you and dude, I was.
• 24:57
  I was so. Surprised that that connectivity
• 25:00
  remained and I was like, this is unbelievable.
• 25:03
  We're getting this and it's and so it it it was super cool, like
• 25:06
  because you stay connected 90 plus percent of the time, you
• 25:08
  know? So yeah, it was, it was, it was,
• 25:10
  yeah, it's safe connected. It was Starlink, you know if
• 25:12
  you're in trees and stuff, if you get the more powerful one,
• 25:15
  right the mobile version, it's got a stronger signal up and
• 25:18
  down it. It helps with those tree caliber
• 25:21
  when it's over the road and things like in Perry, right his
• 25:24
  launch recover. So it's it's like like the
• 25:27
  swamps in Southern Louisiana. You get down those deep woods,
• 25:30
  man. You're right.
• 25:33
  Exactly. You're under a blanket.
• 25:35
  Blanket right. Exactly, exactly.
• 25:38
  Man, with technology, I I have to think in the last handful of
• 25:44
  years, the last five years if it's shorter than that
• 25:47
  artificial intelligence forecasting all of that.
• 25:50
  I mean you've seen it from from putting phones on there and
• 25:55
  getting line by line to get a video across to where
• 25:57
  instantaneous stuff. I mean, are you seeing
• 26:01
  forecasting getting better and better and better thanks to like
• 26:05
  Open Open AI and things like that?
• 26:08
  Yeah, I mean Open AI is going to, it's going to play a role
• 26:10
  going forward. Technology itself, just besides
• 26:13
  Open AI and all that other technology, it's it's helping
• 26:17
  us. The technology's dramatically
• 26:18
  improved over the last 15 or 20 years, right.
• 26:21
  And as I tell people, used to have a huge array of equipment
• 26:24
  and I don't have a cell phone on me.
• 26:25
  But basically you can take a cell phone today or an iPad.
• 26:28
  I go anywhere in the world and and talking about an event right
• 26:32
  then go live. Anywhere in the world and and
• 26:34
  those Saints and now Starlink's talking about you with T-Mobile
• 26:36
  you can be live on text or emergency backup anywhere in the
• 26:39
  world and and you know after the first year so if you think about
• 26:42
  it we can go to anywhere and talk about whatever you want to
• 26:45
  talk about anywhere in the world right.
• 26:47
  So yeah, the weather technology is getting better, better,
• 26:50
  higher res, it's getting better and matter of fact some some of
• 26:52
  the days it's it's so good that we can target a in a tornado
• 26:57
  side of things. You can target an area a yearly
• 27:01
  one or two county area and say a couple days out like hey this is
• 27:05
  my target right and why right And so you can you can start
• 27:09
  getting very laser focused on where the high potential is
• 27:12
  going to be and and potentially what the how intensive tornado
• 27:14
  is going to be right. Not only is it going to be a
• 27:16
  tornado but what kind of tornado is going to be weak tornado or
• 27:18
  significant tornado. So the technology and the.
• 27:22
  That kind of stuff's getting better and better every year for
• 27:24
  sure. That that's what I love watching
• 27:27
  is whenever. It's just before you get into
• 27:29
  the stuff, it's the beginning, you know this, you what you give
• 27:33
  the why. This is why it's happening.
• 27:35
  This is where it's coming from. This is, you know, you explain
• 27:38
  that in layman's terms where I can understand what the hell
• 27:42
  you're talking about because because if you get all technical
• 27:47
  in mumbo jumbo, it doesn't make it just starts to fly over my
• 27:49
  head, you know? But right.
• 27:51
  But that that's one of, that's one of your best skills.
• 27:54
  You take it fast, you got to keep.
• 27:56
  Oh man. You got to keep the the message
• 27:58
  that's coming across there and how he's articulating it.
• 28:01
  I'm telling you, it was like I just suddenly seen, you know,
• 28:03
  something I've never seen. But it was like sliced bread.
• 28:05
  And I was like, this is so good, this is weather on another
• 28:08
  level. And I've been.
• 28:10
  Watching weather all the time, it really is.
• 28:13
  Well, it's just, you know it's 45 plus years of chasing, but
• 28:17
  it's also under luck in the technology and really it's just
• 28:20
  looking out up at the sky, the sky.
• 28:22
  Give you all kinds of closes we already talked about, right.
• 28:24
  So if you look at the sky and if the model forecast something
• 28:27
  that morning and it says, hey, by 3:00 or 4:00 the winds in
• 28:30
  central Oklahoma and Oklahoma City.
• 28:32
  The winds are going to go from this maybe a veered wind back
• 28:34
  around a southeasterly wind and the shears going to increase.
• 28:37
  Well at 4:00 or 5:00 the winds start backing it's like wait,
• 28:40
  the bottles got that right. So then you start looking for
• 28:43
  everything else. There's a triple point.
• 28:44
  Here's the winds. Here comes the wave out of the
• 28:46
  Texas Panhandle. And oh boy, it looks like it's
• 28:49
  the bull's eyes. Can be just W for come see at
• 28:51
  5:00. Well, boom.
• 28:52
  I've got Tyron Kidd going up at 4:30 just W Lacombe City.
• 28:55
  You start seeing those pieces of puzzle come together.
• 28:58
  It's pretty much you like it's going to go full throttle.
• 29:00
  You know what's going to happen, right Most of the time and it's
• 29:04
  putting those pieces of puzzle. But I'm really good at mesel
• 29:06
  scale and I'm really good at understanding things.
• 29:08
  But what a lot of people don't understand is if when you're out
• 29:10
  storm chasing, you got it, you got to look at the atmospheres
• 29:13
  3D. And you got to figure things out
• 29:15
  spatially. If I get a, if the wind changes
• 29:18
  direction, whatever that might be, what is it going to do to
• 29:20
  the atmosphere just because it's because sometimes the bottles
• 29:23
  weren't forecast. I'm going to have an east wind
• 29:24
  at 35 because the storm went by just to my east and put an
• 29:28
  outflow out. Well, now that I've got an east
• 29:30
  wind at 30, but I've got a southwest flow along at mid
• 29:32
  level, all of a sudden my shears went through the roof and it
• 29:34
  wasn't forecast to do that. So all of a sudden now it's
• 29:36
  like, well, I'm going to have tornadoes now and it wasn't
• 29:38
  supposed to be right. A lot of times this atmospheric
• 29:41
  accidents happening, you got to be ready for them to understand,
• 29:43
  hey, this is. Get ready to happen, and then
• 29:45
  explain to people what's going to happen before it happens.
• 29:48
  I don't think people really enjoy that.
• 29:49
  Oh. Dude, it's phenomenal.
• 29:51
  It's like Tom Brady reading a defense in it.
• 29:53
  Like in a 2 minute offense, right?
• 29:55
  You know, it's like and he, you know, he's dialed in.
• 29:57
  It's the same thing I can see for you.
• 29:59
  It's just all coming together and the excitement and it's all
• 30:02
  right there in front of you. It's all in slow motion really.
• 30:05
  Even though it's fast and furious to us.
• 30:07
  It's like how you do that. See it's like.
• 30:09
  Here it is guys. Yeah, you've seen it with 45
• 30:15
  years of doing this. You've seen the picture painted.
