EAS News Article
Confessions of a Storm Chaser
By Emily Hunteman
Insights: The College of Science Magazine
Spring/Summer Issue 2005
Kim Klockow’s idea of a good time is going to a party with friends to make fun of weather-related movies like The Day After Tomorrow. Klockow double majors in economics and synoptic meteorology, and she and her friends know so much about weather that they spot inaccuracies in Hollywood movies that they find hilarious — like charts showing ocean currents going the wrong way.
“When we go to the theater to see these movies, we laugh hysterically,” she says. “I feel sorry for the other people in the theater.”
Klockow is a Phi Beta Kappa senior from Granger, Indiana, who last summer became the first Purdue student to do an internship at the National Severe Storms Laboratory in Norman, Oklahoma. She was one of 10 students chosen from approximately 150 applications.
Her fascination with weather dates back to her childhood in Naperville, Illinois, when a tornado chased her and her family home from signing up for French lessons. Klockow was only seven at the time.
“Mom got us in the basement and then went upstairs to watch the storm, and I sneaked upstairs to watch with her,” she says. “The sky was green, and stuff was flying through the air. In that moment, I changed from being petrified by tornadoes to being awed by them. I kind of wanted to chase them back.”
Since then, Klockow has gotten a good deal of storm chasing under her belt. She says that storm chasing involves hours of travel time, picking a particular aspect of the storm you want to focus on, and then staying in communication with someone called a nowcaster, who is at a base telling you exactly where to drive. When you get close to the storm, she says, you can start following it visually. <Complete Article>
