Tornado season prompts safety tips from experts

It's a twister, Auntie Em!

Although from the 1939 classic, "The Wizard of Oz," the forecasting quote said by Dorothy Gale is now relevant for the entire Midwest upon entering the tornado season.

Tornado season refers to the point in time at which tornado activity is most likely to occur in a particular area. The South tends to see the most activity during March and May. The Midwest, from late spring to early summer.

Tom Skilling, chief meteorologist for WGN-TV, said this is due to the location of the region, between the descending cooler winds of the north and the ascending warmer winds of the south.

"You have these two air masses clashing while powerful jet streams traveling from the west collide and produce vertical motions, which is a key role in helping tornadoes and severe thunderstorms form," he said.

With the formation of these severe thunderstorms and tornadoes, enter Benjamin Rock.

Rock, a veteran storm chaser for the Kane County Amateur Radio Emergency Service (ARES), had always been interested in severe weather and various sciences, and believes his turning point to a life of storm chasing occurred when he saw his first tornado at age 10.

He began his chasing career at 16, after a friend took him along on a trip to Oklahoma and Kansas.

"I was hooked from there," he said. "To see Mother Nature produce such a powerful thing of beauty that can destroy so much in such a short period of time, was just the most amazing thing I ever saw."

Sixteen years later, the Woodstock resident said he still loves his chosen career path, and adding more than 300 tornado and severe storm sightings and several close calls early on in his career to his résumé, no end is in sight.

"I still get butterflies when I see a tornado," said Rock, who delivers newspapers when not chasing storms. "It's like the first time you get on a roller coaster. You get apprehensive, you sweat, you get really nervous, you have that complete rush of adrenaline and then it's over."

Normal duties of a storm chaser include checking weather models for an area with the right qualifications for a storm, making sure the mode of transportation is safe and reliable (which Rock said is most important), choose a designated spot to observe and then just sit and wait.

Rock said he has a weather station on his car that provides dew points, temperatures, humidity, barometric pressures and a rain gauge, a laptop, various radios and various camera and recording equipment.

"Experience-wise, (storm chasing) is a lot of hurry up and wait. It can be boring at times and very exciting and adrenaline-filled the next. You may drive for hours and thousands of miles and not see anything but roadway. A lot of people think it would be cool until they actually see a tornado," he said.

Skilling recently returned from a weeklong storm chasing venture throughout the Midwest, and said his experience was like "something out of the movies."

"We had this tornado cell develop right above us on Highway 10 near Metford, Okla. As we were driving away from it at 55 mph, I was looking back at this tornado and just thought, 'My word,' " he said. "It's like being in a movie but it's the real thing. It reinforces the notion you have about the power of nature, and it's absolutely stunning how quickly these things move and how powerful they are."

The ARES organization, located in Geneva, consists of 30 licensed amateur radio operators who volunteer their time and equipment when communications are needed or severe weather strikes.

Rock said each responder is sent to a predesignated area around the country to head into the storm and report what they see to a central command point, who relays the information to the National Weather Service.

Rock advises people to equip themselves with a weather radio (which sounds an alert when a civil or weather emergency breaks), and items to make a basic survival kit that can last for 72 hours for each member of the family, including pets. He also suggests families practice tornado drills.

"These simple things can make all the difference in surviving or becoming a casualty in an emergency," he said.