When a storm gathers steam, typically a tornado or a hurricane, most of us run for cover. But some run straight into nature’s fiercest meteorological events, hoping to immerse themselves and record them live. Among them are meteorological experts who pursue high winds and heavy rains for scientific research. Getting close, often in a hurricane’s direct path, allows professional storm chasers to document crucial on-field data impossible to obtain from afar. These findings help scientists paint a better picture of the dynamics of storms, enabling more accurate forecasts and expedient evacuation. Others are hobbyists, often amateur photographers and artists looking to capture the beauty and power of these phenomena first-hand.

Scottish American naturalist John Muir was known to “chase” storms long before it was common to race after often deadly winds. The pioneer climbed up a lanky Douglas spruce in the middle of a windstorm one December day in 1874 to feel what treetops feel. In the 1950s and ’60s, meteorologist Neil Ward and photographers David Hoadley and Roger Jensen emerged as modern American trailblazers of storm chasing. Ward, often dubbed the first scientific storm chaser, intercepted atmospheric vortices and relayed the information via the Oklahoma Highway Patrol’s radio. Hoadley and Jensen were both from North Dakota — the storm-prone state that’s now part of the holy grail of chasers, aka “Tornado Alley.” Hoadley also founded and ran a first-of-its-kind magazine called Storm Track. In the 1990s, internet access and tornado cult classic Twister helped further elevate the profile of storm chasing.

Storm chasing isn’t all thrills, and there’s certainly a method to the madness. For tornadoes, it involves hours of driving around in specialty vehicles and waiting, led not by adrenaline but calculated interceptions to best capture the storm. Chasers then position themselves and their equipment. There are standard safety guidelines — don’t chase alone, for one, and avoid using cellphones amid lightning. A set of ethics — be courteous to other chasers — is also widely embraced within the community. But flying into the eye of a hurricane is different and usually undertaken using specialized aircraft carrying scientists, or by weather squadrons of the U.S. Air Force, who conduct tropical storm reconnaissance.

Her portfolio is a stunning art gallery dedicated to the chaotic beauty of skies and storms. Cascading shades of blue, gray, orange or purple… penetrated by sudden flashes of white. Walters isn’t a traditional storm chaser; she does with a paintbrush what researchers do with fancy equipment: capture the essence of these weather phenomena. It started in the summer of 2016, when she was in the midst of a blinding battle with chronic migraines, the 29-year-old tells OZY. “Glaring lightning and pounding rain were visuals I wanted to tie metaphorically to the pain I was faced with,” she recalls. Five years later, she has found steady refuge in the volatile element most run from, often painting live from her Dallas studio.

Just what anyone in the path of a storm wants — a timely alert that can save their life. African SWIFT, a collaborative project between some of the continent’s leading meteorologists and researchers at the University of Leeds in the U.K., makes accurate, super-short-range hourly forecasts while a storm is approaching, using a satellite-aided technique called “nowcasting.” The meteorological agencies of Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria and Senegal are among the project’s partners. Nowcasting has helped in the successful evacuation of communities impacted by flooding and mudslides in Kenya and could save the lives of thousands who die every year in storms on Lake Victoria.

Even without a forecast system, birds have their own means of surviving storms. Songbirds like cardinals and buntings find refuge in dense foliage, while woodpeckers find safety on the downwind side of tree trunks or take cover inside cavities. But some migratory birds actually leverage headwinds to launch their big journey. Other seabirds aim for the calmer eye of the storm so as to evade its spiral, effectively “eye-riding,” not unlike their hurricane-hunting human counterparts. In 2011, satellite transmitters caught a tagged whimbrel flying directly into Hurricane Irene, a neat but taxing survival tactic later noticed in other members of the species.

It’s not always wise to try to tame the storm. In South and Southeast Asia, millions are accustomed to regular evacuations. “Super-typhoons” and cyclones batter Southeast Asia annually, with nearly 100,000 people evacuated in December as typhoon Rai pummeled the Philippines. In South Asia, Bangladesh and India are subject to particularly brutal lashings. Both countries were faced with the double whammy of COVID-19 and the violent cyclone Amphan in 2020. In May 2021, Cyclone Yaas swamped villages on both sides of the border.

Extreme weather, typically in the form of decimating hurricanes, is familiar to this part of the world. Just last August Haiti wrestled with two destructive elements when rescue efforts in the aftermath of a 7.2 magnitude earthquake were hampered by tropical cyclone Grace. As densely packed places, often with inadequate infrastructure, the nations in this belt often take the hardest hit of hurricanes that also strike the U.S. That vulnerability is compounded by socioeconomic factors and because of rampant deforestation — and consequently, mudslides — on many islands. Climate change will only make things worse for the Caribbean and Latin America, warned the World Meteorological Organization in August.

North of the Caribbean, the U.S. averages over 1,150 tornadoes each year — more than Europe, Australia and Canada combined. Tornado Alley, a part of the Great Plains in the central part of the country, is so named because it sees the most tornadoes. Texas, Florida, Kansas, Oklahoma and Nebraska are the states most vulnerable to the annual onslaught. Alabama sees the highest annual average of tornado-related fatalities, while other Southern states such as Tennessee, Kentucky and Arkansas also suffer. And then there are the hurricanes that make their way up from the Caribbean. Hurricane Ida, which has claimed at least 82 lives in the U.S., chose a poignant day to make landfall in Louisiana: Aug. 29, the 16th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.

The legendary storm chaser’s many contributions to tornado science shine brighter than his tragic death in Oklahoma’s 2013 El Reno twister. His famously cautious pursuit of storms helped scientists understand how shifts in pressure, air temperature, humidity and winds collude to create phenomena so powerful and unpredictable. Known widely for his time on the Discovery Channel show Storm Chasers, the 55-year-old Samaras first earned the public’s recognition in 2003 after a probe he deployed in Manchester, South Dakota, survived and recorded findings from a high-intensity tornado. The tragic fate he met a decade later, when he perished along with his co-chasing son, Paul, and colleague Carl Young, served to reinforce the truth Samaras lived by: There are things we don’t know yet about the sky.

From the haunting mystique of “thunder and lightning” arriving in the opening scene of Shakespeare’s Macbeth to Hurricane Ophelia unifying power in Danielle Steel’s novel Rushing Waters, storms figure prominently in the literary sky — as decorative backdrops, metaphors for human emotions or narrative devices. Violent weather is described with poetic abandon in Louis MacNeice’s “June Thunder. ” And in Emily Brontë’s novel Wuthering Heights, frequent moorland storms parallel the passion between protagonists Heathcliff and Cathy, as well as the forces of fate that human emotion cannot defy. Mellow or sweeping, sinister or sweet, literary storms add punch to the plotline.

Alongside the wealth of stormy reads, there are plenty of movies and documentaries on the topic too. For a highly condensed visual history of North American storm chasing, check out the 2016 YouTube documentary The Storm Chasing Anthology. Or consider Oklahoma: Tornado Target, a decidedly unnerving 42-minute film that captures a reality for the residents of that state — both a chronicle of the challenges and resilience of Oklahomans and a cautionary tale about storm chasing. The award-winning Trouble the Water and Spike Lee-directed When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts are accounts of the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina. Difficult to watch — harder to look away.