• 30:18
  But I think that has to be part of the thrill is that no matter
• 30:21
  what, it's never the same. Any of them, none of them are
• 30:25
  ever the same. And I guess that keeps the the
• 30:27
  spice of wanting to keep doing it and and put yourself in that
• 30:31
  position. Yeah, no tornadoes and no
• 30:33
  hurricanes. No2 are never alike.
• 30:35
  No2 cat fives, No2 cat ones, new EF fives or EF ones, they're all
• 30:39
  different. So even in the same state,
• 30:42
  they're they're all different. They they they interact
• 30:44
  differently, they do different kinds of damage and they're all
• 30:48
  all inspiring and amazing, right.
• 30:50
  So because you never know what you're going to get at the end
• 30:52
  of the day. That's why I go out.
• 30:53
  Because you never know what Mother Nation's going to give
• 30:55
  us, right? That's right.
• 30:56
  And and if nothing else, you may not get the tornado you're
• 30:59
  wanting to see, but you'll get some other picture.
• 31:01
  You'll see something unusual. Something is going to happen.
• 31:05
  You just get right. You're around, it's going to
• 31:07
  show out. Mother Nature always just shows
• 31:10
  out. Shows always happens, yes.
• 31:12
  It does. Hey, Jeff.
• 31:13
  What's the craziest thing you've ever seen?
• 31:15
  Like, Speaking of crazy like, what's the craziest weather
• 31:17
  event I should say? Let me keep.
• 31:19
  My gosh, that you've seen, we've seen you and we've seen you in
• 31:24
  some crazy weather things, but I bet you there's some stuff that
• 31:27
  we have not seen you you. Weren't, Yeah, he's lost that
• 31:29
  you haven't seen. The camera goes off, right,
• 31:32
  right. Exactly.
• 31:35
  Gosh. Oh, OK.
• 31:39
  There's a video online about this and so.
• 31:42
  Me and Brian stirs another Chase friend of mine from the early
• 31:44
  days. Me and Brian was, I just got my
• 31:47
  van worked on and they had EU joints replaced because you got
• 31:50
  to be real methodical and keeping your vehicle up to date
• 31:53
  and repairs and things. And we're up in Edgar, NE, South
• 31:56
  Central Nebraska. It's a weekend to Saturday.
• 31:59
  It's just me and Brian. I'm in my big conversion van at
• 32:01
  that time and we're chasing triple point storms up.
• 32:06
  It's tornadoing. I'm doing about 45 to 50.
• 32:10
  I'm not going very fast. The storm is only about 10 miles
• 32:12
  to my W It's coming down toward this.
• 32:14
  We could see the storm. It's a big Barber pole.
• 32:16
  It's rotating tornado warning and effect.
• 32:19
  And all of a sudden I hear clang bang boom.
• 32:23
  And it's that horrible bad cell you don't want to hear, right?
• 32:27
  And I could hear the the, the transmissions going, but I'm not
• 32:31
  moving, I'm coasting. I just like just coasting down
• 32:34
  the hallway. Look at Brian.
• 32:35
  He goes, what was that? And I said, I think the drive
• 32:38
  shaft fell out. That is not a good time.
• 32:43
  That's terrible timing. Terrible timing.
• 32:45
  Oh my. Lord, he goes, horrible timing.
• 32:48
  So he goes, So he goes, What are we going to do?
• 32:52
  And so about that time, I remember Brian, so I called, I
• 32:57
  called 911 and said, hey, my truck's rolled down.
• 32:59
  This is who I am. This is where I'm located.
• 33:02
  And by the way, there's a tornado off 1 NW.
• 33:03
  It's moving SE pass on the Weather Service and that's F 2.0
• 33:06
  passes. Don't want to go check on us,
• 33:09
  right. So, so Brian, So Brian and and
• 33:16
  his good eyesight, he's like, hey, there's a farmhouse up the
• 33:19
  road there about 1/4 mile and he goes, I think we can make it.
• 33:22
  And I'm like, I don't know. And about that time in my the
• 33:26
  phone rings again. It's it's Kathy, My wife's
• 33:28
  calling. She goes, hey, what's happening?
• 33:30
  I said you can't believe this. EU joint fell out of the truck
• 33:33
  and I said we're broke. Down she goes, oh, quit kidding
• 33:36
  me you you guys are just pulling my leg.
• 33:37
  I said no, I'm not kidding, sweetie.
• 33:39
  This is real. We're in a behind here.
• 33:44
  I said the trails coming. I said we're going to, we're
• 33:47
  going to try to make it to the farmhouse.
• 33:49
  So we took off running. And we get about, we go up, we
• 33:54
  hit westward going up a hill, and then we break to the right,
• 33:58
  head north, up, up in this pasture.
• 34:00
  So you're heading. Right towards the storm.
• 34:02
  We're heading toward the tornado.
• 34:04
  We're trying to beat it to the house, right?
• 34:06
  And about that time it's it's getting dark and a baseball
• 34:09
  Hill's flying. You can hear it zipping through
• 34:11
  the earth. He goes, biases and we're
• 34:14
  running. And just as we get to the front
• 34:17
  porch, the the front gate and the wind's probably about 7080
• 34:20
  out of the east because the tornado's to my W coming at us.
• 34:23
  So everything's rushing back West into the tornado.
• 34:26
  And then she had that house, had the old farm rail farms, you
• 34:31
  know, the little 12 inch. Little rails on the front porch
• 34:33
  to hold it up. Well, those that in the wind,
• 34:36
  it's whistling like a Dixie. It's like it's screaming, right?
• 34:40
  You know it's screaming. Well, the homeowner knew that we
• 34:45
  broke down, but she had the door lock.
• 34:47
  She had the porch light on. And when I beat all the door,
• 34:51
  she said she came to door she didn't open.
• 34:53
  And she says, what do you need? What do you want?
• 34:55
  I said, well, trucks broke down. A tornado's in your cornfield
• 34:59
  and it's we gotta go. You got a basement?
• 35:00
  I asked her, do you have a basement?
• 35:01
  And she says yeah, but why you asked?
• 35:03
  I said because we're going to get rid of her by the tornado.
• 35:04
  We gotta go to the basement now. So she unlocks the door.
• 35:08
  She unlocks. Seriously.
• 35:09
  She unlocks the door. And Brian's carrying the camera.
• 35:12
  And there's in the old farmhouses, you got those old,
• 35:15
  you know, little the seal plates.
• 35:16
  You got to step up off the porch.
• 35:17
  You got this little seal plates on the door.
• 35:19
  So Brian trips on it and he face plants inside the door goes
• 35:23
  boom. He hits, but the camera still
• 35:24
  going and you hear the roar of the tornado coming.
• 35:27
  And then about that time, the two by fours and stuff that
• 35:29
  punched on the outside walls, you hear boom, boom, boom, boom,
• 35:32
  boom, boom, boom. And the roost rip it off.
• 35:34
  You hear things cracking and bright.
• 35:36
  Oh yeah. And I go, Brian, we got to run.
• 35:39
  And also I saw her run through the kitchen with the flashlight.
• 35:42
  She's going to back of the house and down the stairs and the
• 35:44
  element is she's going down the down the basement to the
• 35:47
  kitchen. Right.
• 35:48
  So I'm following her. She dies underneath the pool
• 35:51
  table. Once we got to the basement and
• 35:53
  me and Brian, me and Brian are running down the stairs and it's
• 35:56
  like get down the stairs where the back of the stairs, you
• 35:58
  know, it's like the basement. You know what those like.
• 36:00
  So I get underneath the basement and my back's up.
