WEBSTER CITY, Iowa — With severe weather season upon us, Jordan Hall is staying busy.
Hall, a storm chaser with SevereStudios, is currently in Iowa tracking severe weather after a night covering tornadoes in Arkansas.
Depending on how the night goes, Hall and his chase partner could make it into southern Minnesota.
Hall — who now lives in Norman, Oklahoma — used to storm chase in high school with his friends in eastern Montana. Like many storm chasers, it all started when Hall watched the 1996 film "Twister" at five years old.
"I just got obsessed with it and I started looking up tornado pictures, tornado videos on my grandma's computer growing up," Hall recalled. "Getting into middle school and high school, I actually started watching YouTube videos, seeing more videos on the internet, and just wanting to know why they happen and actually wanting to see them in person."
As a senior in high school, Hall remembers how one night of storm chasing led to hail damage to his pickup. "My family was not happy with me," he said.
By college, Hall was learning how to read weather models and forecasts.
Hall has been officially storm chasing since 2016. His new chase partner has about 20 years of experience under his belt.
"I think the most important thing is always having an escape route. In the situation of where we do get pretty close, usually that's kind of how we like to chase, we always have an escape route when needed. That's one of the more important things, is to understand the blueprint of a storm because every storm does have a blueprint so to speak," Hall explained. "Usually the hail is going to be in the same spot on most storms and your tornadoes are usually going to form on the southern side, underneath the wall cloud for the most part. So understanding how a storm operates and what the blueprint of the storm is, really helps you position when you're out in the field and knowing where to be and where not to be in certain moments, as well."
Their storm chasing vehicle also serves as an office. Among other things, they live stream, run radar software and get weather data sent to them. It's set up with eight cameras.
They aim to get the worst parts of the storm on camera for breaking news, but also as a warning.
"I think some people become complacent to some of the warnings... but if you can start showing people what it's actually doing, they might actually take it a little bit more seriously when it is threatening their homes and families," Hall said.
So what keeps a storm chaser chasing?
"I love the adrenaline rush I get from it, but also seeing Mother Nature do things that you never thought would be possible," Hall said. "Being able to see something with your own eyes, that's completely out of your control, that's just so much bigger than you, I think is just kind of what fuels me every day."