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Nov. 11, 2015 - Art Bell

02:23:35

Art Bell MITD - Warren Faidley Storm Chasing

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56:18

warren faidley

51:04

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Speaker	Time	Text
art bell ▲ ● ▼		American Southwest.
		I bid you all good evening, good morning, good afternoon, wherever you may be in the world's 25 each and everyone covered by the blanket by this program, Midnight in the Desert.
		My name is Arthur Bell.
unidentified		The rules of the road are so simple.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No bad language.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Don't need it.
unidentified		And only one hear it, one call for show.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Max.
		Has anybody noticed that the advertisements for Windows 10 are getting bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger?
		I've got like seven computers with Windows 7 on it.
		And which I'm contented with, but they're tempting me.
		They're trying to get me to hit that button.
		And I'm resisting with all my willpower.
		But I've noticed that as I continue to resist, the messages get bigger.
		They started out a little tiny thing on the taskbar, and then they were a little tiny thing that popped up a little bit.
		And then they were a bigger thing that popped up.
		I had one that came up and covered the whole screen the other day.
		Do it and do it soon!
		All right, so the news of the day.
		The first thing I'm going to read you is not news of the day.
		This is a pretty freaky story, and let me tell you about it.
		It came to me from a nurse, and I know her name, and we know how to reach her.
		But I will not give you her name for privacy reasons.
		We also know who the patient is here, or we're on her trail.
		My producer is trying to produce this.
		This was sent to me by the nurse, and so without naming her, Hiart, I just wanted to tell you about a patient that I recently had in the ER.
		It was a young mother who had already presented twice previously since confirming pregnancy 10 weeks ago.
		On those visits, she said she felt uneasy about her pregnancy and was concerned for the baby's well-being.
		Each time, we did blood work and an ultrasound to confirm that everything was as it should be.
		On the third visit, she presented to ER stating that she just didn't feel pregnant and could we please ensure that everything was okay.
		Upon obtaining blood work, her HCG levels were those of a non-pregnant woman.
		Her pelvic ultrasound revealed no fetus, no evidence of any recent pregnancy.
		We knew this was not correct because we had done recent ultrasound showing a live single fetus within the uterine cavity.
		This time, though, there was no fetus present.
		The patient did not show any signs or symptoms of miscarriage, just quit feeling pregnant.
		As you can imagine, she was apprehensive about this pregnancy right from the start, and now the pregnancy had vanished.
		Documented and photographed via ultrasound fetus was now missing with no signs of where it went.
		I couldn't help but immediately think of your guest, Dr. Jacobs, that would be, talking about the hybrids and hubrits.
		Could this be a case of a pregnancy that was removed from the mother, as your guest had suggested?
		Sure sounded eerily familiar.
		So as you can imagine, we are working on this case.
		That doesn't happen.
		Petuses don't just vanish.
		HCG levels back to normal.
		Couldn't happen.
		So this was the nurse, and again, we're going to keep her name for now private, as well as, of course, the patient.
		We can't go another step now, really, without the patient's permission or interview.
		So now, looking at a little news of the day, the Elbows Out GOP presidential contest appeared on Wednesday to have entered a kinder, gentler phase, kind of 11 commandment, you know, like the 11th commandment had taken hold.
		Jeb Bush was a little more energetic, I thought.
		Rubio did very well.
		He's probably the one in waiting, in my opinion.
		Rubio's the guy, I bet you.
unidentified		We'll see.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Anyway, it was an okay debate.
		The Donald didn't say too much.
		The international community is mounting its most serious effort yet to end the nearly five-year-old Syrian war, rallying around a second round of talks in Vienna this weekend amid the emergence of a Russian proposal that calls for early elections.
		I shouldn't laugh.
		Have you seen the state of Syria elections?
		Are they serious?
		Anyway, they're going to talk about it, and they should.
		There have been 250,000 people killed so far.
		But it's got the brew of the Third World War in there, I think.
		The latest from the IAAF investigation, Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered an investigation immediately into the allegations of widespread doping among that country's sports figures.
		shouldn't laugh at that either, I guess, right?
		And this, of course, we've had this on the website, but from theanomalous.com, hold your horses, true believers.
		Every journalist and their cat are monitoring the threads at NASA's Eagle Works to scoop the competition, and Rick Stella is no different.
		The long and short of this announcement is a peer-reviewed paper based on a new experiment, which is pending.
		And it's very certain to knock our collective socks off anytime soon.
		What it is, folks, is an EM drive.
		An EM drive breakthrough.
unidentified		It looks like it actually works.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I wonder how long NASA will test it before they will finally actually declare that.
		It works.
		We may not know how, but it works.
		In fact, even a plucky Romanian did, with some measure of success, build one.
		So we may be on the verge of a backyard space program.
		I wonder who will launch first.
		The subject tonight is timely in the sense that there are very violent storms going on tonight across Illinois, Iowa, probably mainly Missouri overnight.
		It's a mess, and it's late in the year for that mess, and our guest will be able to comment on it for sure since he chases storms.
		No, he's not crazy.
		It is a true, absolute straight line to all the adrenaline a human can use.
		We'll talk about it in a moment.
		But I do want to say one thing.
		NBC News tonight, in covering the violent weather, you know, they had cameras, of course, in Iowa because they were doing political coverage, right?
		And again, here I go, laughing, but God, it was a funny sight.
		They had this young gal, I guess probably a political reporter, right?
		And the tornado sirens were going off, as in, get the hell out of here and go find shelter right now.
		I mean, you could hear the sirens screaming in the background, which is, I assume why they turned on the camera, but in the background, she was standing right in front of a Jebkin-Fix-It sign.
		Again, I shouldn't laugh, but she, you know, her face was worried, and the siren was going off.
		She's probably imagining, you know, a mile-wide tornado bearing down on their building, and it had to be right in front of a Jebkin-Fix-It sign.
		All right, so it has been too many years since I've interviewed this man, and I suspect he's as crazy as ever.
		Warren Fadley was the first person to pursue severe weather and natural disasters in a full-time capacity as a journalist, consultant, cinematographer, of course, and photographer.
		He's been labeled as America's top storm chaser, and that's quite a title.
		And America's storm survival expert by multiple media outlets.
		You have very likely seen Warren on news programs, CBS's Early Show, the BBC, O'Reilly Factors, CNN Fox News, and so much more reporting on severe weather.
		As a full-time extreme weather journalist, forecaster, and storm survival expert, so who knows, we might save a life tonight.
		Warren has likely experienced more assorted severe weather and natural disasters than any living human being.
		And believe me, his adventures, deadly encounters, could fill volumes.
		They will fill three hours tonight.
		It's adrenaline junkie's dream to chase storms.
		I did it when I was young and stupid, I know.
		But I sure am still very, very interested in it.
		We're going to break here, and when we come back, we're in safety.
unidentified		We're going to break here.
		We will rock you.
		We will, we will rock you.
		Take a walk on the wild side of midnight.
		From the kingdom of Nye, this is Midnight in the Desert with Art Bell.
		Please call the show at 1-952-225-5278.
		That's 1-952-5278.
		Call.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's it, all right.
		Warren Fadley is my guest coming up.
		He's a Storm Chaser.
		It is said he is the best of the Storm Chasers.
		Welcome to Midnight in the Desert, Warren.
warren faidley ▲ ● ▼		All right, good to be here.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		We did interview, I think you and I talked back, you said in 2002?
warren faidley ▲ ● ▼		I believe so.
warren faidley ▲ ● ▼		I think it was, yeah, 2002, a long time ago.
unidentified		Yeah, painful to think about all that time.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Anyway, you're still alive.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's on the bright side.
warren faidley ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, a lot of close calls since then, but fortunately, I've been both lucky and smart.
warren faidley ▲ ● ▼		I don't know which is the more of, but still out there chasing.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I think you need a little of both, actually.
warren faidley ▲ ● ▼		Well, you need a little both, but you need to have some kind of a survival instinct.
warren faidley ▲ ● ▼		You know, I had that, I was told when I was a journalist, and I think it kind of transitioned into storm chase, and it's probably kept me out of a lot of trouble over the years.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Where are you located, by the way?
warren faidley ▲ ● ▼		This time of year, I'm in Tucson, Arizona.
unidentified		Tucson.
warren faidley ▲ ● ▼		It's Usually the slowest time of the year for severe weather, although, of course, tonight there's some areas that are getting hit.
warren faidley ▲ ● ▼		But generally, this time of year is one of the few times I can actually sit back and not worry too much about chasing.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Are things changing?
		That's a pretty comprehensive question.
		When I say are things changing, I mean when we talked in 2002, the tornado season was one thing.
		The typhoon and hurricane seasons, they were something else.
		And since 2002, one, if you think about it, have things changed?
unidentified		Well, they have.
warren faidley ▲ ● ▼		I mean, the last few years we've seen very little hurricane activity, you know, in the Gulf Coast or the East Coast.
		And the last probably four or five years in the central plains, there's been somewhat of a tornado drought, although it seems like the violent tornadoes that do occur somehow seem to find humanity.
		But beyond that, the weather, it's drier, you know, we're seeing these massive dust storms, you know, 110 miles north of me up in Phoenix, and we're seeing some of the storms kind of change where you see the violent storms and the plains move a little bit further to the east.
		So things have changed a little bit.
		But when you talk about severe weather and the kind of things I chase, which is everything from lightning storms to tornadoes to hurricanes and everything in between, it's pretty much a regular occurrence somewhere in the world.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You know, that's true.
		During the years that I was not talking with you, I lived in the Philippines for quite a number of years.
		And I lived up at about 190 feet.
		We were on the 200 feet, the 19th floor.
		I still own the condo there in Manila.
		And my wife, who is a Filipino, she said, one day I called her to the window because we would get, you know, very, very violent thunderstorms.
		And when you're up 200 feet in the air, you really feel it.
		And one day I said, hey, huh, come here, there's ice falling.
		She said, no, no, no, no.
		Ice doesn't fall in the Philippines.
		I said, look.
		And there sitting on the windowsill were chunks of ice, a very powerful storm.
unidentified		She went, wow, ice!
unidentified		Never seen it in her life.
warren faidley ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it's very unusual the way that storms form there to have hail, if that's what you're referring to.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		There was hail.
warren faidley ▲ ● ▼		Tropical areas.
		Yeah, in tropical areas, that's pretty uncommon.
		You don't see that very often.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, there was rotation going on, too, and not far away they actually had a tornado.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So those things occur, although not nearly like we have it here in the U.S. No.
warren faidley ▲ ● ▼		The U.S. is really the hell machine of the world, especially on eastern Colorado, a little bit further up north into north, South Dakota.
warren faidley ▲ ● ▼		I mean, that's where you run into sometimes the grapefruit-sized hell.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You know, I've done some foolish, maybe not so foolish and maybe some of it foolish, storm chasing myself, as I told you, I think, the first time we interviewed, from Amarillo Air Force Base.
		Used to chase them up into Oklahoma, take, actually back then film, sold it to KFDA television in Amarillo back then.
		And we chased Lynn, who, by the way, went on to be, a good friend of mine, went on to be a meteorologist and does TV news in Louisiana.
		He and I chased tornadoes and storms that were about to issue them all the way up into Oklahoma.
		So I know a little bit about what you do, but I was a real piker.
		You're the real McCoy.
unidentified		You're said to be actually the best.
warren faidley ▲ ● ▼		Well, I let other people say that.
		I don't make that claim.
		The best is, everybody has a different definition of what the best is.
		But it's kind of interesting you talk about storm chasing back in the days because you know we didn't have all the laptops and all the technology we have now, which is a totally different type of chasing than you had 10 or 15 years ago.
		It's completely changed chasing in the way we chase.
		And there's good things about it and there's bad things about it.
		But the technology is really the biggest thing to affect storm chasing and storm spotting probably in the last 10 or 15 years.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I can say this to you, Warren.
		When it gets in your blood, it never, ever leaves.
		We will get an occasional violent storm here, and I'll be watching it on radar scope on my little iPhone 6.
		Boy, I wish I'd had that back when.
		And, you know, and I'll be looking for rotation.
		I'll be out looking at the clouds.
		And every now and then you get just a little bit of rotation.
		You go, wow, look at that.
		And so it never leaves you.
		Never, ever.
		It's like radio.
		It never leaves you.
warren faidley ▲ ● ▼		No, it doesn't.
		And, you know, I started out as a newspaper journalist when I got out of college.
		And even the journalism bug to this day stays with me.
		If I'm sitting here at night and hear, you know, sirens for more than probably five minutes, I'll jump up and grab the scanner and see what's going.
		You know, it's the same thing, and same thing with storms.
		Even when we have storms here in Tucson, if I see the sky get dark or, you know, I look on the radar and there's something out there, I still have that urge even during the offsmeal to go out.
		It is a curiosity.
		I mean, that's why so many people chase.
		It's a big atmospheric treasure hunt, and boy, once that fever bites you, it's something that's just really hard, if not impossible, to get rid of.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I know.
		And it's really hard, I think, to describe to people who don't understand it.
		And that would be some of my audience.
		But it's a total adrenaline rush.
		For me, it's like being on the air.
		I don't know.
		It's just something you go and do.
		something is about to, some roll cloud is about to go by and issue a tornado.
		You follow until you see it and get...
unidentified		That tornado, is that your photography?
unidentified		Oh, yeah.
warren faidley ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, there's three.
		I believe there's three photos on there.
		There's a tornado in, I believe that was in Kansas, and there's the famous lightning strike that got me started, the one of the lightning strike hitting the oil and gasoline tank farm here in Tucson back in 1987.
		And there's another shot, which is really kind of a beautiful landscape shot, which was shot in West Texas there off of I-40 east of Amarillo.