• 36:03
  Against the floors and the and the floors bouncing up and down
• 36:05
  trying to come out of the basement and it's pound.
• 36:07
  I mean there does this coming on top of us because the board, the
• 36:10
  boards above us are ripping off. I mean the nails were coming out
• 36:13
  of the boards. The one by six is on the on the
• 36:15
  the basement ceiling which is the floor.
• 36:18
  Right, right. No, it's it's it's the whole 9
• 36:20
  yards and so the roofs blown off, the walls are ripping off
• 36:24
  and that lasted about two 2 1/2 minutes and we knew it was bad
• 36:28
  and. Anyway, so Toria, my ears are
• 36:31
  popping and all that kind of stuff.
• 36:32
  So as we turn around, I I tell the lady I said, well, I said
• 36:37
  let's go upstairs and we went up real slow up the stairs.
• 36:40
  Just as it got to the top of the stairs, I opened the door.
• 36:44
  Again, to my amazement, this the moon was out, the Crescent moon
• 36:48
  was shining on, the tornado had just left the farm, and I can
• 36:51
  see the tornado and the big white tornado going through the
• 36:54
  cornfield to my E about 1/4 mile.
• 36:56
  It's it's at the green silos, it's hitting, the farm's gone.
• 36:59
  You hear cows moving and stuff and they're hurt.
• 37:03
  And so anyway, the green silos and all the tractor equipment is
• 37:06
  thrown out in the field. And this is crazy.
• 37:11
  On the N wall of this house is about the only wall standing
• 37:14
  Okay. They had a they had a dial
• 37:17
  Rotary phone on that side of the house.
• 37:20
  I picked up the phone. There's a dial tone and I'll go.
• 37:23
  I'm going to call 91111 and the guy goes, I think it's seriously
• 37:29
  County Sheriff's Office. They go seriously county or so I
• 37:32
  believe that's the correct county and I said hey this is
• 37:35
  Jeff. I'm out there and and I said
• 37:36
  what's man what's your name. She tells me her name.
• 37:38
  I said oh I'm it route so and so misses so and so's house he goes
• 37:41
  we got the Calvary coming well power's out everywhere right.
• 37:45
  So I'm on top of this her properties on a on a ridgeline
• 37:48
  you could see for like boom good 10 miles every direction.
• 37:51
  I see police fire trucks coming from everywhere.
• 37:54
  I mean, they're. I mean, they're coming from
• 37:56
  everywhere. OK, What?
• 37:58
  What? They get there?
• 38:00
  And it was very interesting that I won't go on all the details,
• 38:04
  but it's very crazy what happened there.
• 38:06
  But anyway, so everybody's fine. They get there.
• 38:11
  They assess my truck. My van's got one of the barns
• 38:14
  Gran Silos has has come apart robustly and it's like it's
• 38:18
  logged into my van that was cut my van in two.
• 38:20
  It went through the front windshield of the van and it's
• 38:22
  logged into the van. Oh yeah.
• 38:24
  So anyway, so then they call the local dealership and the local
• 38:28
  dealership came and got the vehicle.
• 38:29
  They. Brought me a new Tahoe and I
• 38:31
  remember the the particular general manager of the of the
• 38:35
  dealership when he handed me the keys, he goes, man you've had a
• 38:38
  really rough night there because everybody in the county's
• 38:40
  talking about it and he goes if you have any keys he goes you
• 38:43
  need to go find a hotel so which we did and he goes just come and
• 38:47
  see us tomorrow we'll get you, we'll get we got your van we're
• 38:49
  going to take it back to the shop and we'll figure out what
• 38:52
  what happened with EU joints and all that.
• 38:53
  And I said we'll take pictures or thing because I'll need it
• 38:55
  for insurance for the people that did the work.
• 38:57
  So anyway, I needed that when I got to the hotel.
• 39:00
  In the shower was washing my hair and cleaning up from all
• 39:03
  the debris flying. I had corn coming on my hair.
• 39:06
  I had, I had corn embedded in my hair just in the shower.
• 39:11
  Here. Clean cling.
• 39:12
  I look the others corn in the shower.
• 39:14
  That's insane. That's insane.
• 39:17
  That's insane. That's so that's my anger.
• 39:19
  Nebraska, we ran 1/4 mile. And by the way, the more the
• 39:22
  story that year is I think oh you Nebraska, Toronto Harris is
• 39:25
  our quarterback that year because I think we, I think we
• 39:28
  broke some records running that quarter mile.
• 39:32
  Did you get to reinforce you joints that after that that's
• 39:36
  the question, yeah. I I would say that was taken
• 39:39
  care of. Yeah.
• 39:39
  That probably got resolved quickly.
• 39:41
  Yes, that that that brings up a good question.
• 39:45
  And this goes for not just you, all of you guys who are storm
• 39:49
  chasers. How the hell do y'all get car
• 39:51
  insurance? It's just something that I've
• 39:53
  thought of. I mean, I sell, I sell
• 39:55
  insurance, I don't sell car insurance, I sell all the other
• 39:59
  stuff. I don't sell property and
• 40:00
  casualty. But but I really and truly have
• 40:02
  wondered, how do y'all get insurance on the?
• 40:04
  I think for me you just got to be careful and you as a real
• 40:10
  thumb over the years I haven't had that many casualty losses.
• 40:15
  So you just got to be, you know, you just got to be careful and.
• 40:17
  Don't worry Jeff, we can edit. We can edit some of this out if
• 40:22
  we need to. That's fine.
• 40:24
  Yeah, it's fine. It's fine.
• 40:26
  You use your vehicle work, yes. Yes, it's used for work.
• 40:32
  Yeah, it's used for work. But it's like it's like anything
• 40:34
  else you get that you you have equipment, technology in the
• 40:37
  course today that keeps you out of the path of the really bad
• 40:39
  stuff, whether it be the big hail or the high winds and the
• 40:42
  occasion, you know, I've actually believe it or not that
• 40:46
  I can tell you this is no secret about this.
• 40:48
  I've actually had more accidents, not directly related
• 40:52
  to the weather, but because of the weather, such as deer
• 40:56
  running out in front of you, right.
• 40:58
  I mean, over 40 years, I'll probably hit 8 or 10 deers in my
• 41:01
  lifetime, right? Yeah, those kind of things,
• 41:05
  power lines down and it's those kind of hazards.
• 41:08
  Other drivers, it's, it's flash flooding.
• 41:11
  It's hydroplaning. It's it's not really the storm
• 41:14
  itself per SE. It's the hazards of being in
• 41:16
  that environment and they haven't things.
• 41:18
  I had a as tornado storm back 25 years ago in central Kansas.
• 41:22
  I had a deer come out right next to the road.
• 41:24
  I mean the the wheat was like you know 4 feet high 3 feet
• 41:27
  right on the yellow line. That tornado was coming and
• 41:30
  lightning was going boom, boom, boom.
• 41:31
  And Derek comes right out in front of the vehicle and go
• 41:34
  boom, hit it and smash the radiator.
• 41:36
  You know like the the the fan ate the radiator boom.
• 41:39
  You're you're you're dead on the side of the road.
• 41:41
  Right. So those things happened right.
• 41:43
  You just yeah. It's deer.
• 41:45
  It's it's other drivers, it's it's those kind of things are as
• 41:49
  much of A hazard as anything else out in the field, to be
• 41:51
  honest with you. Yeah, Ted, totally makes sense.
