- It's the Midwestern Way.

- [Lady] Yeah.

- [Tanner] to talk about the weather.

(laughs) (energetic music) (car beeping) (energetic music) (loud thunder) (car siren) (indistinct) (piano music) Storm chasing is one of those weird things that people are like, wait, what do you do?

Like, what is that?

(laughs) People have this perception of storm chasing or storm chasers, or they're like really crazy.

They have all these like crazy vehicles.

Their personalities are insane and all this stuff, and it's just really not the case.

Storm chasing gathers a lot of people from around the country and even the world, and all sorts of variety of personalities.

I'm more of your like probably typical storm chaser, I guess.

(laughs) I just get very excited and very like pumped about stuff.

- [Man] Hey, this is sick, bro.

(loud boom and windy) - [Man] Ha-ha.

Woo.

- [Tanner[ As a kid, I would always be like looking up at the sky.

Anytime storms would roll in, you know I'd be kind of looking out the window, looking outside like you know, just whatever.

My grandparents would actually record weather videos and TV shows on the VHS tapes.

I remember watching them like religiously as a kid just over and over again.

- [TV] Two people are dead after a series of tornadoes in Minnesota.

- [TV] The aftermath of powerful tornadoes that ripped through the state of Minnesota.

- [TV] Knocking down trees, ripping apart houses, and flipping vehicles.

- [Tanner] When I was a teenager that's when things became really real.

On June 17th, 2010.

That was the day that Minnesota broke its record for the amount of tornadoes that happened in like a single day.

We had 48 tornadoes that touched down in Minnesota some of which were EF4s, very powerful tornadoes.

My dad got a text from a friend or whatever, being like, hey, there's this, there's this, you know, crazy storm heading your way.

And my dad looks at me, he's like, do you want to chase it?

He has no experience whatsoever.

(laughs) And I'm like, yeah, let's go.

- [Tanner] And so we see this giant like lower income and I'm like I think that's the wall cloud thingy.

I don't know.

And then we see the TIV, and we see these like mobile radars go by.

And so if you've ever seen the the show Storm Chasers this was actually their TV show.

Like this is all of them like filming and stuff.

And so I was like, no way.

Like are you kidding me right now?

(laughs) And so me and my dad, we went and pursued.

We just followed them because we had no idea what we were doing.

We went outside of Monticello, and we ended up seeing a brief touchdown.

Ever since, I've been hooked.

(dramatic music) (windy sounds) - [Tanner] Hold on.

Yeah, we do.

We gotta go.

- Oh my gosh.

(police sirens) - So the United States has the highest amount of severe roller setups in the entire world.

So that means if you're a storm chaser the United States is literally the pinnacle place to be.

And so with storms there are different classifications of storms.

The most powerful one is supercells.

Less than 1% of all storms in the world are supercells.

There are beautiful ones that are just like, they are just massive.

And you can see every component of it working and like you can see the rotational points of it and the downdraft and the updraft and, and everything.

There are also messy supercells where you're like it's a lot of rain and you're like, huh.

The only way I know where I am is because of radar.

(laughs) You know, like this.

is how I know to position myself.

And hopefully you get a glimpse of something, right?

(dramatic music) So it's crazy how much has changed since I was 15 years old and I'm 29 now.

Back in the day, I would literally take my chunky laptop and I would convince a friend to drive me somewhere because I didn't have my license.

I was 15.

Today things are so much different.

Technology has caught up.

I can do everything for my phone.

I don't need a laptop.

It's a lot easier to chase now than it was back then.

(dramatic music) The best storm chase of my entire career happened actually in Minnesota, which is really cool.

It was July 8th, 2020.

And so this was the Ashby/Dalton EF4.

- [Tanner] I'm waiting for something like this all year, man.

This is the pinnacle of storm chasing.

This is literally everything that you want when you're storm chasing.

You know you have a nice slow-moving supercell.

You have a beautiful structure on the storm with like clearly there's like no rain here whatsoever.

This is all clearly visible.

And so this is my GoPro time-lapsed footage.

And like right here at the bottom this is when it's all rotating here.

It's all getting.

You can see the whole thing just rotate right here.

The funnel starts to appear.

- [Tanner] (indistinct) inside.

There we go.

Beautiful.

Classic funnel starting to develop right here.

And it's just, it's just all wraps up so nicely.

Like it's just gorgeous.

Just absolutely gorgeous.

Literally, birds are chirping.

Like what?

(laughs) (birds chirping) (wind blowing) So at this point, a tornado warning, obviously on it.

I am racing to get next to this thing.

This thing is becoming way more powerful now.

You just don't get structure like this ever.

Like it's just so hard to see the whole storm all the way up.

And it's like clear blue sky on this side.

You know, you can clearly see all of the elements at play.

There's like the inflow is going into right here into the tornado and it's going all the way up into the storm.