		And that's just, you know, the clouds are just amazing, the modest clouds and the kind of a purple sunset light on them.
		The kind of things that, you know, chasers just spend all the money and time out there chasing looking for.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I saw stuff just like that in Amarillo.
		Believe me.
		Yes, these are amazing photographs.
		And as far as the tornado photograph is concerned, it's one of the best I've ever seen.
		My goodness, what form?
warren faidley ▲ ● ▼		Well, I spent, interestingly, I only shot two or three photos of that because at the time I had a 35 millimeter film camera that I had got from an agency in Los Angeles who wanted me to shoot weather.
		And so I spent most of the time shooting that on 35 millimeter film, which was one of the first tornadoes actually shot on 35 millimeter film, if I remember right.
		But that's always the problem with storm chasing and being both someone interested in motion footage and someone interested in still images is how do you handle it when you have something like that on the ground?
		Do you want to shoot the stills?
		Do you want to shoot the footage?
		And over the years, people have preferences.
		Stills were, of course, at one time the only thing you could really shoot.
		Video just wasn't of quality.
		And nowadays with HD cameras, I mean, you can shoot some amazing quality footage.
		So even though technology is advanced, there's still that juggling act going on when there's something really amazing happening to decide what format you want to actually record it on.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, see, I look at that tornado and I say, my God, that is beautiful.
		Absolutely beautiful.
		And it is.
		I mean, it's just gorgeous.
		You've got basically what looks like clear sky everywhere else.
		You've got that giant, ominous cloud above, and from it, the tornado.
		And it's about as perfectly shaped as I've ever seen.
warren faidley ▲ ● ▼		That's probably one of my favorite shots because it does kind of incorporate all the things you're looking for in a tornado shot, which is really hard to find the color because the sunset light was on it.
		You don't find that with a lot of tornadoes.
		It's kind of a gray against gray.
		And you also had, you know, it was close enough to get a good quality shot.
		Fortunately, the best thing about that tornado is it didn't do any serious damage or hurt anyone.
		So, you know, once you hear that and you know there's nothing bad about it, you can really kick back and enjoy the photograph.
		You know, it's not like taking some of the images I've taken where, you know, the tornado went on to become a killer tornado or was doing serious damage because it's really difficult to kind of celebrate, no matter what it looks like, to kind of celebrate those shots when you realize what it did.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, that brings us to something I want to talk to you about.
unidentified		I said, okay, it's beautiful.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And I know that you understood the word beautiful.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		As our eyes look at it, or if you're a chaser or if you're interested in violent weather, that is beautiful.
unidentified		But it's a fine line.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Now, when I called you up, this may be a story in itself, when I called you up before the show, I, you know, was messing with you and I said, Tim Cantori, I think you said, I was about to hang up on you.
		So, you know, I'll ask you about that in a moment.
		What I do want to ask about is this.
		When the violent weather is really going, naturally, yeah, go to the weather channel.
		I think a lot of people do.
		They get their best ratings when things are worse.
		And you go over there, and, you know, you've got Dr. Forbes on screen.
		And I really love the guy in a lot of ways.
		But, you know, on the one hand, he's saying, oh, my God, look at this radar scan.
		You see that blue?
		That's got to be stuffed in the middle of a tornado.
		And definitely a return of things in the air.
		And he's getting very excited, very, very excited.
		And yet, he has to stop every, well, I don't know, like three or four minutes and say, but of course, we're not happy about this.
		We'll find some way to say that.
		You know, it could be headed toward a populated area or whatever.
		It's such a fine line.
		If you're a weather freak, you love it, but you can't be seen to love it too much because it does bad stuff.
		Is that about right?
warren faidley ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I mean, yeah, that's always very difficult to watch radars when you have what we call the damage ball or you guys will see the reflectivity and the signatures and you know it's debris going up in the air and you can just tell by looking at GPS or the overlays that it's going to a populated area.
		I remember one time in Oklahoma City, we had a tornado going through there and my foot was actually shaken on the accelerator because I realized what I was chasing was obviously killing people at the time.
		So there was this excitement, but there was also this kind of anxiety of knowing what you were looking at was doing some real serious damage.
		But you're right.
		You have to be careful.
		And you were talking about Dr. Forbes and describing it, and I think I actually remember seeing that same thing.
		And I think a lot of the excitement is just from the science part of it, that you're witnessing something absolutely amazing that if another scientist was sitting next to you, they'd be saying, oh, my God, and you weren't on TV.
		It would be real exciting.
		But of course, when you're dealing with the public, then there's a whole different persona you have to take on because what you're looking at may be doing some serious damage or even killing people.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, Forbes was saying things like, you know, I think this could be the biggest I've ever seen in this kind of return.
		You know, biggest ever.
		So he was trying to suppress scientific excitement.
		You've got it exactly right.
		And then impress people, of course, with the danger.
		And they do warn town after town after town after town.
		So you don't think, it's not your feeling, that there are more tornadoes.
		There may even be fewer, but you don't think they're more violent?
unidentified		Or do you think perhaps yes?
warren faidley ▲ ● ▼		No, when you look at the statistics and you get away with all the, you kind of eliminate all the hearsay science, there really are not more violent tornadoes.
		Now, in the last few years, because of the drought, one of the interesting things that's happening is the dry line is beginning to form a little bit further to the east, and we can talk about that after the break.
		But that's something, a phenomenon that's occurring because of the recent drought that's forcing the swarms to go up a little bit further out to the populated areas.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, here comes the break, so stand by.
		My guest is Warren Bately.
		He chases storms.
unidentified		You might want to take a look at his vehicle and his dashboard.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		We'll have him describe that equipment for you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'm sure it's the latest.
unidentified		the greatest.
		Back to bottom, leave one, now go.
		Walk out the door.
		Just turn around.
		Turn around the glass and all your sorrows.
		You, devil, glass.
		It will soon be over tomorrow.
		Come on, oh.
		Midnight in the Desert doesn't screen calls.
		We trust you, but remember, the NSA.
		Well, you know, to call the show, please dial 1-952-225-5278.
		That's 1-952-Call Art.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		My favorite by a mile.
		Welcome, everybody.
		I've got a Storm Chaser, the Storm Chaser, actually.
unidentified		The original Storm Chaser, best Storm Chaser, still the best Storm Chaser.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Warren Fadley is my guest, and we're talking weather.
		And I'm sure you've seen this last tornado season.
		Things have changed a lot since Warren started chasing, and I was chasing way back when.
		They've really changed a lot.
		We're going to talk some about that, but let's get this Cantori thing out of the way.
		So, do you have a bone to pick with Cantori?
warren faidley ▲ ● ▼		Well, not really.
		I have a love-hate relationship with the Weather Channel.
		I very gratefully published my book, Storm Chaser back in the Twister days, was it 95, around then?
		So, you know, they've been good, but I've had some problems lately with them and what we call chasertainment, which is, you know, it's chasertainment, which refers to instead of delivering weather information that's really going to save someone's life, it's geared more for entertainment.
		You know, you show the chasers out there doing really dangerous, wacko, you know, unnecessary things.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		There's no shortage of those anymore, right?
warren faidley ▲ ● ▼		Well, yeah, we could talk about that for the next 10 hours.
		But that's one of the problems.
		They embraced that, ironically, a couple years ago, and it almost killed their crew when they were out chasing Mike Bettis, the El Reno tornado that ended up, unfortunately, killing three researchers out there.
		And I think they learned their lesson because the tornado hunt never resurfaced after that year.
		But they got really caught up in that chasertainment of promoting, chasing, you know, chasing this misrepresentated as being something legitimate when it's not.
		And I think a lot of people saw that.
		And I think it ended up hurting the Weather Channel in the long run that they kind of adopted that as a legitimate way of promoting weather.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know, look, they're in the ratings business.
		Like every TV channel up there, they're in the ratings business.
		And so I get it.
		But I also get what it drove people to and the danger of it.
		So I get both sides of it.
		In other words, look, the Weather Channel needs ratings.
		It's as simple as that.
		Now, how far do they go to get ratings?
		It's not a taxpayer-supported channel.
		It's not a government-supported channel.
		They get their money from commercials.
		So it is indeed a fine line they walk, Warren.
		A fine line.
		You think, though, they stepped over it?
warren faidley ▲ ● ▼		I think they stepped over it because when you lose the public's trust and you start showing, you know, again, things that are for entertainment value, not for news value, it actually risks lives.
		Because if I'm watching the weather channel and there's a tornado heading towards my house, I don't really care what this person or that person is doing chasing it.
		I want to know, you know, if it's going to affect me.
		I want to know if I need to take shelter.
		I want to need to know what I need to do.
		And seconds save lives.
		And if they're going to broadcast that kind of information, they need to spend that time giving people important information.
		And, of course, most people turn into local television and the National Weather Service.
		Those are probably your two best sources when there's some kind of a threat.
		But to use that angle of entertainment in those situations rubbed a lot of people, I think, the wrong way.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		To your point a little bit, when Jim Cantore pulls into a Midwest town somewhere, usually somebody tells him, hey, Cantore, get out of here.
		They obviously don't want to see him.
		They know what it means.
		If he's in town, it probably means bad stuff.
warren faidley ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yeah.
		Every time we'll pull into town with the chase trucks, we're often run out of town like Frankenstein with the torches and the pitchforks.
		It does get people's attention.
		They always want to know, which is kind of interesting, I've always thought, because you can go into an area that people should know better on, say, a high-risk day when there's a higher probability of violent tornadoes, and you'll be filling up the gas tank or something.
		Someone will always come up and go, are there going to be storms today?
		And I always kind of look at them and go, you know, I think if I lived here and it was a high-risk day and a good chance of violent tornadoes, I would probably, you know, know.
		I wouldn't have to go up and ask them.
unidentified		But, you know, some of the things that I'm going to do.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Have you seen that commercial?
		I tried this on a guest the other night and hadn't seen it.
		Have you seen that commercial of the horror movie Spoof where the guy is, you know, where they're going through, let's run to the running cart.
warren faidley ▲ ● ▼		That's great.
warren faidley ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The guy in the background is kind of shaking his head.
warren faidley ▲ ● ▼		Right.
unidentified		No, behind the chainsaws of Chorus.
warren faidley ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		Yeah, you know, logic, and I always tell people, people are asking me, you know, of course, how to survive storms and what you should do.
		We can certainly talk more about that later.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		We will, yes.
warren faidley ▲ ● ▼		You know, one of the things I've noticed over the years, which I've tried to convey to people when I do lectures and speaking engagements and things like that, is that I don't care how well organized you are, and I'll say this even to myself, when you get in a real serious, and I mean life-threatening situation, the thing that's going to save you are the instincts, are the things that you have burned so much into your memory and your preparations that you're going to take the right steps.
		Because we all hear the safety instructions every year what to do if there's a hurricane or a tornado.
		But people will always tell me, and I've seen it firsthand, and I've seen ended up in tragic results, when people are faced with that and panic sets in, that all goes away.
		That instantly is completely erased.
		And that's what creates panic, and that's why you have so many people who don't need to perish in severe weather events that do.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'm going to give you a little scenario.
		You know what scares me the most is what I cannot see, Warren.
		I just can't imagine being in a wood structure somewhere in the Midwest, have it be way after dark and hear that damn freight train sound.
		If I know where a storm is and I can look at the clouds, I can look at the storm, like you, perhaps not like many people, I can kind of tell what's going on.
		But oh man, to hear that sound in the dark, I can't think of anything more frightening.
warren faidley ▲ ● ▼		Well, the sound would certainly frighten you, but I've been in over the years in numerous situations, especially back before we had radar and good communication information, where we would stay in flimsy, cheap motels.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, of course.
warren faidley ▲ ● ▼		And lo and behold, you'd hear the tornado siren going off, and you'd see the funnel clouds illuminated by the lightning, and it was always a threat.
		And it is.
		It's a very hopeless feeling.
		And, of course, I usually will look over a building before I stay there even nowadays and know where the shelter is, know where the exits are, and things like that for safety.
		But I've been caught in those situations.
		And I'll tell you what, at some point you just submit and you cross your fingers and find the safest place you can.
		And the rest is purely luck.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Let's talk a little bit about what you said about the dry line moving east of where it used to be.
		I think you're right about that.
		I do.
		so many of these storms now seem to be happening east of where they used to be.
		I mean, Amarillo gets them every now and then, but not nearly as...
		Now it's way east.
		What's going on?
warren faidley ▲ ● ▼		Well, a lot of this is because of the drought.
		And what happens is you have an area called, it's a boundary called a dry line, and it separates the dry air from the moist air.
		And it's a breeding ground for storms.
		They like to go up along that boundary.
		And generally, it's somewhere, you know, Amarillo or just to the east of there.
		And a lot of times it's not as defined, and you just don't have the moisture depth.
		And you'll have storms go up, and then they'll go up.
		And further down east, it'll stabilize things in the afternoon.
		And you may have a few tornadoes.
		That's a very common scenario out there.
		With the drought, though, you have a real sharp dry line that ends up being maybe 40, 50 miles to the west of Oklahoma City, for example.
		And that becomes a very active area.
		And you have a lot of very violent storms go up.
		And unfortunately, when they move, you know, 30, 40 miles to the east, they're right in the Oklahoma City area, which we've seen with Moore and with El Reno, these very violent EF5 tornadoes recently.
		And that's one of the results of the drought is you have these storms maturing, coming off the dry line and moving into the populated areas there.
unidentified		How many were killed in the El Reno storm?
warren faidley ▲ ● ▼		I believe it was four or five.
		I know there were three of the research chasers were killed, and there was another guy who stopped on the road to photograph the storm with his iPhone, and maybe another person, but I know four for sure.
