Did you hear the one about the storm-chaser whose car was hit by a tree in a Starkville storm on the way home from Walmart?
Crystal Worley is a rising senior at Mississippi State University. She is a meteorology major, and in May she spent 10 days chasing down storms on the Great Plains for a class about storm-chasing.
“The Great Plains are the only place it’s considered safe to do it,” Worley said this morning. “In Mississippi it’s not a good idea. There are too many trees.”
Trees are dangerous for storm-chasers primarily because they make it difficult to see where the storm is coming from.
However, as Worley found out Wednesday night, they also are dangerous when they fall.
“I was just driving home from Walmart,” she said. “And the weather looked really bad, so I thought ‘I need to get home.'”
She began driving on Garrard Road, the road she lives on, about 6 p.m. She travels the road every day.
“It’s lined with extremely tall trees, and I always think, ‘Wow, it would really suck if one of those fell,'” she said. “So I’m driving and looking up, and one of them starts to fall.”
She tried to accelerate, but it was raining too hard.
The tree landed on her car.
Worley’s windshield shattered and covered her in glass, and the tree blocked the road. She made four calls: to her roommate; to her boyfriend; to her family; and 911.
She lost count of how many people stopped to help her.
She said she is lucky to be alive.
“It was the scariest thing of my life,” she said. “And I’ve been storm-chasing — so I can say that.”
Worley’s car is nearly totaled. She has created a GoFundMe account to help raise money for repairs, but until then, a friend has to drive her everywhere.
The experience, she said, was a reminder of how important severe thunderstorm warnings are. She knew there was a warning Wednesday but went to Walmart anyway.
“Now that this has happened, I can explain to people why it’s important to take those seriously,” Worley said. “You always think it’ll be okay, but it only takes one time for it to not be.”
Despite a scary run-in with the weather, she still plans to go into meteorology. She wants to work for the National Weather Service, maybe for the forecast office in Norman, Oklahoma, eventually. That office issues storm warnings.
“I still love severe weather,” she said. “Even though it could care less for me.”
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