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Gurnee woman spends her vacations chasing tornadoes

Friends don't expect to see slides from Disney World when they go to Patti Volpert's house to hear about her vacation.

Her images are straight out of the Hollywood blockbuster "Twister" -- without the flying cows.

Volpert, 57, travels from her home in Gurnee to spend at least two weeks each summer in Tornado Alley with Cloud 9 Tours, the oldest tour company catering to amateur storm chasers like Volpert.

"It's the storm itself that's so fascinating," she said.

Volpert, who works in the records division of the Lincolnshire Police Department, got hooked on violent storms as a kid growing up in Lake County.

She remembers when she was 8 years old and watched a violent storm system pass over her house after it spawned a tornado in nearby McHenry.

After her son grew up, Volpert looked for something adventurous to do. She saw several shows on the Weather Channel depicting storm chasers. Online research led her to Charles Edwards, 43, a meteorologist and community relations specialist with FEMA who started Cloud 9 Tours in 1996.

His interest in storms dates to his childhood in Galveston, Texas, which was destroyed by a hurricane in 1900. Ironically, he never saw a tornado after he joined a club of storm chasers at Texas A&M University until a twister nearly crashed an end-of-the-semester party he hosted at his apartment. The funnel touched down on the outskirts of town.

"It was a fairly big one. It lasted 20 minutes or so," he said.

One was enough. Edwards was hooked.

"I couldn't shake it. It's an addiction," he said.

His only aim when he launched the Oklahoma-based Cloud 9 Tours was to take one or two people along to help pay for gasoline and lodging.

Today, he and three other guides lead three two-week tours each year that attract 15 to 20 people every time. The cost of a tour is $2,700.

Amateur storm chasers arrive from as far away as Australia and England just for the chance to see a tornado up close.

Others, like Volpert, come right from Tornado Alley and tornado-prone states like Illinois.

Volpert has a special subscription service to watch Doppler radar on her laptop while experienced guides from Cloud 9 steer their vehicles ever closer to twisters tearing up the earth. They get close, mighty close sometimes.

The "rope" from a tornado passed right over their van once and crashed down in the field just 50 feet away.

Volpert said storm chasing has a humanitarian side. Storm chasers constantly relay information to the National Weather Service so people in the path of a tornado can be warned in time.

"Hopefully, they can save lives," she said.

A small crowd gathers to in hope of photographing the formation of a tornado on a Cloud 9 Tours expedition in Tornado Alley west of Salina, KS, May 8, 2005. Courtesy of Patti Volpert
Damage to one of Patti Volpert's vehicles from the hail core of a Texas storm. Courtesy of Patti Volpert
Patti Volpert says she got hooked on violent storms as a kid growing up in Lake County.
A tornado crosses a rural road and was photographed on a Cloud 9 Tours expedition in Tornado Alley, May 29, 2004 near Anthony Kansas. Courtesy of Patti Volpert
Patti Volpert of Gurnee is a records clerk at the Lincolnshire Police Department but spends her free time as a storm chaser. Steve Lundy | Staff Photographer
Patti Volpert of Gurnee is a storm chaser. Her SUV is equipped with a laptop hooked up to the doppler radar and a video camera. Steve Lundy | Staff Photographer
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