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July 11, 2002 - Art Bell
02:06:15
Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell - Warren Faidley - Weather Photography, Storm Chaser. Stephanie - Psychic Visitations
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From the high desert in the great American southwest, I'm your host, Bill Hager. I'm
Bill Hager.
This, of course, is Coast to Coast AM, and I'm Art Bell.
Now, the news around everywhere else is lousy.
The wildfire in Colorado today raced across 7,000 acres.
By evening, the fire was burned across an estimated 120,000 acres of wooded hills southwest of Denver.
Fires burning in Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming, and Utah have charred nearly 1.5 million acres of tinder-dry forest and brush.
Well, that's because the weather is changing.
You see?
Earlier, I got an email from a young lady, Stephanie, I won't give her last name right now, in New York, that reads, I'm 36 years old.
I'm the mother of two children, ages 14 and 7, two nights ago.
My seven-year-old daughter awoke horrified.
She told me she had seen three aliens, small, like children, flying around the room.
They were green, had several eyes, and winged like with big heads.
Our cat, Boo, was in the room going nuts.
He was jumping up and down from the bunk bed to the floor.
She said that he was scratching one of these aliens.
The cat was.
Then when he scratched it, they all disappeared.
There wasn't any blood stains on the bedroom walls.
There is, though, a brownish-like something or another that feels slimy.
And it just goes on and on, and she gives her phone number, and so I... This is pretty weird stuff, and I thought that I would bring Stephanie on the line tonight and get the rest of the story, as Paul would say.
Stephanie, welcome to the program.
Oh, hi, Art.
Thank you so much for allowing me to tell my story.
Oh, you're very welcome.
Boy, can I hear the New York in you!
I know, I have the Brooklyn accent.
I was from Brooklyn and then I moved to Staten Island.
So, Stephanie, what is going on there?
I mean, I just read a little bit, but this has been going on how long?
Well, I don't know where you want me to begin.
I could begin when I was 15, when things started, strange things started happening to me.
You know, I could tell you the whole story, or you want to hear what happened two nights ago?
Well, some of the early stuff.
Okay, alright.
About age 15, I had bought a Ouija board.
And at the time, I was not aware of the dangers of using one.
Uh-huh.
And I used to play with it just for fun.
And I had that Ouija board in the house.
Very strange things started happening to me.
For example, I used to sleep on a canopy bed.
Yes.
And the canopy top would start blowing with all the windows shut.
It would just blow.
And one incident in particular that scared me to death was, I felt a strange presence in my room, and it was very scary.
I jumped out of my bed, and I put the light on, and I looked at my hands, and on one of my hands was written what looked like ash.
In ash it was written the name of a woman, uh, Anna Bringenham, it said.
Give me that name again, Anna.
Anna, I think it was B-R-I-G-A-N-H-A-M.
And that was written on your hand?
Right, it was sort of like in an ash, like a smoky ash.
A smoky ash, okay.
And then I ran into my mother's bedroom, which was next door, and I woke her up screaming, and then I opened the light in her room, and then the writing transferred from my hand to her wall.
The writing went from your hand to her wall?
Right.
And she got out of her bed, we both could not believe what we had seen, and the name Anna Bringenhand was written on the wall.
Oh, my God.
What did your mother say about this?
Oh, she was petrified.
And, uh, you know, a lot of things started happening.
Like, we had found a statue once.
It was like an Indian warrior statue.
And it had red, ruby eyes.
And one night, the eyes started to glow so bright as if flames were coming out of his eyes on the wall.
Yes.
And, uh, I just felt there was like an evil spirit in the statue.
And then, on a few other occasions, I was scared to death, so we just, we threw it out, not in front of our building, but we walked a few blocks down, you know.
Alright, you're now 36 years old, huh?
Right.
You're a mom yourself.
Right.
You've got a couple kids, 14 and 7, and whatever this is, has it gone away, Steph, for long periods of time, or has it like always been with you, occurring every now and then?
Uh, it's always been with me.
Always, huh?
And I always have, uh, like, psychic dreams.
You know, like, I have premonitions, like, I was in a bad accident when I was 19, and I had dreamt a dream, uh, exactly the way it was gonna happen, like, a month before it happened.
Really?
And, um, the policeman had said that they thought that we had died in the wrecked, the wrecked car.
It was so bad.
And, uh, in my dream, I was instructed how to, uh, open up the car door.
Everyone was unconscious except me.
And I pulled my friend out, and my boyfriend at the time, the two boys were in the front, you know, he was, uh, he went through the windshield.
Yes.
See, I'm already sitting here at this point listening to your story, you know, thinking, this girl opened a door back, uh, you know, when she was 15, and some sort of, um, evil spirit, uh, uh, came through.
Yeah, I had the idea, I became a morning Christian at 19.
So I got rid of that Ouija board.
I mean, I would never play with something like that again.
Yeah, I know.
But when a door's open, someone comes through and you close the door, all you do is lock it in sometimes.
And so I was thinking, here's some sort of evil spirit perhaps, frankly, inhabiting you.
But now you're telling me that at one point, it or something warned you of how to escape an otherwise fatal accident.
I don't know what it is.
You have both evil and an angel and an evil spirit.
I don't know.
I'm mixed up there.
Maybe.
Two nights ago, what happened in your home?
Okay, this is pretty scary.
Okay, it was two days before Father's Day and my seven and a half year old daughter, she woke up panicked and she said she saw three small aliens.
She said they were about like her height, about four feet.
And, uh, she just, the way she described them, they were green, they had horns, they had big yellow eyes with eight fingers, eight toes, and she said they had four eyes.
The two regular eyes in the middle of the face and one eye on each side of the ears.
Really?
And she said they were flying all around the room.
So our cat, Boo, he was in the room and I had noticed he was acting crazy.
He started jumping up and down on her bunk bed, from her bunk bed to the floor.
Uh huh.
And then he was, uh, his ears went back, which is, he doesn't do, you know, he don't act like that.
And he was chasing, like he was chasing something.
And then she said, Boo scratched one of the aliens, and then all of them disappeared.
And, uh, and then, on Father's Day, which was two days later, I put my daughter to bed around 10 o'clock, and me and my 14-year-old son decided to go down and watch some TV, because we weren't toys.
Then we came up around 11.15, went to sleep, In about ten minutes, my son started to yell to me that his bed was shaking.
His bed shaking?
Right.
It was shaking.
Right out of The Exorcist, huh?
It's scary.
Alright, and so you went in there?
No, actually I sleep with my children in the same room.
Okay, well then you should be aware then that the bed's shaking, shouldn't you?
Well, it also happened to me.
One of my other stories was from When I moved here, you know, my bed was shaking too, like two years ago.
What, how much shaking are we talking about here?
This is like, well, what happens to me, it would shake.
I think it was part of a dream.
You know, the bed would be shaking.
Yes.
And I'm actually like half asleep and half awake, but he was awake.
You know, he hadn't fallen asleep yet.
And, um, then he, um, he was terrified and he's a smart kid.
So I know when, you know, when he's really scared.
I tried to comfort him, and then we shut the light again.
I said, maybe he'll go away, you know?
Right.
Then our cat booth starts going crazy again, and he, um, started clawing around the bottom of the bunk bed where my son sleeps.
And he was going crazy.
Then my son felt some kind of, uh, some hands or something trying to push up his mattress.
You know, and, um, he felt actually a claw, a giant claw try to claw him, he said.
A claw.
So then I open up the light and, uh, he's screaming.
And, uh, it's just, uh, then I got out my Bible.
I'm trying to say scriptures and everything.
I said, in Jesus' name, you have no power here.
Leave my children alone.
And I said this a few times.
I sat on my son's bed saying this.
Then I put the nightlight on.
And I left it on all night.
And then the next day, I see on top of the bunk beds is, like, brownish red.
They're, like, pointy marks.
Brownish red pointing marks on the bed.
They're still here.
No, they're on the wall.
I see that there's five in all.
It's funny because five of us live here.
It's my husband, my mother, me and my two kids, and there's five marks.
Like hallmarks?
You could say that they're like pointy.
It's sort of like points.
I don't know.
It's weird.
It's kind of weird to explain, though.
But when I touched it, it's like, feels slimy-like.
But they're like, sort of, it's like brownish.
Is it, uh, you say it just feels, it feels slimy?
Right.
Uh, is there actual material that you can see there, or it's only to the touch?
Um, I see it.
You know, I didn't know what it was.
I showed my mother, she was like, uh, she couldn't believe it herself.
So there's some kind of material there, then?
Yeah, it's five marks.
You know, it looks like, uh, Well, it looks brownish, sort of.
I'm looking at them now, in fact.
They're, like, pointy.
You know, on the wall.
I don't know if it's the blood of the creatures that my cat scratched.
You know, I don't know.
I don't know what's going on.
Normally, you see, normally I would beg you for photographs, of course.
But you mentioned in your email that your computer is launched, I guess, huh?
I was surprised I even got through to you today.
You know, I was praying that I'd You know, it sounds like something has, there's only two possibilities I can think of.
One is, something has attached itself to you, and it's still there, and you're going to have to do something about it.
Yeah, I don't know what.
Or, or it's coming from you.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I also had, um, like a cat, another cat that was 17 and he had died.
And when he died, uh, he died up in our room here.
So the night he died, I buried him out in the back.
And, um, when he died, you know, we, we, we were hearing all things up here, like thumping and running around.
And, uh, we were just, like, scared.
My kids were, like, clinging to me.
Very scared to death.
Mm-hmm.
And, uh, but I felt it was him, you know, just coming back to say one last goodbye.
Right.
And that happened, uh... It happened.
...two years ago.
Uh... I don't know.
You know, it's a lot of bunch of different things here.
So, you're scared?
I'm scared because I'm a Christian.
I believe we have power over evil.
Well, didn't you tell me you just said be gone in the name of Jesus?
Well, it wasn't gone, you know.
I get that.
I get that.
You really need, I think, you need to be in touch with somebody.
Somebody who can really help you out.
Somebody... Yeah, I'd be willing to even put a camera in here.
Sometimes they have those Things where you could, you know, the cameras see things that you can't see.
You'd be willing to have cameras?
Like, you know, to see if there's something in this house.
Cause, um, there's a lot of stuff.
And then I hear, we hear singing sometimes like little children in the, by the attic.
How frequent is all this going on?
How frequently?
Um.
An investigator would ask.
It's a lot in the summer months, you know.
My daughter, I had gotten her two Teletubbies, uh, what was it, last summer from a yard sale.
Yes.
And the Teletubbies, in the middle of the night, we hear them singing.
They just would start singing.
The Teletubbies started singing?
By themselves.
Yeah, we were petrified.
We woke up, we were like shaking and scared.
I threw them out.
You know, I threw them out.
You know, I'll tell you what I'll do, Stephanie.
I've got your phone number, your personal phone number.
So, if any investigator out there feels like pursuing this with cameras or a team, they're going to need more details, and I'll sort of screen them, and I'll put you in touch.
How's that?
I appreciate it, because I would like to... I mean, if there's something here that someone I'm the evil spirit here.
I definitely wanted to get out of this house.
I understand.
All right.
Done deal, Stephanie.
I appreciate it a lot.
Okay, thank you very much.
I love your show, and you're doing a great job.
Thank you, and have a good night.
You too.
A quiet night, I hope.
Oh, I dread to go to sleep.
That's why I listen to you.
I'm up all night, you know.
Okay, take care, Stephanie.
All right, good night.
Good night.
All right.
That's Stephanie from New York.
Yeah, you know, after hearing all of that, and obviously there was more we didn't hear, that's a case I think of.
I can only consider two possibilities, but you know, who the hell am I?
I can only consider that she has allowed something in that is still with her and may always be with her.
She echoes of last night's program about the Bell Witch, huh?
or it's coming from her you know young teenage girls boy again and again and again you hear about these stories but here it is still with her here's something that i would like to help you have you all follow up on for me uh... it comes from a listener in toledo ohio maggie maggie art i heard a news story this morning at eight thirty or nine o'clock on clear channel wspd in toledo Ohio about a bottomless pothole in the middle of the street.
Firefighters put a 1,000 foot line down that hole and didn't hit bottom.
I only heard part of the story and think they said it was in a place called Washington or Washington Township anyway.
