12 • THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 19,2002
Jay Antle, Antle Bay, Texas, doctoral student in American Studies, gets his kicks out of chasing storms. Antle has traveled all over taking pictures of storms.
LAURIE SISK/KANSAN
Student keeps his sights on the eye of the storm
By Todd Smith Kansas staff writer
Most people head for the basement when the National Weather Service announces a tornado warning, but not Jay Ante and Mike Umscheid. They chase tornadoes through the Great Plains.
Antle, Baytown, Texas, doctoral student in American and environmental history, said he chased storms because he enjoyed being around "raw, untamed nature."
He said he liked the challenge of forecasting severe thunderstorms.
"When you are in the presence of a rotating thunderstorm 50,000 feet tall, and it is shooting off lightning at a stroke of every two or three seconds, that is a truly awesome kind of an experience," he said.
Antle looks at computer models done by the weather service that are available on the Internet and gains a sense of where tornado-producing storms will be. He maps out a 100-square-mile area, heads out and hopes a severe thunderstorm develops.
Umscheid, Overland Park graduate student in atmospheric science, said timing was everything in storm chasing.
CONTRIBUTED ART
Umscheid said many tornadoes lasted less than one minute to as long as five min-
A tornado sweeps through a field in Pratt in April 2001.
"It is important for storm chasers to arrive at the storm early in its lifetime to increase the chances of seeing a tornado," Umscheid said.
Significant tornadoes can last up to 30 to 40 minutes, he said.
Umscheid said he was two miles away from a tornado in Pratt in April 2001 that was on the ground for 30 minutes.
Antle said the worst destruction he has ever witnessed was a tornado hitting a farmhouse near Seward, Neb. The tornado was an F-4 on the Fujita Tornado Damage Scale, which means it had winds up to 260 mph.
Umscheid said that he took storm-chaser vacations to witness tornadoes.
He said the best time of the year for storm chasers to intercept tornadic storm
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