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November 20, 2008 |
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Created and Maintained by: The Photoimaging Information Council |
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by Mark Lapin |
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TGP: How do you work together during a chase? Melanie Metz: Peggy does the driving because we use her car and she knows it really well. While she’s driving, I do forecasting and photography. We have a mount on the dashboard for our video camera but we try to stop as often as possible to take better pictures. When we stop, we both take pictures with our still cameras.  © 2006 Twister Sisters
If other people are around, we’ll also try to get some funny shots of anyone out chasing that day. Almost every time we chase, we run into someone we know. We can be way out in the middle of nowhere and spot one other car and we’ll know the people in it. The serious chasers tend to know each other. TGP: Tell us about your arrangement with the TV station in your area. Melanie Metz: We report on severe weather for Fox News, Channel 9, in Minneapolis. We have a contract with them that runs from April through August. They have their own meteorologists but we’re always focused on severe weather forecasting so we know a little more about what’s going on. If something looks like it’s developing in the viewing area around Minneapolis, we call and let them know our forecast. If it’s close enough, they send out a satellite truck and try to have it in place to meet up with us in the field. They feed our video back to the station and we do a little report. If we can’t meet their truck, we take video of the storm, edit it on our laptop and find a wi-fi link to upload the package to the station before their news report. Last year, we managed to meet up with their truck a couple of times. This year, there hasn’t been much weather.  © 2006 Twister Sisters
TGP: Your website says there are only a handful of female storm chasers. Why do you think that is and how does it affect you? Melanie Metz: The prevalence of men in storm chasing is probably a reflection of the fact that there are generally more men than women in the physical sciences. Being a chemist, I’ve often been the only woman in a class full of men. At conferences, we’re often the only women presenting. Probably, there are a lot of women who are interested in severe weather but don’t know the science or how to pursue storms. The physics, meteorology and math are perceived as difficult. We do know women who chase, and we see them in the field. But a lot of times, the women are partners of men who are more serious. The man may be a meteorologist or serious chaser who has a wife and she’ll go goes along because she enjoys it.  © 2006 Twister Sisters
The television station where we work, Fox 9, sponsors an event called Women in Science. It’s designed to get young girls more interested in science. Peggy and I set up a booth and talked about what we’ve done as scientists. We met a lot of girls who were really interested and wanted to have their pictures taken with us. TGP: How did you get involved in storm chasing in the first place? Melanie Metz: I’ve always been curious. That’s something I’ve heard from a lot of people who are passionate about severe weather. They were just born that way. One of my goals growing up was to see a tornado before I died. As soon as I got my license, I’d drive out to watch storms. I remember sitting watching for a tornado to come out of a storm but I didn’t know where it would emerge. Luckily, I never saw one back then or I might have been in a bad situation.  © 2006 Twister Sisters
The science behind tornadoes is very fascinating. It’s very challenging and dynamic, always different. Peggy is the same way. We both have scientific minds. We’re challenged by the forecasting aspect of it. TGP: How has this season been for storm chasing? Melanie Metz: Well, this hasn’t been much of a year for tornadoes. There have been reports. There have been storms and good systems coming through when all the parameters were in place for big tornadoes but the ‘Cap’ has always been too strong to let them develop. At least we didn’t have to deal with disappointed storm tours because we didn’t run any this year. People who were out for the season hit the road all of May and a good portion of June and didn’t see a single tornado.  © 2006 Twister Sisters
TGP: Could you explain about the Cap? Melanie Metz: The Cap is technically an inversion layer at higher levels of the atmosphere. During the day, the surface air gets hot and wants to rise. When good surface-based storms get going, the warm air rises up with enough force to break through the Cap and explode with energy. But if the Cap is too warm, the surface air can’t rise. It’s called boom or bust. Storm chasers hope it will be boom but this year it has been mostly bust. We think it has something to do with the prolonged drought we’ve been having.  © 2006 Twister Sisters