I think this may be another of the bottomless holes like Mel's.
Let's do a real quick break.
Well, I almost did it again.
I get so involved in what I'm doing that I blow right through breaks.
I do it all the time.
Things on my mind.
And my back is, by the way, my back is really giving me fits right now.
So I'm doing a little Back at Better Knocks on the Wood.
All right, listen.
We're going to take the regular network break now, and we'll be back shortly with a couple of more items.
Boy, there's an awful lot going on out there.
Can you believe an earthquake on the New Madrid Fault?
Gordon Michael said, watch for it.
I'm Art Bell, and this, from the left coast, is coastal.
And it's coming home, we gotta get right back to where we started from.
Love is good, love can be strong, we gotta get right back to where we started from.
Woah the
okay here we go into the night uh... there seems to be some but israeli by the way i'm getting word uh... that there is
a big uh...
a ufo flap up possibly going on in uh...
I think it was New Hampshire.
And maybe my wife will come in.
I know Peter called just prior to the show and said that he couldn't confirm anything yet, but that there was something going on in New Hampshire.
He's getting some sort of word.
So consider that one sort of as a stand, no doubt we'll say, before the night is over in the gray box.
And we'll see what happens.
West of the Rockies, you're on the air.
Good morning.
Hi.
Hi.
I just wanted to call and inform you about the bottomless pit in Seattle, Washington, I think it is.
Well, let's see.
What did it say?
Let's see, about a bottomless hole in the middle of the street.
So it didn't say.
It's in King County, Washington.
Yeah, I heard about it on the radio today, but I guess the firefighters or the street people went to go try to fix just what they thought was a hole, and that's when they dropped the rope down, and then it just never ended or never stopped.
I'll tell you, there's something about Washington State, isn't there?
Yeah, I know.
And this bottomless hole stuff, um... I mean, how could you... I mean, this was in the city, huh?
Yeah.
I mean, they opened, like, a manhole or something?
I don't know.
It was, like, a hole in the street, and then they peeled the road back, and then that's when they realized, like... Oh, my God, this hole goes down forever.
Yeah, and they dropped a brick down it, and you can hear the brick bounce off the walls, but you just never hear it end.
This is... this is under a street?
Uh-huh.
So, I would say that it probably disappeared because I don't see people building a street over a bottomless hole.
Well, I wonder how many Chevys have gone down there?
I don't know.
Fords?
For real?
GeoMetros?
You wouldn't even hear of Geo.
For real?
You'd have to go clink once and that'd be it.
Alright, well, I appreciate the information.
Yep.
Alright, thank you.
Take care.
What is it about the state of Washington and these holes anyway?
The middle of the street.
Boy, I'll tell you, we live in a time of weird news, don't we?
Again, the story I have, talking about this fault line, the Evansville earthquake, actually the Midwest earthquake, you ought to call it, really, it says Johnston From the U.S.
Geological Survey said it was an arm of the new Madrid fault zone.
And then it goes on here to talk about the New Madrid Fault, and this is from CNN.com, for what it's worth.
West of the Rockies, you're on the air.
Hello.
Hi.
Hi.
I'm Aliza, and I'm calling you from KFI 6.40 in Norwalk, out of L.A.
County.
That's, well, the point is in the wrong place.
It's just 640.
Just 640.
Okay.
You know the gentleman that called last night about the birds dying here in L.A.
County, in L.A.?
Oh, yes, I do.
Oh my gosh, we had a pigeon in our backyard that was dying and had eventually died.
And we've had other little birds that have died.
We've had crows that have died here in Norwalk.
And this little Norwalk.
And plus... I'm getting a lot of emails about this.
I wonder what the hell is going on down there.
I don't know that, but you know what else?
Besides the birds, my cat, she caught a bird this morning.
And so it's got to have been slow of stealth, you know, for her to catch it.
And my cat, that's the first bird that she's caught in a long time.
But I think because my cat's been throwing up, my dogs have been throwing up, I think there's something going on here that they're not telling or doing that they should be doing.
Because the animals are getting sick here.
Well, you know, when miners used to take canaries down into the mine, Yeah, I have a canary.
And the canary dropped dead in its cage.
They knew it was time to go.
Yeah, so I think... I wonder if it's like that.
I don't know, but it's got to be something.
But you know what?
You turned me into that VersaCorder.
I love my VersaCorder.
My next big buy is going to be that telescope.
I love you, Art.
You're the best person.
And even though you keep me up, women stay up anyways.
Thank you for the call.
Okay.
Take care.
That was very nice of you.
A verse quarter's neat.
You can record a whole show on a verse quarter.
A lot of people are catching on to that one.
First time caller line, you're on the air.
Hello.
Hello, Mr. Bell.
I have to relate the story to you very quick because there's definitely something afterlife.
I was looking at the computer on Saturday because I used to live around Fort Myers, Sunnable Island to be exact.
And so I usually look at the obituaries who died in that area because I know a lot of people there.
I live in Santa Clara, California now.
Right.
So as I bring up, I never read the article, but there was an article about Father's Day and this gentleman that founded the Edison Mall.
It's quite a large mall in Fort Myers.
And I started reading the article, which I never do.
And I go to the second page, and as I go all the way down to the last picture, there were pictures in of this gentleman that founded the Edison Mall.
The last picture shows me my son, who died 24 years ago.
What?
Standing in that mall.
Walking in that mall right in front and and behind it is a bunch of scaffolding.
How can you know for sure?
I already called up.
I found out it's him.
I called Florida.
What?
And my son died 24 years ago in July the 8th.
Wait, wait, wait.
Slow down.
Let me first ask you, 21 years ago, you say your son died.
24 years.
24 years, I'm sorry.
In what manner, what was the manner of his death?
He had a boating accident on Sanibel Island, in the Gulf of Mexico.
A boating accident?
Yes, sir.
And his body was recovered?
Yes.
And you and your family buried him?
Yes, yes.
Or cremated him or what?
Well, he was cremated.
Now this picture is taken before he died.
It was taken in June of 78.
Oh.
But what this picture is telling me, because I was looking for a job and I don't want to go to a mall for some reason, I fear malls because of the attacks.
Yes.
So this picture is telling me that my son is sending me the message, don't work at a mall because behind him There's hardly anybody in that mall.
There are two women walking in front.
I've got the printout in front of me.
Him standing right in front of the scaffolding and men are working on it.
Do you think that's the message?
Really?
I do.
Well then, that's the kind of thing you better follow.
Don't you believe in that?
Because it's the second time he's given me messages like that.
Ma'am, I'm not sure what I believe.
I think I do believe that such things can occur, and if I received that and I thought as you do, I would avoid malls.
Well, thank you, and happy birthday, Mr. Bell.
Oh, thank you very much.
I would avoid malls.
You know, you've got to follow your gut on this stuff, as it is with a lot of life.
You've got to be true to yourself, honest with yourself, and if you're not, Then you're going to make a hell of a lot of mistakes.
If you're not true to yourself, if you don't follow what you believe in and pursue that, then you're going to make mistakes and maybe there's a lot of people who don't listen to things and they make the ultimate mistake, you know, and they're immediately sent to the other side.
Of course, we never never hear any complaints about those mistakes, because they were the last mistakes made of that sort.
Wild Card Line, you're on the air.
Hello.
Hello Art, this is Colin calling from Evansville, Indiana.
Oh boy, ground zero, huh?
Yes, sir.
Listening to you on 1280 WGBF.
Yes, sir.
Just wanted to get with you a little bit on today's activities.
5.0, not a whole lot of damage out here.
Yes, that's right.
damage and that's what you would expect with a five quake but right just just
got a little eye-opener I guess you could say yeah a little hello there
yeah but there's been no hello there on this line of the fault line since the
1800s yes that's right we've had a few tremors here and there but that's about
it until today I was wondering if the gentleman that predicted this had
predicted any any major quake on the on this fault well you know I hate to be
the bearer of bad news What I would recommend you do is you go back and listen to the program with Gordon Michael Scalion.
I really don't want to speak his words.
I just want to advise you to go back and listen to that program.
Okay.
All right, sir.
Well, thank you and have a good evening.
You have one yourself.
Bye.
You know, that hit me right between the eyes, as it did a zillion other people.
I mean, this is pretty fresh in everybody's mind, what Gordon Skit said about the New Madrid fault.
Now, there will be others, I say, as a little controversy about what fault line it's on, but according to CNN, it was New Madrid.
East of the Rockies, you're on the air.
Good morning.
Hello.
Hi.
Turn your radio off, please.
Sure.
It's always number one.
Where are you calling from?
How you doing?
I'm calling from Cape Cod, Art.
Cape Cod, all right.
Nice to hear from you.
Well, actually, good to hear from you, since you called.
Ease to the Rockies, you're on the air.
Hello.
Hi Art, how are you doing?
Just spiffy.
Joe from Boston, WRKO 680.
I have a comment and a question.
I want to ask you first my comment and then your question on KNYE.
Sure.
What is happening to Dr. Anderson?
Have you gotten involved with his family?
No, listen.
No, well, we're trying.
We had numbers, we had websites, and I'm telling you, man, just Well, the reason that I ask is maybe you can have this professor on, this guy from Italy, who built this little time machine, because if this thing works, maybe the Air Force or Area 51, which I hope you do more programs on, knows about this and they're doing some work down there.
Well, maybe we can get a picture of Dr. Anderson or Madman.
Well, look, everybody has a mass amount of electronics.
I was sort of joshing.
Of course we have failures.
You know, can have things that go wrong.
Everything is on computers.
He said they have failures over there.
Computers, do you have failures?
I mean, you record all your shows.
Do you put them on analog or digital?
We do not have failures.
No, no, Will said that over at the...
Well, look, everybody has a mass amount of electronics.
I was sort of joshing.
Of course we have failures.
You know, can have things that go wrong.
I mean, everything is on computers.
Everything. Everything.
You don't use analog or reel-to-reel anymore?
There's not a turntable, there's not a record, there's not anything that even resembles that technology anywhere near the building.
Wow!
I don't like computers.
You don't, huh?
No, I can't see it, you know what I mean?
Well, you know, the problem with computers is they don't care whether you like them or not.
Well, how do you record all your shows?
You must have an awfully extensive... No, no, no, no, no.
What do you mean, how do I... I play them.
In other words, my show comes up live as it is right now.
But it's being recorded?
No, no, no, no, no.
Does that mean you're recording it at KNYE for later?
No, no, no, we're not.
We're just playing it live.
It comes down from satellite in a flash and we just air it live, sir.
Oh, I thought you were archiving it for your own... No, the network archives it for us.
And they do that on hard drives, sir.
Oh, my God.
Hey, we're in the age of computers.
You can ignore it, but it's not going away.
Well, I hope you get that professor on.
Yeah, I do, too.
All right.
Thank you.
Wes of the Rockies, you're on the air.
Hello.
All right.
I have two things.
The first thing I want to tell you is I have the miracle cure for your back.
Uh-oh.
Do you know how many miracle cures have been thrust upon me?
But go right ahead.
Okay.
First, you know I'm on the level.
I know the terminology.
I've got the same deal.
L4, L5, S1, S2.
I've lived with it for 30 years.
Okay.
Proceed, sir.
What is the cure?
Yeah.
There's a back machine that certain physical therapists and chiropractors have, and it increases the muscle mass in your low back.
A back machine?
Yeah.
It's a very expensive.
It's a $50,000 machine.
Yeah, it's a very expensive, it's a $50,000 machine.
Oh my God.
Only certain of the, you know, physical therapy, sports injury offices have it.
But find one of those and I'm promising you it'll work a miracle for you.
It has for me.
I appreciate the information.
Sir, what else?
Yeah, the other issue is that I wanted to ask if you could ever get those four army intel guys that went AWOL from Germany, what was it, eight to ten years ago?
Yeah, I interviewed them.
Yeah, I know that you interviewed them years ago.
I wondered if you'd done a recent one.
No, the story, I appreciate the call, but the story hasn't changed.
It was a very strange story involving a Ouija board and soldiers that went AWOL and ended up in Florida.
And I interviewed them years ago and there's not been a change.
To that story, yeah.
It was weird then, it's weird now.
Very, very strange story.
