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The season for storm chasing this year had started off poorly.
The only major tornado reported was an EF2 that passed by the southern part of Springfield, Missouri last week. They were chasing a supercell a little north from there at the time that didn't turn out to be anything at all and became completely unmotivated when they learned that south of them had something good.
Nonetheless, they had continued on. They stopped for a bite to eat when Pat found a promising formation to the east of where they were. The radar indicated a big area of mesoscale discussion in the southern parts of Indiana for the next few hours and they were close enough to make it in time, so they paid for their food and separated into two cars.
Bird and Ryann were nearby watching some clouds roll in as well, so they stopped by to pick them up and ended up going in three cars. Pat was in the passenger seat with the iPad split screened in his lap between velocity and reflectivity radars while Wade drove. In the car behind them were Jp and Entoan, both entirely too unserious over the radio. And trailing after them were Ryann and Bird with arguably the most well-equipped vehicle for this hobby. Pat and Wade were left with the regular car while Jp and Entoan at least got some protection on their windows.
Now that he's thinking about it, maybe one of them should be in the front of the car train instead of Wade and him.
"This is Jp niner niner," Jp said over the walkie inside one of the cup holders. "I'm seeing some lightning ahead of us. I feel like you guys need to take this more seriously, over."
"Can we just turn the walkie off?" Wade asked.
Pat smiled and glanced up from the radar, "I mean, we could."
"Hey, Pat," Jp said. "What does this triangle pyramid thing do?"
The question hung in the air for a few moments. "Is he serious?" Wade asked incredulously.
Pat shook his head, "We should not have let them be in the same car." He reached over and pressed the side button to respond, "It's called a Turtle. It'll help us measure a tornado's wind speed, direction, and the air pressure inside of it. One of us will need to place it where we think the tornado is heading."
"Cool!" Jp replied.
"Oh! Can we do it?" Bird asked excitedly.
"If we get a tornado, yeah. You guys have the best protection," Patrick answered.
"Sweet!"
Through the windshield, Pat watched as a streak of lightning breached through the dark clouds circling the sky. It sprouted like tree roots from inside the cloud, and faint streaks of rain poured out of the sky like rays of sunlight. It didn't take long before raindrops began to pelt their windshield.
They took the main road through town. People without umbrellas covered their heads with their bags as they rushed toward shelter to keep from getting wet. A low rumble of thunder shook the ground, vibrating their car ever so slightly. He frowned as the rain picked up again and he saw a group of people huddled by the front entrance to a local café just off the street. They had no idea how dangerous this storm could get. He hoped that it won't head toward the town if it fully develops.
He exited out of the radar as they left the main downtown portion of the area. They started trailing along the back roads toward open fields. Hay bales are scattered throughout some of the fields with cows crowded together, their backs to the wind. Trees began to shake violently as their leaves danced through the air before finally they came to a stop against the pavement.
Pat pulled up where they are on the map and followed the road toward where it looked like the tornado would drop on the radar. He had already taken some time to scout for backup routes in case of emergency, but it's always good to double check.
He hasn't been doing this for more than a year now, so Pat honestly doesn't think he's seen a full blown tornado in action. They've either all fizzled out within the first minute, not dropped at all, or have dropped but only lasted two minutes tops. All he had growing up were earthquakes. They never had any crazy big storms like supercells. When Wade offered for him to join them last tornado season, he was both terrified and amazed by the opportunity. Entoan showed him how the radar works in more ways than what he already knew, but so far, it has been a little underwhelming. He's more than okay with that, though, because it meant he didn't have to worry as much.
Patrick relayed the route to Wade and then told the others over the radio before he pulled the radar back up. A few cars passed by them, and he could tell some of them were also storm chasers based on the satellites on their roofs or the logos painted on the side of their vans.
He watched the clouds and compared them with the radar as a hook slowly began to develop at the bottom of the reflectivity chart. "Actually, we can pull over here and probably get a good shot of it," Pat said as he gestured toward the grass beside the road.
"Really? Wouldn't those trees block it?" Wade asked.
"It's not touching down over there," he replied simply.
Wade turned on their hazards and pulled over. The rearview mirror showed their friends doing the same.
The rain let up a bit as they stepped out of the car, but it was still windier than Pat expected. He shivered involuntarily at the drop in temperature as a strong gust slammed into him. It tugged loosely at his clothes, but he paid it no mind. Instead, he grabbed the iPad and shut his door as Wade closed the driver side door and went to grab some cameras from the back seats.
