Tornadoes
TORNADOES
In the spring of 2013 I spent several weeks driving in the Great Plains with the tour company Tempest Tours, and I photographed a tornado near the town of Millsap, Texas. As the long condensation funnel formed above me I found it hard to move—I was held in place by competing emotions. Part of me was transfixed by the sudden formation of a massive, rotating column of air less than a quarter of a mile in front of me, and yet part of me reacted instinctively with fear. A few days later I was fortunate to photograph another tornado near Viola, Kansas, and I witnessed another a few weeks later near Dix, Nebraska. It’s one thing to see a tornado, and another thing altogether to watch meteorologists track the weather and predict where one will form. On June 28, 2018 I saw an outbreak of more than half a dozen tornadoes in Capitol, Montana, and I photographed a “nocturnal” tornado at the end of a long road as it spit lightning on the ground at dusk, crossing into South Dakota. It will be hard to beat that long, exhausting and euphoric day. Many of these photographs were published in my book FIERCE BEAUTY: Storms of the Great Plains.