First time caller line, you're on the air.
Hello.
Hello, Art.
Hello, sir.
You must be in a truck.
Yeah, I'm a truck driver.
I'm in Chattanooga.
Now, head down to Atlanta.
Yes, sir.
First of all, I want to wish you a belated happy birthday.
Thank you.
I couldn't get through last night to tell you.
I finally got to check out your website.
I checked out that...
American Anti-Gravity that you had on the website.
That's a pretty neat little deal there.
Yeah.
They actually got all the parts you can buy to build your own.
I've been thinking about trying that as soon as I get the chance.
Well, I recommend it.
I mean, by all means.
You know, people trying these things by themselves is a really good idea.
Usually.
Yeah.
Usually.
That's pretty neat.
There are some things that you should not try at home.
That are dangerous, but when one comes along that you can try and verify yourself by all means.
Canada's number two privately owned national television network, according to Sammy from Ottawa, said in its 6.30 newscast, the weather is Canada's number one story today, according to Canada's Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
The weather is only number six in the news, but this one, the privately owned one, is where it's listed.
He says I can't blame him because in Ottawa we've already had, listen to this folks, three times the normal level of rainfall.
Farmers near Montreal would have had more success growing rice in water paddies than the more traditional crops up here.
Now, water that might well be in Colorado right now is instead to the north where it ought not be, in Ottawa.
Three times the normal rainfall in Ottawa, up in Canada.
Now isn't that exactly what we said would occur, that weather conditions would begin moving north?
That appears to be a process well underway right now.
West of the Rockies, you're on the air, hello.
Hi, Art.
Hi.
I want to give you something.
Turn your radio off, please.
Okay.
Hang on a minute.
Okay.
Always folks have it next to you so that you can turn it off the minute you get on the air or you will confuse yourself.
Okay.
Yes.
I want to give you something because you have been giving us something for so long.
We've completely gotten rid of our TV.
We don't have cable anymore.
Really?
Big move.
That's a big move.
Who made the decision?
Well, actually the cable company made it for us.
Oh, I see.
But anyway, what I wanted to tell you is we listen to Art Bell every night, faithfully, and we really enjoy you.
And I wanted to tell you, I've seen pictures on your website of your wife, and I wanted to wish you a happy belated birthday.
Take that woman out.
My back will permit me to walk straight.
I'm sort of bowed a little bit right now.
My back knows when I'm about to, you know, want to do something important, whether it's
work or vacation.
It doesn't matter.
My back knows.
And it goes, gotcha!
It's sort of like with your vehicles.
My mom always told me, don't talk about when you have extra money in front of your vehicles or your plans.
Or they'll take it, right?
Uh-huh.
You got it.
Gotta go.
When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school, it's a wonder I can think at all.
You know, I recently had a conversation in my Firebird.
I've got a Firebird Trans Am.
I barely ever drive it.
We drive the Geo Metro.
But now come to think of it... It's been acting a little strangely.
I wonder what it wants.
I wonder what it's going to do.
each one of us or not welcome to the program
Well, thank you very much for having me.
Where are you physically right now?
Physically, I'm in Tucson, Arizona.
Tucson, Arizona, huh?
Well, tell me, did you hear about this mess in the west?
Yes, I sure did.
We had some of the winds down here, but certainly not the intensity that you guys had up there.
Yeah, they were definitely clocking near 100 miles an hour now.
As a storm chaser, can you give me some idea of what the hell happened to us today?
Well, to put it as simple as you can, it was just a very intense Low pressure system, and we have these all the time.
So it was a pressure gradient then?
Correct.
Yeah, the atmosphere is always trying to balance.
You have the holes, which are low pressure, and you have the highs, which are the building pressure, if you look at it that way.
And this was just one of those holes in the atmosphere being rapidly filled with flowing air.
And on the surface, that translates into really high winds.
Well, I tell you, we dived 30 degrees in an extremely short time, so that tells you how much energy was at battle, I guess is the way to put it?
Yeah, the atmosphere is battling between the high and the low pressures all around the globe, and this one just happened to be centered over your neck of the woods, and as you said earlier, it's almost like the jet stream Uh, when you have winds that strong, you know, the jet stream usually runs between 80 and 200 miles per hour, so you guys are somewhere right in the middle.
Yeah, yeah, definitely.
Oh, gosh, the damage.
Anyway, that's nothing new to you, I guess.
You have been a storm chaser now for how long?
Oh, going on almost 20 years.
Twenty years.
You're crazy.
Lincoln and I?
Absolutely crazy.
I did the same thing, Warren.
I was an amateur.
I was stationed at Amarillo Air Force Base in Texas, up in the panhandle of Texas.
That's in the middle of Tornado Alley.
And I have a very good friend who's become a meteorologist.
He has done so for a television station down in Lake Charles, Louisiana, named Lynn Woodlake.
And Lynn and I used to take off from the Air Force Base and chase These thunder heads, these roll clouds, we chased a few right on up into Oklahoma in a stupid little Volkswagen, taking footage to sell to local TV stations.
And how I came out of that alive, I have no idea.
Now I didn't go on to be the weather nut that my friend did, and obviously you've gone well beyond that, but what possesses a person To put themselves in the way of danger like this.
I mean severe, life-threatening type danger.
Well for me it's a journalistic pursuit.
It started off that way.
I started out as a newspaper magazine journalist and wanted to do something different.
I mean I had friends who specialized in news or fashion or sports and I thought well you know no one's doing weather.
There's no photojournalist out shooting weather exclusively.
So, at the time it was just really accidental.
I fell into something that no one else was doing and there was a vacuum for those kind of images and what at first I thought was going to be a serious hobby or sideline turned into a full-time business.
So, in other words, when you know that weather is going to hit or is very likely to hit, what do you do?
Start driving?
Get on an airplane?
In other words, how does a photojournalist interested in covering weather disasters, how does he get around?
Well, that's a good question, because you almost have to be there with weather.
In breaking news, you can go to a scene.
You either get there too early or too late or at the right time, and then you get the shot.
With weather, it generally requires a little bit of pre-planning.
For example, you were talking about Amarillo.
In about two weeks, I take off and meet some of my Chase volunteers in Amarillo, and we'll chase from that location.
There you go.
Now, I heard an interesting stat on CNN the other day.
They said that this year thus far, we have had not anywhere near the number of tornadoes that we would normally have, which indicates some kind of change is going on, apparently.
Absolutely.
As a matter of fact, I think the count right now is at about 59.
There may have been another one or two today.
The official count is 58.
Usually this time of year, the preliminary count is somewhere around 150, maybe 200.
So we're way behind.
That's a big difference.
Even more amazing is the fact that as of the 13th of April, this is the longest period we have gone in U.S.
history without a tornado fatality.
That's right.
That's what I heard.
That's what was on CNN.
Oh, that's amazing.
Yeah, 1961 was the last time and that went right up to April 12th.
So, we've set a new record.
Now, in your profession, do you have any guesses about, you know, weather everywhere seems to be undergoing a really drastic change.
People have noted, for example, this year that there doesn't seem to be a springtime.
People have gone from winter straight into summer.
And they're missing the seasonal change.
It's it's getting radical.
Very true.
And as a matter of fact, if you look at some of the data from this year, this is a very unusual year.
Not only the tornado counts down, but the number of very strong cold fronts that usually go down into the deep, deep south and create these storms.
We haven't had those this year.
So the whole pattern has suddenly shifted into a very benign system.
Of course, today, if you You would be thinking that.
These weather patterns change over years.
If you look, for example, at tree ring research where they take the very old trees and cut them in half, of course, and look at the actual rings, they can tell there are fluctuations.
every so many hundred years or even thousands of years if you look at some
of the other fossilized data. So we go through these swings and we may
be at this time in our history preparing to go through a major
swing, major change. Yeah I would say it's probably underway right now actually. I have no idea...
They're upping the forecast for the number of hurricanes they think there's going to be.
I know an El Nino is building quickly again in the Pacific, and so I guess we're really in for it, which means that business for you is probably going to be pretty interesting.
Unfortunately, you know, when you have these lulls, when things slow down, I get a little bit nervous because That usually means that Mother Nature is trying to find some kind of a way or method to make up for it.
You know, the quiet before the storm fits the situation.
You officially call yourself a storm chaser, right?
That's the title.
Journalist.
A storm chaser journalist.
So in what way are you different from other I recall we were simply, when I did it, we just wanted footage.
Boy, when those tornadoes would begin to dip down or touch ground, we were on it with footage, probably ignoring life and limb.
But Lynn, who's a meteorologist, knew which side of the storm to keep us on.
He probably kept me alive, I'm sure.
It's quite dangerous in that part of the country when you have those Those supercell thunderstorms, but you have to remember the majority of people that chase, believe it or not, this may shock some people, there's probably about two or three hundred hardcore people who chase just for the thrill of it, for the fun of it.
Just for the thrill.
The thrill of it.
Now, some of these people do it, they've been doing it for years.
As a matter of fact, the first real storm chasers, the first people that went out and did it for the enjoyment began in the 1950s.
And since Twister, the number of people have gone up into the hundreds.
As a matter of fact, you can go out on any big storm day now on the plains as you used to do in Amarillo.
You would be shocked.
You'll see hundreds of cars lining the road, traveling towards these storms.
Really?
It's completely, in some places, it's gotten completely out of control.
As a matter of fact, some people have suggested legislation.
I'm not, I'm not, I can't defend myself because I think I probably did it.
You know, I was a young airman, I was stupid, and I did it.
I'm sure I did it for the thrill.
You know, I'm sure that was a big part of the equation.
We were taking footage and we were selling that, and that was good little business for a while, but frankly, it was a thrill.
I remember a movie, you remember the movie about the shark and the beach and all the rest of it?
Yes.
It kind of reminds me of that, I suppose, in a way.
Anyway, listen.
What do you do when you go out?
Who do you go out with?
If you take off after one of those big cells where you believe that a tornado might develop, what do you take with you?
How do you protect yourself?
Have you ever been actually... Have you ever actually... I've got so many questions.
I'm sorry.
Have you ever actually, for example, had a tornado cross over you?
I've had the winds that feed into a tornado, the forming tornado, hit the vehicle I was driving back in Kansas in the early days of chasing when I didn't know any better.
I drove right into the area where the circulation actually begins.
You can tell because there's very strong wind shifts all of a sudden.
You notice things just aren't right.
The winds, matter of fact, they'll go from one direction to the next direction without
warning all of a sudden and then back the other way.
That was a good indication that I was in the wrong place.
No, I've never actually been inside a tornado.
You've seen the classic footage, of course, of the people who were caught under the freeway
bridge as a tornado passed directly above them or over them.
That's incredible.
What would have happened to the barometric pressure below these people?
Wouldn't they have lost eardrums, that sort of thing?
No, the pressure doesn't actually drop that much.
From what they know, there are people who have been, and that's a great example, people who have been very close to tornadoes, and there's even instrumentation relatively close to some of the larger tornadoes.
The pressure wouldn't drop enough to hurt you, but they found recently that underpasses are probably one of the least likely places you want to be During a tornado because they actually channel the wind.
So the old theory about going to an underpass has changed in recent years and it's not the best place to be.
Although better than I suppose out on the flat.
Well, you know, it depends.
If you can find a small depression, you have to remember these winds, which can reach 318 miles per hour in an F5 tornado, are right above the surface.
So, theoretically, if you can find a very small ditch, those winds will go right over you.
The problem you have is debris.
Debris flying within that zone of destruction can hit you.
And there have been cases recently where people did the right thing.
They did find a small ditch.
So, the best advice is to be as far away from a tornado as you can be if you see one coming.
Well, again, circling back to that famous shark movie I was talking about, I remember a scene in which a bunch of good old boys with beer and guns, they were overloading a boat and on their way out to kill that there shark, you know?
And I remember a scene in which one of the officials was standing on the shore just shaking his head going, they're dead.
You know, they're dead.
And it's kind of like the hundreds of storm chasers that you're talking about take off out of Amarillo and other places during the really worst of it and chase these things.
You really think there ought to be some sort of legislation about this?
Well, I don't really think there should be, but there are people who have proposed it because it is getting out of control.
I mean, it's not unusual to see the roads lined with cars.
I mean, literally lined as far as you can see.
And you have to remember, there's a lot of people chasing who have a legitimate reason
to be there.
There are journalists, there are scientists, there are spotters who are out there to warn
the community.
So there's a lot of people who chase responsibly.
And even the people who chase for fun, a lot of these guys and gals will report what they
see.
You know, they're not out there just to have fun.
They actually will call the weather service and report something if they see it or if
there's an accident, they'll stop and help.
But there is a good old boy aspect to it.
People just out there, let's go see a tornado, honey.
Yeah, and you've got your locals now.
And the weather stations in Tornado Alley do such a wonderful job now of covering.
I mean, they're on live when there's a storm.
These listeners who have never been in the plains would be amazed.
I mean, it's continuous live coverage with a radar that shows you right where the storm is.
A lot of people see that now, and they get in a car, and they tear after the tornado.
So you've not only got the chasers from other areas, you've got the local people going out to take a look.
And you've even got the reports of radar, so if you're chasing, you know right where to go.
Oh, absolutely.
And people nowadays, of course, have satellites or televisions in their cars, so it's not hard to find a tornado nowadays.
How do you, in other words, When you see a front developing, or something that's obviously going to produce a tornado, or very likely will, of an F4 or F5 variety, something really awful, in the Midwest, do you get on a plane and move, or what do you do?
Well, there are systems occasionally.
April 26, 1991, I believe that was the year when there was a major outbreak of tornadoes.
You could tell days in advance, you could see the system coming, but most of the time Amarillo in the best location and from about so the last week in April through about the second or third week in June somewhere within that region now it may be Midland Texas all the way up to almost the Canadian border there will be somewhat of a regular season you may have to do quite a bit of traveling but there will be tornadoes every few days so once you're there it's a matter of forecasting it's a matter of going over the data the trucks we use for chasing and
Really?
Wonderful gadgets.
So we're forecasting continuously from the morning when the first reports come out we're looking at data throughout the whole day on our laptops and refine our chase area to one location and of course once the storms go up it's more of a visual chase than it is so much of a data chase at that point.
How many times have you come close to dying?
Well my first storm chase, believe it or not, at age 12 I got the wacky idea here in the desert to go out, as you know there, when it rains, being flat out here.
The little washes, as we call them, fill up with water, and I got the bright idea to go out and have my first storm chase.
Well, unfortunately, I was part of the back gateway, and I was swept down this flooded ravine.
Went through, you know, the near-death experience in a little movie.
What movie there was at age 12 flashed before me.
Oh, really?
And I can remember to this day, and of course, at 12 years old, there's not much, but there was a little significant, you know, fast-moving little movie that everyone talks about, and to this day, I can vividly remember it.
Listen, hold on.
We're at the bottom of the hour.
This is all about storm chasing.
Warren Faidley is my guest.
I'm Arbel.
All right, Warren, this may be outside your immediate storm chasing experience.
However, it may relate to what we're talking about tonight.
You know, we've got a situation in the world right now where, for example, the Larsen B ice shelf just collapsed and is in a million pieces right now and can be seen from satellite down at the Antarctic.
At the North Pole, our Navy is talking about a new ocean.
Because it's melting.
No more subs being able to hide under the ice up there, because there won't be any ice in Alaska.
The tundra is melting.
I mean, there are some fairly significant changes going on in the world right now, and that's bound to affect your work.
Absolutely, and over the course of the last 20 years, I've noticed changes.
The best example, if you ask anyone here in the Southwest, in Tucson, about the summer monsoons, they'll tell you that in the last 10 to 15 years, the monsoons have changed.
As a matter of fact, most of what I would consider my best lightning shots were accomplished
ten or fifteen years ago when we had a large number of summer thunderstorms.
But in the last ten or fifteen years, that number has dropped off.
We also have the same monsoons you do, and they just don't come up here anymore.
Yeah, and that's all over the country.
You can talk to people that have been in one area long enough to notice changes, some of them very subtle, changes in wildlife, the number of animals or amphibians in a certain area, all these things.
Collectively, they do signal that something is changing.
Something major is in the middle of a change, that's right.
And so, you really kind of work at the macro level.
In other words, you look for a major event of some sort and you make your way to it for photographic and journalistic reasons.
So your material appears, I guess, all over the place, huh?
All over the world.
I've been published in probably almost every news magazine.
Certainly here in the United States and even in foreign countries.
And it's amazing some of the things weather photos are used for.
I've seen them used for everything from puzzles to on cigarette lighters, billboards, you name it.
When you think about it, if you consciously think about it, pick up a magazine in your house right now, you'll probably find a stock type weather photo.
So, you know, that's really true.
I really hadn't thought a lot about that.
So there's really a pretty good market for what you do.
Oh, absolutely.
And then you have, of course, the film and video end, which opens up a whole new area of interest.
I have watched a couple of specials on tornadoes, and I've seen some of the F5 tornadoes, and it's hard to imagine anything on Earth more frightening than something of that magnitude.
I take it you've seen them?
I've seen one F5.
Matter of fact, the first major tornado I ever encountered on April 26, 1991.
Oh my God.
It was so large it really looked like a dust cloud.
It looked like, or actually it looked more like a cloud of smoke.
Where was this?
This was near Red Rock, Oklahoma.
As a matter of fact, the scientists were near the same tornado with portable Doppler instruments and they actually recorded the highest wind speed.
I've ever recorded of a storm and that was I believe 318 miles per hour which is the
top range, top end of an F5.
Actually our atmosphere is only capable they think of supporting a certain wind speed under
any condition, isn't that true?
Well yeah, if you look at the physics, you know, and weather, one of the things that
fascinates me is the physics involved.
You know, if you're talking about a softball sized hellstone falling at 100 miles per hour,
if you're talking about the wind speed, the damage from tornadoes, there's no doubt that
there have been tornadoes with winds that have exceeded the 318 ranges.
Some of the damage is incredible.
There's one wonderful story the old-timers in Nebraska like to tell about a tornado back, I believe it was in the 40s or 50s, that hit and carried away farm machinery that they've never found.
They've never found?
Never found.
Which would mean to you Would mean to me that the wind speeds were so incredible that this machinery was deposited either somewhere where they can't find it or disintegrated or buried in the ground or just disintegrated.
You would think something of that substance, I mean it would certainly take some of it out, but the major body of the thing would have to have more or less survived.
Oh gosh, I wonder if that'll turn up in a desert in Africa somewhere.
You never know, there may be some munchkin driving it around in the land of Oz right now.
Yeah, there may be.
Do you particularly chase our tornadoes, your specialty, or do you look at all kinds of weather and disasters?
Well, I chase everything.
I start in the winter with blizzards and work the way through the spring with tornadoes and then lightning in the desert southwest during the summer, late summer, and then of course hurricanes along May I ask you a question?
I'm also, whether or not, and when there's a hurricane, for example, I watch CNN like a lot of other people.
Do you know some of the CNN correspondents, by any chance?
go through everything and and and do the marketing may i ask you a question
by i'm also whether or not and and when there's a hurricane for example i watch
cnn like a lot of other people do you know some of the uh... cnn correspondence by any
chance i would think you brush
up against them occasionally i have run into him
You have run into him?
On different stories.
I've always wondered, you know, during a hurricane, the practice lately has been to take some poor correspondent who doesn't seem to have anything better to do that day, I guess, and say, listen, you're on an airplane, you're going down to where we think the eye of the hurricane is going to be, and here's this poor guy hanging on to a lamp pole, you know, with a camera pointed at him, and you wonder, man, he drew the shot straw.
Well, I tell you what, most journalists, and I believe there's even old footage of Dan Rather recovering those storms, and I could be wrong.
I've heard him say once that he enjoyed covering those kind of storms.
You know, there's just some attraction to weather.
It's not, as in news, and one of the reasons I got out of news was there was all this violence, man against man.
Now, of course, we have the terrorism.
I didn't want to cover that because, to me, that was just something Completely out of control, and if you were killed by it, it would be, in my opinion, somewhat worthless in the scheme of things.
While, on the other hand, nature, which is just so magnificent, no one has any control over.
You know, you can't have a peace accord to end all the supercells in Texas tomorrow.
They're going to happen.
No, actually, there's another side of this, and a lot of people won't understand it, but I've not seen an F5, but I've seen plenty of tornadoes, and The listeners aren't going to understand this because people have been killed and a lot of houses have been destroyed and towns have been destroyed, but there's something incredibly beautiful about that demonstration of nature.
Beautiful is a dangerous word to use, but it's true, isn't it?
Absolutely.
To see a storm that's towering over three times the height of Mount Everest, or close to it sometimes.
And just the colors and the power and the energy of that and the light,
the way the light plays on these storms, it's just beautiful.
And people usually have two opinions.
They're either terrified of storms, as a lot of people probably were in your area today,
or they're fascinated.
It seems that people's interest swings one way or the other.
Well, it's fascinating to listen to if you weren't in it.
And perhaps when we look back on it, we can say, remember the storm of 2002?
You know, then it'll be fascinating.
In the middle of it today, it was simply downright frightening.
And that's the thing about weather.
You know, it's interesting if you've noticed, whenever there's wind damage, and I'm not talking about today, but I'm talking about usually associated with a regular storm with a precipitation involved.
People will always insist, if there's any damage, that it was a tornado.
And I've noticed this over the years, it's kind of fascinating.
If there's any kind of wind damage, it's almost like People want it to be a tornado.
They will insist, if you see them on the news or if you see them at the scene, they'll always say it was a tornado, even if the damage is all in one direction and it's obviously just straight-line wind damage.
Right.
It's amazing how people are so fascinated.
They want to associate that damage with something like a tornado.
Well, that's because their brains are trying to assimilate what could have done this, and they just don't believe anything other than something as violent as a tornado could have done that much damage.
That's where it comes from.
Yeah, absolutely.
I understand you've got a chase truck, which you call Archangel.
Why Archangel?
Well, I really can't tell you.
I figured that after all these years of chasing and surviving, I must have some kind of an angel.
That's the best reason I can give you for the name.
It's a custom-designed chase truck.
It has just about everything you can imagine inside of it from a defibrillator, in case
we run across an accident or someone is struck by lightning, which is one of the biggest
dangers when you're chasing, to computers.
Safety equipment has a full five-point harness system like NASCAR in it and a roll cage.
Aren't you afraid of the electromagnetic effects on all that electronic equipment out in the middle of cells?
Well, the truck has been hit by lighting.
It was hit last year in Eastern Colorado.
And the only thing it suffered was one of the driving lamps blew out.
Wow.
uh... scared of the living heck out of me but uh...
i would think i would much rather have a truck out there that would attract the
lighting with me and being relatively safe inside a vehicle which you are
as opposed to being standing out there and having meeting the biggest
uh... target well that's true
And I suppose you're sitting on rubber.
As long as you're on rubber, you're probably pretty much okay.
Yeah, as long as the windows are up and you're not touching anything that's grounded to metal, you're safe.
Now, there have been, believe it or not, this is rather bizarre, but there have been instances where people were driving and the tires actually blew out and they lost control of the vehicle.
Oh, it blew out the tires.
It will blow out the tires.
That is relatively common when vehicles are hit by lightning.
I should say it's not uncommon.
So all four tires could go at once?
Well, all four.
One or two.
So it's something to keep in mind when you're driving in a heavy lightning storm.
In other words, that's actually the lightning then finding its way to ground through the metal of your car and then ultimately through the rubber of the tire and just blowing it up?
Well, probably through the rim somehow.
Probably.
We used to know when I would chase the storms out of Amarillo, we'd watch those roll clouds and we would know when the conditions were just right.
actually believe it or not usually it goes right to the frame. Again you get into the
physics of storm chasing which absolutely fascinate me.
We used to know when I would chase the storms out of Amarillo, we'd watch those roll clouds
and we would know when the conditions were just right. Can you feel it too?
You can feel it when the conditions are right but you know it's very difficult on a big
day to predict what will happen.
And I remember a couple times last year when we had what was labeled as a moderate risk or a high risk.
And that's a level that the Storm Prediction Center uses to grade, in layman's terms, the risk potential on a given day.
And you can feel the energy.
You know, after chasing this many years, I can tell by the way the sky looks in the morning.
I can tell by the way the wind.
Sometimes you can tell by the smells.
The moisture here, you can occasionally smell the golf as it works its way up into Texas.
Oh my.
And those days, you know you're going to see something.
You know there's a lot of energy in the air and something big is going to happen.
Something big is going to happen.
Now there are many days when the atmosphere is capped off.
And a lot of people would say, well we had, you know, you had these giant winds today and these winds were blowing into the plains.
Why didn't you have a lot of storms?
And the answer is lack of moisture and also the upper atmosphere was warm.
But you just never know.
On any day, you may go out and see the most magnificent storm
or the most magnificent tornado you can ever imagine.
And you may see nothing.
And that's one of the things I know attracts me and other people
to chasing is that unknown.
And as I told people before, it's like opening up a birthday present every day
when you're out there, you just never know what you're going to find.
And to me, that unknown.
In my opinion, that's what we had here today, was straight line winds approaching 100 miles an hour.
A lot of people are asking, I get these fast blast computer messages while I'm on the air
and they're saying you keep using the term straight line winds.
In my opinion that's what we had here today was straight line winds approaching 100 miles
an hour.
Now what does straight line mean versus, I guess obviously a tornado is a twister.
It's in rotation, right?
Correct.
Straight-line winds are just one direction.
In other words, for example, when the air falls from a thunderstorm and hits the ground, it moves out laterally in one direction.
With a tornado, you have circulation, so the damage would be in a different type of pattern.
Whether our researchers or the people who go out and do damage surveys Here in the desert, we have these things called dust devils, and they look for all the world like miniature tornadoes.
Of course, today there was no question, it was straight line winds.
Here in the desert, we have these things called dust devils.
And they look, for all the world, like miniature tornadoes.
Now, what is the difference in the physics, if there is a difference,
between a dust devil and a tornado that's formed as a result of a, or comes from, is mothered from a thunderstorm?
Well, they're both rotating columns of air.
They're both a type of vortices.
The difference is a tornado is associated with a thunderstorm.
A dust devil is more of a thermal feature, which results from the thermals rising from the desert
floor, and is usually associated with high temperatures and
sometimes a little wind.
They can approach some pretty good winds.
They can.
As a matter of fact, here in Tucson, back I believe it was in the 40s or 50s, a military cargo plane crashed after it flew into one.
So they can be strong.
I've heard winds that can reach 40, 50, maybe 60 miles per hour.
I'm sure there's exceptions that have gone even higher than that.
Yes, and you go from dead still to 60 miles an hour, boom, like that.
Absolutely.
Five zillion questions.
A note about Dust Devils.
We were talking earlier about my first chases.
After the flood, I chased.
I then moved on to Dust Devils, so it was kind of interesting you brought that up.
You moved on to Dust Devils?
On my little, back then we called it a little spider bike.
Oh, no kidding!
And I borrowed a pair of welding goggles from a kid and wrapped myself up in a winter jacket.
You can imagine it was 115, of course, when you're a kid, you don't care.
I can't imagine chasing dust devils.
And we would sit out, I had a group of three or four kids, and we would sit out in the corner of this giant vacant dirt lot, vacant dirt lot, out in the 110, 115 degree temperature, waiting for the right dust devil, and off we'd go, riding into the center.
And there was a couple of occasions I actually got into the middle of them, and I remember the interior, the first thing was it was as hot as a blast furnace, you could barely breathe.
I don't know exactly what physics are involved in there, but the inside temperature was even hotter than the outside.
Yeah, I was going to ask.
I wonder if there's some sort of barometric pressure difference.
There must be in the center of that.
The rotation must cause it.
It may be the pressure.
It can be, you know, the way the air is condensed inside of it.
Who knows?
But I remember looking inside, and you could actually see the wall, the dust going around me, and it was kind of a weird, eerie... To the inside?
Dusty yellow look, and you could actually see the tube going up into the...
Into the sky.
Oh, that's really weird to be right in the center of it and to watch the wall all around you.
You know, I've thought about in recent history, nowadays, to go back and do it with some professional equipment and see if I can actually photograph it or videotape it.
Of course, I'm sure if I was out there doing it, it probably wouldn't be too long until the guys in the little white uniforms show up.
Probably not.
Do you get approached by local authorities frequently when you're out?
Yes, as a matter of fact.
Most of the time, the local authorities want some kind of weather update, and I have a pretty good working relationship with most of them, as I do with the weather service offices throughout the plains.
But, yeah, you know, law enforcement and the spotters really don't get a lot of the credit they deserve.
I mean, in any community right now, as a matter of fact, as we're talking as late as it is, I'm sure somewhere in the United States right now, there are storm spotters out looking at a storm, reporting it back to the weather service.
Storm spotters are really overlooked and we hear all this about chasing but...
Storm spotters, the people who work at the Weather Service, are often overlooked in all this.
Very important.
Very important.
They save a lot of lives, and they unfortunately never get credit for what they do.
All right.
I'll hold it right there.
Warren Fadley is my guest.
He gets to take a little bit of a break right now at the top of the hour.
We're talking about storms, and we had a real whiz banger in the desert here today.
The desert picked up and moved.
I'm telling you, it was awesome.
From the high desert in the middle of the night, I'm Art Bell.
Once again, here is Warren Fadley.
Warren, I've got a question for you from Columbia, Tennessee.
What is a microburst?
You know, we know what a tornado is, sort of.
I guess.
We know what straight-line winds like the ones we had here are, but what is this microburst thing?
It brings down airplanes and stuff like that?
Well, microburst is what we talked about earlier about the wind falling from a thunderstorm and hitting the ground.
Of course, if you're flying and you fly into one of these, you're going to have air which is descending and can get you in a lot of trouble.
So that's what, when people say a microburst hit, that's what they're talking about is when the wind under thunderstorm fall. The down draft right? Right, the
down draft and move out across the ground or of course if you're flying it won't do
you much good but if you're up in the air and they'll push you down towards the
ground so that's why you hear that term used. These micro bursts are visible
on some types of radar? It depends.
You know, I suppose you could adjust a Doppler-type radar to pick something like that up, but generally they're not.
Now, there are special radars that are used around airports to detect these things.
Generally, when you're talking about microbursts, you're talking about a very small, concentrated area, usually somewhere less than, say, three miles.
So, it's a very, very small area.
And they don't last that long.
They usually last less than five minutes.
But, again, if you're in a plane or if you're on the ground near one, they can do quite a bit of damage.
Here's Sheila in Arlington, Texas, who says, Mr. Bell, in May of 99, Oklahoma City, Tornado F5.
Ask if he was there.
It's the highest storm winds ever recorded.
It felt like your insides were being sucked out.
Your eyeballs, too.
We went through it.
What was the date again?
99 Oklahoma City F5.
Yes, I wasn't on that specific tornado.
I was on a tornado that was west of Oklahoma City.
As a matter of fact, there were three or four intense supercell storms that went up on that day and I believe killed 30-40 people.
That was the last major fatality type outbreak we've had.
Well, here's a good question for you.
If you're with Dorothy there in the farmhouse in Kansas, and you look out and you go, oh my God, a tornado.
What is your best bet?
Assuming you don't have a storm cellar, do you get in your car and run?
Or is that one way to do it?
A safe way?
Or do you hunker down in the house?
Or what's the safest bet?
Well, as I always tell people, to save as bad as to have planned ahead for that.
But if you get in a situation like you just described, the best thing you could do is to find someplace underground, no matter what it is.
You're always going to be safer underground, in a basement, in a depression.
You know, if you were an experienced storm chaser, there's a chance you could get in a car and drive away if you knew what you were doing.
Right.
But most people, when they see a tornado coming towards them, they panic.
I mean, they lose their mind.
Tornadoes are really odd because they're somewhat mesmerizing.
And even after the number I've seen, there's still something about them that I've equated to like, you can get transtix staring at a fire in a fireplace.
That's right.
There's something about them that just transtixes you for a while.
And I'm sure there's a lot of people who have lost their lives because they've seen these things coming.
And they just freeze.
And they freeze.
And they're very hard to, it's very hard to judge distance and speed.
Because it's such an odd phenomenon.
It's not something you see every day.
They've had tornadoes do some pretty strange things.
Like, for example, stay in one spot for 20 minutes and dig a hole in the ground.
Well, I don't know.
I know that tornadoes can move in very odd directions.
The majority of tornadoes move, you know, towards the northeast or towards the east.
Right.
But they can do odd things.
There's tornadoes that have made complete circles.
There's tornadoes that have stopped. There's tornadoes, as a matter of fact, a couple years ago, there was one moving
at a hundred miles per hour.
I heard, Warren, that occasionally tornadoes have actually become so strong, so fast,
that they've broken away from the thunderstorm that was feeding them and moved ahead of it.
That I have never heard of.
You've never heard of that?
No.
Now, of course, they don't last because they're not maintained, but they can, for a time, move ahead, I've heard.
Well, during a dissipation stage of a tornado, you can still have a very weak circulation.
It may not be associated with the main rotation of the storm, but that would be very short-lived and probably wouldn't do any damage.
Now, you can have things leading edge.
You can have these vortices at the leading edge of an understorm known as gustnados.
But they're not generally associated with any kind of large-scale rotation as you have with wind.
Did you say gustnado?
Gustnado.
Located at the leading edge of a thunderstorm or just in front of it.
As we were talking earlier, some of the winds, the microburst-type winds fanning out from the storm will kick up these little, very similar to dust devils, in front of the storm.
And they're often mistaken.
I've seen them.
And if you're depending on which way you're looking at a storm, and if you don't have
your bearing straight, it will look like a real tornado.
And many of the fault reports you get around thunderstorms are gustnadoes.
Okay.
Are we perhaps overdue for a major, very deadly weather event?
It's been so quiet, but quiet and weird.
I mean, what did they say, Minnesota?
90 degrees today or something like that in Minnesota?
That's insane.
Well, and we took a break there.
I was looking at some of the forecasts for today now.
I guess it was tomorrow just a little bit ago, but for Tuesday.
You know, there is a risk up there of severe weather, and you figure with these winds heading up in that direction, and the dew points are a little bit higher, and those higher temperatures, something's going to give.
So, if you live up in that part of the country, you might want to keep an eye on the weather tomorrow.
You wouldn't likely take a trip, based on what you know tonight, unless, of course, you're doing the program, so you can't do it, but I mean, seeing that, would that cause you to get on a plane and go?
No, it would have to be something extraordinary, something that had enough positive elements and a few fewer negative elements to go.
There are a few situations where I would actually do that, but you have to remember with severe weather, you know, you can forecast a day in advance, you can forecast hours in advance, but a lot of times it comes down to, believe it or not, one or two degrees difference in the upper atmosphere, which we call capping, which holds back The development of storms and sometimes that can be just a few degrees that will prevent major tornadic outbreaks.
The people in the planes probably have no idea how many times that chasers have been sitting out there and the atmosphere has come within just a few degrees of letting loose absolutely How much does the jet stream have to do with this?
It does seem to follow that where the jet stream curves and twists directly under the jet stream, people seem to have a lot of trouble.
Is it the jet stream driving the weather along with it, or how does that work?
Absolutely, the jet stream is one of the most critical elements.
For the formation of a tornado, you need to have that upper level flow.
You need to have veering winds from the surface up through the atmosphere.
Very important to get the rotation going in a storm.
The jet stream also creates lift in the atmosphere.
When you have any body of fast-moving currents over an area, you're going to have some upswelling, which will give you some lift.
The jet stream also vents storms.
Most of us see storms out here in the desert.
They go up and they look tremendous.
But what happens is they collapse on themselves, all that weight, and they just fall and collapse.
Yes.
Well, with the supercell storms you have out in the plains that create the majority of the large tornadoes, you do have jet stream winds, which are venting the top of those storms, allowing the updraft to survive for a longer period.
Okay, but how high is the jet stream?
Well, the jet stream generally, when you hear someone referring to a jet stream, they're talking about Somewhere in the range of anywhere from probably, you know, 10,000 feet on up to
40, 50, 60 thousand feet.
Alright, the reason I ask that is because when you get, when you start talking about the supercells you and I have been talking about, the kind that form out the panhandle and up into Oklahoma, those supercells I believe can get as high as 50 or 60,000 feet, can't they?
Oh yeah, it's not unusual for them to be well over 50,000 feet.
So that means it's right on, it's going right through the jet stream?
Oh yeah, absolutely.
That helps move the storms along, and again, it creates a lot of lift and moves them along.
When you talk about a jet stream, you have to remember there are different types of jet streams.
There's low-level jets, what we call, that sometimes set up in the plains coming from the south.
So you have jet streams up through all levels of the atmosphere, and of course, depending on where you are on Earth, there are different levels and different intensities.
You keep talking about the physics of all of this.
Do we completely understand, do we really completely understand the physics of all this?
One would almost think no, or we'd be able to have completely accurate forecasts, which we certainly do not.
Well, you know, weather forecasting is kind of interesting because of all the sciences, it's probably one of the ones that has not really advanced as fast as a lot of other science.
But why not?
There's a good reason for that, and that is a lot of the top minds, and there are, trust me, there's some people in tornado research, and people, for example, out of Norman, Oklahoma, who are brilliant.
I've met these people, I've read their work, they're absolutely brilliant people.
The problem is, on a large scale, I don't think a lot of kids are enticed into meteorology.
You know, people with a brilliant mind seem to go towards the money.
They go towards, you know, engineering, law, medicine.
Yeah, but you're a good example of somebody who's been able to chase his dream and storms and make money at the same time.
That's true, but, you know, I'm not a scientist, although I do admire the science of it immensely.
It just doesn't attract, meteorology doesn't attract, I think, the most brilliant, the large pools of brilliant people, although it certainly has a few people, many people who are Who are gifted, but it doesn't attract the kind of people I think who are looking for money.
I just can't figure that.
I mean, it has one of the most profound effects on our planet.
It makes or breaks insurance companies.
It affects economies of entire nations and parts of the world.
It just doesn't make sense.
I mean, it's what's all around us.
Well, you know, weather forecasting has come along very slow.
We have things now called atmospheric profilers.
Which are Doppler radars that point vertically.
So, you can actually tell the wind speeds if you have the right configuration.
You can actually tell which way the winds are blowing without setting up the standard.
You know, everyone's probably, most people have seen the weather balloons that they release.
We're all sure.
To gather data as they go up to the atmosphere.
Sure.
Well, the problem is, here in the U.S., most of the time they only launch those twice a day.
They launch them at a.m.
and they launch them at a p.m.
So, When most severe weather occurs, which is towards, you know, the after mid-afternoon to early evening, they don't really know what's going on in the atmosphere as far as temperatures go.
For example, we were talking earlier about the cap and the temperatures, how important that is for severe weather.
Right.
Occasionally, if it looks like it's going to be a big day, they'll send up an extra balloon, but that's one of the weaknesses.
It's just an example of one of the weaknesses in forecasting, is there's that large void of data Between certain hours that prevent forecasters from making a really, really positive forecast.
And there's other little things like that.
So I think, you know, at some point, somebody has to be willing to put the money and the technology into it to make more accurate forecasts.
Although, of course, nowadays, I think you could say the forecasting is a lot more accurate than it was, say, 10 or 20 years ago.
Well, I'm going to go to my experience here over the last, say, month.
A lot of times they will forecast 40 mph better winds, perhaps gusts to 60, and it just doesn't happen.
And it doesn't happen four or five times.
And then suddenly, yesterday, it happened.
It didn't just happen.
It happened beyond Uh, their wildest expectations of the forecast.
I mean, we had almost 100 mile an hour winds here and they were talking about maybe gusts to 60.
So they seem to miss it on one side or the other.
And that causes people, you know, after you cry wolf about three or four times, people go, Oh yeah, right.
You know, we're used to wind here in the desert.
No big deal.
And then you get the almost 100 mile an hour winds that destroy things.
Well, still, it's very difficult to forecast, and it's not because of negligence with the tools that the forecasters have.
And I think the technology, they do the best they can with what they have.
But, you know, weather's fickle.
It's really bizarre.
You just never know from one day to the next what's going to happen.
And, you know, you do the best you can, but there's no foolproof method yet.
Within, really, a few hours, To forecast, of course, with Doppler radar, which is one of the greatest, in my opinion, tools that the Weather Service has nowadays, you can dissect a storm and tell if it has tornadic potential, sometimes an hour in advance.
Okay, listen, I don't want to crash your site, but I'm on your site right now, stormchaser.com.
We've got a link up under your name on my website right now, artbell.com, if people want to follow it.
stormchaser.com is the website.
And I'm looking at a photograph of this month's amazing storm-chasing weather picture, courtesy of StormChaserPicture, the month's homepage.
Okay, well, here is this tornado.
My God, it looks like, it actually looks like I'm curious, are you looking at the photograph?
I think I remember which one it is, even though it's this way.
It almost looks like there's three other tornadoes visible, or three other little arms that could be tornadoes, or part of the... I can't quite make out the configuration of what I'm seeing.
It's very interesting.
Okay, yeah, this is... Someone earlier had emailed you about the 1999 outbreak in Oklahoma, and this is one of the tornadoes.
From that day of a western storm holy smokes West of Oklahoma City and that just missed you can see a little house down there Of course people listening can't see it But the tornadoes passing right next to a farmhouse and probably missed it.
I it looks like probably about a quarter of a mile Wow from from nailing as a matter of fact when I was sitting there videotaping that there was a group of people local people there Talking about the people that live there.
They they actually knew the family hmm Let me ask again about the apparent additional tornadoes or additional rotational things that are sticking down, not all the way to the ground.
What have we got there?
Well, you have to remember that the majority of tornadoes are made up of individual vortices within that circulation.
Right.
So, when you see on television a tornado, it's not just one, usually one large circulation.
It's a series of sub-vortices within that circulation, which, if you think of it, the damage that does,
instead of having one area of circulation, you may have numerous areas, and they're spinning,
you know, 200 or 300 miles per hour.
You can imagine the efficiency of the damage and also why you have sometimes unusual damage.
You know, one building will be destroyed and the one next to it is not because of the way the physics of the structure of that vortice.
This one, you can see there's the main one on the ground and that circulation around that area is actually some of the other Vortices are spinning off of it.
And sometimes you'll see them, they'll come out horizontally.
As a matter of fact, in that same day in Oklahoma City, there's a classic shot of a large tornado on the ground with a horizontal tube coming out the side of it, a smaller one.
Again, you know, the physics are just amazing.
Do we really understand completely, do you believe, the physics involved?
You know, there's some researchers in Oklahoma that are doing that right now.
A couple years ago they had Operation Vortex.
Which went out to a massive research project.
They were using planes and research vehicles.
And the data from that is just fantastic to read because they've learned so much now, especially with the portable Dopplers, which they're taking out into the field, able to dissect storms up close and personal to get all kinds of different readings at different levels to see why these things form, why they dissipate, why sometimes the perfect storm does not important to the ones that do.
Oh, that's an interesting term.
So they're learning.
I mean, for example, they've found out that a lot of the tornadoes are the result of boundaries
left over from other storms.
Matter of fact, if I remember right on this day, I believe there were some existing on the Oklahoma
day in 1999.
There were some boundaries from previous precipitation earlier in the day.
Just as a matter of interest, since you do this as a full-time profession, when things are totally calm,
and it's a beautiful day, and the birds are singing, and there's no bad weather anywhere,
do you sit around and pout or what?
No, you know, I enjoy that.
Do you really enjoy a nice day?
I really do.
You know, I don't enjoy the death and destruction.
Hold on.
We're at the bottom of the hour.
I was just wondering what does a full-time photojournalist do on a really nice day?
This is coast and we'll be right back Well, this should be getting to get very interesting.
Warren, you mentioned a phrase a little while ago that keyed to memory for me, Perfect Storm.
Of course, it was a movie called Perfect Storm.
And occasionally, storms can sort of come together, can't they?
It doesn't happen all that frequently, but large storms can come together and become one.
You know, the elements that help create a large storm systems like like the perfect storm for example it's really a timing of elements coming together at the right time whether you're talking about your the wind you have today or the perfect storm you know it's like a machine everything have to work the right time and come together right place to create or the wrong way depending on your point of view.
The wrong way correct and as a matter of fact I just noticed here this is kind of interesting they just issued a high risk Or actually, today would be Tuesday.
Four?
Proportions of across Minnesota, western Wisconsin, northwestern Iowa.
So all that heat is about to explode?
Your winds are going up there.
As a matter of fact, a lot of people probably don't know what high risk means, but I'll tell you that's a very, very rare rating that the Storm Prediction Center gives.
You see only a handful, maybe one or two a year issue.
Oh, really?
Very, very rare.
As a matter of fact, I was just looking at the statement here, it says parameters appear to be coming together for a significant severe wind event across portions of the upper Mississippi Valley.
Oh my God.
We heard the 90s in Minnesota, so in other words, all of that heat is about to meet up with something.
Absolutely.
The moisture up there and the heat and the winds are going to come together tomorrow.
And if you live up in that portion of the country, You'll want to really watch the weather tomorrow, the forecasting.
Again, that's very rare.
They issue these, and I saw the red come up on the screen.
As a matter of fact, if you go to my... We were talking about the stormchaser.com on the left-hand side.
There's actually a little graphic there from the SPC, and you can click on there.
It'll give you all the... Where is it?
I'm on your page.
If you look on the right-hand, or excuse me, the left-hand side... Right.
You come down there about halfway, it says, Today's Severe Weather Outlook.
Okay.
From the SPC, and I put that there so people can go there.
But when we were talking at the break, I looked under and saw that red, and I'm like, oh boy.
No, I want to see it myself, and everybody else is going to be rushing there.
Now, let's see.
I'm on main menu, media center, stock images and footage, Warren Cyclone, Cowboy Home Page.
Oh, that should be interesting.
Storm Chaser, Print Gallery, Chase Products, Speaking Engagements, Sponsor at Chaser, Chase Frequently Asked Questions, Chase Links.
We're getting there.
Uh, Kid Storm page.
Kid Storm page!
Absolutely.
Uh, and then I've got contact data.
And the next thing should be the Severe Weather Outlook.
Uh, let's see.
There you go.
Today's... Oh!
There it is.
There it is.
You can see they got one.
So that red area...
Very, very, very significant event could occur tomorrow and as a matter of fact they've even
discussed issuing a public information statement and that's another rarity when they actually
issue that kind of a statement.
Now I want to point out this could change.
This is preliminary.
This is early.
Well what does this likely mean, Ron?
What does this likely mean though?
I mean, are they looking at the possibility of tornadoes there, severe thunderstorms, or is this just going to be like what happened to us today?
Well, no, it's going to actually be more storms.
I think the upper atmosphere, I looked over this real quick, I didn't have time to go over the whole statement, but I think the winds, as we were talking earlier about the jet stream, and this all ties together, the winds are unidirectional, they're coming from one direction.
instead of having that turning in the atmosphere, which will create more rotation in the storm,
I think they're looking here at more of a straight line damaging wind event and maybe large hail.
Now, that could change, again, this is preliminary, and in the morning, I'll tell you,
I don't know how many times I woke up and looked at one of these at night
and got all excited when I'm out chasing, and it's taken down to a slight risk,
which is one of the lowest ratings.
So severe weather like this changes hourly.
Yeah, I see.
It says parameters.
A lot of it seems awfully technical here for people like yourself, but it says parameters appear to be coming together for a significant severe wind event across portions of the Upper Mississippi Valley on Tuesday.
Oh, wow.
So, all of that energy is about to be converted.
Does that mean that it's going to suddenly, after all this happens, get cool?
I don't remember there being a real strong cold front associated as you normally have this time of year with this system.
This is more the dynamic system as opposed to what you associate with a cold front coming down and sweeping across the country.
This is a very intense low pressure system.
The one you had again is working its way up there and when it hits that moisture So, in other words, what we had is what's headed their way to cause part of the problem?
It's heading their way.
The strong winds, when you mix that with, you know, when you mix any kind of a strong wind with surface heating dew points, you're looking for trouble, and that's obviously what they're seeing here.
By the way, folks, if you click on that little map, it gives you a big map, and then it gives you all the explanation.
That's really a cool link.
Yeah, they do a great job, the SPC.
I mean, you can't give enough credit for putting this out now.
In fact, I'm bookmarking that as we speak.
Pilots, public look at these now, weather people, it's great information.
As a matter of fact, it breaks it down here into tornado probability, damaging wind, and large hail probabilities, too.
Alright, here's a question that everybody asks, and I've had people call me up and say, you know, there's got to be a way to stop A tornado, people have envisioned blowing, literally blowing them up, putting some sort of a very high explosive or maybe fuel air explosive or you know something or another in a forming tornado that would cause it to disperse instead of to continue to form.
In your opinion is there any possibility that could work?
Oh I think someday you know you could have lasers or some type of energy that could be Absolutely.
put into storming. They tried dropping chemicals into storms to try to change.
As a matter of fact, I think they tried a couple years ago on a hurricane to try to cool it.
You know, once you cool a thunderstorm, the heat, that has a tendency to diminish it.
Absolutely.
But, you know, the problem with that is that any time you monkey with something like a thunderstorm,
There is the other danger of unleashing even greater potential.
Making it worse.
Making it worse.
And a few years ago, there was a situation where a company did some cloud seeding and the storm went on to produce severe weather.
I don't remember the specifics, but there were people at the time blaming the people
who cloud seeded saying, well, that, you know, cloud seeding produces more rain.
If you're not familiar with it, that's what they do.
But the storm went on to become more severe.
It may have been more severe even without the cloud feeding, but you have to be very careful because once you start... So that probably discourages those kinds of efforts?
Absolutely, because people are going to be suspect anytime you try to change the storm.
But you have to remember, storms are a very large scale system.
It's very difficult.
I mean, how are you going to pick which storm?
It's not uncommon on the big severe weather days to have lines of storms or squall lines that can stretch almost across the whole country.
I think at this point it would be very difficult but someday who knows and of course that'll put me out of business but that'll be happening.
I'll co-retire.
Warren, that leads us into even a touchier couple of areas here.
One is there are a lot of people who believe that there are ongoing attempts at weather control.
That our government would not talk to us about it for the very reasons that you just spoke about that they'd probably get blame But that they are secretly experimenting with modifying our weather.
I'm sure you've dealt with the question.
Oh, absolutely.
And I'm sure I've heard rumors.
I've talked to old timers who've told me back even in World War II there were secret projects
to try to make, create cloud cover, for example, or to create fog or to modify the weather.
I believe both here, or I should say the United States, Europe, the Allies, and also in Germany
at the time I believe there were attempts to modify the weather.
But again, the amount of energy it would take, I think, to change any kind of weather system
It is not available now.
Well, you know, I'll tell you about an interesting story that you may or may not be aware of, but when there were tragic, terrible fires going on in Southeast Asia, Russia offered to produce a cyclone.
They said that they had satellite technology in place, satellites in place, That could produce a cyclone, and they actually offered to do it for free.
I believe it was for Malaysia, if I'm remembering correctly.
They offered to do it for free once, but would charge for it afterwards.
Pretty wild story.
That was in the mainstream press.
Yeah, again, the amount of energy that you would have to expend to create a storm would be fantastic.
I mean, to modify it, I think is possible, but to create it But who knows?
There may be some method someday.
Who knows?
It may be one of those situations where you can start something very small and it can grow in intensity.
Like tickling an elephant or something.
There you go.
I don't know.
And then, even more controversial, I've got to at least run this by you.
There are, Warren, thousands of people across the country right now That believe they are seeing something they have not seen before now.
We all know what contrails are.
You know, condensation, little wispy condensation things that appear behind airplanes, sometimes linger for a little while, but most times just sort of fade away.
In recent years, on my program and many others, people have begun to talk of what they are calling chemtrails.
And they believe that something is, I guess that hmm, means that you're not too familiar with this or it's just too controversial.
No, I've heard of the donut-shaped controls, which some people theorize are pulse-type experimental aircraft engines.
Yes.
No, these are, and I've seen them myself, so I can describe it to you.
On an otherwise not cloudy day you will see many jets laying out patterns frequently an X type pattern and instead of the normal dispersal of of the contrails that you would see, just a slow wisping away, these grow sort of a dirtier color, they expand, and they actually become kind of a dirty, cloudy day.
And there are many people who believe that there are ongoing experiments, for what reason we're not sure, weather modification or something else, that's being performed by some jet aircraft.
Pretty wild stuff, I know, but Believe me, many people have seen and believe this to be true.
Well, there's even been theory that the jet contrails actually change the weather when you have enough of them.
Right.
You can actually change the weather with that.
So, you know, who knows?
Any possibility there could be something to that?
Well, you know, I personally haven't heard that.
I personally haven't seen anything.
I've seen contrails that will fan out depending on what the atmosphere is doing.
more like Cirrus, sometimes you'll have a system moving in ahead of that
and the Cirrus will blend in with the Contrels.
In some cases, it's kind of rare, but you can have Contrel shadows
where the sun actually hits the Contrel and hits a cloud below it, say a Cirrus cloud
and you actually see a gray shadow below it. But I've never heard a
theory of anything like that. You're liable to hear it in the next hour.
So then, is it fair to say, do you think that if
attempts at weather modification are going on, either in the private sector
or in the government sector, they probably wouldn't do a lot of talking about it?
Oh, absolutely not.
I mean, it's the same stuff going on up there in your neck of the woods.
I don't think the government would certainly want to be talking about it.
As a matter of fact, the wind here was so bad they closed the Mercury test site.
just near us, you know, the atomic test site.
Closed. They closed it today and they just never do that so that's how it was here. The wind probably picked up any of
the leftover you know nuclear stuff and probably blew it all up to where
the storms are going to be tomorrow so maybe
create a new theory, who knows.
What are good things for people to remember?
Typical safety tips as severe weather season approaches which it is rapidly doing
now.
Well, the best thing is to stay informed by a weather radio.
That, to me, is the most important thing you can do is to stay informed.
Boy, do I agree with that.
And another thing is if you're new to an area, if you're new to an area, if you've moved from, say, Las Vegas to Amarillo, Texas, I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing, you might want to Start learning about severe weather.
You know, don't just take it for granted that someone's going to warn you.
There was a tornado warning three or four nights ago in Amarillo, I believe at two or three in the morning.
So, you know, never take anything for granted.
Learn about severe weather.
Learn and most importantly have a plan.
If severe weather strikes, if you live in hurricane prone areas, you want to have specific safety measures for hurricanes.
If you live in Tornado Alley, you want to have knowledge of what to do, where to go.
That's always a big question.
I know you brought that up earlier when you asked what should you do if you were in the farmhouse.
You know, it shouldn't get to the point where you don't know what to do.
You should always have a plan.
But it will, for many people.
Yes, and one of the saddest things I've seen as a journalist, and it always breaks my heart to this day, you know, it still does, is when you see children killed when a tornado strikes.
There's absolutely no excuse for that.
You know, children have a whole different way of looking at things, at storms and things.
They expect adults to take them to safety if there's a storm.
They rely on us.
So it's always important to have a plan.
If the kids are home alone, make sure they have a plan.
Make sure they know where to go.
Make sure they know where the shelters are.
That's the best advice.
Just stay informed and have a plan.
You going to do a lot of traveling this year?
Absolutely.
Blast off here in about a week or maybe a little over a week.
Non-stop until... And then what do you do?
Just stay at the road?
On the road, do you sleep in the vehicle that you go in?
Or do you stay at hotels?
Well, I used to stay in the vehicle, but fortunately I don't do that anymore.
I need a good night's rest nowadays.
It used to be in the old days, I used to give up lodging and sometimes food to be able to afford gas and film.
Do you have a crew that goes with you?
I have a volunteer chase crew.
As a matter of fact, a lot of them live right there in Las Vegas.
One of them lives up in my lead All right.
You've got a wonderful URL.
I mean, it's a wonderful URL, and I understand somebody tried to hijack this from you recently.
Stormchaser.com.
That's a hot URL.
Well, they didn't try to hijack that.
There was a gentleman with a fan.
I have a service mark on Stormchaser, which only applies to the service.
It's not a trademark, not a copyright.
It doesn't affect the average person using the term, unless for a very specific business,
which 99% of the people...
Well, some guy got the idea he would trademark my name.
Trademark your name.
WarrenFailey.com, which of course you can't do under intellectual property law.
Right, right.
I guess the point here is that even with storm chasing, with the little fame I get, there's always going to be these bizarre, really kind of odd things that happen with a little bit of attention.
So I take it you were able to straighten that out.
I know there are laws that don't really allow that kind of thing.
You've got to chase it down.
It was a real pain to have to do it, and I can tell anyone listening out there, if you haven't registered your own name, go out and do it.
It's a lot easier and saves the frustration of having to deal with attorneys and their related expenses.
When you're in the field, do you have internet capability of one sort or another?
Oh, absolutely.
A laptop computer is really modern.
How do you do it, though?
I mean, there's not all that much reliable out there.
Well, believe it or not, with a laptop and a really good cell phone company that has a nationwide type plant you can use in any location, I can get data.
Last year, for example, there were only one or two times And we're talking about, you know, Chase area covers, the Chaseville area of 20 Valley covers like 250 some, 100,000 miles of area.
Right.
There were only one or two times when I was in the absolute middle of nowhere where I couldn't acquire data.
And you get data rates that are useful?
Oh yeah.
Yeah, I mean it's, I'm able to download, now full color radar, I'm not going to be able to, I'd have to sit there and wait quite a while or the connection may not be stable enough.
Generally what I'm looking for, or what any chaser is looking for when they're out there, are surface data and the outlook like we just discussed here for tomorrow.
That kind of written text data is generally what you're looking for.
So the people in Minnesota, as a general precaution with this sort of thing, should be battening down the hatches, huh?
I would definitely say bring in the lounge chairs and anything loose out there that might fly around tomorrow.
And again, it could change, you know.
I've seen many days like this when you think, oh heck, it's going to break loose.
And it doesn't.
It doesn't.
One element fails to arrive at the right time.
See, that's the danger of what happened to us.
They give us these big wind forecasts a lot, and it never happens.
People get complacent.
They think, oh yeah, right.
And then all of a sudden, it exceeds the forecast, and nobody was ready.
There was some of that that went on in our area today.
Uh, Warren, hold on.
We'll go to the phones when we get back.
How about that?
Okay.
Alright, done deal.
We will be right back.
Okay, once again, Warren Fadley is here.
Warren, just before we go to the phones, take me...
Step-by-step, in some detail, take me through one of your scariest experiences.
I mean, what you did, how you did it, where you went, the whole thing.
Well, the first thing that comes to mind is hell.
A lot of people think, well, it was probably an experience with a tornado.
I mean, even Hurricane Andrew was scary at times.
When I think of sheer terror, when I think of actually really, really, really being afraid, it would have to be a hellstorm.
Yeah, hell.
And you know, you're talking about softball-sized hellstones.
Did you say softball-sized?
Softball-sized hell.
You know, I've wondered about that for a long time.
If you have something the size of a softball that is solid ice, and it's falling at terminal velocity, What about 100 miles an hour?
Yeah, softball falls about 100 miles per hour.
100 miles an hour.
That would, well of course, if it hit you in the head it would kill you.
Oh yeah, and there was someone recently killed, I believe it was Dallas, Texas.
If I remember right, but I was hit in the head by a hailstone.
So you got into a hailstorm?
We were driving in southwest Kansas back, I believe it was June.
Right.
And just made a mistake, tried to cut in front of a storm and then get to the back side of it.
First it was rain, but you could see that ugly green, kind of sick green color off to the right of us.
And we knew we were in big trouble.
And of course, being out there in the middle of Kansas, in the middle of the field with no shelter, we had no choice but to drive through it.
So it's kind of green, you say?
It's kind of a very greenish color.
A lot of people see that before a storm and there's a number of theories we could get into as to why.
You're telling me that that produced softball size?
They weren't softballs in that particular storm.
They were just under baseball size.
It started out with rain and this was all captured on videotape.
It started out as rain, and then it kind of went to small pea-sized hail.
And you can hear me speaking on the microphone as the tape's rolling.
And the hail just rapidly went from pea-sized up to marble, you could see, in the road.
And then it was golf ball.
Very, very hard hail.