		But I'll tell you what, that was a miracle when I was watching that storm on radar.
		I remember at one point we were south of it, and we saw it at the ending stages.
		And I remember getting on the radio and telling someone, I go, we're no longer chasing.
		We're going to go in as EMS people.
		I'm a tactical EMT.
		I've got a lot of medical training.
		So at that point, I had changed my mind to transition from journalist chaser into going into the city.
		Because I'll tell you what, that storm, it's a miracle that it dissipated.
		Had it kept the track and gone down I-40 into Oklahoma City at the strength it was, its maximum strength, that would have been an extremely worst case scenario destructive tornado.
		So although it had some tragic consequences, it could have been a lot worse.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What did they do wrong, if anything?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The ones that got killed?
warren faidley ▲ ● ▼		You know, nobody knows for sure.
		And if they do, they're not saying anything.
		There was rumors that there was a camera rolling at the time, and I don't know if it matters or not.
		You know, the road was wet.
		The tornado expanded rapidly.
		I think there's any number of people that could have been in trouble in that area.
		I know the weather channel vehicle was hit, as we discussed before, because the tornado expanded, and it's just a gigantic monster in just record time.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So was that it, Or did it actually take a jog?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The story I heard at the time was it jogged suddenly.
warren faidley ▲ ● ▼		It did both of those things.
		It actually turned to the north, I believe it was the northeast rapidly, which they sometimes will do.
		And I think, you know, you just get caught off guard.
		I don't care how good you are.
		You know, it's happened to me.
		It's happened to some of the most experienced chasers in the world.
		Those guys were just unlucky.
		And I think, you know, between the mud, slick roads, and running out of options in that situation, it could have happened to anybody.
		And there were a lot of close calls that day.
		If you look at some of the GPS data with the storm chasers and spotters who were in that area, you just cringe to see the little dots.
		And you put that and put the tornado track over that of where they were at certain times.
		So that's just, you know, unfortunately, one of the things that happens with chasing is even with all the modern technology, you're still limited to roads.
		And some of the roads are the same roads that were there long before the technology.
		And that's really, I mean, when I chase, the roads to me are the most important thing, the mapping to be able to maneuver around these storms and to be able to allow for those rapid changes.
		Now, I know they needed to be a little bit closer for their research.
		And, you know, that's when it really gets dangerous is when you're in that area where you're between the very, very large hell and the actual tornado circulation.
		You don't have many options.
		You can, of course, drive into the hell.
		But that storm was just absolutely just a beast.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Other than the adrenaline junkie part of it, which I totally get, why chase storms?
warren faidley ▲ ● ▼		Well, for me, I always had a fascination with several things that got me going.
		One was adventure.
		And, of course, I think I was a product of the late 1960s, you know, and the Everest climbs and the moonshots and all these things.
		As a kid, you know, I'm like, holy moly, I've got to go out someday and do something like that.
		And I think that was what really kind of got me started.
		And I was always the kind of kid that was always out in the desert looking for things and, you know, collecting rocks and scorpions and all kinds of crazy, dangerous things.
		And as I grew up, you know, I translated in.
		Of course, I wanted to fly for the Navy.
		That's the sole reason I went to college.
		But unfortunately, my junior year, my eyesight was just below the standard.
		So I thought, well, I've got to do something else crazy.
		Why not do photojournalism and specialize in the most extreme things in the world?
		And I started out with riots and fires and floods and all kinds of disasters and then took some pretty good photos and transitioned into lightning here in Arizona and just happened to be reading an Associated Press article one day about tornado chase.
		And I went, hmm, you know, I think I'll expand my horizons and head out east.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And this was at what age?
warren faidley ▲ ● ▼		This was, oh, I was, I think I was in my late, mid-late 20s at this point.
		Okay.
		And then, you know, of course, went to, ironically, the very first day I went tornado chasing in Texas, I ended up in Saragosa, Texas, which was hit by a very strong tornado that killed, unfortunately, a lot of children during a graduation ceremony.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, God, I remember.
warren faidley ▲ ● ▼		Being there and seeing that, you know, it humbled me a lot.
		And it also told me I'm going to have to give something back.
		I can't just go out here like you see a lot of chasers and just have a wild, crazy time doing this.
		I had to give something back.
		And that doesn't mean I, you know, didn't have crazy, you know, experiences chasing and did a lot of crazy things and some foolish things.
		But I wanted to give something back to chasing.
		And I think that's where eventually all the knowledge I got from this first-hand survival I put into writing books and doing lectures and becoming an EMT so I could do something when I'm out there.
		Just, you know, besides taking the pictures and the footage, I wanted to give something back when I'm out there.
		And I'm glad I did because I'll tell you what, it's a great feeling when you go out there and you're able to lend a hand to somebody.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		I'm getting messages all the time on the computer as I do the show.
		People are asking that you would describe what they can see in the photograph equipment-wise in your vehicle.
warren faidley ▲ ● ▼		Well, I don't have that picture up.
		I don't want to risk it here and mess up the phone line by turning the computer back on.
		But there's an iPad up on the front windshield, which is attached with a suction cup.
		And that I use mainly for mapping and radar.
		And there is also a satellite, a GPS unit on the dash.
		And that's because you can't always rely on phone lines when you're out there in the middle of nowhere.
		So even if I don't have phone lines, I have a satellite that'll give me a map and a radar, which is very important.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yes.
warren faidley ▲ ● ▼		There's radios.
		We don't use radios much anymore to communicate with weather service.
		There are still some spotters that use the ham frequency.
		And in the old days, that was the way we spotted was on the 2-meter and 440 ham network.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		As a licensed cam, of course.
warren faidley ▲ ● ▼		Right, of course.
		And there's, you know, obviously my cell phone's in there, and there's a camera mounted on the front.
		There's usually two cameras in the front.
		Sometimes I'll have one pointed back towards me, but there's always one kind of a wide view out front we can turn on, and there's a monitor for that.
		There's a handheld camera that comes off that you can actually hold and watch the monitor when you're driving, so you don't have to actually look through the camera.
		You can use that on there.
		And I'm trying to think what else was on there.
		That's the main equipment I use.
		I don't get too technical and put too much technology in there because it's easy to get distracted.
		If you have too many things going on, too many bells and whistles, it's easy to get caught up in all that.
		And I'm also a pilot, so I know that you don't want to get caught up in the moment and lose track of what you're supposed to be doing, which is flying the plane, or in this case, driving the chase vehicle.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You ever wonder at all about the size of the cojones of that pilot in Oklahoma City who is constantly up when tornadoes are in the area taking video?
		Now, I grant you, he generally gets out to what he considers to be a safe distance.
		But, man, I'll tell you, I wonder about that guy.
		That would be quite a job as a helicopter pilot.
		You can't make long decisions in a helicopter in that kind of weather.
warren faidley ▲ ● ▼		Well, no, you can't.
		I tip my hat to those guys because the information they give and the new stations in Oklahoma City, the information, the life-saving information they give, it's saved countless lives.
		And although, you know, I don't think some of the entertainment value that they generate now, which it seems to be more and more every year, but the information value they send from those helicopters is invaluable not only to the people on the ground, but to the National Weather Service, allows them to see what's going on at the same time they're looking at the radar.
		But yeah, all that technology has a very good purpose, but unfortunately in recent years, you know, some of it's getting a little bit out of hand where it's becoming more entertainment value.
		And I can give you a great example is when I was at the Moore Tornado.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, hold that thought.
		Entertainment guy.
		Entertainment value.
		The Moore Tornado.
unidentified		Man.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		So my guest is Warren Bailey.
		He's a storm chaser, the Storm Chaser.
		The original Storm Chaser.
		We're talking about violent weather right now, actually, tornadoes.
		I'm Art Bell.
unidentified		Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.
		Don't leave me just wake up each other.
		The clock strikes 12, and Midnight in the Desert is pounding packets your way on the Dark Matter Digital Network.
		To call the show, please direct your finger digits to dial 1-952-225-5278.
		That's 1-952-CALLART.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Warren Faigley is my guest.
		He chases storms.
		He is said to be the best.
		That's what you're hearing.
		And we were talking about entertainment value, I believe.
		Right, Warren?
warren faidley ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, we were talking about how technology and social media have changed.
		You know, the way that people get their warning information.
		And, you know, it's a great thing.
		It saves lives.
		But at the same time, one of the things that's happening, which is a very negative thing now, is people are relying too much on that information.
		And I'll give you a great example.
		You know, in Moore, Oklahoma, when they were recently hit by that violent tornado, I spoke to somebody and he said, well, I was watching TV and I wanted to get confirmation that it was a big tornado and it was heading towards my house.
		And he barely got out alive.
		I mean, this guy, his home was completely leveled.
		And he only got about a half mile away from it when he found shelter.
		If he'd waited any later, he probably would have been killed.
		But this is a growing problem now is that people are relying too much on others to tell them what to do.
		And they're watching live footage and trying to correlate that with the strength of the tornado and where it's moving.
		And most people don't have the knowledge to do that.
		So the bottom line is they're taking too long to seek shelter or take the action they need to take to save their lives.
		And, you know, there is that entertainment value.
		I've had people tell me, well, gosh, you know, I was watching it on TV and it looked really cool, but I didn't realize how close it was getting to me.
		So that's one of the things I think we're going to have to see people change in weather safety training and discussions is to get people, it doesn't matter what a tornado, you know, if it's an EF-0 or if it's an EF-5, if it's heading towards you, you need to take the same kind of precaution you would take for any kind of tornado, and you need to not delay that action.
		And you need to, especially if you have a family or responsible for other people, you really need to do that as quickly as you can.
unidentified		Which is not at all what chasers do.
warren faidley ▲ ● ▼		No, chasers don't do that.
		You know, chasers were going to be out there, let me tell you.
		And chasers and spotters, you know, we always talk about chasers, but really the unsung heroes of when you talk about people being actively involved in severe weather, you know, you've got the researchers, which, of course, you can't deny their research leads to a lot of life-saving information.
		At least the real researchers, not the fake ones, which we can certainly talk about at some point.
		But, you know, the spotters really don't get enough credit.
		I mean, these are men and women.
		They go out with their own vehicles, and as you probably know from chasing, a lot of times their vehicles are beat to a pulp by giant hell.
		They spend their own gas money.
		It's strictly a public service.
		They don't get anything out of it.
		They never, rarely ever get a thank you from anyone.
		But I've heard so many spotter reports over the years when I've been chasing giving back life-saving information to the National Weather Service that I think we need to designate a National Spotter Day, which I'm actually working right now on doing, to give credit to those people for being out there and providing that kind of information.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Let's take a moment and just stop talking about this aspect of it.
		We'll come back to it.
		And give people your best advice, and that is when you're going to have a – If you live in Oklahoma or somewhere out in the plains, they know ahead of time.
		In fact, I believe Dr. Forbes has taken to creating the TORCON scale, which is the likelihood of a tornado being within, what, 50 miles of you or something like that on a scale of 1 to 5 of it or something like that.
warren faidley ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I'm not a big one.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No, no, it's 1 to 10.
warren faidley ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I'm not a big fan of that.
		I mean, Ford's is a great guy.
		Trust me.
		He's one of the best people they have there.
		I respect the heck out of him.
		But I don't agree with that system.
		It just confuses people.
		There's already enough systems.
		What I tell people, and this isn't obviously a predictability, but the thing I've developed over the years, I call it the triangle of survival.
		And at the top of that triangle is to know the danger.
		Know the danger where you live.
		And people will say, well, I live in Tornado Alley.
		Okay, well, do you live near train tracks?
		You might have a derailment.
		Do you have flooding in the area?
		So the most important thing is to know for your area what kind of dangers you have for an A to Z, wildfires, whatever.
		The second thing is know what to do.
		If it's a tornado, you need to know where the nearest shelter is or have one in your house.
		And the final thing is you need to take action right away.
		You don't delay.
		Those three things will save probably 90% or more of the people who are threatened by severe weather.
		But somewhere along that triangle, people make a critical mistake.
		They don't know the danger, they don't know what to do, or they don't take action.
		And it leads to bad consequences.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I think, hands down, the safest place to be is underground, right?
warren faidley ▲ ● ▼		Underground, yeah.
		I mean, again, you can't always predict tornado strength.
		And I know that some people now, I've watched some of the forecasts in some of the major cities, and the meteorologists will say, well, this right now on radar looks like it's going to be an EF 1 or 2.
		And I just cringe.
		Yeah, if you're a chaser, you could probably look at the velocity scans and figure out the shear and things like that and look at it and think, well, yeah, this is probably going to be a weak tornado or maybe a strong tornado.
		But I think it's a mistake to relate to people that you're thinking it's going to be in EF1 or 2 because it goes back to what I was saying before.
		People will stop taking shelter.
		They'll say, well, it's just an EF1.
		That'll knock my lawn chair over out front.
		I don't really care.
		And they won't take shelter, which is a big mistake.
		You don't want to do that.
		The best option is to always take the same type of action you would take, no matter what the tornado is or what they think it's going to be.
		And that is underground, like you said.
		That is always the safest place to be as an underground, some kind of approved shelter.
		And your best chance of surviving a tornado is underground, especially the violent ones.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And as I'm at least jumped into an unapproved ditch.
warren faidley ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, there are some above-ground shelters, though, that are FEMA-approved that can withstand some very violent tornadoes.
		That's another option.
		You can do put one of those in your house and use it as a safe the rest of the year.
		But you need to have some kind of shelter if there's a tornado.
		That's the only real way you're going to survive.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		What is the strongest wind that has been recorded in an F5?
		You know, the biggest tornado?
