While most people were worried about freezing temperatures Saturday, the Minnesota Storm Chasers’ annual convention drew a crowd of 300 plus people to The Friendly Buffalo in Big Lake to discuss a different weather phenomena, tornados. Among the guest speakers were Ken Cole, stormchaser and film maker, KSTP meteorologist Jonathan Yuhas, IMax film maker Sean Casey with his tornado intercept vehicle (TIV), National Weather Service meteorologist Mike Griesinger and storm chaser Eric Whitehill. Cole showed a movie. The Heavens Rage, he had made which featured Reed Timmer and his vehicle Dominator, a storm chaser who visited Big Lake after the tornado that went through Wadena June 17, 2010. Reed was a guest speaker at the Big Lake Chamber Expo in 2011. TV weatherman Jonathan Yuhas showed slides of various weather maps with the isobars drawn in. Many of the convention goers were able to identify the weather maps for particular storms which have occurred over the pats 50 years. Yuhas advised the storm chasers to consider the sources of their reports before heading out to look for tornados. “The day to day weather forecasting is pretty boring,” Yuhas said. “The severe weather is the fun stuff.” If there are severe weather outbreaks, KSTP cuts in to programming for two minute updates on conditions outside. If there is a tornado warning, KSTP weather will interrupt programming and stay on the air during the duration of the dangerous activity. “We have to,” he said. “It is station policy. Sometimes people don’t like it, especially if it is interrupting something they really want to watch. They call us up and yell at us.” Picture Changes Fast The weather picture can change fast when big storms roll in but it is hard to get pictures of the really big tornados Yuhas said. “When you are filming these things, if you hope to sell the pictures, try not to swear on camera,” he said. “It can make the footage unusable for our purposes.” All areas of Minnesota have tornados, Yuhas said, including Northwestern Minnesota, the Minnesota River Valley and the downtown areas. Most tornados in the Metro area start in Northern Hennepin County and end somewhere in Anoka County. In Illinois, cold winds from Lake Michigan protect Chicago from tornados, although it does get high winds. Many people have trouble telling a wall cloud from a shelf cloud. Gust nodes in the leading edge of a storm can also be mistaken for tornados, which form on the back edge of the storm. “When it is below 65 degrees or the dew point is below 58, it is hard to get anything to twist,” Yuhas said. Storm Chaser Storm chaser Sean Casey brought his TIV, modified from a F350 pickup truck. The TIV features a turret large enough for him to film tornados with an I Max camera owned by his dad. After he built his current TIV (his second), he had difficulty finding someone who would insure it for him. “I finally insured it as an F350 pickup truck,” he said. “That was easy.” Casey built the TIV after shooting Imax movies in a mini van. “I never felt we got close enough,” he said. “We had no funding so I learned to weld and fabricate.” His prototype TIV was built on the frame of a two-wheel drive pick up and it had a very low profile, which did not help it to maneuver over rough terrain. “I got pulled over 17 times that first year,” he said. “And it leaked. It soon began to develop a strange odor.” The TIV II was a huge improvement, then Casey got funding for the movie Vortex Two. “We had a massive science team and we were filming in real time,” he said. Casey’s next venture includes plans for an amphibious vehicle for Wild Weather, a film about lightning and tornados. Inside a tornado feels really windy and turbulent as it is picking up water, Casey said. “It makes it feel like you are moving too,” Casey said. “Then there is the roar of the wind. The moment before entering it is the scariest though, as it comes towards you. The wind direction changes quickly.” The convention was organized by Michael Yoakum and included vendors with storm chaser materials and offering tornado chasing tours. Scott Thoma was there with his book, Out Of The Blue, the true story of two sisters and their miraculous survival of the first recorded F5 tornado in Minnesota, which struck Tracy June 13, 1968, killing nine people and injuring 125 others. “So many people signed up, we had to turn people away said Doug Hayes of Big Lake. “It is nice to see so many people here in Big Lake.”