• 41:54
  I mean, you got to have good tires.
• 41:56
  I would think if you're doing this so you don't hydroplane.
• 41:59
  I'm paranoid about hydroplaning because it's happened to me more
• 42:01
  than once. No fault of my own.
• 42:04
  You don't see, it's like black ice and you just don't see it.
• 42:06
  It just, it'll it'll have good tires, your cork good break,
• 42:09
  yeah yeah tires or brakes and windshield wipers, windshield
• 42:14
  wipers. All that stuff is just super
• 42:16
  critical right And out storm chasing, right.
• 42:18
  All of the all that stuff you got to take really good care of,
• 42:21
  right? It's really important.
• 42:22
  Yes, yeah, it is, 'cause when it when those things start to
• 42:25
  happen, that's when it shines. You know when it makes a, it's a
• 42:28
  difference maker. But you mentioned earlier, like
• 42:30
  your wife, is it Kathy? So she's a storm chaser too,
• 42:33
  right? Like she jumps in there, yeah.
• 42:36
  You guys are like the real Bill and Joe Harding, you know, a
• 42:40
  Twister. Like it's based on your life.
• 42:44
  Kathy comes up and chase with me.
• 42:45
  We've been, gosh, we've been married 20 plus years and she's
• 42:50
  not. I've taken down a couple
• 42:52
  Louisiana a couple of times on some hurricanes, hurricanes,
• 42:55
  when was saying she's not too fond of.
• 42:57
  But because it's like it's 23 hours of boredom and about an
• 43:00
  hour of total terrors, I'll tell you just like get things to get
• 43:03
  out of control really quick, right.
• 43:05
  So the Tornadoes kind of like more in control because you know
• 43:07
  where you're going when the day is going to start and end,
• 43:10
  right? And as long as it's before dark,
• 43:12
  she don't like chasing after dark.
• 43:14
  Which is. Yeah.
• 43:14
  You can't see. Yeah, yeah, I can't see.
• 43:20
  All right. Can't see.
• 43:21
  Sometimes out in the hot plains, you can see 20 miles off, twenty
• 43:24
  30-40 miles off the distance, right?
• 43:25
  If it's hot base, right? Not if it's not.
• 43:27
  If it's rain wrapped in the southeast.
• 43:29
  But if it's out in the hot plains, a lot of times you can
• 43:30
  see them. Yeah, they and and you kind of
• 43:33
  going back to what you do with selling with Baron.
• 43:37
  I I just looked. I looked at their website
• 43:39
  because I'm I'm interested whenever you and I talked on the
• 43:41
  phone. I was like, oh man, I guess they
• 43:43
  do have. I've never thought about it.
• 43:45
  Somebody has to provide a radar that somebody buys.
• 43:48
  So, I mean, it totally, totally makes sense.
• 43:51
  But what all do you do, What all do you sell?
• 43:54
  Do you sell to equipment, to to TV stations, to, Yeah, we sell
• 43:58
  the TV stations, right, TV. And then we have a side of the
• 44:01
  company that sells to the government sector like airports,
• 44:04
  aviation side of things. We did the NOAA upgrade for the
• 44:08
  NEX Reds, you know the dual pole.
• 44:10
  We did the upgrade for that as years back.
• 44:13
  So we have a facet of things from displays to the radar sign
• 44:18
  as well as digital sign and the digital and then also API data
• 44:22
  which feeds people's apps and feeds websites.
• 44:25
  It feeds things on a global scale, so it's a whole gamut of
• 44:29
  everything. Is that how you learned how to
• 44:32
  read all of these maps and different things?
• 44:35
  Is by by selling that equipment and understanding it or how they
• 44:39
  get there. Yeah.
• 44:40
  You know I've always been in sales my whole life even before
• 44:42
  I went to work for this company for Baron.
• 44:44
  But understanding map stuff even in my early days, you know in
• 44:47
  storm chasing back when it's 141516.
• 44:49
  Understand maps and and lat long and and and you know the azimuth
• 44:53
  and directory and understand stuff in 3D and space.
• 44:56
  If something's here, where's it going to be at in power from now
• 44:58
  in space, right. Because the time travel and and
• 45:01
  things and how things morph and move.
• 45:03
  But it's taking all that combination of experience over
• 45:07
  the years and just applying it to to sales and business and and
• 45:10
  obviously using it when I'm out in a field storm station, right.
• 45:13
  Because it all that technology plays in there.
• 45:15
  We have technology nobody else in the world has such as you
• 45:17
  know bare shear markers and shear skits.
• 45:19
  It tells you where this storm, if it has rotation, where's it
• 45:22
  going to be and who's going to be the path of it at what time?
• 45:24
  So it's all that technology and it saved thousands and thousands
• 45:29
  of lives over the years, right? All across the world.
• 45:32
  And that's the name of the that's the name of this whole
• 45:34
  game. I think that that's that's why
• 45:36
  you do it. That's why others some others,
• 45:38
  not all others but that's why the good ones like yourself do
• 45:41
  that. It's an education on whether for
• 45:45
  for the public. But it's also you're you're a
• 45:47
  scientist in a in a sense, you're gathering data.
• 45:50
  That has not ever been observed and studied especially with
• 45:53
  video and things like that. I mean it's it's super, super
• 45:56
  important what you guys do and and and hopefully over time that
• 46:03
  is going to lead to better forecasting, even more accuracy
• 46:07
  and all of that because just the accuracy in the last decade with
• 46:11
  the Hurricanes has been UN. UN It's crazy.
• 46:15
  It's getting really dialed in. And you know especially a couple
• 46:19
  days out and and all that you know but it it's still and then
• 46:23
  listening to you a day before a hurricane's landing or and and
• 46:27
  your reasoning behind the kind of you narrowing your zone down
• 46:30
  of where where you looking and you're not you're you're usually
• 46:33
  dead on. He was dead on.
• 46:35
  The first time I saw him, he was down in Clearwater, said.
• 46:37
  I'm heading to Perry. In fact, I'm not I've.
• 46:39
  Not been watching it yet when he was.
• 46:42
  Yeah, it's, it's, it's there, it's on.
• 46:45
  Uncanny. It all started back when you
• 46:47
  impressed your mom. I mean, it all makes exactly.
• 46:50
  You've just got it. You've just got the knack.
• 46:52
  It's just built into you, along with, along with being able to
• 46:56
  understand all the technology and all that stuff, man.
• 46:58
  It's really, yeah. It's like all the computer.
• 47:00
  They're not all perfect, but they they help, they have
• 47:02
  biases. You know, Tom Sum is too fast.
• 47:04
  Some are too slow and some are too cold and some are too hot.
• 47:06
  And you got to, you got to take away all those factors out and
• 47:09
  then kind of make your best educated guess.
• 47:12
  And then a lot of times it's more than solvals like you may
• 47:14
  have, you know, European or GFS 50 member ensemble.
• 47:18
  It's like what? It's not necessarily the
• 47:19
  outlier, a hurricane that says, hey, it's coming to, it's going
• 47:22
  to Houston or this was going to Miami.
• 47:23
  It's kind of like what's ensemble mean?
• 47:25
  Give me 50 members and they all average and says, no, I'm going
• 47:28
  to New Orleans, I'm not going to Houston or to Miami.
• 47:30
  Then you look at the mean, it's like where does the average
• 47:33
  storm get on track? And so the ensembles probably
• 47:36
  the last five or ten years have really come on super strong and
• 47:39
  that's where a lot of people focus their attention.