		Do we know or are we still imagining?
warren faidley ▲ ● ▼		Well, they've exceeded 300 miles an hour.
		And they've done this using portable Doppler radars, which is great because they're able to go out to take the radar to the storm instead of letting the storm come to the radar.
		And a lot of the folks at NCAR, which is in Colorado, and the University of Oklahoma, and there's probably three or Four more research groups that use portable Dopplers go out.
		And they've measured winds well over 300 miles per hour and documented those, which is absolutely incredible.
		I was on a tornado near Red Rock.
		I don't recall the exact wind speed.
		I know it was over 300 miles an hour, but that's just an incredible amount of destruction.
		And that's just the winds that they've measured.
		I'm sure they can probably top out a little bit higher than that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		300 miles an hour take virtually anything down to the ground, including concrete?
warren faidley ▲ ● ▼		Some of it.
		It depends.
		Tornadoes are made up of individual vortices.
		And it just depends on how strong those vortices are and what they hit.
		And, of course, that's why you'll have the house across the street will be standing, and then the other house will be completely demolished.
		But with your very strong, your very wide tornadoes, those usually leave a very wide path of destruction almost within that whole area where the actual tornado is in contact with the ground.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, so here's a question for you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		One day, an EF-5 is going to hit a big city, something like Dallas, Fort Worth, or Oklahoma City, or, you know, I mean downtown high-rise type area.
unidentified		What will that do?
warren faidley ▲ ● ▼		Well, it depends.
		I mean, you say it depends on the size of the tornado.
		It depends on what kind of structures it hits.
		But if you're talking about a downtown area, you're talking about the biggest danger is going to be glass, flying glass from that tornado.
		It's unlike you're going to see skyscrapers taken down.
		You may have some buildings that are not as strong, some of the one- or two-story buildings near the street destroyed.
		But you're also going to have the compression of wind and the Verturi effect between the buildings compressing air.
		So you may have some absolutely insane velocities doing a lot of destruction.
		But you're going to have a lot of debris, things coming off buildings, cars being hurled into buildings.
		But again, the biggest danger is going to be windows breaking and that glass is flying all over the place in a major city.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What I'm going to ask you is for speculation right now.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Would that be all right?
unidentified		Oh, sure.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So we have speculated for years about weather control.
		And I've often wondered Warren, if it might be possible, if something is out going across the plains, even a big tornado, if it might not be possible, if it was headed toward a city to do something to that tornado, I don't know whether you could detonate something big and either disperse it or change its path or control it in some way.
		I'm sure you've wondered and thought about weather control.
		Is anything like that possible?
warren faidley ▲ ● ▼		Not with the technology we have today.
		There's nothing you can do to, you know, tornado, the storms, the supercells that spawn them are very, very large storms that are large systems.
		The tornado is actually a very, very small portion of that storm in the actual circulation.
		The mesocyclone, which is the rotating part, the core of the storm that's actually producing the tornado in most cases, is a very large, you know, covers a very large area with inside the storm.
		So you would have to disrupt that or you would have to have some kind of vehicle very close to the tornado to figure out.
		And people have talked about using laser beams.
		And trust me, these are some of the messages I get that just crack me up.
		I mean, laser beams and, you know, building, there was a gentleman a few, I think about a year ago proposed building a wall around Oklahoma City to try to stop the circulation.
		None of these things are really, you know, maybe Donald.
unidentified		It's only good if you could get Texas to pay for it.
warren faidley ▲ ● ▼		Well, yeah, there you go.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, boy.
warren faidley ▲ ● ▼		I hope he's not listening.
		He'll be after me tomorrow.
		But yeah, all these things.
		It would take a lot of energy.
		I mean, just the physics of it to overcome something like that.
		You would have to have something that we simply don't have the technology.
		I think if it's ever going to happen, it would be something where they figure out a way to actually reduce the strength of the overall storm and probably prevent it from producing a tornado.
		It would probably be difficult in itself, but that would probably be a more logical approach.
		And I did go back and check the Red Rock tornado.
		I wanted to get this right.
		I believe it was 270 miles an hour, the speed they measured.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's horrible.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Really horrible.
warren faidley ▲ ● ▼		A lot of damage.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And again, the country I lived in for quite a number of years, Philippines, they are getting hyphoons now that are said, in fact, they also said it of the one off Baja not long ago, right?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Or down further in Mexico, the one that blew up in virtually one day to a cat five, and then the opposite occurred, and it virtually dissipated in a day.
warren faidley ▲ ● ▼		You're talking about the one that hit Mexico.
warren faidley ▲ ● ▼		I believe that was, was it Patricia?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I think that's right.
		I think that's correct.
		Very weird storm.
warren faidley ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, well, the thing about that storm was it went from being a hurricane, or from being a tropical storm to a hurricane, a very powerful hurricane.
warren faidley ▲ ● ▼		I think it was less than 24 hours.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's it.
warren faidley ▲ ● ▼		So, you know, when you have that kind of energy in a hurricane, that's really spooky.
		The only thing that really saved everybody in that hurricane was a couple of things.
		One, it moved relatively quick.
		It didn't sit there and spin on the coast.
		And the core of the greatest winds was only, I believe, when it went on shore, maybe 20, maybe 30, 35 miles wide at the most.
		And it went in between really two populated areas.
		So they really left out, really left out with that story.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		They said that was the lowest barometric pressure they had ever measured.
warren faidley ▲ ● ▼		In a hurricane.
		There has been a lower pressure.
		I believe it was Hurricane Tip in 1979, if I remember right.
		That was actually lower.
		If you're talking about just cyclones in general around the world, of course, that was a typhoon.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		Typhoons I'm terribly familiar With, too familiar with.
		And the Philippines gets hit or within the Philippine area of responsibility about 20 to 22 a year.
		It's incredible.
		And they seem like they're getting stronger, Warren.
		I'm not sure about that, but boy, they do build quickly.
warren faidley ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, that hurricane season's a lot longer.
		I mean, you can theoretically have typhoons in the area almost any time of the year.
		But one of the big problems is just the population areas.
		People want to live near the coast, coastal areas.
		There's the major cities, the jobs, all these things.
		There are more and more people living in coastal areas.
		And the problem is a typhoon that would have hit a specific island or specific area there 10 years ago, the population may have been maybe a third of what it is now.
		So as you see that, I mean, you see that in the plains, people moving to more of the major cities and urban sprawl out.
		And you're just giving tornadoes or hurricanes just a larger target to hit.
		But you always have these anomalies.
		We had Hurricane Camille back in 69, and nothing really rivaled it until Andrew, which wasn't as strong.
		And then, of course, Katrina, which was, I believe, only ever went up to a category three rating.
		So, you know, you have these weather extremes, which is one of the reasons it makes it so fun to follow severe weather because you just never know.
		I mean, on any given day or week or month, you may be able to experience one of those extremes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		The scientists are saying that this, we're in the El Niño cycle right now here in the U.S. And they're saying it's one of the strongest they've ever seen.
		And, of course, then there's the opposite of that, La Niña.
		And they, I guess, cycle back and forth.
		But we've got El Niño this year, and it will probably affect my area here, right?
warren faidley ▲ ● ▼		It probably will affect California, but you never know.
		There's a lot of patterns that can offset an El Niño.
		I believe there was a weak El Nino in 2010, 2012 that was offset by some other things, large-scale atmospheric patterns that changed it.
		But you never know, and that's one of the problems.
		You may have a strong El Niño.
		And the history would say the strong one we had back in, I believe it was, what, 82, 83, which was very strong, and the one in 19, I believe it was 1990, was it 97, both of those very strong, did a lot of damage.
		Matter of fact, I think the one in 82, 83 did something like $13 billion in damage worldwide.
		So we're talking worldwide consequences with the El Niño.
		You're talking about drought in Kenya.
		I know that there's millions of people right now I was reading that are threatened by the drought there, fires in Australia.
		So a lot of things that happen in El Niño, it's not just about the wetter.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Can you actually explain to my audience what the two are, basically?
warren faidley ▲ ● ▼		The El Niño and the La Niña?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
warren faidley ▲ ● ▼		Well, the El Niño is the warming of the eastern Pacific Ocean and areas.
		And it happens when the trade winds relax.
		And the trade winds circulate, to make this as simple as I can, the trade winds circulate the ocean.
		The ocean has a lot of heat.
		As a matter of fact, the western portion of the Pacific, the West Pacific, I believe it's called the Western Pacific, I can't think of the name off the top of my head.
		It's called a warm pool.
		That is an area that is generally circulated.
		It circulates around, and the water upwells, and it cools off.
		You think of it like a radiator.
		When the trade winds relax, then you don't have that circulation.
		So the water begins to pile up to the eastern areas.
		It becomes warmer.
		And when it becomes warmer, it changes all kinds of things.
		It changes the configure of the jet stream, which do the low pressure systems move around.
		And that's what causes the global weather changes.
		In some areas, again, you're going to have temperatures that are very hot and dry.
		And in other areas, you're going to have, like California, for example, generally experiences higher rainfall levels.
		And the good news, of course, up further north is usually you don't have as many of the polar intrusions.
		You don't have those really cold, cold storms.
		But that's not to say you won't.
		Now, that's what they expect to happen.
		And I would say probably, you know, December through February is the big El Nino months, especially when you get into January, February.
		So it's going to be interesting to see what happens.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, we need the rain, but, you know, there's a lot of deforested area now that is going to be a problem if we get a lot of rain, obviously.
warren faidley ▲ ● ▼		Well, yeah, because you have the mudslides, you have flooding.
		We've even had flooding here in Arizona.
		That becomes a big problem because California is a lot like Arizona.
		It doesn't handle a lot of rain at one time.
		It's great to have the slow range, you know, the soaking rains that fill up the reservoirs.
		But the problem is with El Niño storms, they have a habit of dropping very large amount of rainfall in very short periods, which leads to a lot of flooding.
		And my being there in 1997 and witnessing that and all the other crazy stuff that was going along with it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		A lot of people don't know, but California is really a beautified desert.
warren faidley ▲ ● ▼		That's very true.
warren faidley ▲ ● ▼		We all know that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right at the coast, of course.
		You get that, I guess.
		But otherwise, they're using water to make it down.
		Here's a question that's on my list that I don't know the answer to myself.
		What is core punching?
warren faidley ▲ ● ▼		Core punching is when you go into the core of a supercell storm, and the core is where you find the largest hell and the heaviest precipitation.
		And it's generally the area in a storm that's moving to the northeast, it's generally an area that would be to the front side of a, or I should say the east side of where a tornado may form.
		So if you're in that area and you wait too long, there may be a tornado somewhere in there behind you.
		Most people don't do that.
		There are some chasers who enjoy doing that.
		I mean, if you don't like your vehicle and you want to go in there and enjoy nice hell beating your car to pieces, that's where you want to go.
		But it is very dangerous because when you get in that area, you're getting very close to where the interface is where you could have a tornado.
		And you can have a tornado even embedded in those areas with some storms.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I have never intentionally driven into that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Have you?
warren faidley ▲ ● ▼		I can hear it.
unidentified		I can hear it.
warren faidley ▲ ● ▼		Well, not intentionally, I wouldn't say, but back again, before the days of radar, we would do that.
warren faidley ▲ ● ▼		And the scariest thing is at night because that's when it's really, really spooky.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How do I agree with that?
warren faidley ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I mean, I think people chase into the pre-lapped data radar days.
		Some of them are very lucky to be alive thinking about all the stuff we must have driven into.
		Because I look at radar nowadays and I'm thinking, good Lord, I probably would have driven into that thing if I didn't have radar.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, so here's what I think is going to get a lot of people killed, Warren.
		Lately, in the last few years, since this entertainment thing came along, there have been so many storm chasers that, frankly, they jam the roads.
		It gets to the point where there is no place to park, you know, if you're in a likely place.
		I mean, it's incredible how many chasers there are.
		And they actually get in each other's way.
		And one of these days, there's going to be a big tragedy because of that.
warren faidley ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I mean, I support 100% a person's right to chase.
		I believe if you want to go out there and chase, you should do it.
		My rule is you don't put others in dangers.
		That includes rescuers that may have to come and get you.
		But I support people's right to chase because I've done it myself for many years.
		It would be hypocritical for me to say not to do it.
		But you can do it responsibly.
		You can still do it safely, and then you can still have a lot of fun and beat up your car or do whatever you want.
		But it's everybody's thing.
		The big problem with chasing right now, it's not the real established chasers, the probably maybe 100, 200 people that have a lot of experience who are fairly responsible.
		It's a lot of the locals.
		And I'm not trying to put local people down because, you know, hell, if I saw a storm out back and I wasn't a chaser, I'd probably go after it too, just like I would, you know, fire anything.
		You'd want to go see what's going on.
		But that's the big problem right now are the locals because the locals, most of them don't have radar.
		They'll see a report on TV.
		They'll go out.
		They'll clog the roads.
		They park in the roadways and make it difficult.
		The El Reno, the example, there was literally a rolling party to the south of that storm we got caught in with people drinking in 20 empty beer cans in the back of their trucks and there were wrecks happening when people were rubbernecking and crashing into each other.
		I mean it was like, you know, a mad, mad, mad world if you remember that movie.
		It was just crazy.
		It was absolutely nuts and we had to a couple times literally drive them through the shoulder of the road almost off the road to get around some of the traffic because there was a second tornado coming towards us at one point.
		But that's the big problem right now are the locals who just don't know what they're looking at.
		They may park in the road.
		They'll walk out into the road.
		And that's what's causing the problem.
		It's not most of the responsible chasers.
		They do a somewhat good job of policing themselves.
		They stay off the roads.
		They pull off the roads and do a pretty good job.
