For my second career, as a weather forecaster (预报员), I jerked on the Canadian Plains, which is the second-best place to chase（追逐） severe weather, after Tornado Alley. I was also studying for a degree in Meteorology so I could interpret weather data and make my own forecasts. I didn't want to be looked at as someone silly who didn't know what she was talking about. Around that time, a photographer friend invited me to chase with him in the Alley for a month. I said sure; I wanted to learn everything I could.
During my second round in 2013, I got to see the largest tornado in recorded history—on the very fat day of the chase season. We were waiting in this dark and dirty gas-station parking lot in El Reno, Oklahoma. Chasers do that a lot. We sit around in groups waiting and eating junk food. The forecast called it a high-risk day, and finally, a tornado rolled in around 5: 30 p. m.
It started out as a little cloud and then turned into a 60,000-foot thunderstorm in maybe 20 minutes. We jumped in our car and raced toward it. A few minutes later I was looking out the window, filming this massive wall of what seemed like rain. We thought the tornado was hidden inside. But then I saw it taking shape and felt it sucking in wind. That's when I realized that wall was the tornado itself it was around 2.6 miles across with winds nearly 300 miles per hour. It was explosive.
We hurried to be: out of there. Cars packed the roads. All we could see were brake lights. We feared we'd be tusk. But in a few minutes, it was over.
Three storm chasers died that day, just up the road from where we'd been stuck. That had never happened before, So yeah, I wondered why I would risk going out again. But then the next chase season called me back.