Patrick walked over to the wooden fence surrounding the property of what he assumed to be a farmer and their livestock. The field before him was empty, though, apart from a few trees very far in the distance. A figure appeared in his peripherals and he turned to find Entoan with a similar iPad clasped in between his hands.
"I thought it would've touched down more south from here," Entoan muttered. He zoomed into the hook on the radar.
"I think everyone did," Ryann said coming up behind them. He was watching as a few of the storm chasers who had continued down the road made u-turns and stopped in the grass on the opposite side of the road from them.
Jp had gone over to help Wade with the cameras, and the two of them walked over here a few seconds later with two tripods and three cameras—one video and two photography.
"Should we set everything up?" Entoan asked.
"Oh, this isn't everything," Wade explained with an excited edge to his voice. "This is just to catch the moment it touches down."
As if on cue, Pat's phone chimed with a new alert in his pocket. He glanced at the screen to see the familiar tornado alert from the National Weather Service. If he listened closely enough over the wind, he could hear the tornado sirens begin to blare inside of downtown.
"Oh, get ready," Ryann said. He hurried over to the fence and propped his own video camera on the ledge, pointing it toward the open field where a small knob had begun to emerge from the dark clouds overhead.
Pat looked up and the sight in front of him was mesmerizing. The clouds swirled together softly, as if they were in a rush but didn't care for being too late. He saw the wall cloud when they were coming in, but something about being this close is different. It gathered near enough to the ground that he felt like if he were to shoot something in the air, it could pierce straight through the veil of darkness. The sun broke through parts of the cloud that gave the whole thing a faint yellow haze resembling that of the lighting in an apocalyptic movie.
He blinked and then turned his attention back to the task at hand. He brought the photo camera Wade handed him up to his eyes and watched through the lens as the tornado began to form. Dirt was lifted off the ground in bulk, chunks of the earth ripped from its home and being sucked up toward the clouds in a whirlwind of soil. A slither of the cloud snakes its way toward the ground and just like that—it grew. So quickly that if he blinked he would have missed it entirely. One second it was a thin rope barely hanging on by a thread, and the next it was wider than a house.
"Holy shit," Pat said a little breathlessly. He glanced over to look at Entoan who had given up on the camera in his hands and instead started watching it straight up. There was a specific glimmer of giddiness in his eyes that reminded Pat of a child who had just spotted their gifts under the tree on Christmas morning.
"Alright, Entoan," Wade started. "Where's it heading?"
Entoan turned away from the storm and looked at his iPad. "East, toward Lemmington Street."
"We can parallel that, right?" Bird asked as he snapped one more photo with the camera around his neck.
Pat started to observe the radar closely as the group decided on which route to take next. If the tornado continued east, which it seemed like it would, they could easily ride alongside it if they drove down Chestnut Way. The only problem with that is that if the tornado were to shift its pattern, there are hardly any roads branched off from Chestnut for them to take. The other option is to circle around toward the south side of the tornado and hope their shot of the storm doesn't get cut off by the forest separating the two roads. Or they could just zig zag their way through the fields and hop they don't get caught behind a train of storm chasers all attempting to go the same way.
He looked again at the mass of swirling darkness in the distance, thankful suddenly that it's still day time and not night. He's never witnessed a nocturnal tornado, but he's seen videos. It's hard to imagine having to rely on lightning to see what's coming for you.
A loud thunk bounced off the metal of their car, followed by another smacking into the grass next to his feet. He looked down to find a giant piece of hail the size of a ping pong ball. The wind picked up significantly then, harsh and whipping as it threatened to swipe him off his feet. The tornado roared violently in sync with the thunder for a moment before the soft drizzle abruptly became a downpour.
"We can head a little ways down Chestnut and then cut back toward the town to try to intercept it with the Turtle," Entoan shouted over the noise.
"That sounds good," Jp said. He tucked the camera he held underneath his shirt to keep it dry and began to head back toward the car he was in earlier.
"Yeah—ow!" Wade exclaimed as a thick piece of hail landed on his head.
They all busted out laughing as the older man tried to swat at the falling ice. "You know," Bird started. "Maybe if you had hair, it'd protect you."
Wade feigned a betrayed look and put on a cartoonish Italian accent, "Brother, I thought you were on my side."
"Ahh, sorry brother," Bird replied in a similar accent. "I forgot."
"You forgot you were brothers?" Patrick asked.
"Yes," Bird replied.
Wade cleared his throat, "That's a normal thing to do."
"Oh, I'm sure," Pat said as they all dispersed quickly toward their respective vehicles to get out of the hail pounding down around them.