• 47:41
  Now it's not just a an, you know, an outlier 1 operational
• 47:44
  run. It's one of the ensemble mean
• 47:47
  show and and that's with it with a snow or it's a, you know, a
• 47:50
  Blizzard or any or flash flood event, those kind of things.
• 47:53
  You always look at what is the kind of the ensemble of all the
• 47:56
  memories show and then take a mean average of that.
• 47:58
  And that's going to give you a pretty good idea what's going to
• 48:00
  happen, right. And most time they do a pretty
• 48:02
  good job. What is it that's making them
• 48:05
  better? But what is it?
• 48:06
  But what is it behind it? Is it the satellites?
• 48:09
  Is it what I mean? What?
• 48:10
  It's everything. Everything.
• 48:11
  It's not just one thing, it's a how many layers atmosphere
• 48:14
  you're sampling like the year pin model, all the different
• 48:16
  layers of the atmosphere that's are sampling the data both in
• 48:20
  vertical and then also in the grid.
• 48:22
  So the grids getting tighter in the sense of the sample rate and
• 48:26
  then how often, how many times a day they're sampling the
• 48:28
  atmosphere, right. And the depth in the layers of
• 48:30
  that And the more that those layers they have and also the
• 48:33
  mega supercomputers, right. Those are getting faster and
• 48:36
  faster and faster and those continue to that's that's the
• 48:40
  key. It's that it's higher
• 48:41
  resolution, more frequent updates and those kind of
• 48:45
  things. And that gives us better
• 48:46
  results, better data, right, Because you you have a better
• 48:49
  grid data if you have information over blocked and
• 48:53
  that's fed into the bottles. It's like they're in the
• 48:55
  hurricane season. They, they have the Gulf Stream.
• 48:57
  They have all the hurricane handers up in the Gulf Stream.
• 48:59
  They're doing all the soundings in the Atlantic.
• 49:01
  And if you know that date in real time, you'll see the models
• 49:03
  will all of a sudden start getting in really close in once
• 49:06
  they start feeding that data into the models, right.
• 49:08
  It's also those samples of the apparent Mr. That should that
• 49:12
  should just keep getting better. You you would think over time
• 49:15
  and with more connectivity and more data, you know being a star
• 49:19
  link and things like that, you're going to be able to to
• 49:22
  upload more, more and more data. Do you do you have a beef with
• 49:26
  Reed timmer? Do y'all ever work together or
• 49:30
  no? That's my Donahue moment.
• 49:33
  Yeah, yeah, dot, a few moment. No, I don't have no beast with
• 49:36
  Reed and I think probably a few people probably
• 49:39
  misunderstanding. But he, he means well.
• 49:42
  He's very sharp, very. He's very sharp individual.
• 49:46
  He understands bottles, science, sides of really well, right.
• 49:51
  But yeah, Reed gets it. No, I'm good friends with Reed.
• 49:53
  He's. I figured, how could you not?
• 49:56
  How could y'all not be? You're both Oklahoma boys and
• 49:58
  y'all are, y'all are not afraid to get in the front of any of
• 50:02
  this at all. I know everything about weather
• 50:08
  or what's happening in a storm because of both of y'all.
• 50:11
  I'm watching you both at the same time, but.
• 50:14
  But you're crazier. There ain't no doubt about.
• 50:16
  It well, I'm I've just I've just been recently turned on and I'm
• 50:20
  I'm, I'm, I'm blown away and I've been a storm.
• 50:23
  Like even back in college when hurricanes would happen I I grew
• 50:28
  up in Alabama. We would come down and rent a
• 50:29
  hotel and get on the beach and wait for the storm to come in.
• 50:32
  You know, like I would always do that.
• 50:33
  Until I went through Opal and it came right over us.
• 50:35
  And then I went through Ivan. And then after that I kind of I
• 50:38
  still, it's still cool, but I'm like way more respectful after
• 50:41
  those two storms of. But Ivan was a monster.
• 50:44
  Yeah, Ivan was extremely bad. Yeah, And I drove over towards
• 50:47
  the odd state in a very fortified building.
• 50:50
  But it was very nerve wracking, you know, like I was.
• 50:53
  I've never seen anything like that.
• 50:54
  Yeah, it was really bad. It's those sounds that you
• 50:58
  captured some of that I and I I was watching it live with a with
• 51:01
  Hurricane Michael. And then I I saw on your
• 51:05
  YouTube, too. I I went back because I wanted
• 51:07
  to watch that footage again. And I it sounded like a freaking
• 51:11
  F-14. I mean it it's it's scary.
• 51:14
  And I I've I've only gone through.
• 51:17
  I stayed in Baton Rouge when we had the hurricane here a couple
• 51:20
  years ago. That that that moved through.
• 51:23
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 51:24
  And it wasn't you know, it wasn't terrible.
• 51:27
  I was on my front porch watching stuff.
• 51:29
  It was just blowing 70, you know, 6570.
• 51:33
  That's howling, man. You know, with some, maybe some
• 51:36
  gusts to 80. I can't imagine 1415160.
• 51:41
  Hurricane Michael was really, it got really, really really crazy.
• 51:45
  Especially with the eyewall that last hour or two before the
• 51:47
  eyewall hit you. Hurricane Michael got into it
• 51:50
  was pucker factor outside real quick.
• 51:52
  Yeah, it was it was it was scary.
• 51:54
  Yeah. Ruth were coming off buildings.
• 51:57
  You know I saw, I saw a telephone pole about 10 feet
• 51:59
  above the ground flying horizontally through the air.
• 52:01
  The 40 foot telephone pole just flying.
• 52:03
  That's crazy. That's crazy.
• 52:06
  Yeah, I've I've heard you mentioned how you had to, how
• 52:09
  you had to have higher FPS cameras to catch those frames.
• 52:13
  It totally makes sense because they're flying so fast that that
• 52:16
  so you can. It's just a boring.
• 52:18
  All you see is a boring go by you don't know what it was,
• 52:21
  right? That is.
• 52:21
  Insane how dangerous that is, that you don't even think that
• 52:24
  something that big could fly, let alone, you know, let alone
• 52:29
  just be a it's a missile. It's a projectile, man.
• 52:32
  Yeah, yeah. That, that, that would, I mean I
• 52:35
  guess that's really that's the thing that you have to be the
• 52:38
  most cautious about. You have to be in front of
• 52:40
  those. Reinforce those, yes.
• 52:41
  Flying debris. Yeah, I see some of those guys
• 52:46
  that get out in some of that you do not, you know what you're
• 52:48
  doing. But I see some that these
• 52:50
  younger guys, I'm not picking on them, but they.
• 52:53
  I know they're just wanting social media likes and attention
• 52:56
  and stuff like that, but they put themselves in some pretty
• 52:58
  precarious situations that Yep. Yep.
• 53:01
  You know, I I the debris. The brand lightning.
• 53:04
  Yeah, the lightning. I mean lightning.
• 53:06
  I'm always. I'm morally scared of lightning.
• 53:07
  Right. Lighting's not going to give you
• 53:08
  those. Well, those little 10 second
• 53:10
  deals like hey I'm here. I'm about to strike, right.
• 53:13
  I mean I've seen some. I've seen some really.
• 53:15
  Wick. I do too.
• 53:16
  Well, I lightning's just one of those things.
• 53:18
  It didn't. It's beautiful.
