It took something drastic for Stan Dorroh to overcome his fear of tornadoes.
Despite growing up in the Mississippi Delta, an area plump with the violent funnel clouds, the 42-year-old configuration manager with Airbus Helicopters says he was “absolutely terrified” of cyclones most of his life.
“Anytime there was a weather forecast I just couldn’t stand it,” he said. “But that fear turned into fascination as I read more about it. Slowly I said, ‘I want to try this.’ It was one of those face-your-fears things.”
Try it he did, that being chasing the monster storms. He started off with a National Weather Service storm spotter training class. Then, he bit the bullet.
“Finally one day, with absolutely no gear, I went out during some thunderstorms and just went from there,” Dorroh said.
That was about three years ago.
Last Thursday, he and Thomas Flynt, 49-year-old engineer with Airbus, set out to chase their fourth storm of 2016.
The two chasers are the only Starkville-based members of North Mississippi Storm Chasers and Spotters, a group of about 30 civilian volunteers based all over northeast Mississippi.
Dorroh said the group provides information to the National Weather Service and local news outlets (they’re contractually tied to WTVA, a Tupelo TV station). They also provide a public service in broadcasting their findings via social media: They have nearly 40,000 Facebook followers and about 1,000 people follow their Twitter account, @NMSCAS.
Last year, the two men who say they have an “understanding” boss that allows them to take days off for the hobby, chased about eight storms and ultimately caught up with two tornadoes.
This year, they’ve only missed one out of their four chases: Thursday’s.
The wait
Thursday’s storms were predicted to be strong, if difficult to nail down. They ended up producing an EF-1 tornado that destroyed about two dozen homes and ripped large trees from the ground in New Hope.
At 9 a.m. Thursday, The Dispatch met up with Dorroh and Flynt and headed out to prepare for the chase by monitoring the storm from a Winona truck stop. The area, Dorroh explained, was the middle of “ground zero” for the highest grid area of expected storms.
“That way I can go any direction and have a good four-lane road to make decent time on,” he said of the setup.
Gliding over an almost empty Highway 82 in Dorroh’s gray Dodge Ram on the way from Starkville to Winona, the beginnings of a storm became apparent. In just three minutes, the temperature rose from 63 to 72 degrees. The chasers pointed out the blue sky and sunshine peeking from behind clouds, and noted some possibly surprising news for those unfamiliar with the science behind tornado-making storm systems: Sunshine, while seemingly a good thing, heats the ground, causing more atmospheric instability, and, thus, larger storms.
“I hear people say, ‘Well there’s blue skies, there can’t be a storm… but that’s just not right,'” Flynt said.
As the chasers continued on the hour-long drive to Winona, the two continually checking radar outlook on their phones, Flynt previewed what the day might hold.
“Ready for six hours of drooling boredom, followed by two minutes of terror?” he joked.
He was right: Waiting to see where the system would develop so the chasers were perfectly set up and not chasing the wrong storm took quite a while. In what eventually came to be 80-degree heat shortly after arriving in Winona, they waited — truck engine off, doors open — in the parking lot of the Pilot Travel Center for about seven hours.
Dorroh sat for most of the time in the truck’s front seat, his eyes glued to his laptop placed on the center console, mouse attached, and his cell phone screen. He and Flynt monitored forecast models from the websites pivotalweather.com and weather.cod/edu/forecast — and utilized the radar systems RadarScope, GR2Analyst, and PYK3. Sometimes, all forecasts are in agreement. But more often, the chasers said, it’s a task of inference based on collected data looking at unpredictable systems.
“It’s a roll of the dice,” Dorroh said. “This storm, that storm, that model. You may absolutely nail it, or you may not. The whole trick is picking the one that you think is gonna be the winner. So, if you’re two minutes off, you’ve missed it.”
The chase
In reviewing the storm’s outlook to The Dispatch the Tuesday before the chase, Dorroh saw numbers that excited him. The Lifted Index (LI) or measure of instability, he said, was low at “-10 to -12.”
“The lower the number the better,” he said, adding you typically want values of -8 or lower.
He said the Convective Available Potential Energy (CAPE), or measure of instability, was approaching 2,500 — and that for a good storm one would typically be wanting values in excess of 1,500 in the spring. The wind shear, he said, was low and just right. The energy helicity index (EHI) — which forecasts supercell thunderstorms, with 1-5 meaning tornadoes possible, and 5+, meaning violent tornadoes possible, was off the charts.
“Some of the models have had EHI as high as 6,” he said, predicting a great chase ahead.
Adrenaline and nerves were palpable even during the truck-stop layaway. The chasers had the incoming storm measuring at a high 70 dbZ in intensity; both said it was the highest they’d ever seen. Golf-ball-sized hail was predicted. That, and the numerous supercells and warmth meant good probability for some terrorizing storms.
The chasers were excited, and loaded into the Dodge Ram multiple times predicting they’d head off any minute.
However, even as Dorroh expressed his enthusiasm, he lamented feeling such a way in remembering the realities of such weather.
“It’s easy to get keyed up with adrenaline,” he said. “But you know it’s tearing up someone’s home, or killing somebody — so you almost feel guilty about getting excited.”
He recalled two times in which he truly feared for his life on a chase.
During one — a large, 2014 tornado in Louisville that was part of a system that killed 35 people across the south — he became surrounded by so much rain, wind and hail, it became difficult to see.
“I knew I was driving toward a monster,” he said. “I was hoping I would come out and ended up about a mile and half from it.”
Another, a few weeks ago in Arkansas, it was dark when he lost reception and radar and the road he was on was closed for flooding.
“I had no idea if I was driving into a tornado or not,” he said.
‘Nobody’s on the right side’
Eventually Thursday, the boredom got the best of the chasers, and — heeding the advice of a couple meteorologists and other evidence, but still not quite sure where the storm may form — they headed towards Pickens, Alabama.
There it began to rain heavily, clouds formed ominously above, both Jackson and Columbus radar went down, cell phone reception evaporated and all seemed right for things to go wrong. But it never added up. Driving down a flooded back road in Pickens, the two watched as an enticing looking storm lined up about 70 miles away near New Hope.
Dorroh slammed his fist into the steering wheel.
“Man, that makes me mad,” he said. ” I took the day off of work to watch it rain.”
Flynt attempted to console him by reminding that even professional storm chasers –like Brett Adair, a well-known chaser and meteorologist out of central Alabama — likely missed it as well.
“Nobody’s on the right side of it,” he assured.
In the dark, the chasers drove back to their starting point, the Lowes parking lot in Starkville. At 8:30 p.m., it was an early ending for the two, who’ve sometimes stayed out until sunrise chasing. They headed home — Dorroh to his worried family, a wife and two young children (who he says want to follow in their storm-chasing father’s footsteps) — and resigned the failed chase to the weather gods.
Dorroh said even such chases are worth it, and have all but destroyed his fear of tornadoes.
“Instead of taking cover, huddling in a closet, I can see the radar and what’s going on, I can position myself,” he said. “But that’s just me.”
Sam Luvisi is news editor and covers education for The Dispatch.
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