This is fantastic.

This is amazing.

These are some of my storm-chasing friends.

That's Bill Doms.

Yeah.

This is- - [Man] Oh no, oh no, Lord, please protect these people.

- [Tanner] Yeah, this was- - [Man] God, please protect these people.

- [Tanner] We never want to see this kind of stuff.

- [Man] In Jesus name.

- [Tanner] Like we never want to see these people just like houses being ripped to shreds, and different things like that.

- [Tanner] But this is what I was experiencing at the moment.

(wind blowing) Let's see.

So right here, this is where I was like filming the destruction that just happened.

And I was like, okay, like that house looks pretty that look, you know, that looks okay.

But then I turned around and this was all that was left of this like machine shed.

(sad music) - [Tanner] Unfortunately there were several workers in that shed and one of them didn't make it.

I think it's frustrating how some people think that we want to see destruction like that.

We don't.

(laughs) We really don't.

We really want to just, we want to capture what's going on and like the powerfulness of tornadoes and the beauty in awe and everything.

But we never want to see 'em go through like homes or towns ripping up a bunch of stuff and like killing people.

We don't want that.

It was a very bittersweet day because on one end I had the most incredible storm chase's experience of my entire life.

But on the other side, someone lost their life.

(sad music) - [Tanner] Good morning.

Good morning.

We are heading towards an outflow boundary that was set up by yesterday's storms.

- [Tanner] People don't understand that there's such a challenge to storm chasing.

There's such a meticulous way of going about it.

Like the reason why not many people see this, these things is because it's hard.

We don't have a technology to pinpoint when or what storms will actually produce tornadoes.

We just know the kind of environment that produced them.

- [Tanner] So there's still like an art of challenge in it.

When I first started storm chasing, I would only see maybe one tornado a year.

Now I see, I think I'm up to 15 tornadoes this year.

That's pretty crazy.

(laughs) Me and Mark are trying to figure out what, where the heck we're gonna go.

- We don't know.

- [Tanner] A really big thing for me in storm chasing is just connecting with people.

I love taking people along with me, and I love like connecting with other storm chasers, and it's like, I don't know also it's like a Midwestern thing where we're like, oh hey how's it going?

- [Tanner] But especially with storm chasing it's really fun cuz I'll have friends in Texas that will come up and storm chase in the Midwest here sometimes or I'll go down there and then we haven't seen each other all year.

And then here we are on a random dirt road like we didn't plan it and we're just watching the same storm, you know?

And it's, it's super fun.

- Dude, we saw a tornado.

(energetic, upbeat music) - [Tanner] Why do I storm chase?

Like why?

Why would anyone (laughs) risk their life essentially chasing these powerful, beautiful, crazy things?

- [Tanner] For me personally, getting out there and capturing images that are so unique and from my perspective is something that I just absolutely love and I love creating stories around that.

And so like I have a YouTube channel, you know and I love creating adventurous videos about my storm-chasing experience.

I'm also kind of an adrenaline junkie a little bit.

(laughs) - [Man] Come on, let's go, let's go, get closer.

(car door shuts) - [Tanner] I also can get paid for it.

News agencies that day or the next day will buy my stuff.

Sometimes I'll have TV shows, and that kind of thing, that'll want to utilize my footage.

And rarely, sometimes a few of us, will get opportunities for our footage to be in movies.

I haven't yet, but (laughs) hopefully.

But honestly, if all of that were to disappear I would still be out there storm chasing.

- [Man 1] Oh, I bet the rainbow is really dope right now.

- [Man 2] Awesome.

- [Man 1] Here we'll be turning in like two seconds.

- [Man 2] Oh.

- [Man 1] Nice.

- [Man 2] Ha ha.

Dude.

- [Tanner] I am just so awestruck by God's creation, by the beauty that storms provide.

- [Tanner] It's not just the tornadoes.

It's, it's the lightning.

It's the structure of how it looks.

It's literally just standing outside and having the big droplets of rain hit your face right when the storm is getting to you.

Like, it's just something I absolutely love witnessing and experiencing.

(energetic music) - [Narrator] Postcards is made possible by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the Citizens of Minnesota.

Additional support provided by Margaret A Cargill Philanthropies, Mark and Margaret Yackel-Juleen on behalf of Shalom Hill Farms, a retreat and conference center in a prairie setting near Wyndham, Minnesota.

On the web at shalomhillfarm.org.

Alexandria, Minnesota, a year-round destination with hundreds of lakes, trails, and attractions for memorable vacations and events.

More information at explorealex.com.

The Lake Region Arts Council's Arts calendar, an arts and cultural heritage funded digital calendar showcasing upcoming art events and opportunities for artists in West Central Minnesota.

On the web at lrac4calendar.org.

Playing today's new music plus your favorite hits, 96.7kram.

Online at 967kram.com.

(peaceful rhythmic music)