Wade wasted no time. He pulled back onto the road at the same time Pat buckled his seat belt. He instructed Wade as the road changed from pavement to gravel. Their car swayed as it drove through potholes and abnormally large rocks that sent dust through the air behind them. Chestnut Way came into view right as the rain began to batter their windshield. Their wipers began to work overtime, barely reaching the other side before they crossed back over.
The clouds overhead blocked out enough sunlight for their car's headlights to spring to life. Patrick glanced out his window to keep an eye on the twister in real time instead of through the screen in his lap. It had grown a lot more by now, stretching into a wedge with a length that became as wide as it looked tall. It was raining so hard that he could barely make out the edges of the tornado through the murky darkness. The sight both scared him and gave him a sense of dangerous fascination. Out of his peripherals, Pat saw Wade lean forward in his seat to try and get a better view of what's in front of him.
"Fuck!" Wade shouted suddenly. He swerved slightly as a giant crack spider-webbed across the windshield.
"What was that?" Patrick asked.
"It's the stupid hail," Wade explained. "Our windshield isn't strong enough."
"Do we turn around?" Pat asked.
Wade shook his head, "There's a side road up here we can take that'll get us out of dodge."
Pat picked up the radio. "Boys, me and Wade are gonna have to turn off early up here. Our windshield isn't gonna make it."
Jp responded instantly, "I told you that the other car would've been better!"
Wade spoke before Pat could respond. "Yeah, yeah whatever. At least I can drive when it's raining unlike you," he said, referencing the time when Jp drove them all into a ditch during a chase.
"Frick you!" Jp shouted. The static crinkled around his voice and Pat could hear Entoan laugh in the background, "I couldn't see anything!"
"Well then open your eyes!" Wade responded.
"It wasn't even raining that hard either," Entoan said.
Wade nodded vehemently, "Exactly!"
He signaled his blinker and they turned off down the side road. Pat watched the rearview mirror as their friends kept going straight. He didn't mind it all that much if he was being honest. He got to see one of the craziest tornadoes of the season touch down. That's all he really wanted.
"Do you think they'll actually manage to get the Turtle down?" Patrick asked with a knowing grin.
"Oh, definitely not," Wade replied without hesitation. "I don't think they even know where to put it down at."
Pat laughed, "They're gonna set it down in a random person's front yard."
"And completely forget about it," Wade laughed. "Is it even heading toward the town?"
"I don't think so," Pat replied.
The wind around them picked up pace, slamming forcefully into the car. Wade carefully drove around a downed power line laid out flat against the road while the low whistle of the wind echoed around them. Patrick turned around to look out the back window in the hope of seeing the tornado again. When he couldn't seem to get a clear shot, his heart rate spiked a bit and he exited out of the map to go back to the radar.
His heart dropped. The tornado switched directions. Instead of continuing east like it was supposed to do, it spun back and was now heading northwest.
Exactly where they were.
The radio crackled to life to the end of Entoan's sentence. He sounded panicked in a way Patrick has never heard out of him before, "—tell them!"
Jp and Bird both tried to shout at the same time, the sound too much for the walkie to handle. The static peaked into a high squeal and then mushed together into a single mess of pollution.
"Wade!" Patrick shouted over the howl of the wind outside the car. The rain hammered into their vehicle so hard it almost sounded like they were getting pelted with rocks. Maybe they were.
"I know!" Wade shouted back.
Patrick could hardly hear him over his own heartbeat thundering in his ears. He risked a glance out of the window and only has time to catch a glimpse of something flying toward them before he turned away just in time to avoid a face full of glass.
The pressure inside the car changed drastically. In a matter of seconds, it felt like all the air had been sucked out.
The last thing he heard was Wade shout his name before something harsh slammed into his head and his world was enshrouded in darkness.
When he came back to, it was to someone gently shaking him.
Pat pried his eyes open. The world was a blurry mess of colors that swam in front of him like a raging sea. He grimaced and attempted to clear the foggy haze clouding his mind. He turned to look at the fuzzy outline of a figure and registered faintly that it was Wade. His car door is open.
"Wa'e?" Pat tried to ask, but it came out slurred.
He attempted to move and gasped when a blinding bolt of agony shot up his legs. His eyes blew open, partially clouded by a deep red that dripped down from the throbbing ache above his eye. Pat blinked away the blood that caked the right side of his face and faced Wade now that the ringing had finally subsided in his ears.
"Stop moving damn it," Wade hissed while he reached across Pat's chest. "I'm trying to get your seat belt."
