I went storm chasing with the future meteorologists of America

“You guys still with us?” Schwartz called over the radio.

“Yeah, I’m right behind you, and Emily is right behind me,” I called back.

“Groovy,” he said. “We’re trying to get ahead of the cell on the right of us. It’s looking pretty promising, and we want to get a good view of it. Also, if it decides to come north, we don’t want to get smacked by hail—if it develops large hail—so, uh, just stay with me.”

Back in May, Mountain Gazette sent me and the photographer Emily Tidwell on a storm chasing trip with a group of college students studying meteorology at Metropolitan State University of Denver. I put about 2,000 miles on my car driving circles around Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas as we hunted down tornadoes. What resulted is a timely and important story about the consequences of federal budget cuts affecting severe weather forecasting.

You can hear my editor saying more about the piece here on The Stack, a podcast by Monocle magazine.

The whole story and Emily’s incredible photography will be in Mountain Gazette 204. And just a heads up: you’ll have to subscribe to MG by Friday to receive this issue.