Lessons From a Storm Chaser on How to Stay Safe in Tornado Alley

In the late afternoon on May 31st, 2013, a massive supercell thunderstorm formed southwest of El Reno, Oklahoma.

“It was really ominous from the beginning, before the storm had even formed a tornado,” remembers Jana Houser, a storm chaser from that day, who is now an associate professor of Meteorology at Ohio University. “It was a really big, black, menacing-looking supercell. You just sort of felt it — you felt that this storm was going to produce a really big tornado.”

Often when tornadoes form, Houser explains, they move from the southwest to the northeast but this one didn't do that. It actually acquired more of an easterly path and for a while, it even tracked southeast. “That caught a lot of people off guard," Houser says. "Traditional logic for that particular storm actually failed people.”

“My [storm chasing] group went east. The people who went south had a really hairy interaction.”

The Weather Channel’s Mike Bettes had his car thrown. One of the chase vehicles with Reed Timmer from Discovery Channel’s “Storm Chasers” had its hood ripped off. But for others, the tornado proved fatal: eight people were killed in vehicles, including four storm chasers. Veteran storm chaser Tim Samaras was one of them.

“I can count on one hand the number of chases where I’ve actually been afraid for my situation and that was one of them,” Houser says. “I remember stopping at one point. We were at least several miles away from the tornado and there was still debris falling out of the sky.”

Ever since she was 9 years old, Houser had wanted to study meteorology (and be a storm chaser). That’s why she moved to Oklahoma to pursue her PhD and lived there eight years, during which time she regularly went storm chasing to collect data.

Oklahoma is one of the states located in what is nicknamed “Tornado Alley.” While there are no formally agreed-upon boundaries, it is generally considered to be a region in the southern plains of the central United States that ranges from central Texas through Oklahoma, Kansas to Ohio.

Between 1999 and 2018, the U.S. averaged 1,225 tornadoes a year. Many of them occurred in Tornado Alley because it's the part of the United States that's ideally situated for the formation of supercell thunderstorms, the kind of storms that can produce the most violent of tornadoes classified EF2 or greater.

"Tornado Alley is a prime spot for tornadoes because the right combination of ingredients typically comes together each spring," explains Brian Donegan, digital meteorologist for Weather.com. "That includes strong jet stream disturbances punching eastward out of the Rockies into the Plains, where cool, dry Canadian air interacts with with warm, most air from the Gulf of Mexico. That clash of air masses leads to instability in the atmosphere, which triggers thunderstorms."

"The jet stream disturbances lead to spin in the atmosphere, making it more likely for thunderstorms to rotate and produce tornadoes," he continues.

For Houser, Tornado Alley was a great place to be a meteorology grad student.

“From a scientific perspective, it was an awesome place to be because I had this great opportunity to drive out of my door and see tornadic storms,” Houser says.

“But from a personal perspective, there were a couple of times where these big tornadoes were striking a little close to home.”

During her last year in Oklahoma, Houser and her husband had their first baby. “Having a husband and a child at home when I’m out in a radar truck chasing storms can really be scary,” she says.

In May 2013, there were three major tornadoes that occurred just a few miles from where Houser and her family lived in Norman.

“I was not targeting the same storms that were approaching Norman, so I had to constantly switch my attention between what was happening at home and what was happening in front of me,” she remembers.

For example, when Houser was storm chasing during the El Reno tornado — a tornado that wasn’t a threat to Norman — there was a separate line of supercells to the south. One of those produced a tornado southwest of Norman that was on track to impact her husband and six-month old daughter.

“I had my husband take our daughter and leave our home to drive south in an effort to get out of harm's way,” she remembers. “My husband was scared and did not know what to do, so I guided him to a safe spot, [but] that day, there was a mass evacuation from Oklahoma City.”

“There were crazy drivers on the road and a lot of traffic. My husband saw people doing a lot of crazy things including driving down the wrong side of the freeway,” she continues.

Houser’s home didn’t have a storm shelter of its own, so normally their emergency plan was to grab their go bag and head to their neighbor’s 4- by 8- foot storm shelter. This time, worried about a direct hit, she had told her husband to pack the car up with important possessions, because she wanted to preserve items that she knew the storm shelter was too small to hold.

“Looking back, it was definitely not the safest choice,” she says. “If I had to go back and do it again, I think I would choose to have them forget the possessions and take safety in the shelter.”

