From the Brazos Valley to Oklahoma’s Tornado Alley, Texas A&M University’s student storm-chasing team checks the skies daily for threatening weather – and the chance to see Mother Nature at her very worst.

The group, which numbered a few dozen several years ago, now has 130 members, and each knows his or her idea of a good time – hopping into their own cars, checking weather radars along the way and driving straight towards the kind of storms that sent Toto and Dorothy over the rainbow.

Texas Aggie Storm Chasers, or TASC for short, is the only student-run storm-chasing team in Texas and its members have one thing in common: a love for weather, and the nastier the better. Their idea of a good time is to ride 600 miles round trip, dodge hail and lightning and hopefully see a tornado or two or three along the way.

The program is organized and supervised by the Texas A&M Student Chapter of the American Meteorological Society (TAMSCAMS) in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences, College of Geosciences.

Chris McKinney, a graduate student in Atmospheric Sciences from Euless, serves as the group’s leader this year and he supervises other team leaders who are qualified to take storms chasers out into the field. Each team leader has had at least three upper-level meteorology classes and many have several years of storm chasing experience.

“We make sure everyone is prepared and knows what he or she is doing,” McKinney says. “Every person on the team has had numerous training sessions and safety seminars. We want everyone to see interesting weather, but safety is always the priority.”

The team has been out several times this season, but so far in Texas, while some storms have produced some heavy rainfall, the tornadoes have been no-shows.

Team members have said the chances of seeing a tornado form during a chase are only about 1 in 10 – hardly slam-dunk odds. But the odds of seeing severe weather are much greater. “When we do make a trip, we very often see severe weather, some of it very severe,” McKinney says.

“But the important thing is, we do learn something on every trip. You can still learn about weather conditions and cloud formations even if you don’t see a tornado.”

The team makes its own forecasts, and when the lead forecasters determine that severe weather is likely to occur in a few days, the team makes preparations. The final decision to go out is usually made about 24 hours in advance.

Once the team has spotted severe weather, it often relays information to the National Weather Service offices in either Fort Worth or Houston. Each outing is well documented and is videoed and photographed, and many team members use their cell phones for backups.

“We pretty much document everything on a trip,” McKinney confirms.

Five years ago, on May 4, 2003, the TASC team had a record-setting day. It reported an F-4 tornado – only an F-5 is stronger – near Leavenworth, Kan., and relayed important data to weather stations in the area. More than 90 tornadoes were reported that weekend in the area. During some chases, TV stations have used footage shot by TASC members.

McKinney says April and May are the peak storm times in Texas, so the next few weeks could be interesting.

“This is no game for us – we take this very seriously,” he stresses.

“We want every trip to be a learning experience for us, but at the same time, we think we do provide a public service. If we can help the National Weather Service warn people of an approaching storm, we might even be able to save some lives.”

For more about TASC, go to http://atmo.tamu.edu/tamscams/tasc/index.html.

Contact: Chris McKinney at (979) 845-7655 or (817) 266-9885.

Writer: Keith Randall (979) 845-4644 or This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it .