Jun 18, 2009 6:53 pm US/Central
Storm Chaser Talks About Capturing Austin Tornado
(WCCO)
-
-
Storm chaser Brad Nelson, who also a trained meteorologist and works at DTN Meteorologix, captured some incredible video of several tornadoes that hit Austin on Wednesday night.
Brad Nelson
A local storm chaser captured some incredible video of several of the tornadoes that hit Austin on Wednesday night.
That storm chaser is Brad Nelson, who also a trained meteorologist and works at DTN Meteorologix.
"It was a family of tornadoes," said Nelson. "It was not just one large tornado. One tornado would wrap up, dissipate and then another one would form behind it."
"So it was an extremely dangerous situation even for a storm chaser because we'd be watching a tornado and yet another action area was going up behind us. So we had to be aware of exactly where we were on the storm at all times," he said.
Nelson takes vacation from his regular job every year to chase storms.
He goes into the field armed with a laptop loaded with weather satellite and radar data and an Internet connection.
And, of course, his camera.
"There are more bust days than what you think," said Nelson.
But Wednesday night was not a bust.
They lost sight of the storm for a while, but then:
"As we got out of this grove of trees," Nelson said. "[We] saw an amazing looking, not a wedge tornado, it was more of a cone-type tornado on the ground."
"We saw it unfortunately churning right over this farmstead," he said. "Destroying this house in this grove of trees, some out buildings. It was very sad to see this amazing tornado sit over the same spot for six or seven minutes or so before it finally moved on. And even it after it moved on you see the all power flashes in the video. It was just an incredible tornado."
Nelson is out chasing again the next day. He wants to make sure people know that what he does is extremely dangerous without the proper training.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
Click to enlarge
Stumble It!
Reporting