		So yeah, it's becoming a major problem.
		And I see the future of something happening, you know, where there's an accident blocking a road and here comes the big tornado down the road and takes a lot of people out.
		I've seen that scenario set up many times.
		It's just fortunately so far everybody's either been able to get out of the way or the tornado took a different path and missed the traffic jam.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Every movie that I've seen on the subject always seems to concentrate on a group of people who are absolutely intense on setting up a weather station that will be inside a tornado or even themselves getting inside a tornado.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		There aren't people out there still trying to do that either.
warren faidley ▲ ● ▼		Well, there's people that try to put probes into tornadoes, into the path of tornadoes.
		Let me correct myself there.
		That's still done.
		There was Project Vortex a few years ago, which had vehicles.
		These people are very professional, well-trained, safe.
		Putting probes out in the front of a tornado to get data, that's a legitimate pursuit of going out and doing research.
		And it's necessary.
		Of course, nowadays we have a lot of drones are going to be used here pretty soon.
		They're working on drones with instrument packages.
		It's all about doing this and doing it and staying alive and being able to get that data without putting humans at risk.
		And of course, that's where we start to see problems with people crossing the line when you have people out there who say they're researchers and they're doing all this life-saving work, but they're not actually doing that.
		They're trying to generate publicity or income, and that's becoming probably the biggest nightmare in storm chasing right now.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's changed a lot since we last talked, and certainly since I chased and you began chasing, a lot has changed.
		And I guess there is a pretty big danger out there.
		How close have you come to being inside a tornado yourself?
warren faidley ▲ ● ▼		Well, I've been in the circulation of very weak tornadoes, and it wasn't on purpose.
		One time we drove real close to a landspout tornado, which is still a tornado, but it's not derived from a really strong mesocyclone, so they're rarely destructive.
		And we were actually in that circulation for a little bit on the outside edges of it, but I knew that it wasn't going to be a major tornado.
		I could tell the height of the storm and the base and a lot of other things.
		But that's something you try not to do because, again, you just don't know how strong a tornado is going to get.
		It may start out as an EM0 and suddenly come down, which I've seen them do, into a very, very strong tornado in just a few minutes, if not seconds.
		So there's no way to really second-guess how strong a tornado is going to be.
		You can look at radar and velocities and things like that, and if you're really good about reading that kind of data, but there's just no guarantee.
		You just don't know what's going to happen, what's going to be picked up by the tornado and hurled into you.
		So it's not a real good thing to try to actually get into the center of a tornado.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Even though you basically know what you're doing, it's still possible that Mother Nature can fool you or you make the wrong decision.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I imagine you've come pretty close to losing your life at some point.
warren faidley ▲ ● ▼		I could probably tell you about the next four or five hours about that.
		I mean, this year we were driving towards, I try and remember the name of the town in Colorado, maybe in Lamar, Colorado, and there was a dust storm.
		It seemed like an innocent dust storm.
		It didn't look very dangerous.
		It wasn't something I was really worried about.
		The ground was wet.
		We didn't really expect a major dust storm to hit.
		And it hit.
		I mean, it hit in front of us.
		And fortunately, I pulled off the road, did the right thing.
		We ended up evacuating the vehicle and literally running into a field.
		And it was a good thing we did because when the dust cleared, there was a very tragic multi-vehicle pilot that occurred in front of us.
		I think that took one or two lives and injured quite a few people.
		So it's not always a tornado.
		It's the things you just don't expect that are going to get you out there.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You have to always be aware of.
		Yeah, that's right.
		People aren't reacting normally in those situations.
		I'm Mark Bell.
		is midnight in the desert.
unidentified		Go, go, ride by the wind.
		Throw down a spin.
		I dare do love, I want to breathe.
		I made you better, oh baby, I'll let you down, I'll let you down.
		There's no one there's no one before.
		You want more, you want more, more, more, better jump.
		This is Midnight in the Desert.
		To call the show.
		If you're East of Midnight, call 1-952.
		Call Art.
		If you're West of Midnight, call 1-952-225-5278.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You figured that one out, Jeff.
		Hey, everybody, if you would like to join in the conversation, here comes the talk.
		We're going to open the lines.
		We'd love to have you ask a question of our nation's premier storm chaser.
		Maybe one of the very first storm chasers, and he's still doing it.
		His name is Warren Faidley, and this is your chance to ask about this sort of thing.
		So public number, area code, 952-225-5278.
		Once again, 952-225-5278.
		Now, we also have Skype for your audio pleasure.
		You, if in North America, America and Canada, can download Skype.
		It's free.
		Absolutely free.
		And then once you get it, download, well, download Skype.
unidentified		Once you get it, add us to the UK.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's easy to do.
		Go to the little plus sign and put MITD51 in there if you're in North America.
		M-I-T-D 51.
		Just the initials, as in Midnight in the Desert 5-1.
		Then we will appear on your contact list.
		And you can call us free of charge anytime from anywhere in the world.
		If you're outside of North America, it's MITD55.
		Or Midnight in the Desert.
		You don't spell it out.
		Just the initials.
		And it doesn't matter whether it's CAPS or not CAPS.
		M-I-T-D-5-5.
		Now, back to Warren.
		And Warren, I want to ask you, this is for me, because I live out here in the desert.
		And while we rarely get tornadoes, they do happen.
		What we get a lot of are these dust devils.
		And these dust devils that we get are pretty serious sometimes, Warren.
		And I don't fully understand them, what powers them, how they get going.
		But boy, I'll tell you what.
		If one hits the side of your house, it sounds like a truck ran into your house.
		And I've actually been caught in them.
		And you have to huddle down because, of course, dust is trying to extinguish your eyes.
		They are really serious.
		How big can they get and what makes them?
warren faidley ▲ ● ▼		Well, unlike a tornado you would associate with an actual thunderstorm, which is a little bit more, matter of fact, quite a bit more complex.
		Dust devils are really simple, just rising thermals that get, usually there's a little bit of wind that begins rotation and the air rises inside and voila, there you've got it.
		You've got a tornado, you've got a dust devil.
		And they can be quite intense.
		I know back in the 1960s or 70s, one of them crashed a refueling jet out here at the military base that flew into it when it was landing.
		So they can be very destructive.
		They're very fun.
		I mean, when I was a kid, I used to ride my bicycle and I'm into them.
		I guess that would give you some idea of what I may be doing someday.
		You know, it was a lot of fun as a kid getting inside.
		Especially if you got inside when you could actually be inside the cylinder and look around and look up.
		And, you know, it was kind of fun.
		I forgot that you asked me another question there.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know, what actually forms them?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		They form and they go away just like regular tornadoes, except I don't know what powers them.
warren faidley ▲ ● ▼		You know, generally when you have a hot day, you have the rising air.
		And usually there's almost always a little bit of wind associated that'll get them to rotate.
		And that's all they are.
		They're very simple creations.
		There's nothing really, really complex about them.
		They can be large and they can be destructive.
		I mean, out here in Tucson, a lot of times you'll have sheds that are carried away by tumbleweeds and all kinds of stuff.
		But they're generally not a menace.
		Now, I actually saw a wreck a few years ago when I was leaving town.
		I was only about 10 minutes out on my chase trip when a dust devil crossed the road in front of me and a woman panicked and hit another car and caught a pretty bad accident because of the dust generated by one.
		So they can be dangerous.
		They hit trucks or cars, especially trucks, high-profile vehicles.
		They can be a real menace.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I sometimes wonder when a storm chaser gets his vehicle pounded by giant hail, and it looks awful, and he's standing there talking to the insurance guy.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I wonder how that conversation goes.
warren faidley ▲ ● ▼		Well, I've been really good because any hail damage I've ever suffered, I paid for myself.
		I didn't go to the insurance company and say, hey, I figured that would be the end of the insurance policy.
		A lot of chasers like to keep the hell dents kind of as souvenirs.
		I think that's one of the old words we used to call them in the old days.
		Chasers flack, but in the old days, you would almost keep those dents in your car.
		As a matter of fact, a lot of chasers, if you look at their cars, they don't even bother to fix them.
		And matter of fact, if they need a new car, they'll just go over to the car lot there in Oklahoma or Texas and pick up a hell-damaged car and just might as well start out with a few hell dents in it anyways.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Well, let's try a couple of calls here.
		Shall we and see what's out there?
		Hello there on Skype.
unidentified		You're on with Warren Ailey.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hello on Skype.
		Okay, something is up and it's not good with your audio.
		I don't know what's going on, but you're hard to hear.
		Hello.
		Going once.
		Going twice.
		And gone.
		You'll have to work that out.
		Frequently, when you start out on Skype, the best thing you can do is go to the Skype Echo server, and you can talk into it.
		It will then play that back to you, and you can decide whether you sound good or bad.
		And if you sound bad, you can fix it before you call.
		Anyway, let's go to the phone and Lexington, I think, Tennessee.
		Hello.
unidentified		Yes, hello.
		Hey, man, this is so cool talking to Art Pale.
		And I've listened to you for years and years and years.
		I'm a truck driver.
		And anyway, yeah, the storm thing.
		I just kind of had a curious about something.
		I was several years ago, I was trucking through Kansas on I-70 between Ellis and Hayes.
		And it was at night, and I drove into Begum Tornado.
		Didn't realize it.
		And wind got so bad, I pulled over on the shelter road, set my parking brakes on the truck.
		And man, it was rocking real bad.
		How I had to holler at my co-driver and have him jump in the passenger seat, put a seatbelt down.
		Anyway, ended up turning my rig over while I was sitting there.
		But the question I had is the wind was, of course, when it got so, you know, it was shaking my truck so bad, I had to part.
		Well, it seemed like the wind was hitting me at a 45-degree angle on my left side, which would be the north side.
		And then as we were sitting there, it just looked like the wind kind of rotated around a little bit and then hitting us straight on.
		And then it started hitting us on the about a 45-degree angle to the right.
		And shortly after that, that's when it picked our rigged up and turned us over.
		So I was curious, was I like dead center of that thing, or what do you suppose was going on?
warren faidley ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's really hard to tell because when you have a tornado, you have a lot of complex wind fields within the tornado.
		You also have downdrafts, outflows that can be mistaken for a tornado.
		But generally, if you're near a thunderstorm and you have winds that are changing direction that quickly and from those types of angles, you're usually either very close to a tornado or somewhere in the interface where a tornado is possibly forming.
		It's impossible to tell because winds can be very complex in a thunderstorm, especially sounds like you might have been in the front of it.
		So you have all kinds of winds come from different directions.
		But when you see those winds coming from different angles and increasing, decreasing in speed, that's never a good sign.
		That's usually the sign that you're in some kind of an area you shouldn't be.
unidentified		There you go.
		Yeah, no doubt, no doubt.
		And Art, how long have you been?
		Now, are you on short?
		I'm picking up on WKWN and on shortwave.
		Right.
		And this is the first night I've heard you in years.
		Are you just on shortwave?
		What's going on?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No, no, no, no.
		Okay, no, so that you know.
		Yes, we're on shortwave.
		We're on about 50 different radio affiliate stations across the country.
		And, of course, we're on the internet everywhere.
		So it's kind of like we started out as an internet-only radio program, and we're sort of morphing into, I don't know what.
		That's a deal.
unidentified		All right.
		Well, man, it sure is good to hear you.
		Man, it's been years, and I've been wanting to talk to you for years and years and years, but, you know, before when you was just on coast to coast, it was impossible just about to get in.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I'm surprised you got in now.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And listening to this entrepreneur, are you actually in a truck right now?
unidentified		Yes, I'm in 18-wheeler right now going to Oklahoma.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Wow.
		All right.
		Thank you very, very much for the call.
		That's pretty cool.
		So he's actually able to get us on short wave in a truck.
		That's pretty wild.
		I'm going to try this one more time with Stephen, who had trouble with Skype.
		Hello, Stephen.
unidentified		Are you there?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No, sounds the same to me.
		Stephen?
		No, Stephen.
		It's still not working, buddy.
		You're going to have to go back and give it a try.
		Like I said, go to the Echo server, please, if you can hear my voice and get it straightened out.
		It'll work eventually, trust me.
		Summerfield, Illinois.
unidentified		Hi.
unidentified		Hey, Art.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hey, there.
unidentified		I'm glad to get to you.
		I've been listening to you since the mid-90s.
		Isn't that wild?
		But my question for your guest is, I don't understand why people around Oklahoma in areas in that particular Part of the country, they keep getting hit so often with tornadoes.
		Why do they stay there?
		I mean, it's just beyond belief.
		Oklahoma City is just like Ground Central.
		Maybe your guest can talk to some of these people.
		What are they?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I hear what you're saying.
		They're in the part of the country that gets hit again and again and again.
		So what do you say about that, Warren?
warren faidley ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know, that is a good question.
		And I have talked to people in Moore, in Oklahoma City, in those areas, who have left.
		They've gone.
		They're done.
		Especially Moore being hit, what, two or three times now.
		They're gone.
		They're leaving.
		They're getting out of there.
		But the odds of getting hit by a tornado, I mean, we went through some really weird years here, very, very slim.
		But then you have to ask yourself, you know, the other question is why do people live in San Francisco or L.A., which the odds are, right, that it's going to be annihilated eventually.
		I mean, it's not if, it's just when.
		And, I mean, I always, whenever I'm on the West Coast, I'm always aware of that.
		I'm always aware, especially places like San Francisco.
		I'm always aware that someday they're going to, it's just inevitable, going to suffer an absolute catastrophic earthquake.
		But most people don't, they want to play the odds.
		They don't want to leave because of that reason.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know, I do understand the psychology, though.
		They do get hit a lot.
		And I guess when you're sitting watching on TV, you say to yourself, well, do they stay there?