Sometimes hail's soft, but you could see it hit the road, and it was pretty much staying intact.
You knew you were in trouble.
Aye, aye, aye.
And then tangerine-sized, and then, boom, it was hitting the top.
Very, very deafening sound.
Now, as a matter of fact, some chasers even carry, I know one guy in Amarillo that carries a pair of
headphones to block out the sound.
It's so deafening loud, but.
Well, isn't it destroying your vehicle at that point?
It's hitting the vehicle and, you know, considering our speed trying to get out of it and the speed of the hell, it was doing a lot of damage.
So you were trying to drive out of it?
We were trying to drive out of it.
And it was hitting the roof, denting the roof, denting the hood, and one hit the windshield and it cracked and almost the same second of very large when caved right in the
middle right in front of the video camera pointed right there square
uh... with a deafening sound you've got this all on video all on video it's been shown
on on the number television shows
uh...
and i looked over at my uh... chase
part-time you know Can you see?
Because there was glass flying in the car.
The windshield was shattered.
It was just kind of going in and out from the wind, pulsing.
It took another hit and I figured it was going to cave in.
So at that point I had a large map up against my chest thinking, well, you know, the next one is going to come all the way through because there's really nothing holding that windshield together.
And about that time we got through it.
And I'll tell you what, it was nerve-wracking.
To say the least, but most chasers will tell you that getting into big hell is very scary.
Can I ask you a question?
You've obviously got a very expensive vehicle, which you have a name for, right?
Your Archangel?
Right.
Your Archangel must be a very expensive vehicle.
Sure.
Right?
Absolutely.
So, when you go to your insurance company, and you go to get insurance, and you tell them, I mean, usually they ask what you do for a living, right?
How wild are they about giving you insurance?
Well, I actually have commercial insurance, which covers normal driving.
I pay the extra and go the full commercial route for the vehicle.
As far as that kind of damage goes, I self-insure myself.
As much as people might not like insurance companies, I would not take the advantage
of that, of going out through my own decision and damage something.
And just like that storm, I think it ended up doing $700 or $800 damage just to the couple
windows it took out.
But that's all self-insured.
I pay for that.
I don't claim that because that is part of the, in my opinion, part of business operations.
And now, of course, if someone slams into the back of me when I'm driving home from
chasing that, that's a whole different issue or something that's in the normal course of
business.
All right, here's another big question we have today.
And then I'm going to get to callers.
I'm sorry, callers.
We'll be right with you.
With the tremendous wind we had here today, There was an argument that went on about whether you're better off having a window cracked open to in some way equalize the pressure when you're having like 100 mile an hour winds or near 100 mile an hour winds or you're better off having everything sealed up.
A lot of people say, well, you leave something open, you give the wind an avenue to get in.
That would certainly be true if there was a bigger opening, but I just don't know.
What's the answer, or is there one?
That's an old wise tale.
Years ago they used to say if there was a tornado or hurricane you should crack the windows and let the pressure equalize.
The pressure is not intense enough in those storms to disintegrate and float a building from the pressure.
You've got to look at it this way.
If the winds get so intense that you're going to have that kind of damage, the windows are going to break out And take care of it themselves.
As a matter of fact, here in town, there are many, many, many windows that imploded.
They just flopped flat and imploded.
That tells you the kind of wind we have.
Yeah, you don't want, and the other thing is you run the risk of being in front of that window trying to open it when the glass shatters and being injured.
That's a good point.
So, in other words, it's generally an old wives tale and you might as well keep everything closed.
You're much safer doing that.
you're much safer to be seeking shelter and thinking about yourself rather than worrying
about that. Like I say, debris flying through the air is going to take out those windows,
you know, no matter what you do.
Alright, I appreciate that information.
I'll remember it, too.
First time caller on the line, you're on the air with Warren Fadley.
Hi.
Good evening, sir.
Good morning, actually it would be now.
I'm here in Iowa.
Warren, I've got a personal experience and a question for you.
It was an evening many years back, driving from the Colorado River from Lake Havasu City down to Parker.
And my dad and I decided to do a little storm chasing of our own.
And we were driving through a monsoon storm that had been building up all day long and was dissipating pretty good.
We started following it and it was heading along the river.
As we were going through it, my dad decided, you know, we better remove the coax off our 2 meter antenna, or radio, off the pickup truck we were driving there.
That's a ham antenna, folks.
Yeah, a ham radio antenna, 2 meters.
So we undid the coax off of the radio and laid it on the floor.
Well, we didn't realize the coax was very close to the seat post where it bolts into the floor.
Well it was when we were driving into this storm and there was a weird ticking noise inside the vehicle and we couldn't figure out where it was coming from and I happened to look down by my foot and see this blue arc that if anybody knows what a blue arc spark from a spark plug to a uh something grounding looks like that's the way it looked it'd start out really slow within just a couple seconds it'd start arcing very rapidly oh that's really it would it would completely stop then the lightning would go off and then It would be like this for, you know, a couple, three, four seconds.
Sir, you were in an extremely dangerous situation.
A two meter antenna, Warren, is a short antenna.
Right.
Maybe 19 inches or maybe double that, but no bigger.
And so for that to be picking up, that means that he was in the immediate electrical field, immediately under electrical field of a storm, yes?
Oh, absolutely.
As a matter of fact, our chase vehicles, we probably have four or five antennas on there for CBs, and scanners, and cell phones, and all kinds, and also two meter 440 rigs we carry to communicate.
You're him.
Oh, absolutely.
Oh, no kidding.
I'm W6OBB.
KB7TVO.
Glad to meet you.
There we go.
But, yeah, when the antennas, you know, a lot of times, believe it or not, I've been near storms and the antennas will actually sizzle and pop.
And that is the energy building up.
Now, that doesn't necessarily say there's going to be that connection made between the ground and the cloud, the cloud and the ground, whichever way it is.
That doesn't mean that.
And I have to tell you this story, this is really quick, but it's awfully funny.
I was on top of a mountain here in Arizona shooting lightning a couple years ago.
and there are a number of other photographers are watching watching
what i was doing and i heard the intended and some start a pop and civil
well i thought about the years i jumped in the truck immediately packed
everything up in these guys are all just laughing you know there's there's war in
the storm chaser you know jump in a truck with a little bit of lightning
about five seconds later lightning bolted must and maybe quarter mile away
uh... and he's got jumped about you know two feet off the ground of course
also so when something uh... you know normally i i've got like a
hundred foot tower here at the house and i've got a hundred seventy five feet
uh... on each side of the tower coming off hundred feet uh... for low band work and of course if you don't have
that insulated when there's a lot of wind
you get incredible voltages Or in a thunderstorm, it gets really mean.
I mean, you get big arcs that appear in the antenna tuner to ground.
But gee whiz, for a 2-meter antenna to be taking a charge like that, you're in a very dangerous area.
Yeah, absolutely.
And I don't know what the wisdom would be of unplugging it.
He may have saved his radio, but who knows?
Who knows if you're safer leaving it connected or not?
That's probably pretty hard to say.
Well, he said that it was jumping to the seat belt bolt, and that would be the vehicle ground.
Yeah, I think they were very lucky, because the charge would have come in there.
They could have been injured.
Oh, my.
All right.
Wild Card Line, you're on the air with Warren Fadley.
Hi.
Yes, this is Dr. Bishop here at STRATCOM in Omaha, Nebraska.
Yes, sir.
Yes, I don't know if you're aware, I had a comment and then a question.
First of all, that you were asking about the predictability of weather, that the actual theory of chaos actually came out of weather prediction by Dr. Lorenzo.
That sounds correct, yes.
Okay, and my question was, Concerning tornadoes, we had a paper that came around, everybody read, and I think they sent it originally to NASA, that were telling everybody that it was written by an aeronautical engineer, and he was postulating that a tornado was actually, where it gets its power, is where it intersects the Earth's magnetic field and actually turns itself into an electric motor.
I never heard that before and I don't know if there's any scientific fact to it.
Personally, from what I know and what I've seen, I would doubt that would have any effect
on it because scientists have nailed down probably better than 50, maybe 60 percent
of what's happening.
But again, who knows?
You say they've nailed down 50 or 60 percent.
I would say so.
So that means there's 40 or 50 percent they don't understand.
Absolutely, because there's still a lot of tornadoes that are produced in storms that
you wouldn't think so.
So in other words, there could be some physics...
I don't know that so much of physics involved is some of the mechanisms which may actually lead to the formation of a tornado.
I think they're very close to unlocking it.
A couple of researchers in Norman, Oklahoma, I think are very close to figuring out.
But one of the problems is why doesn't the perfect storm produce a tornado?
Yeah, that is a very good question.
Why not?
You can have, and that's one of the big mysteries, you can have a storm, I was on one last year, that if you look at a radar loop, it was the best storm in the panhandle.
There was tornado warnings, I mean the thing was perfect, but it would not produce one brief tornado.
You've got to understand folks, translate when he says best, it means worst.
Right, and I don't mean to play that with any kind of disrespect, that's just the terminology.
Yeah, I understand.
It's just that a lot of people don't.
They just don't look at storms the same way a chaser does at all.
That's probably true, but that is one of the mysteries is why when you have that storm that looks perfect on radar, why wouldn't it produce a tornado?
And yet storms that don't look at all perfect and sometimes surprise the forecasters totally do produce tornadoes.
Absolutely, and there's different mechanisms.
Some storms It's fascinating, but I think they're pretty close to figuring it out.
There was a shot CNN got, some video footage, that a pilot took, that I saw recently, of a tornado in the air, like two or three tornadoes, right out this guy's window.
I wonder if you happened to see that?
Not the recent, I'm familiar with the helicopter footage.
I believe it was... Oh, that's what it was!
I'm sorry, helicopter.
Minneapolis.
That's right.
Yep, yep.
Amazing amount of work, considering the danger he was in sometimes.
Could have easily been another vortex form near him, so he was very, very lucky.
Those are some of the most amazing pictures, video footage I've ever seen.
Amazing when you see an entire pine tree flying through the air.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, indeed.
East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Warren Fadley.
Hi.
How you doing?
Okay, sir.
Okay, I'm a storm chaser too, but I restrict myself mostly I'm an expert on hurricanes.
Where are you?
I'm in New Orleans, Louisiana.
Ah.
But I grew up on the East Coast, New Jersey.
Yes, sir.
And went through some storms.
My first one, I was six years old, and I loved every minute of it.
And you've got to understand, people don't get this.
They don't understand.
A lot of them don't.
And you can't blame them.
To them, it's just terrifying stuff.
It's not fun.
I understand.
But I have a couple of questions.
One is I have a very frustrating situation that you don't have when you chase tornadoes, and that is when I want to go to where I think a hurricane is going to make a landfall, I'm not going to be able to get there because they're going to be evacuating.
I'm not going to be able to get through.
How do you get through?
How would you get through?
That's a really good question, and I'll tell you something.
When I covered Hurricane Andrew, I believe it was 1992.
I went to Lafayette for that one.
Yeah.
You know, that was, in my opinion, the last Great uncovered hurricane by the media.
Up to that point, the media, you know, as Art pointed out earlier, would send out one guy to stand there in the rain.
But with all the new cable stations since then, a lot of them have come on air since then, when there's any kind of a hurricane right now, I can guarantee you're going to see massive coverage.
Yeah, but he wants to know how to get through.
Right, and the problem with that now is that because of that coverage, What they're doing now is they are, the evacuations and the areas they're closing off are happening a lot further in advance.
With Hurricane Andrew, they didn't really get crazy there until a day or two before.
I mean, this did be going on, they knew it was coming.
But nowadays, they close up everything real, real, real soon.
So you have to get there days and days in advance to get access.
But you really can't.
That's the problem.
You can't do that because it'll change course on you for sure.
That's true.
And even as a journalist with all the credentials I have, and if I'm doing For MSNBC or somebody.
There are times they won't let you through?
They won't let you through.
Now, of course, you know, I spent many years as a journalist before I was a storm chaser, so I know some of the ways that it works.
All right, listen, both of you hold on.
I'm going to hold you over, caller, and just stand by.
I'll bring you back with Warren, and we are going to continue to take calls for Warren Fadley.
Fascinating topic.
The weather always is.
Boy, it was wild here today.
From the high desert?
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