"You're bleeding," is the first thing Pat said. Wade had a gash across his left temple that's been coated in a thick layer of blood already. He doesn't know how long he had been out for, but it couldn't have been long because the storm was still raging outside.
Wade scoffed, not unkindly, "Thanks man, I hadn't noticed."
The low rumble of a car engine faded into existence and Pat watched as two pairs of headlights swerved to a stop in the middle of the grass.
Wait—grass?
He looked around—really looked. Their car was in the middle of a field, the road they had been driving on behind them in the rearview mirror. Lightning still flashed across the sky, the growl of thunder never letting up despite the wail of the twister growing further away.
The windshield of their car is completely shattered. Cracks splintered across the glass, conjoined with their friends to form a barrier that made it impossible to see through. The driver's side window had disappeared entirely and left jagged triangles behind. That must be where the cut along Wade's arm was from.
Patrick doesn't know what he was expecting when he looked down at himself. It just certainly wasn't his legs being trapped underneath the front of the car. The entire passenger side of the vehicle had been crushed inward on top of the lower half of his body. Glass shards littered what he could see of his lap and every time he tried to move his legs, he felt something else move alongside the bone in what he assumed to be his knee.
"Jesus Christ," Pat exclaimed. He turned away, a sick feeling churned around in his stomach.
"Pat! Wade!" A familiar voice shouted. Patrick watched as Jp stumbled out of their car and sprinted toward him and Wade. Entoan rushed after him and they both nearly collided into each other as they came to a stop beside Wade.
Ryann was already on the phone as he walked over. Bird surveyed the both of them and then the definitely totaled vehicle they were in, "Holy shit, man."
"Sorry, Wade," Pat said suddenly because he felt like he needed to apologize for this. "I should have been watching the radar."
"Dude," Wade started. "If you need to apologize for that, then I need to apologize for the way I drove. Even if you did see it, there wasn't a way to outrun it. We were fucked either way."
"At least your alive," Jp said. He took a shaky breath in, "I thought you guys were goners for sure."
"Ambulance is on its way," Ryann said as he tucked the phone back into his pocket.
"Can you lift it?" Entoan asked.
Wade chuckled nervously, "I'd love to see you try."
"No," Pat protested immediately. "Don't. There's something in my leg."
"Shit," Wade said. He swayed where he stood. Entoan caught him before he could fall and gently helped lower him to the ground.
"Wade?" Pat asked, concerned.
Wade waved a hand in the air, "I'm fine. My head is just killing me."
"Yeah, no shit," Bird said. "Can you see okay?"
"I don't know, has Jp always looked that ugly?" Wade asked with a grin.
"Frick you!" Jp exclaimed. "I look great."
"Whatever helps you sleep at night," Wade replied.
Patrick laughed and immediately regretted it as it budged his legs and pain pierced through his knee again. The smile never left his face, though.
They sat there for the next few minutes as the sound of an ambulance grew closer and closer. The wind speeds had died down by now, and the rain let up a bit. There were more sirens in the distance that Patrick assumed were heading toward the town. He hoped there wasn't too much damage if the tornado managed to hit before dying out.
When the paramedics ran over to them and pried off the metal from around his legs, Patrick thought he'd be sick at the sight. A piece of the metal had collided and punctured through the bottom of his knee. The removal process might have been one of the most painful experiences he's ever had, but it was also over quicker than he had imagined.
Wade and Pat rode in the same ambulance to the hospital to make sure their injuries wouldn't have any longer effects. Jp and Entoan followed closely behind them all the way while Bird and Ryann went to help out the rest of the town with promises to meet back up after they got checked out.
When the ambulance drove by the town, he saw how the south side had taken the brunt force of the impact from the tornado. A few houses lost their walls, and Patrick watched as neighbors helped other neighbors out from underneath debris. There were numerous street lamps downed and at least two cars that had been carried a few miles from where they had been picked up.
He shared a look with Wade and an unspoken conversation passed between them. Pat didn't even know what it was, but he did know that whatever he had seen in his friend's gaze sent a wave of calmness coursing through him. His shoulders slumped, and he leaned back against the ambulance wall as the doctors rushed around them.
One of those cars could have been them.
They were lucky. By the looks of it, they hadn't even been flung far. The edge of the tornado must have gotten them. Or maybe it was a sub vortex. He couldn't see before he blacked out, but it was very possible for there to have been multiple vortices with how wide the storm had grown.
They were lucky.
He looked at Wade again to make sure he was real. That they were both still here. Then he looked out the window and caught sight of Jp and Entoan's car a few vehicles away in the lane over.
They're all still here. That's what matters most to him.