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Storm chasing isn't glamorous, but is saves lives, expert says By ALBERTO ENRIQUEZ Weather researcher Charles Doswell has been chasing tornadoes ever since he left the Army in 1972. He doesn't recommend it. But if you're crazy enough to try something stupid, says the big Texan in the black cowboy hat, it's still a free country. At least, no bureaucrat has regulated amateur storm-chasing yet. He shares a few how-to tips on his personal Web page: www.wildstar.net/doswell/ If you're not so crazy, you also may want to check out his official, government-sanctioned Web page for the sober side of tornadoes, severe weather prediction, and how the seemingly insane science of storm-chasing has led to life-saving advances in storm-spotting: www.nssl.noaa.gov/doswell/ "Spotting has saved many lives, and chasers have been instrumental in upgrading the spotter training program," Doswell said Friday as a visiting lecturer at Southern Oregon University. As a scientist at the National Severe Storms Laboratory in Norman, Okla., Doswell clearly is fascinated by just what makes clouds spawn tornadoes. The physics is incredibly complicated and challenging. Doswell doesn't recommend the forecasting business, either, "unless," he says, "you like being publicly wrong often." As a regular guy, he clearly relishes getting close to Mother Nature's wrath with a camera. But if your visions of storm-chasing are based on Hollywood's fanciful "Twister," you may as well unpack the 4-by-4 right now and spare yourself the disappointment. As a professional storm chaser, he may devote three weeks a year to chasing the wicked long-horned clouds. In those 504 hours, logging one hour of actual tornado time over three tornado days would be a success. "Being dead-centered by a tornado four times in a 24-hour period (as in the movie) would be phenomenal, especially since being dead-centered once would put you in a hospital, if not in a body bag," he said. Also, for the record, tossing Ping-Pong balls would tell you a lot about one twister, but each one is different, and it would say nothing about the real question: exactly what happened before to make the twister. Also, real storm chasers keep their distance, and ride shotgun, because the biggest danger is the highway itself. At least one chaser has been killed in a single-vehicle accident. Tornadoes, despite internal winds sometimes exceeding 250 mph, don't move across country much faster than 20 mph, so actually dodging the storm is not that difficult on the open road. Still, 27 years of chasing bad weather has gotten Doswell close enough. A video he played for the SOU audience showed a tornado ripping apart an entire industrial park, blenderizing steel buildings like so much malted milk, all seen from a mere third of a mile away. The noise sounds something like a huge rock drill greased with mud. These instances clearly bring out more of the regular guy than the dispassionate scientist. As Doswell pointed out the evolution of various tornado features for the audience, his partner could be heard on the video marveling at the concentrated power of the destructive center: "Look at that rotation." Doswell could only mutter, "Goddamn." Early in his career, he drove into one devastated town and felt guilt-stricken and humbled by what he had wished so much to see. "But then I realized that the atmosphere isn't influenced by what I think -- but what we've learned, I'm convinced, has saved lives." Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA