Chapter Text
Tyler didn’t get into storm chasing intentionally. He just kind of stumbled into it when he was a semester into an environmental science degree at the University of Arkansas with no idea what he actually wanted to do with it. Office work didn’t suit him much and he wasn’t a big fan of paperwork or anything that got too repetitive. It made him itchy to sit still for long.
That bull rocking his shit kind of fucked up his short-term life plan.
He never really bothered to make a long-term one, but figured it would involve land and a barn somewhere in the middle of Arkansas if he could swing it. Maybe Missouri. Just somewhere hilly and away from the mosquitos that covered the fields closer to the Mississippi.
One TBI and a doc telling him he’d be an idiot to keep riding effectively soured his career. The two times he’d busted up his shoulder didn’t help either. The first recovery from shoulder surgery was hard. The second was a damn bitch. The head injury had been a lot of time spent in a dark room reevaluating his life and trying to figure out what the hell he was supposed to do next.
His aunt calling him to check in steered him toward storms and then meteorology, recalling how enthralled he’d been by them when he visited her in the summers as a kid. She lived right in the border of Arkansas and Oklahoma and had a big bay overlooking an open field that he liked to curl up in to watch storms roll in. He’d lost count of the nights he’d fallen asleep to rain on the double-paned glass and thunder crackling in the distance. Nature’s lullaby.
He got accepted to the U of A and figured that was just about the best option until he figured out what exactly it was that he wanted to do with a degree. Plus, it was close enough that he could still live at home and drive into Fayetteville on days he had class.
The drive wasn’t actually that far, but sometimes he made it longer when he was thinking over an assignment. Or getting lost watching the clouds roil in the sky as he flew around the curves of dusty backroads, miles from where he actually needed to be and usually a tad too low on gas for how fast his truck was guzzling it down.
That’s how he found Boone.
He turned a corner and found himself on a hilltop with a thick copse of trees on one side and a long, rolling cattle pasture on the other. Among the herd of grazing cows was a tiny truck with big tires flying through the air and crashing down with a splash of mud.
It was enough of a surprise that it pulled his attention away from the beautiful storm forming off to the east.
Tyler slammed on his breaks, his backend fishtailing and tires screeching in protest. The little truck, none the wiser to their audience, bounced along the field and hit a make-shift dirt ramp, becoming airborne again. Tyler pulled into the gravel entrance to the field, stopping short of the red metal gate and putting his truck in park. Hopping out, he leaned against the gate with his forearms and propping his boot up on the lowest bar.
Whoever was in the truck was a daredevil from the looks of it and, from the heavy equipment sitting off to the side in the field, the mastermind behind the track of ramps and mud pits that Tyler could now see forming a circle in the field.
He knew he was an adrenaline junkie. No one got on the back of a bucking bull if it didn’t both excite and scare the hell out of them just a little bit. He’d loved the thrill he felt right before the chute opened when he could feel the power of the bull under him and the tightness of the rope over his hand and the bit of fear that had him thinking ‘damn, I must be crazy’ just when it was too late to back out of a ride.
He missed it.
Learning came easy to him, always had, and he enjoyed it, but he couldn’t help but feel like his life had taken a 180 degree turn from interesting to kind of boring real quick.
Whoever was behind the wheel of that truck certainly didn’t look like they were bored.
After landing one final time in a pit, the truck spun in circles, slinging mud all over the place, then it stopped for a moment before shooting across the field again, this time headed straight for Tyler.
“You break down or somethin’?” The guy shouted out of the window as he came to a halt by the gate Tyler was still leaning on.
“Nah, I was just watching. Looks like fun,” Tyler shouted back, gesturing to the dirt track.
“‘Course it does ‘cause it is,” he replied matter-of-factly.
The guy cut the engine and got out. He was wearing a faded ball cap, cut offs, work boots, and an old Wakarusa shirt that was missing most of its sides and arms. He bounced toward Tyler the same way his truck had bounced across the field between ramps, like there was too much energy in him and nowhere to let it out.
“They hire me to build ‘em a new course a couple’a times a year,” he said with a shrug as he wiped the mud he’d gotten on him hand when he got out of the truck on his shirt. He held the hand out to Tyler. “Boone.”
“Tyler,” he responded, taking the offered hand without hesitation and giving Boone a firm handshake.
A wide, goofy grin spread on Boone’s face. “Well, since you’re here and you ain’t calling me crazy, you want to finish testing the ramps with me?”
“Hell yes, I do.” Tyler wasted no time swinging a leg over the gate and jumping down into the slightly too tall grass on the other side.
He and Boone became thick as thieves. Boone’s family owned an off-road park not far away and Tyler spent almost every weekend racing Boone through the courses on anything with wheels and a motor. It wasn’t nearly the same rush as bullriding had been, but it was enough to satisfy him.
Plus, Boone was always willing to listen to him talk about the weather when they were waiting on rain to stop while sitting nice and dry under a pole shed. He started to pick up on the stuff Tyler told him about clouds and the atmosphere and all the little things that come together to make a storm. Mostly to rib him for getting so caught up in it, but he also sent Tyler pictures of the lightning storms out by the park that he missed while he was in class.
It was nice having a friend off campus. Environmental science was part of the the Ag college, so there were other men and women who were like him and grew up around cattle or on a farm, but he also knew they saw him and thought “pretty face, empty head” after hearing he had been a bull rider and he knew he oozed southern frat boy, even if he didn’t rush Greek. It was just who he was. A personality he’d had since birth, but honed once he’d found himself more in the public eye on the circuit.
He was fine with letting people think that. They tended to underestimate him that way and it was always amusing to see them go a little slack-jawed when he chimed into a class discussion and surprised the hell out of everyone by contributing something intelligent to the conversation.
Boone didn’t care if he was a genius or dumb as fuck. Tyler liked that about him. He didn’t act like Tyler was weird for being fascinated about something as commonplace as clouds and wind. Boone liked anything that made a lot of noise and edged on the side of unsafe to handle, so thunderstorms and tornadoes were right up his alley really.
It was a warmer than usual day in late April and they knew a bad thunderstorm was forecasted for late that afternoon. Boone had just bought a couple of GoPros and wanted to try them out as soon as FedEx dropped them off. So he and Tyler were out on the wooded trails on dirt bikes when they noticed the storm coming in sooner than they thought.
“You check the weather lately?” Boone asked him when they stopped near a clearing. The clouds had taken on a sickly green color and the wind was picking up in a way that made the air feel thick and heavy.
Tyler shook his head. “No service out here. But that’s an anvil.”
“What’s that mean?” Boone asked, shifting on his feet.
“Tornado,” he said, voice coming out awed and hushed. He could already see a wall cloud with a bit of rotation forming.
“Shouldn’t we get to somewhere with more shelter?” Boone shoved his helmet back on and straddled his bike, waiting for Tyler to do the same.
“Yeah, yeah we probably should.” He couldn’t get himself to move though. The rotation was dropping down beautifully.
“Then move your ass, T. This helmet might hold up to hail, but I’m not sure it can handle if that thing decides to throw a whole tree at us,” Boone yelled to him, the wind nearly drowning him out as it gusted around them. Tree branches were bending and creaked loudly in protest.
“Right. Right.” Tyler nodded absently. “We should go.”
He cranked the kick start on his bike, still looking at the mesacyclone forming in the distance. It was coming closer to them fast. A rush of excitement hummed through his bones. It was like he could feel what was coming.
He nodded to Boone to signal he was taking a trail that would keep them parallel with the storm. It was a task just to keep his eyes on the path in front of him. Tree roots and dips be damned, there was a conical funnel coming down closer and closer to the ground as they rode and it was mesmerizing.
He flashed back to being eight years old and watching a tornado touch down right in front of him through the rivets of rain on the car window.
He let out a whoop when the rain hit them and then shivered when he realized the wind was shifting. Instead of running parallel, now it was headed right for them. Cursing a blue streak, he sped up.
There was a culvert ahead. They just had to get there and hopefully it was enough to keep them from being flung clear out of Washington County.
Small bits of ground debris started blowing across the trail in front of him and he pushed harder. Risking a look back, he saw Boone right on his tail, keeping up with him.
Tyler spun his finger in the air and pointed toward the funnel, trying to let him know they were in its path now.. Boone gave him a thumbs up.
The rough skid he made to stop just short of the big ditch sent him tumbling and the bike sliding down the bank.
Boone, having made a cleaner stop than he had, jerked him up by the shoulders and pushed him toward the concrete culvert ahead. It was the best shelter they had out there.
“Do you see it, Boone? Do you see it?” He crowed as they dove into the tunnel. “Holy shit!”
Boone crouched down shoulder to shoulder with him and looked out of the opening. “Hot damn, T. It’s right there!”
The funnel cloud was less than a half a mile away at an angle and Tyler could feel the roar of it in his chest.
Around them, the air stilled like everything in the woods was holding its breath, waiting for contact with the ground.
“C’mon, c’mon, c’mon,” Tyler encouraged it. They weren’t in the best place to ride out a tornado. He knew that.
But would he ever get the chance to see one this close again? Would he ever get to hear what it was like to have one bearing down on them like a freight train? Was that thrilling slice of fear shivering through him now going to fade and never be felt again?
“Is it going to touch down?” Boone yelled, looking over at him. He had his visor flipped up and Tyler could only see his eyes wild, wide, and excited.
Tyler figured he probably looked the same way.
“God I hope so,” he said, unable to take his eyes off of it. It would hit at an angle. “There anything we can hold on to?”
“Nah, walls are just concrete all the way back,” he told him, looking back over his shoulder. “Think we should go further in?”
Tyler nodded and waited until the cyclone was nearly above them and straining toward the ground before pushing Boone back in to the darkened tunnel. “Go. Go. Go!”
The hail struck hard, a few pieces bouncing into the opening and they could see it gathering in the ditch outside. Some chunks were the size of golf balls. Tyler reached out and picked one up that had ricocheted in and fell at his feet.
“The same updrafts that help form tornadoes also produce hail, that’s why you sometimes see it in the same storm,” Tyler told Boone, holding the ball of ice up for Boone to see. “Little droplets start at a high altitude and enter into this constant circulation making them bigger until they finally hit the ground. It’s-“
He kept talking even as they could hear the tornado pass over them, giving Boone a play by play of what should be happening outside the culvert. Boone looked giddy as a kid who just got told he was headed to Disney World.
Once they heard it pass and stopped seeing debris fall into the ditch outside, they scrambled for the entrance. Tyler stumbled out and launched himself up the side of the ditch to get on higher ground.
He gasped when he saw it.
Just ahead of him and moving away, but still massive and powerfully spinning, was a perfectly formed tornado uprooting trees and sending branches flying through the air. A halo of debris orbited around the funnel, sending bits of everything it touched into the sky around it.
His eyes burned like he might be getting a bit teary.
Boone jumped up beside him and let out a howl before beating on Tyler’s shoulder several times. “We just survived a tornado!”
Tyler chuckled as his friend launched himself into a series of bow-legged cartwheels and turned his attention back to the storm steadily putting space between it and them.
“Oh, shit, dammit, hell, fuckin’ a-“ Tyler’s attention snapped to Boone, who had stopped doing flips and was standing on the edge of the ditch kicking at the wet dirt. He ripped off his helmet and some of his dark, ear-length hair followed it, sticking up in odd places.
Tyler saw their mangled bikes laying under a fallen tree.
Boone turned back toward the tornado with both middle fingers raised in the air.
“Well,” Tyler sighed, hands on his hips. “Fuck.”
It was a long walk back, but Tyler spent most of it rattling on about the science behind what they just saw with Boone interjecting once in a while to ask a question or two.
A few days later, he was leaving class when Boone called him.
“Look, T, I want you to hear me out before you get all flustered by this and whatnot or, ya know, get pissed at me,” he said before Tyler could even give him so much as a ‘Hey, bud.’
“You starting a conversation that way makes me think I might be right if I get flustered and pissed at you,” he replied, turning left out of the Ag building to head to Old Main for his public speaking class, which was a degree requirement and one he was passing with flying colors because he had always been the eloquent type and people liked to listen to him talk. Boone groaned on the other end of the line and Tyler sighed. “Just tell me, Boone.”
“You know how we was wearing our GoPros during that ‘nado that hit?” Boone said like he was likely to forget about that at any point in his life.
“Yeah,” he drawled, slowing his walk and making people huff as they had to skirt around him on the side walk. “What, were they not recording?”
“Oh, no. They caught everything,” Boone assured him. “And so I thought, hey, it might be cool if I cut the both of our footage together and made a little video and all. And I did.”
“Okay, and?” Tyler prompted. Knowing they had actually gotten good footage, he wanted to see it. The cameras might have been able to pick up stuff he didn’t see at the time.
“See, I uploaded it to YouTube because I thought, hey, it’s cool, why not? Ya know? Anyway, it kinda…went viral.” Boone sounded a little nervous, which Tyler didn’t think he’d ever heard from the other man before. “I probably should’a asked you first.”
“What’s so bad about that?” He wasn’t online much, but a few of his gnarlier rides still made their rounds and he got tagged from time to time.
“Nothin’! Nothing, just…hell, I’ll send you the link. Call me after you read the comments.” He ended the call and a few seconds later, a link popped up in his texts.
The video itself was condensed down to about ten minutes, it started with a clip of him riding in front of Boone, his riding jersey soaked with rain and clinging to his back. He watched himself spin his fingers in the air before pointing at the funnel and Boone had turned to catch the perfect shot of the funnel descending before looking back and giving a thumb’s up. Then it mashed together moments of them getting to the culvert and watching the storm, but while they were taking shelter further in the tunnel, Boone had overlaid the audio of him talking while they walked back. It ended with a shot of Boone flipping off the tornado. Tyler was impressed Boone had been able to take the footage of the storm, throw in a little music and editing, and perfectly capture how intense being that close to the tornado had felt.
He couldn’t see what had Boone so worried. The video had an impressive half million views and still rising and it had only been posted the day before.
He scrolled down the comments.
[I could listen to him talk about tornadoes all day.]
[hes pretty and smart. Single?]
[more please!]
[when is the next one?]
[that was dumb as fuck. I love it]
[why does this guy sound like Pecos Bill from that 90s movie with Patrick Swayze? The one who rides the cyclone at the end]
-[that’s Tyler Owens! {link} he used to be on the PBR circuit]
—[wait, can he ride a tornado? I want to see that!]
—-[dude doesn’t have enough brain cells left after getting stomped on. What an idiot]
——[just tell us all you’re afraid without telling us all you’re afraid]
[these dudes have steel balls]
[if this guy taught my science class in high school, I might have actually learned something]
[these are the kind of storm chasers I want to follow]
[never hit a subscribe button so fast]
Tyler called Boone back.
“What do you think?” Boone asked, sounding like he might be holding his breath.
“You want to find the next one on purpose?” He asked him, gears already turning in his head.
“Hell yeah,” Boone replied.