• 53:19
  It's beautiful from a distance. But like I didn't play with it.
• 53:21
  I don't mess around with it. We we've talked about.
• 53:23
  I. Was curious.
• 53:24
  That was actually one of my questions your your opinion on
• 53:27
  lightning. You know because for me I think
• 53:28
  it's after me. Lightning scares the crap out of
• 53:33
  me. I've had a couple close strikes
• 53:37
  luckily I've never been struck. I stay in it.
• 53:40
  I mean it could be an incredible storm and if you're if you know
• 53:43
  if the things you know the storms in the fresh development
• 53:46
  side. It's kind of down in Florida,
• 53:48
  Maine the lightning strikes are just going to come ripping right
• 53:51
  there. You got to.
• 53:52
  I've seen some. I've had lightning hit telephone
• 53:54
  poles in front of me. I've had him hit fences in front
• 53:56
  of me. I mean, I've seen, you've seen,
• 53:58
  I've had, I've seen lightning hit cars.
• 54:00
  I mean, I've seen the whole gamut, right?
• 54:02
  So yeah, lightning. I'm super scared of lightning.
• 54:05
  Me too. I'll taste an F5, but I'm scared
• 54:08
  to death of lightning. Should be, yeah.
• 54:11
  Yeah. No, no, it's, I mean, it's
• 54:14
  electricity coming straight at you.
• 54:18
  Little to no warning. No warning, no.
• 54:21
  And it's. I agree with Blasi like.
• 54:23
  We've said we've we've gone into that.
• 54:25
  It is definitely. It's coming for me, but it ain't
• 54:27
  going to get me something else, Will.
• 54:29
  I'm. I'm too afraid of it.
• 54:32
  Totally. Yeah.
• 54:32
  I've seen, I've seen some wicked lightning stuff, bad stuff
• 54:35
  before. I stay away from lightning.
• 54:36
  Lighting scares me more than anything.
• 54:38
  And it should, right? Right.
• 54:39
  I mean, it's just, it didn't give you a precursor.
• 54:41
  It's going to strike. Just happens.
• 54:44
  It's crazy. Hey Jeff, we've got this guy.
• 54:46
  He's he's deceased now, but his sister-in-law.
• 54:50
  His name's Melvin Roberts, and he's from South Carolina.
• 54:52
  And allegedly, he's been struck by lightning like 12 times
• 54:55
  before he died. Oh, my gosh.
• 54:58
  And so I've I've, I've reached out to her.
• 55:00
  I'm trying to get her on the show.
• 55:02
  And she's agreed, but she's a little busy right now.
• 55:04
  But she wants to tell me the story.
• 55:05
  But it's pretty wild, as you could imagine.
• 55:07
  I'm sure, you know, 12 times this guy's been struck by
• 55:09
  lightning. That's a lot.
• 55:11
  That's crazy. I mean, do you think that
• 55:14
  certain people are like, like Lightning's drawn?
• 55:18
  Like to some people other like more than others.
• 55:21
  Like cuz I do. I mean cuz this guy's been hit
• 55:23
  12 times. I feel like it comes after me a
• 55:25
  little bit more than it should too.
• 55:28
  I don't know. I I.
• 55:31
  This is getting outside of your realm.
• 55:32
  But yeah I I think well I just yeah I can make a comment but I
• 55:37
  but I won't. But it's like you know the Lord
• 55:40
  gave us got the good common sense to get in doors and it's
• 55:44
  like if it if Lightning's striking I'm not going to test
• 55:46
  faith right. I'm not going to I'm going to
• 55:48
  get indoors or get inside the vehicle or get inside the house
• 55:51
  where you need to belong. Right.
• 55:52
  And stay away from being outside and getting struck right.
• 55:55
  Just no, not doing that. It's kind of my thoughts Jeff is
• 55:59
  you know, I would have learned maybe after the first.
• 56:01
  Most time but you know I'm not I do I'm I'm intrigued to have
• 56:05
  this lady's story and and hear hear about him for sure it it's
• 56:09
  I. Feel like he enjoyed it.
• 56:10
  I feel like somewhere she's going to tell me he enjoyed
• 56:12
  being struck at some point. I have a weird feeling like how
• 56:15
  do you get struck that many times without, I don't know,
• 56:18
  putting yourself in it? You know?
• 56:19
  Like, I feel like there's something odd there.
• 56:22
  We'll see. That's probably, that's a new
• 56:24
  record. I never heard of that before.
• 56:25
  So that's. A.
• 56:28
  Well, we signed up for that. We we also whenever we Chad when
• 56:35
  whenever you were you were chasing the that one in in
• 56:37
  Florida this year we got Bubba the Love Sponge.
• 56:40
  I don't know if you've ever heard of this guy.
• 56:42
  I had not heard of him either until earlier earlier this
• 56:47
  summer. But Chad knows him.
• 56:48
  He's this shock jock who used to be on Howard Stern and and on
• 56:53
  SiriusXM and stuff like that. Kind of out of Out of My Realm.
• 56:56
  He discovered us because we did a podcast talking about podcasts
• 57:00
  that we like. Chad talks about him, blah blah
• 57:02
  blah. Long story long.
• 57:04
  He broadcast your entire deal on his four hour Daily Show all
• 57:10
  across the whole state of Florida.
• 57:12
  That across the country, man. Yeah.
• 57:14
  Across the country, yeah. Yeah, he's a yeah.
• 57:16
  So yeah, he I I text him. I woke up early and I sent him
• 57:20
  because he was showing some crappy radar and some crappy
• 57:23
  slow cycle thing. And I was like, dude, check this
• 57:26
  cat out. So he puts you on 'cause he also
• 57:28
  has a YouTube channel and all this, so he puts you on too.
• 57:30
  So while you were going he was showing your feed as you were
• 57:33
  live and but what's funny is he had like an old radar showing
• 57:39
  like the wind directions and the sheer and he was stuck in a
• 57:42
  stationary mode. You can see the play button
• 57:43
  wasn't had not hit the play for like an hour.
• 57:47
  It's like this guy, this guy is full of it.
• 57:50
  It's not in Perry. It's still off the coast.
• 57:51
  And I was like, dude, Bubba, hit the play button, man.
• 57:54
  You just gotta hit the play button.
• 57:55
  Your thing is delayed. Here he is in the storm.
• 57:57
  I'm watching him. So it was pretty funny.
• 58:01
  But he did show you for like an hour of the show.
• 58:03
  But finally, he's funny me. That's funny.
• 58:06
  But it's it's stuff like that that helps to get the message
• 58:09
  out. You know they have to get the
• 58:11
  the because there are people that that were in harm's way
• 58:14
  that may not have known about it you know and they say it's on
• 58:16
  the radio as well and stuff not just on YouTube.
• 58:19
  He he's on he's actually on on FM stations too.
• 58:22
  So yeah, yeah, yeah, I thought. I thought we'd need to mention
• 58:26
  that before. Before.
• 58:27
  We forget. Because, you know, it's it's
• 58:29
  interesting. You never know what you're going
• 58:31
  to get on Tigs bits. That's why.
• 58:33
  I mean, Jeff's made it an hour in here, which is crazy.
• 58:37
  Yeah, it's it's a you never know.
• 58:38
  You never know what you're going to get out in the field either,
• 58:40
  right. So you I've seen all kinds of
• 58:42
  things happen right out in the field.
• 58:44
  So it gets you for sure. You have.
