westislandweather.com

Chasing Tornados - The Ultimate Extreme - and You’re Invited
By MLBaron - The West Island Weather Station

F5 Tours, Inc. doesn’t take you in a chubby bus with long vertical windows to see dead movie star’s homes or “Old Faithful”. You would be cramped aboard a storm chasing vehicle with storm spotters and tornado chasers headed right for trouble.

“We remove that anxiety and put you in a situation where you can learn how to chase in comfort. It takes a special kind of person to want to go on a storm chase.” says Andrew Revering, CEO of F5 Tours, Inc. “Our extreme winter is setting the stage for a record breaking tornado season.” said the veteran storm chaser. You know you’re in for some excitement when the tour guide asks you to sign a waiver and fill out a next of kin information card.
The company web site (http://www.f5tours.com/index.php) has more details and booking information. I’ll gladly post your video and photos on westislandweather.com when you come back.

If you saw TWISTER, a movie about a bunch of weather nerds ( nut cases ) chasing tornados it was not totally far fetched. A tornado can defy the laws of gravity with unbelievable catastrophic impact, however some exaggerated special effects in this movie insulted everyone’s intelligence. This is the kind of movie that the case becomes more useful for the VHS home movies you just transferred to DVD. The most outrageous scenes included a tanker truck suspended in mid air then exploding a few yards away. A cow slowly hovering by the chaser’s windshield - mooing along and then another cow. Later we found out it was the same cow. The chaser’s truck crashing through every room of a rolling house and smashing out the other side showed 4x4's could do anything. If this movie couldn’t get any dumber - Bill and “Jo” - divorcing storm chasers run for their lives as a huge F5 Tornado bares down on them in a corn field. They ended up in barn and decided it’s not safe. They find a long leather strap and secure themselves outside to a water pipe in a shed. The tornado blew away the shed and spun right over the couple as they went horizontal (hmmm) in the 150MPH wind. Then through all the blinding sandblasted debris; “Jo” with eyes wide open looked up into the center of the tornado and sees the blue sky and sun breaking through. As the twister heads away, debris and shingles keep falling from the sky. Bill and “Jo” are OK as their fellow storm chasers come to the rescue. You could say that some of the movie was based on eyewitness accounts who where “last-call” customers at The Bayside Lounge.

But seriously, an EF5 tornado like those that recently occurred down south removes everything in it’s path...everything. If you are not underground for safety in the path of one of these, you will leave this earth in a most violent way. There are indeed storm chasers that pursue tornados and provide important life-saving data and information to The National Weather Service and they invite you to come along!