		Especially in those areas near Oklahoma City that seem to get hit again and again.
		What is it about Oklahoma City?
		Any thoughts on that?
warren faidley ▲ ● ▼		Well, again, it's what we discussed earlier.
		Oklahoma City went many, many, many years without a tornado strike.
		I forget how long.
		I wrote it in one of my books about how long it had gone.
		It was a crazy amount of time until it started getting hit and then getting hit again and again and again.
		Most recently, more in the El Reno tornadoes.
		But again, I think a lot of it just depended upon where that, a lot of it's just fate.
		A lot of it's just bad luck of just having a very strong thunderstorm that produces a very violent tornado go through your area.
		Why couldn't it have been 100 miles south or 100 miles north, but the populations are a lot lower?
		It's just a very unfortunate thing.
		But again, it goes back to what I was saying earlier about the dry line creeping a little bit further to the east and the storms initiating out just far enough so by the time they reach Oklahoma City, they're reaching their maximum potential, and that's generally when they're going to produce the most violent tornadoes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, real quick, we've covered most things that I wanted to cover.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Wichita, Kansas, you're on the air with Warren.
unidentified		Hi.
		Hi, Mr. Bell.
		I have a question.
		I actually live in a smaller town, out of Radon, outside of Wichita.
		Okay.
		Well, we're right by a refinery, and everybody tells me that the heat from the refinery is actually warming the air to push the tornadoes away.
		And I don't know if that's true or they're just screwing with me because I used to live in, I was born in San Diego and then who's telling you this?
		Is it the people who work there?
		No, my husband's family.
		They say, oh, well, the heat is heating up the atmosphere, and it's less likely we'll get hit with something big because the heat will push the cold air away from this area.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Warren?
warren faidley ▲ ● ▼		I've never heard of anything like that.
		It's hard to believe it because, you know, the storms are just so immense and so powerful that I don't think a single refinery is going to probably have any effect on it whatsoever.
		I mean, people used to think in Topeka, Kansas, that Burnett Bupa was called Burnett Mound protected the city.
		Most major cities have areas like that where they think either a hill or a lake or a factory will protect them, and that's unfortunately usually not the case.
		There's just not enough energy coming out of a structure like that to really alter a massive tornado.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It's a good PR story, though.
warren faidley ▲ ● ▼		Well, yeah, it's a great PR story because everybody started building refineries to keep the tornadoes away.
warren faidley ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		We are being protected by that refinery.
		I've got something like that going on here where I live.
		I've got 13 towers up, Warren.
		13 tall towers, one of them 100 feet, the rest 76 feet tall, covering five acres.
		We get lightning storms all the time.
		But you know what?
		I've never been hit by lightning.
		I've never had one of the towers yet.
		And I have come to believe that these 13 towers, all of which are grounded, actually protect me.
		I don't know if that's true, but I believe they discharge before the strike.
warren faidley ▲ ● ▼		That could be very true because you have buildings now that have lightning systems on it where it'll discharge the lightning course into the ground or protect the building.
		So it's very possible, though, that storm is making that connection between the ground and the cloud through those towers.
		That's quite possible.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I've come to believe that.
		Every time I say it, I knock on wood, believe me.
		Is there any advice that you can give to would-be storm chasers?
		I mean, I get it.
		I know why people do it because it's an adrenaline rush.
		But what advice would you give them?
warren faidley ▲ ● ▼		Well, the best thing to do, I could say to storm chasers, you know, from someone who's been doing it for many, many years, is to make sure when you do it, you're not going to hurt anyone else.
		That's the big thing, is to make sure that you're not going to do something so stupid that you're going to have to have EMS people come in and rescue you and put themselves in great danger, which happens a lot.
		You know, don't be part of the problem.
		I mean, you can get as crazy as you want.
		Most of the time, people are chasing out in the middle of absolutely nowhere.
		I mean, you can get away with all kinds of crazy stuff, but don't danger other people, especially people that aren't chasing.
		Pull all the way off the road.
		Don't get distracted and do crazy things in your vehicle that could harm someone else.
		That would be the number one thing.
		I guess number two would be try to give something back to what you're doing.
		If you're going to go to a local school and do a safety talk and show some pictures to kids, do something like that, learn to be a spotter, spot your neighborhood or your local area so you can report back what you see.
		But try to give something back to humanity.
		It's not all about just taking things and pictures and enjoying these things.
		I really think you have to give something back.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, well, Warren, I think I'm going to say thank you for being here tonight.
		It has been a joy to interview you, and I would like to do it again.
		I'd like to have you back.
		Perhaps the time to have you would be, I don't know, some spring day when things are really heating up and you're actually out.
		But then again, you probably couldn't do it under those conditions, could you?
		Or would you?
warren faidley ▲ ● ▼		You know, I would if it sounds like a great idea.
		It just depends on the circumstances.
		But a lot of times the storm's in, you know, by 8 or 9, and you've got all that time afterwards when you're all wound up, so it would be kind of fun to do a show under those conditions.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It really would.
		I mean, even if you at times would have to put down whatever communication device you were using at the time and just sort of let us listen, it would be wild.
		I appreciate your being on with us, and we'll do it again sometime.
warren faidley ▲ ● ▼		Great.
unidentified		Thanks a lot.
warren faidley ▲ ● ▼		I appreciate it.
unidentified		All right, my friend.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Take care.
		That's Warren Fadley.
		So, coming up, we're going to go to open lines, and that means for the next hour, anything you want to talk about is fair game.
unidentified		Anything at all.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So, by the way, did you hear that story I read from that nurse when we began the show tonight?
		If not, I'll sort of recap.
		From the high desert and the great American Southwest, I'm Art Bell.
unidentified		We'll be right back.
		Well, please coordinate your valentines and call 1952-225-5278.
		That's 1952.
		Call Art.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
unidentified		All right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So, it's open lines.
unidentified		Anything you want to talk about is fair game.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Very much appreciate your indulging my interest in things that are strange.
		And storm chasing has kind of always been down my alley.
		You can still do it.
unidentified		If something close is getting wild, I'll still go out and try.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Anyway, anything you want to talk about, fair game.
		That's what open lines is all about.
		I do want to go over this one more time.
		This nurse.
		We are really pursuing this.
		This is a woman who was pregnant.
		She was verified as being pregnant.
unidentified		They did everything.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The blood work.
		They did, you know, they took pictures.
		And she had a live single fetus within her.
		And then one day she walked into the ER and said she didn't feel she was pregnant anymore or didn't feel pregnant.
		They photographed her again.
unidentified		It was gone.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Now, there was no abortion.
		There was no either induced or otherwise.
		In other words, her HCG levels, which they measure, became non-existent.
unidentified		This fetus absolutely flat disappeared.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And the nurse, of course, wrote me a very, very interesting, and I should just read it again, but I'm not going to.
		Let's go to open lines and see what's on your mind out there.
		Adam on Skype.
unidentified		Hello.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You're on the air.
unidentified		Hey, Aaron.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hi.
unidentified		That's pretty strange.
		How far along was the woman?
		Okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Let me see here.
		She was many weeks.
		Let's see.
		You are.
		Okay.
		Young mother who had already presented twice previously since confirming pregnancy ten weeks ago.
unidentified		Okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So the pregnancy was confirmed ten weeks ago at the point she first went to the hospital.
unidentified		Hmm.
		Yeah.
		Don't know what to say there.
		Hey, I heard the comment earlier about the lightning protection, and I just wanted to say that we had a company come in and put a system in for us, and it was sort of, the booklet really described how it works, and it was pretty interesting.
		They put up these things called spline ball ionizers.
		It looks like a dandelion.
		That's right.
		Yeah.
		And as the lightning cloud forms a charge in the sky, it sort of repels the opposite electrons away down in the ground, and so you get this ground charge that forms underneath a charged sky.
		And as the storm moves across, it drags this ground charge along with it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I should have.
		Look, I should have been hit a million times.
		You know, if a storm is just looking for ground, normally, if it sees a metal tower sticking up in the air and it's on ground, it's going to go right there.
		But in my case, because I have 13 of these things, I mean, we're talking over 20-some-odd years now, I've never been hit.
unidentified		They put in a three-quarter-inch copper pipe in a big ring ground around our entire site, and then that ground from that went up our tower.
unidentified		We had a 300-foot communications tower, and it went up the tower to these ionizers, and the theory was that it would slowly drain off the ground charge so that there wasn't enough potential for a strike.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's entirely possible.
		Does that work?
		And knocking on wood, I've got a little wood here.
		That is hidden.
		never happens uh but i the first years, man, I thought I was going to be gun in.
unidentified		Well, good luck to you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Thank you very much for the call and take care.
		Yes, that many towers up in the air.
		Everybody used to say to me, boy, are you going to get hit by lightning.
		And virtually everything else has, in fact, actually, get this, folks.
		I get this purple stuff that forms during a storm up toward the top of my towers.
		It's like plasma.
		Actually, it's not like plasma.
		I think it is plasma.
		And then there'll be a lightning strike, and the plasma around all the towers will, boom, disappear.
		And then it will build up again.
		So slowly over the years, I've come to trust that I'm not going to get hit.
		Knocking again.
		But it's a strange setup.
		It really is.
		People look at it and go, oh, boy, are you in trouble?
		Well, not necessarily.
		Let's go to Silverdale, Washington.
		Hello.
silverdale in washington ▲ ● ▼		Hi, Art.
		I was just going to say we were about 25 years ago in Big Bend, Texas, in the national park there, and we were out for the afternoon.
		And all of a sudden, a storm came up, and we were looking in the distance at the Cheesos Mountains, which are orange in the desert in the distance.
		And the sky turned like a jet gray and like charcoal gray.
		And the ocatillo had the, the cactus had the beautiful orange blooms on it against that.
		And it was just spectacular.
		We took a lot of photos and could see the tornado in the distance.
		And there's so few, you have to drive miles on a road and no way to take an angle.
		So I got that adrenaline rush and wanted to stay out there all evening and watch it.
unidentified		But it got to where, you know, we had our daughter with us and we said, we've got to go back.
silverdale in washington ▲ ● ▼		So we went to Marathon to the hotel.
		But it was spectacular.
		I think it's one of the prettiest sights I've ever seen.
		It's that orange mountain, the mountains.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's pretty until something awful happens.
silverdale in washington ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yes.
		And, you know, you can't get away from them.
		They move so fast and they change direction sometimes, too.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Actually, as a chaser, you can usually stay safe.
		With radar, you know which way they're going.
		But in the days that I was chasing, we didn't have that radar.
		And, God, it was dangerous.
silverdale in washington ▲ ● ▼		It must have been.
		But beautiful.
		I'll take care.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Take care.
		Thank you very much for the call.
		To Joe in, well, I don't know where you are, Joe.
		Mr. Hello.
		Can you hear me?
		Actually, you're a little too loud.
unidentified		Oh, really?
		Yeah.
		How's that?
		Is that okay there?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Now turn your device down.
unidentified		Okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And we'll be all set.
unidentified		Didn't know you could hear me in the background a bit.
unidentified		I am a first-time caller, even though I've been listening to you since, God, I'd say the beginning of the 90s, if not like early, early 90s.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Everybody seems like they want to remind me of this.
unidentified		No, but I am a huge fan, and this is an honor, actually.
		I've been wanting to call you for years, but I always put it off.
		I'm like, you know, I'll call them when the time's right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Well, the time's right, and here you are.
		And so ask anything you want.
unidentified		It's not so much of an, well, it is kind of an ask.
		Have you ever had anybody call in and talk about, about like abduction scenarios or gray aliens that were hooded or robed?
		Hmm.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hooded or robed.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
unidentified		I'm talking about taller ones, not necessarily.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, hooded.
		Hooded.
		I've heard that.
unidentified		Because this is something that happened to me a lot when I was a little kid around four or five years old.
unidentified		And it was something that went on for quite a while.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, did you hear Dr. Jacobs when I had him on?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Twice, actually?
unidentified		No, I did not.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, my.
		I'm sorry.
		You should join what we call the Time Travelers, which allows you to listen to past shows.
		I have this doctor, Dr. Jacobs, who believes that, yes, abductions are real, and the purpose of them is to put what are called hybrids or hubrids on Earth, half human, and, well, I don't know if it's half, but part alien, and that it's a virtual invasion of our planet.
		And he thinks that's going on.
unidentified		Okay.
		Now, here's what makes this story extremely interesting.
		Here's how this whole thing would usually go down.
		It would be me, a little kid, waking up in the middle of the night, and there would usually be at least one being at the foot of my bed.
		And I don't know if this was telepathically, because, you know, I mean, this is, I'm 50 years old now, so this is when I was like four years old.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I get it, yes.
unidentified		It was usually, you know, like, do what we tell you, or we're going to break your toys or take your toys or something along the lines of that.
		And I would get upset, and then they would, like, leave and go to the closet and disappear.
		And I would usually end up following them, go into the closet, and there'd be like a portal type thing.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Now, why would you follow them?
unidentified		I don't know.
		And that's all I remember.
		You know, I don't ever remember getting on a craft.
		I don't ever remember being abducted.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, you see, that's a part of the story that doesn't ring true to me.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		If some hooded figure appeared when I was a kid at the foot of my bed, the very last thing in the world that I would do is follow it into the closet because everybody knows that's where you get eaten.
unidentified		But here's the thing.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So what kind of crazy kid were you?
unidentified		I don't know, but I've never told this story to anybody.
		Don't.
		And then, but here's the kicker.
		When the internet started taking off, you know, like early internet, I'm talking like pre-IRC.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I remember early internet.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'm not old.
unidentified		And I would go on IRC chat in some of these UFO style chat rooms on IRC.