• 58:46
  Sure you have, man. What would you say is been the
• 58:51
  most surprising storm that you've chased Where it you go in
• 58:56
  thinking you're going to see something and you come out and
• 58:59
  it just got it got crazy, just way crazier than you could have
• 59:02
  imagined. There's several of them.
• 59:06
  I'd say Joplin for sure. Joplin was horrible.
• 59:09
  You know there's going to be 20s at Davey end up being at you
• 59:11
  know that 5 levels of city killed a bunch of people,
• 59:15
  injured a bunch of people. That was a horrific event.
• 59:18
  There's been several of those. You know that you know that
• 59:20
  something bad's going to happen then ends up getting worse than
• 59:22
  what you thought, right? Katrina was one of them.
• 59:25
  Ivan was definitely way up there on the on the scale.
• 59:28
  It went from extreme to very extreme along the coastline,
• 59:31
  buildings collapsing, right. And those kind of things.
• 59:34
  So yeah, yeah, there's the band, they're all, they're all a
• 59:38
  little bit different. Oklahoma City, El Reno, one and
• 59:43
  two, both El Reno tornadoes were monsters, right.
• 59:46
  And then more 1-2 and three. I've seen all the Oklahoma City
• 59:50
  tornadoes, the big ones, May 3rd, 99, that was a super mega
• 59:53
  outbreak, right? In Oklahoma, central Oklahoma.
• 59:55
  So yeah, I've seen a lot of those big, the big monster
• 59:58
  outbreaks, right? You never, you never know.
• 1:00:00
  You know there's going to be tornadoes, but you never know.
• 1:00:02
  There's going to be, you know, they're going to be on the
• 1:00:03
  ground for 100 miles, right? I mean, you just never know.
• 1:00:06
  Yeah, yeah. And I've.
• 1:00:07
  I've heard you, of course you won an Emmy storm storm chasing
• 1:00:13
  as well. I mean, you know not many people
• 1:00:15
  that we've had it. I don't believe we've had
• 1:00:17
  anybody Chad who's won an Emmy on here yet.
• 1:00:20
  So that that's awesome. I don't want one either.
• 1:00:23
  I'm so I'm still empty handed. Yeah, so.
• 1:00:27
  Chad will have to. Chad will have to work on that.
• 1:00:29
  Oh, you do. We do.
• 1:00:31
  We're going to, we're going to for sure.
• 1:00:32
  But you've been a part of some of the biggest storms that have
• 1:00:37
  been broadcast in any shape, way or form in the last 30 years,
• 1:00:42
  you know, 45 years, but just, I mean.
• 1:00:46
  It's crazy, but it helps your location.
• 1:00:50
  I guess being in Tulsa, you're kind of at a hub, being in
• 1:00:52
  Tornado Alley there that allows you to go and chase those
• 1:00:57
  things. But I mean, the time and effort
• 1:01:00
  and money that you spend to go everywhere else is is
• 1:01:05
  unbelievable. And I I wanted to know what is
• 1:01:08
  your gear like whenever, you know, do you have multiple
• 1:01:12
  phones? What kind of cameras are you
• 1:01:15
  using? Yeah, yeah, all of that stuff.
• 1:01:16
  So. So I mean you got the early
• 1:01:18
  days, it's, it's changed quite a bit, right.
• 1:01:20
  So that today, you know, gosh, a couple cell phones, iPads,
• 1:01:24
  couple iPads. Love go.
• 1:01:27
  Pros have all kinds of mounts and obviously Starlink, the
• 1:01:32
  Canon R5 got a bunch of Canon equipment, L lenses, you know,
• 1:01:38
  you know, back in the early days, I was joking with somebody
• 1:01:41
  here a while back the other day we used to take that.
• 1:01:44
  I used to have a Mac computer, you know, desktop, and I'd have
• 1:01:48
  the car with me and I have a phone coupler and I still got it
• 1:01:51
  right. And you take the phone coupler
• 1:01:53
  you put it in, you go to a Texaco.
• 1:01:56
  In southwest Oklahoma, it's not there anymore.
• 1:01:57
  But anyway, you go put in, you know, your quarters into the
• 1:02:01
  payphone to have like an 8 foot, an 8 foot cord on it.
• 1:02:04
  So you can put the cord inside the car and roll the windows up,
• 1:02:06
  right? So I put that with the phone.
• 1:02:07
  Culprit. You dial the 800 Comp USA
• 1:02:10
  number, right? You'd hear Delton and you'd be a
• 1:02:12
  whopping 300 baud rated. I can't be, you know, do the
• 1:02:15
  connection and then you type in on your DOS command on the
• 1:02:18
  computer. You know I need OPS for Oklahoma
• 1:02:21
  and Texas. It can be on one line at a time,
• 1:02:23
  real slowly on the screen. You download all the odds and
• 1:02:27
  then you would disconnect and then you get a piece of paper.
• 1:02:29
  You draw and have a map of the planes and you put all the lot
• 1:02:32
  low on and you know tip sure the wind direction and odds you know
• 1:02:36
  overshooting top blowing dust. You put all those deals you
• 1:02:39
  figure on, hey it looks like the winds all conversion here I'm
• 1:02:41
  going to head to the state line on the Texaco border and that's
• 1:02:44
  where you go, right. And you wait for the storm to
• 1:02:46
  develop and come at you. So yeah for those days, the
• 1:02:49
  early days but now honestly gosh you guys, you literally keep.
• 1:02:53
  You can take your iPhone, your iPad and you can go.
• 1:02:55
  Anywhere in the world in Storm Chase, I I mean.
• 1:02:58
  It's crazy. It is crazy, right?
• 1:03:01
  Yeah. So that's the starter kit you
• 1:03:02
  need. So if I want to become a storm
• 1:03:03
  chaser tomorrow, that's my starter kit.
• 1:03:05
  Just an iPhone and an iPad. IPad a couple.
• 1:03:08
  Apps, yeah, yeah. Get you some apps going?
• 1:03:10
  Yep. Yep, Yep.
• 1:03:12
  Man, that, that. Do you.
• 1:03:15
  What do you feel about this? All of these now storm chasers,
• 1:03:20
  Because there's a ton of them that are out there and and you
• 1:03:23
  know, like I said earlier, some of these guys I see, I don't
• 1:03:26
  think they're putting themselves in good places.
• 1:03:28
  They're not, you know, not everybody.
• 1:03:30
  There's some good ones. There's some great ones out
• 1:03:32
  there, I know. But but it seems to be
• 1:03:34
  everybody's got a camera now. Everybody thinks they can go and
• 1:03:38
  do this the way that you have done it, the way that Reed
• 1:03:41
  Timmer does it, you know, use using analytics and and being
• 1:03:45
  being smart about it. And then now there are all these
• 1:03:48
  YouTube like weather channels in a sense, you know, I'm not
• 1:03:52
  naming names or anything like. That but but this is kind of the
• 1:03:55
  modern age. How do you feel about that?
• 1:03:59
  It's it's everybody's got to make their own path, their own
• 1:04:01
  their own way, right? So it doesn't look nobody.
• 1:04:07
  How do I say this? I'm trying to be.
• 1:04:11
  I don't. I try to compete with anybody
• 1:04:13
  else. I'm kind of my I set my own way.
• 1:04:15
  I'm my own guy and I'm doing my own thing.