TGP: The Twister Sisters don’t shoot hurricanes but you did have some powerful experiences in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Could you tell us about that? Melanie Metz: A couple of weeks after Katrina, we went down to volunteer at a camp run by the Best Friends Animal Rescue in Tylertown, Mississippi, a couple of hours north of New Orleans. We had over 200 dogs and many cats, rabbits, an iguana, all sorts of other animals. Most of them were brought in scared or injured. Some had been stranded on rooftops or attics after their owners were rescued. A lot had burns on their feet because their pads had been eaten away by all the toxins in the water. It was nice to see them being nursed back to health and regain their happiness. We didn’t plan it that way, but the evening we arrived at camp to set up our tent, the outer bands of Hurricane Rita began coming to land. We could see the edge of it. We’re not experienced campers and had to read the instructions just to get our tent up. But we camped out right through Rita, and somehow ours was the only tent that stayed up the whole time.  © 2006 Twister Sisters
Aside from helping out the animals, we also did forecasting for the camp. They were having a difficult time figuring out what to do about Rita. They had a general idea of its track but Rita kept heading further North than predicted and taking more of a turn towards the camp. They weren’t sure if they should pack up and try to move the animals to a safer place. Some people had been through Katrina, and didn’t want to go through that again. They relied on Peggy and me to give them hourly updates. We had a laptop and an Internet connection way out there in the middle of nowhere. In the end, we had sustained winds of 40 miles per hour but never did pack up. We just waited it out and were glad we did because the worst passed over in a couple of days. Then we were on tornado watch. The storms produced tornadoes 100 miles north of us but we didn’t chase because we were committed to helping out at the camp. While we were forecasting, I didn’t feel like I was doing a lot to help. But at the end, the leader came up and told us how much they appreciated the forecasting we did for them. That meant a lot.  © 2006 Twister Sisters
The biggest rewards were reunions – when an owner came in looking for a pet and we actually had them. These were people who had lost everything in the storm so being able to reunite with their pets was a powerful experience. One owner had put a note in a medication bottle and attached it to his pit bull’s collar. The note said he had waited a long time with his dog hoping to get out but the rescuers forced him to leave the dog behind. We were able to contact the owner and reunite him with his dog. At the end of our allotted time there, I didn’t want to leave. I wanted to stay and go into New Orleans and help bring back animals. A lot of people had the same experience. A couple of people quit pretty serious professional careers just to stay and keep working with the shelter. TGP: One of your fellow storm chasers, Jim Reed, told me that the Twister Sisters are quite active in raising awareness of severe weather and helping the public prepare for storms. Melanie Metz: We have been interviewed quite a bit, and we also teach Skywarn classes for the general public and emergency personnel about severe weather. The classes tell what to look for, how to report developing storms. People at the weather services are looking at radar but are not able to tell exactly what a storm is doing aside from the fact that it looks intense and might be producing hail or might become a tornado. They call people out in field their ‘eyes in the sky’ because they’re out watching what’s actually happening. It’s important to teach people to identify the features of storms so that they can help by calling the weather service and reporting what’s going on in the atmosphere. Then the service is able to issue better warnings. They know if a storm is producing wall clouds, large hail, strong winds and issue warnings before it hits populated areas.  © 2006 Twister Sisters
TGP: What other storm-chasing activities do the Twister Sisters participate in? Melanie Metz: We go to two conferences-- The National Severe Storm Chaser Convention in Denver and The Doppler Radar and Severe Weather Conference in Des Moines, Iowa. We’ve been going for a few years, and have presented a couple of times. We do case studies on the events of a particular day. We go back and look at the data, the forecasting, everything that happened during a certain event. We did a case study on a tornado in Minnesota that was not really forecasted to be in that area. The tornado was supposed to be in Iowa. We took a look at how things came together, what was going on in the atmosphere, how the tornado ended up where it was. We’re both scientists so we enjoy presenting. We’ve also met a lot of national researchers and meteorologists at these conferences. They’re great places to make connections.  © 2006 Twister Sisters
We also participate in Internet discussion groups, especially one called Stormtrack.Org, where a lot of people both serious and non-serious hang out and talk about severe weather. Sometimes we’ll meet a person in the field whose name we recognize from a discussion group. That’s always fun. A lot of people in the community know each other. We all have the same passion. To read the Twister Sisters' Bio/Background, click here.
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