		Yes.
		And I wouldn't necessarily say a whole lot.
		You might go in there and talk to people, but I never ever say a thing about me.
		Well, one evening I'm in there, and there's this lady that used to go in there all the time, and she starts telling me about when she was a kid, how these deities that were hooded, usually maybe one or two, would come to the foot of her bed and threaten to break her toys or take her toys and would end up going into the closet where she would follow them and either go into a portal or...
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You should have married her.
		You guys are soulmates and you're both nuts.
		I'm sorry.
		I don't mean to be mean to you, but you just don't follow things like that into the closet.
		If there's a lady out there who does that, you really need to connect with her and pursue that relationship.
		Hello, on the phone line somewhere.
		You're on air.
		Hello.
unidentified		Hello, Art.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, that's me.
unidentified		Yes.
		Oh, yeah.
		Hi.
		Hi, man.
		My name is Mario.
		I live in North California, Southern California.
		Man, I just want to say I've been a longtime fan.
		I'm sure coach to coach regrets letting you go.
		You know, you're over here back on Ibo, so I'm sure, you know, they see the fans leaving their station and listening to you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I don't know.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'm just glad to be here.
unidentified		Oh, man, I'm sure everyone is.
		But, anyways, I wanted to ask you about that missile launching the other day in California.
		Have you heard of this?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, two of them, actually.
		Two Trident missiles were launched from a submarine.
		The one spectacular one occurred at night.
		And, yeah, everybody saw it.
unidentified		I saw it too, and I recorded it, but to me, it almost looked like it was opening up a wormhole in the sky, you know, almost like another dimension at one point.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I know it did.
		Yep, it was pretty cool, I know.
		But it wasn't a wormhole.
		It was the launch of a trident.
		Now, if you ever see tridents getting launched in mass, it'll be like a wormhole opening for sure for all of us.
unidentified		Okay.
		Can I sneak one more question in?
		Yes, you may.
		Beg pardon?
		Can you give some details on that infamous phone call you received in the 90s?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		On what call?
unidentified		Yeah, that infamous phone call about the panic caller from Area 51.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, that one.
		All right, sure, yeah.
		Well, there's nothing to tell.
		This guy called me at a moment like this, you know, in the middle of open lines, and he said he was, and it sounded like he was in an airplane.
		He said, I'm in an airplane and I'm going to violate Area 51 airspace.
		And I said, this is, don't do that.
		It's not a good idea.
		And then he was later heard screaming something about a rail gun.
		And, of course, we didn't hear from him again.
		So that's it.
		That's all there is to tell.
		I mean, I followed him.
		I bet we spent 20 minutes, 30 minutes on the air.
		I kept trying to get back hold of him and get the rest of the story.
		But eventually, frankly, it just ended.
		And I don't know what became of that man.
		But do not fly.
		Actually, don't walk.
		Don't drive.
		Don't in any way penetrate Area 51.
		If you do, something permanent will happen to you.
		Or at least temporary.
		You'll end up in jail.
		Best case.
		Worst case.
		You will cease to breathe.
		You will be at room temperature, as Rush would say.
		Okay, let's go to, believe it or not, Oklahoma City, just talking about you too.
		Hello.
unidentified		Hey, Art.
		How you doing?
		Fine.
		Thank you for taking my haul.
		Big fan, obviously.
		Anyways, Oklahoma is something else as far as weather goes, and that's why it was a real great show.
		I can definitely relate to it.
		The tornadoes here are absolutely insane.
		We didn't have a lot this year.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Let me ask you what an earlier caller asked, and the earlier caller asked, knowing that you're right in the middle of where tornadoes go, why don't you move?
unidentified		I mean, you look up anywhere, they've all got their climate problems.
		But Oklahoma has picked up more climate problems recently.
		We've had earthquakes and several of them have gotten in the high threes magnitude.
		I know that's a lot for people out in California, but yeah, it's a good point.
		But where I live in particular is on the northern half of the city, and the southern half of the city is normally where it cuts through.
		Moore has been hit repeatedly.
		Again and again and again.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Four and more.
		Listen, do you blame your earthquakes on fracking?
		Is there fracking going on in the area?
unidentified		Yes, there is fracking going on in the area.
		And I couldn't agree more with that.
		And I don't try to hop on those bandwagons all the time, but we had like five earthquakes in the last 15 years, and then major ones anyway, like significant ones you could feel.
		And then all of a sudden in 2013, you had like, I think it was like 100 and I don't have the exact numbers, but it was like over 100 earthquakes from May to June in 2013.
		I mean, we're talking, I don't have the exact numbers, I'm sure somebody's looking up right now, but it was a substantial jump.
		And so one or two things is happening because Oklahoma's in the middle of the plate, the North American plate.
		Either the plate's ripping in half, and they're not telling us about it, or it's fracking.
		I mean, it's just one or the other.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'd rather blame it on fracking.
		I wonder if they know the long-term possibilities with fracking.
		I mean, we get these small earthquakes, but is it possible that it could produce something really unwanted?
unidentified		I think they know some things that they're not telling us about fracking, obviously.
		But it slowed down lately, but that's because of the, you know, the release of our oil reserves and the drop in crude oil.
		So that's probably the only reason why it slowed down, the earthquakes, with the fracking.
		But I also had a second question for you, Art.
		And I'm not, let me be clear, I'm not challenging you, and I do agree in climate change because I've seen it firsthand in this state.
		But what do you think would be a reasonable solution for climate change to battle it?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's an ultimately good question, and honestly, I don't have the answer.
		I really, really don't have the answer.
		So you're welcome to sort of challenge me, and you should challenge me on that.
		Because we do talk about climate change.
		I think clearly we are undergoing climate change, whether you believe man's hand is involved or not.
		It is going on.
		We are warming up.
		The glaciers are melting.
		They try and say that there is more snow now in certain areas than there was.
		Maybe there is.
		It's probably because of winds.
		But that are piling it up.
		But I don't have an answer.
		I mean, the CO2 level is going up.
		Nobody can argue with that.
		It's measurable.
		It's going up.
unidentified		What is it?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		400 parts per million or better right now.
		So I don't mind being challenged, and I don't mind telling you, I don't have an answer.
		If I did, I'd be making a lot of money at that.
		Let's go to Hayes, Kansas.
unidentified		Hi.
tim in colby ▲ ● ▼		Hi, Art.
		This is Tim.
		I just wanted to ask, did you get the gavel I sent you?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, did you send me that gavel?
tim in colby ▲ ● ▼		Yes, sir.
tim in colby ▲ ● ▼		I sure did.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Boy, did I ever get it?
		Listen to this.
		Order in the studio.
tim in colby ▲ ● ▼		That is great.
tim in colby ▲ ● ▼		Oh, my gosh.
unidentified		That's awesome.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Got it right here.
tim in colby ▲ ● ▼		I hope that they have a chance to use it sometime soon.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You want another flat earth debate, do you?
unidentified		Well, something.
tim in colby ▲ ● ▼		Something like that, or maybe something when you actually have a chance next year to do the Dings or the Bonks.
tim in colby ▲ ● ▼		It seems like that might be a good way to kind of cap it off there.
unidentified		Well, first of all, where did you get it?
tim in colby ▲ ● ▼		I found it online, just a random place.
tim in colby ▲ ● ▼		I think it was an old auctioneer's gavel.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I was going to say, did you go to like a judge store?
unidentified		No.
tim in colby ▲ ● ▼		No, it was eBay or Amazon or the two.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, these days, I guess you can find anything online, right?
unidentified		Just about.
tim in colby ▲ ● ▼		Just about.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So you are a very, very, very kind and thoughtful person to send it to me, and I promise you, it's going to get used.
tim in colby ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, well, I heard you calling for it one night, and I was thinking you needed it during the flat earth debate for sure.
tim in colby ▲ ● ▼		It seemed like an order needed to be called for that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I did need it.
		Now, the problem that I've got is I've got a metal cable.
		So if I bang on it...
		Maybe that'd be all right.
unidentified		Sounds great.
unidentified		Okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Maybe it'll work.
		Anyway, is that it?
unidentified		Yeah, that's all I got to say.
tim in colby ▲ ● ▼		Roswell's TM.
tim in colby ▲ ● ▼		I'm glad you're back.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, brother.
		Thank you for the call and the gavel.
		That was very, very, very kind of that gentleman.
		I really did need it during that Flat Earth debate.
		Now, I should talk a little bit about the Flat Earthers.
		They are a very persistent bunch.
		I mean, when I say persistent, that's not even doing it service.
		They have jammed up our sites, Facebook sites and other sites with anger.
		And for example, recently I had a scientist on.
		They wanted part or a piece of him, as it were.
		So they jammed up our sites until we would agree to put a flat earther on.
		Now, a lot of people did not like the flat earth debate.
		Personally, I thought it was entertaining.
		That's the way I'm going to put it.
		It was entertaining.
		And I don't know that I'm ever going to get over somebody who thinks that our sun is 3,000 miles above our heads, above Earth.
		I mean, let's think this through a little bit.
		We have satellites at 22,300 miles up in geosync orbit, right?
		So if that were the case, those satellites would get burned up by the back side of the sun.
		We would, of course, be burned up by the front side of the sun.
		Let's go to Jed on Skype.
		Hello, Jed.
		Jed doesn't sound like it's going to work, buddy.
		Are you there?
		All he wants.
		Hello?
		Hey, how are you, Art?
		I'm fine.
unidentified		Well, I didn't think you were talking to me.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, your name is Jed, right?
unidentified		Jedi Miller, yeah.
		Yeah.
		Well.
		What's up, Art?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You?
unidentified		I was on the group the other night on Facebook, Midnight in the Desert, heard a bell?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
unidentified		And I was just wondering what you do on the weekends.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What do I do on the weekends?
unidentified		Yeah, are you still on the radio on the weekends or do you go into town and watch a movie or something?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Thank you for the question.
		We've got a really bad echo with you.
		What do I do on the weekends?
		I take my weekends off.
		I take days off, Jed.
		That's what I do.
		There are a lot of people calling with the expectation that we are going to have a weekend host, not necessarily.
		Now, it turns out the network does have shows that run on the weekend, so don't be afraid to listen by all means.
		But we're not doing a version, per se, of Midnight in the Desert on the weekend.
		Now, I do this five nights a week, right?
		And at my age, that's a bit of a pull as it is, five nights a week, but I love it, so I do it.
		Two nights a week I spend with my family, or I attempt to.
		It's kind of difficult because actually we're on very, very opposite schedules.
		In doing this show, I cannot do it as the end of my day.
		So it's not like I can go home at 12 o'clock and go to sleep.
		No, no, no, no.
		It doesn't work that way.
		If you're lucky, very lucky, you might get sleep by, say, 3 to 4 a.m.
		That's typical.
		And then, of course, you're up in the afternoon.
		So it's kind of disruptive for the family in that my daughter, who is eight, gets up very early with mom for school.
		And it does work out otherwise, but it's kind of a wild deal, you know, to do a show like this.
		Hello, you're on the air, Santa Rosa, I believe.
unidentified		Yes, can you hear me, Art?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I can, yes.
unidentified		Oh, my lord.
		It's so funny.
		How are you, sir?
		Fine.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Fine.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Just fine.
unidentified		Okay.
		I have to ask.
		I haven't talked to you.
		I've been listening to you since 97.
		I was talking to my mom earlier today, coincidentally, and I brought up the time that I actually called, actually I probably talked to you in the early 2000s.
		And I was one of the last callers.
		I was the last caller.
		And you asked me to say goodnight to America, and I sure did.
		And that was fun.
		And I also like the way you used to say, you know, going through interviews with a fine-tooth comb.
		I don't know how you said it, but anyways, I always love that little phrase you did with the fine-tooth comb.
		It's just great.
		I want to say that you're like a father figure to me.
		My dad wasn't really around much, and you really helped develop my voice as far as standing up for myself and those sort of things and debating and your sort of yes, sir, and your attorney approach to things.
		It seems, anyways, I think very highly of you.
		I do want to ask you a couple things.
		I'm a big fan of Alex Jones as well.
		And he's my age, and I've been following him very closely because he gets a lot of, I want to see for myself if he was lying or he's telling the truth.
		And I can tell you most of the things he says come to pass.
		And about 95% of what he says seems to be true.
		Well, for example, what?
		Well, let me see.
		9-11, he was on the ball with that pretty good.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What does he say about 9-11?
unidentified		Well, he points to people like Richard Gage of Architects and Engineers here in the Bay Area.
		And they talk about Building 7, for instance.
		They talk about, you know, he talks about the Bush family, for instance, and his brother being head of security leading up to 9-11.
		He was dismissed.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, I'm not trying to be mean here, but I mean, what did he say?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What did he say that is now verifiably true?
unidentified		Well, what's verifiably true?
		Well, Hmm.
		Let me think about that.
		How about buildings falling into their own imprint?
		The way those buildings fell down is it seems like it seems that buildings have never come down quite that way before, that fast.
		He talks about the reporter building seven as well.
		He talks about the BBC reporting it ahead of time.
		There's a timestamp there.
		He has movies on this, so you can actually see it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I mean, okay, let's try.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Let me try a question, if you don't mind.
unidentified		Yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Is he trying to make a case that it was an inside job?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Is that sort of like the bottom line?
unidentified		He coined that phrase, actually.
		Yeah, he sure did in regards to 9-11.
		And I just think it, honestly, I just think it would be a fascinating interview between you two.
		I know he holds you in high esteem.
		And I just, if I could pick one person you could interview, I think it would be him.
		And just one more thing.
		I know that JFK assassination anniversary is coming up.
		And there's this lady out there named Judith Ferry Baker.