• 1:04:18
  And I think your, I think your work has to speak for itself,
• 1:04:23
  right? And I I think that goes with
• 1:04:24
  anybody. Just like you guys is hosting
• 1:04:26
  the outline. You're not competing with other
• 1:04:28
  people to do all the podcasts, right?
• 1:04:30
  You you guys are doing your own thing, your own way.
• 1:04:32
  And at the same way in storm Facing, you're going to do your
• 1:04:35
  own, your own thing. Look, I filmed over 1000
• 1:04:37
  tornadoes. I've been in over 50 hurricanes.
• 1:04:39
  Hey, if somebody's going to break my record.
• 1:04:41
  Try to get their more power to go after it.
• 1:04:44
  Go, go get it done right. So look, everybody does their
• 1:04:48
  own thing and I think it's just one of those things that you
• 1:04:52
  everybody's got to make their own way right and just got to do
• 1:04:54
  it safely. That's that's my word of caution
• 1:04:57
  is do it safely, right? Because a lot of times there's a
• 1:05:00
  lot of gotchas out there and if you're not careful, you'll get
• 1:05:03
  caught right. So you got to be really careful.
• 1:05:07
  Yep. Yep, for sure.
• 1:05:08
  Well, there you go folks. That's that's as good.
• 1:05:10
  That's as good of advice as you can get.
• 1:05:12
  If you want to get into storm chasing, then hats off to you.
• 1:05:16
  Hats off to you. But.
• 1:05:17
  But do it. Do it safely.
• 1:05:19
  Do you still do. Do you still do tours for folks?
• 1:05:23
  Oh yeah. I've taken out, yeah, not as
• 1:05:27
  much as we used to. We do do more of the more of a
• 1:05:33
  kind of a documentary type people like if they want to do a
• 1:05:36
  movie, a do documentary and we taking out like.
• 1:05:40
  Singing groups, you know, band members and things, and
• 1:05:45
  different people like that for different, you know, different
• 1:05:48
  adventures. But mainly it's more of the
• 1:05:49
  private work. So I'll call you and say, hey
• 1:05:51
  Jeff, we got to come out for two weeks in May and we really are
• 1:05:56
  interested in tornadoes, but we need a bunch of this kind of
• 1:05:59
  material for our documentary or for our movie or for commercial
• 1:06:03
  or for this. And we do a ton of that kind of
• 1:06:05
  stuff. It's not so much like, hey, you
• 1:06:08
  know, John Key pubs going to pay me to take them.
• 1:06:10
  On a tour somewhere and we've done that in the past, but it's
• 1:06:13
  more, it's more specialty type stuff where somebody needs
• 1:06:16
  something Pacific on A on a chase, right.
• 1:06:19
  They need and if they say tornado, great.
• 1:06:21
  But really they're trying, they need what we call B roll.
• 1:06:23
  They need all the other stuff leading up to the Chase, like
• 1:06:26
  it's the drive, it's the hotels, it's.
• 1:06:28
  It's out in the country and you're filming you know, cows or
• 1:06:31
  horses out chasing out on a open planes or something, right?
• 1:06:34
  They they need all that B roll. And so we do a lot of that type
• 1:06:37
  of work, right? That's cool.
• 1:06:39
  Yeah, totally, totally Makes sense why they would hire you
• 1:06:41
  too. You know, they know what you.
• 1:06:43
  They know what you did that that makes that makes total sense.
• 1:06:45
  Yeah, that's. That's awesome.
• 1:06:48
  Were you involved? I know that I've seen it like
• 1:06:51
  pinned on your ex, your Twitter with with Twister when it came
• 1:06:57
  out, like I know you, you went. To the No.
• 1:06:59
  Were you involved in in that movie at all?
• 1:07:02
  No, not the first one, not the first one, No, the second one's
• 1:07:05
  coming, but that's another story.
• 1:07:08
  But the the first one I just there for the unveiling there in
• 1:07:12
  Oklahoma City. Oklahoma City Country Club and
• 1:07:15
  the you know, Bill Paxton, Helen Hunt were there and it was a
• 1:07:19
  great event and it was really cool.
• 1:07:22
  It's really cool. Well we're we're going to have
• 1:07:25
  to have you back on whenever Twister 2 comes out because I
• 1:07:28
  know that that'll be a talk about.
• 1:07:30
  I know you can't talk about those things and I we totally
• 1:07:34
  want to talk about those things. So, so we're going to going to
• 1:07:36
  have. To have I think Twister 2 comes
• 1:07:37
  out and they'll they'll be, they'll be.
• 1:07:39
  It'll really cause another massive rush of people to go out
• 1:07:43
  and they get into the storm chase and that'll it'll hyper
• 1:07:45
  explode again, just like it did the first time and this time
• 1:07:48
  it'll do the same. Oh yeah, it'll get.
• 1:07:50
  Really. If you're getting amped up for
• 1:07:53
  it, then I can't wait, man. Then that amps me up.
• 1:07:57
  That totally amps me up. Well, Chad, do you have anything
• 1:08:02
  else? I mean, we could talk to you for
• 1:08:04
  hours, but I try to keep it as condensed as possible.
• 1:08:08
  No, I appreciate it, man. I've Brantley covered a lot.
• 1:08:10
  I know we were going there were blizzards we can talk about, but
• 1:08:13
  maybe we can do that another show.
• 1:08:14
  That's like a whole other series in itself, but.
• 1:08:17
  Hurricanes and tornadoes, I appreciate you guys reaching out
• 1:08:20
  to me. I appreciate being on this show
• 1:08:21
  and didn't know about you until your tag me and I was looked at
• 1:08:24
  the show and was like, it's pretty damn cool, right?
• 1:08:26
  So it's like, yeah, so I was like, yeah, I wanted to do come
• 1:08:28
  online, be on with you guys. I appreciate you reaching out to
• 1:08:31
  me. I really.
• 1:08:32
  Absolutely appreciate you. Hey, listen, if you're ever down
• 1:08:34
  here and you need. Like a camera guy, a guy just to
• 1:08:37
  carry stuff around. You're chasing a storm and
• 1:08:39
  you're in the Panhandle. Just reach out to me, man, I'll,
• 1:08:42
  I'll be glad to help out any way I can.
• 1:08:44
  So. Be careful when you offer that
• 1:08:47
  because I'm honey Colin. You never know, right?
• 1:08:49
  I'm in. I'm in.
• 1:08:51
  I know you are awesome. My wife, my wife, my wife asked
• 1:08:56
  me today, she said. So do you think this could ever
• 1:08:59
  lead to you being in a chase with him?
• 1:09:01
  And I said, I highly doubt it, honey, but God, I hope so.
• 1:09:05
  And she said I knew you would say that.
• 1:09:07
  And I said so you never know. And now I feel like there may be
• 1:09:11
  a chance. Also, the offer stands on my
• 1:09:15
  end. I'll ride with you anywhere,
• 1:09:17
  anytime. So we could, we could actually
• 1:09:19
  take a roadshow on the road, out chasing and you just don't live
• 1:09:23
  and go, this is what we thought was going to happen, but this is
• 1:09:25
  actually what happened, right? And then just it's unscripted,
• 1:09:28
  right? You never know what's going to.
• 1:09:30
  Happen. I like it.
• 1:09:32
  We'll we'll come to you, man. We'll come to Tulsa and do this
• 1:09:35
  and we'll go, we'll go chase some of those tornadoes, that'd
• 1:09:38
  be. All right, all right, all right.
• 1:09:39
  Let's do it.