That’s what they'd done 11 days earlier when an EF5 tornado hit Moore, a town that was just 6 miles north of their home.

In general, Houser says, residents in Tornado Alley states are pretty tornado-smart and know what to do during warnings, even when they move there from out of state.

Local news stations have also worked hard to win the trust of locals. “There are a lot of resources that go into storm chasing and news coverage of tornadoes in the central plains,” says Houser. And it seems to work: According to her, many locals have a favorite newscaster that they trust to keep them up to date on a tornado’s movements so they know when it’s time to take shelter.

Social media has also made it easier to track severe weather.

Still, though, if you live in an area with a lot of severe weather, it’s hard to not get warning fatigue, she says, especially during tornado-heavy seasons.

It’s easy to start to get complacent, too.

Because it's difficult to know for certain where a tornado is going to go, when tornado warnings are issued, they generally cover a wide area. As a result, Houser says, “because tornadoes are usually small scale events, you can have a house on the southern side of town and not be impacted by a tornado even when the north side of town was hit. This can create a perception that a warning was kind of a false alarm for you, even if it really wasn’t.” The more times you seek shelter but don’t feel a direct impact, the more dubious you might be about the next warning.

People also sometimes decide they want to see tornadoes, Houser says. “There are some people who might go outside or take a drive out to the airport to get a clear view of the sky and see what’s coming towards them.”

In her experience, people tend to take tornado warnings more seriously when there has been a recent high impact event.

For example, she says, 11 days before the tornado in El Reno, another EF5 tornado hit Moore Oklahoma, killing 24 people, nine of which were children. It also caused an estimated $2 billion in property damage.

Since that tornado had been so horrific, Houser says, people took the El Reno one so seriously that some people tried to evacuate, causing gridlock on the roads that her husband ran into that day.

So what should people do to be safe during tornado season?

It’s important to have an emergency go-bag ready so that you can quickly grab everything you need when you seek shelter.

“In our grab bag, there is a pair of clothing and pajamas for each person as well as hard-soled shoes for the kids, hiking boots and gloves for myself and my husband,” says Houser. “That way, if a tornado were to destroy the house, we have safety gloves and hard shoes so that we don’t injure our feet and can remove debris to get everybody out safely.”

Other good items to include in a grab bag are toiletries, extra medication, diapers for the baby, spare car keys, one or two meals of non-perishable food (Houser has canned Spaghetti-Os and peanut butter and jelly in hers), important financial paperwork, and cash.

Know the difference between a tornado watch and a tornado warning.

A tornado watch means the weather conditions are favorable for a tornado to form, but a tornado warning means a tornado has actually been spotted or indicated by radar. You should not ignore a warning.

If a tornado warning has been issued, seek shelter immediately in a pre-designated safe zone, such as a basement, storm shelter or safe room.

If you cannot get to a storm shelter, find a safe place in your home. This should be as low to the ground as possible, sturdy, and away from windows and outside walls, such as a closet, bathroom, hallway or crawl space under stairs.

“We do not have a basement,” Houser says, “so our safe place is in the central bathroom in the bathtub with a mattress placed over us to protect from falling or flying debris.”

Never seek shelter in a mobile home as even relatively weak tornadoes can damage or roll them.

If you’re driving and you see a tornado, never park under a bridge.

“The structure of a bridge creates a wind-tunnel effect,” Houser explains. “People have died from making that choice. You’re actually better [off] if you can keep driving towards bluer skies.”

If you don’t think you can outdrive a tornado, get out of the vehicle.

“Cars are affected by tornado winds very differently depending on the size and shape of your vehicle and direction your car is facing compared to the winds of the tornado,” she explains. “Tornadoes can vault a vehicle and catapult it.”

Once you’re outside your car, find a low-lying ditch and lay face down with your hands over your head.

Finally, make sure the whole family knows what to do in a weather emergency.

Houser has since moved from Oklahoma to Ohio where she now works as an associate professor, and has three little girls, ages 7, 4 and 1. But while Ohio has fewer tornadoes, she says that she still makes sure her whole family recognizes the significance of tornado and severe weather threats.

“My kids definitely do have fear about storms and tornadoes,” she says, but “we have matter-of-fact discussions about what to do if severe weather approaches and I explain why.”

She says those discussions include teaching her kids what to look for in storm clouds, where to go in the house during a tornado warning (i.e. the bathtub) and where the family will meet up if they are separated during severe weather.