		She has a book called Me and Lee.
		And she claims that's Lee Harvey Oswald's girlfriend.
		And I've listened to her in interviews of different areas.
		And she's got interesting information.
		They have these conferences coming up here.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, listen, brother.
		I've got to run.
		We're in a break.
		But, you know, Alex is an interesting, energetic guy.
		Now, he has talked about conspiracy theories.
		Have they yet been proven to be true?
unidentified		I don't know.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'm not immune.
		I think of them myself.
		Personally, I think 9-11 was an outside job.
unidentified		I'm going to take a chance.
		Get up.
		I'm seeing a feminine name.
		She's got it.
		Yeah, baby, she's got it.
		I'm dreaming.
		I'm going to find out your desire.
		Midnight Matters can be explored on midnight in the desert with iPad.
		If you can spend from your computer, please be sure to use a headset mic and call MITD51.
		That's MITD51.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It is.
		And our national number, of course, is Area Code 952-225-5278.
		Again, 952-225-5278 or 952-CALART.
		I'm getting a few strange reports that some people are saying they are hearing last night's show in repeat.
		And I wonder if anybody can enlighten me in any way on that.
		I can't imagine that happening or why that would be happening.
		But maybe it is.
		Hello there.
		Gary?
unidentified		Yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hi, Gary.
unidentified		Hi, Art.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Sounded like I was interrupting.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That sounded like I was interrupting a conversation you were having.
unidentified		I was testing to make sure I was on the line.
unidentified		I wasn't sure.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You are.
unidentified		Great.
		I just wanted to comment.
		A few times in the past, few shows in the past, you had made mention of wondering if there was a real discovery of aliens, what that would do to people who were religious or, you know, the answer is a lot of bad stuff.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It would do a lot of bad stuff.
		I have had religious people that I've talked to, just the discovery of aliens, as long as they're, say, 15 light years out, they might handle that.
		But if, you know, if the aliens came down, landed, and made no reference to God, nor even worship of anything, there would be serious, serious trouble.
unidentified		And see, I don't understand that because, you know, when it comes to the Bible, you have to understand that, you know, it was written for us.
unidentified		And just because things exist outside of what's in the Bible doesn't mean that God doesn't exist or that it should rock your faith.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Here's where the trouble comes in.
unidentified		That's not in the Bible.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I know.
		Look, but here's where the trouble comes in.
		There is but one God.
		It says so in the Bible, right?
unidentified		Sure.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Only one thing.
unidentified		Only God didn't create aliens, and he just didn't mention it in the Bible.
		You know what I mean?
		The Bible was created for human beings.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And I'm not saying that he would have had.
unidentified		I guess that's my point.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, my point is, though, that these folks would be upset because there is but one God, and so they would have to know about God.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And if they didn't, that would question, you know, I mean, go right to the bedrock of their faith.
unidentified		Yeah, it's crazy.
		Anyway, that's pretty much all I had to comment on.
		I love the show, and really glad you're back.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, good to be here.
		Thank you very much.
		Yes, it would go to the bedrock of their faith.
		They wouldn't know how to react.
		I do get it.
		Believe me.
		I do get it.
		If you believed, I guess you would have to have great faith yourself that there is but one God and that that God would be recognized everywhere by all intelligent beings and if not it would it would open some I think pretty serious questions in your mind hello there wherever you are you're on air yes Art yes Mr. Collins,
unidentified		you have a great, great actually, let me rephrase that, you have the greatest show, and you're the greatest communicator and investigative journalist I've ever heard.
unidentified		You are the absolute best.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, I am not an investigative journalist, although I will follow a story, obviously, but I'm a talk show host.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And I'm glad you enjoy me, but that's what I am, a talk show host only.
unidentified		Yes.
		But when you probe and you probe your guests, nobody does it like you.
		I just want to say as a compliment.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Thank you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That is a compliment as a talk show host.
unidentified		Yes, that's what you're supposed to do is probe.
		Right.
		Now, I'd like to relate a real quick story that happened many years ago when I was a young guy.
		I was living in Illinois.
		I had purchased a 1968 Dirk Riviera from a police officer there.
		And I was on my way to El Paso, Texas.
		And I was fascinated by the southwest, and I was even thinking of moving there.
		And on the way to El Paso, I was on the interstate highway going roughly around 60 miles an hour.
		And to my very front, approximately a mile away, maybe a little more, I could see a tornado crossing the interstate.
		And it was very dark, it was wide, and it was moving very slowly.
		And at that time, I was a trail seeker and on the very wild side.
		And I said, I wonder what it would be like to go through that, because I had no idea what I was doing.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Boy, you got that part right.
unidentified		I wasn't thinking of consequences, right?
unidentified		But I knew that this was a heavy car, and I knew it was fast, so I proceeded to accelerate, and I got my speed right at the 100 mark, maybe a few miles over 100.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		100 miles an hour.
unidentified		Headed into a tornado, fast as you can.
unidentified		Yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
unidentified		Got it.
		As I entered the darkness, holding the wheel very tightly, it appeared as though at first I was entering like a time warp.
		It was like time had suddenly stopped.
		I was like in the middle of a vacuum.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know, time slows down for people facing immediate death.
unidentified		That's a good point.
		Yes, it is.
		And what happened was it was approximately, I'm counting, recollecting about four seconds, maybe a little more, maybe a little less.
		And then suddenly I was exiting this vacuum I was in, and my car started, it started like shaking so violently that I actually thought I was going to lose control and get taken away.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, these things happen when you traverse a tornado at 100 miles an hour, sir.
		I'm sure you began fishtailing and going all over the place, and you are lucky to be alive.
		Very, very lucky to be alive.
		That was not really a smart thing to do.
		Hello there, you're on the air.
unidentified		Yes, Art from Oklahoma City here.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, sir.
unidentified		I was just calling to touch on a subject that sort of came up a little bit earlier with regard to fracking.
unidentified		I'm in IT.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I think I'm the one I mentioned.
		He was talking about all the little earthquakes, and I mentioned fracking.
		What do you think?
unidentified		Well, I'm in IT with an oil and natural gas company here.
		I'm sure you think there's no problem with fracking.
		Well, fracking itself has been going on for nearly 100 years.
		One of the newer parts of that technology has been the wastewater well injection systems.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Actually, I bet from your point of view, fracking actually improves the environment underground.
unidentified		Well, it certainly makes oil and natural gas that's heretofore been difficult to get to, more easily accessible.
unidentified		It's good for the economy.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Good for the economy.
unidentified		But our best evidence indicates that it's probably the wastewater well injections, which are a pretty recent technology that could be contributing to the earthquakes, right?
unidentified		But fracking itself has been around for a very long time.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Helps stabilize things and helps people walk straighter lines and makes birds sing prettier tunes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I appreciate that.
unidentified		What you know is that that part of it seems to always get kind of left off of that, you know, that fracking has been around for quite a long time.
unidentified		And so anyway.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But we're fracking enthusiastically.
unidentified		True.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Thank you very, very much for the call.
unidentified		It was an interesting sell.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I mean, look, I'm not even going to get into it, but I do think it is a cause of small earthquakes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Now, everybody can handle that, right?
unidentified		A little bit of shaking.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's all right.
		But what you don't want is something big to happen.
		And I don't know that we've been doing it enthusiastically long enough to really understand whether we're going to get something big out of it or not.
		Hello, Bill.
		You're on Skype.
		You're on.
		Hello.
unidentified		It's nice to have a night where I don't feel rushed.
		Okay.
		I started listening to you in the 90s.
		I'll go ahead and continue on that trend.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Sure.
unidentified		And somebody handed me a tape.
		And it was one, I guess you've interviewed him several times, but it was John Lear.
		And it was like a five-hour interview.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
unidentified		And you want to talk about knock my socks off.
		I've been hooked to you ever since.
		Some of the things that he said, and he had no need for profit.
		No.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No, no, no, no, no.
unidentified		No.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		John was not about profit at all.
unidentified		Is he still around?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		He is.
unidentified		Are you ever going to interview him again?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I would love to.
unidentified		Anyway, to touch on what I said the other night with Linda, and I'm confused on this, and maybe you know, so it's a good question for you.
		Maybe Mikho Kaku says zero through three.
		And I think she misunderstood that I was talking about how many different species do we think might be out there.
		But the zero through three thing is, I imagine three being the highest, like on a, and that's from what I've listened to.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		They would be as gods to us, yes.
unidentified		Right, right.
		Could manipulate universes and all that.
		Yes.
		But I heard Stephen Greer say like eight, nine, and ten, and maybe I misunderstood him, but I don't know.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No, he was just expanding the scale.
		I mean, you can do that.
		You can imagine all kinds of things.
unidentified		I don't know if I want to be a three.
		I want to do the journey.
		I want to be the ones and maybe a two, but I'm more interested in the journey rather than the other.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, none of us are going to live long enough to make it to the next category, but we can imagine them.
unidentified		Oh, yeah, we can.
		Like I said the other night, I'm an atheist, and that's not really, I guess it is a faith, but my only faith is that my soul is mine, and I don't want to give it to nobody on off chance.
		I think there's, I believe in good and evil.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You believe in good and evil, you believe in souls, and you're going to hold on to yours even in death.
unidentified		Yep, I'm going to hang on to it.
unidentified		It's mine to keep.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That is a very unusual faith that you have there.
		Very, very interesting.
		You do believe in souls.
		You do believe in good and evil.
		You don't necessarily believe in God.
unidentified		Well, I'm not saying that I don't believe in the possibility of a creator here.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yes, you are.
		Yes, you are.
		That's what you're saying.
		So you're an atheist.
unidentified		But that's not a theist.
		I don't believe in a deity.
		It's the opposite of theism.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So you believe there is no God?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Just straight across.
unidentified		You're an atheist, right?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Theism.
		Theism is the belief in a deity.
		You're hedging.
		You're hedging.
		So, you know, I picture you in the crypt with your hands around your soul holding on, not letting it go anywhere.
unidentified		Maybe, I don't know.
		But that's another point, too, is that, you know, through everything we've listened to, on one hand, you have the scientists who, you know, think that everything was as small as a cork and blew up.
		And then you have, I don't care, you know, all walks of religion, and they think that some almighty being created it in seven days.
		Why can't we just take the middle path and say, we don't know?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		We can.
		But of course, then you're taking a path that is taking a chance, right?
		We don't know.
		Even I say that.
		I don't know, but I have hopes.
unidentified		So I call myself a hopeful person.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hello there.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You're on the air, wherever you are.
unidentified		Hello, is this me, Art?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Only you know that for absolute certain, but it sounds like you.
unidentified		Oh, okay.
		Well, I didn't know.
		You know, I've been holding a little bit through some other people.
		But longtime listener and first-time caller.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, thank you.
		It's great to have you.
		We don't screen calls here, obviously.
unidentified		Well, I see that.
		But the reason I'm calling tonight is about lightning rods.
		Oh, yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, sure.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What do you think?
unidentified		Oh, well, yeah.
unidentified		Well, you know, this was something I was told about.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'm a guy with 13 towers in the air, sir.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How could I not think about lightning rods?
unidentified		No, I remember you mentioning that earlier tonight on five acres or something like that.
		I'm going, well, this is really something because I worked with an engineer, electrical engineer, that he had a cabin up in the way up in the mountains in Mount Pinos, up near the, just off the top of the grapevine, you know, off I-5 north of L.A. And yeah, his house was the highest one in this development.
		And I designed a plumbing system for him and a heating system for him because he was building it all custom.
		And it was a really unusual place.
		But anyway, because it was built on the side of a mountain.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, real quick now, what happened?
unidentified		Well, you know, we were talking about, you know, lightning up there because, I mean, he was way out in the middle of nowhere.
unidentified		He was at trees and everything.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I get it.
unidentified		And he says basically if you have a metal, a grounded metal rod up above the roof of the house, the house will be protected underneath that metal grounded rod, you know, sort of at a 45 degree angle.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, well, that's why they call them lightning rods.
		You know, they're grounded, and hopefully they attract the lightning, I think.
		And then it is scooted off to ground, and when it's grounded, it dissipates.
		Protects the house.
		House doesn't catch on fire.
		Everybody's happy.
		Hello there.
		You're on the air.
unidentified		This is David.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hello, David.
unidentified		I was just wondering if you keep in touch with Ed Games still.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I don't.
		I'm waiting for him to bring me gold, and he's never done it.
		He promised to bring me gold, remember?
unidentified		Oh, yeah, I do kind of remember that.
		So, no, I'm waiting for the gold.
		The other thing is Toyota's test marketing hydrogen fuel cells in the Southern California market, and I think that would be a really interesting subject.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It would be.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That and flying cars.
unidentified		You talk about chaos.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, what I'm talking about is things that we were promised and never got delivered.
		From the gold to the flying cars.
		Maybe the hydrogen stuff will fly.
unidentified		Never can't deliver.
		Well, great to hear you on the radio again.
		Thank you very much.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, thank you.
		And hello there.
		You're on the air briefly because we're ending.
unidentified		Friday.
		Bernadette, how are you doing?
		I'm good.
		How are you?
		Great.
		I told you not to go into the light because I told you you'd come right back out.
		And see, that's why babies cry when they come out.
		They know they're going to get their kulos cracked again for how many times you've been reincarnated.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, because that's right.
unidentified		That's why we cry.
unidentified		We know we're coming back.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I'm coming back too, but right now I've got to go.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So reviving.
unidentified		Oh, wait.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Wait, Bernie Dad.
		reviving a very, very old tradition.
		Would you do me a favor?
unidentified		Yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And say, good night, America.
unidentified		Good night, America.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		There you go.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It's only been about, I don't know, 20 years since I've done that, right?

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