Since the mid-1990s, tourists have paid storm-chasers to take them to places in the American Great Plains where they expect to see tornadoes. Why, a reasonable follow-up question might go, would anyone want to get so close to something so disruptive? These tourists, a study found, characterized their relationship to severe weather as a "passion", describing their feelings about tornadoes using words like "enjoyment" "fascination" and "love". Some people seem spiritually moved by tornadoes—one tourist called the storms "humbling"-but the main motivator seemed to be simple: Twisters are cool.
America has many more, tornadoes than any other country, and its people have long regarded twisters with a mix of fear, awe and thrilled pleasure. Fast-moving-and dramatic, tornadoes have been irresistible parts for popular entertainment. One needn't be an extreme-weather enthusiast, however, to take a brief and far-less dangerous tour: of culture tornadoes have inspired and of the transformation of American society's feelings about these storms from fear to excitement.
European colonists in the future United States were fascinated—and sometimes horrified—by their new land's weather. In the Early Republic, the influence of romantic ideas about the terrible and wonderful power of nature became clearer in American tornado culture. Some people began to write about tornadoes in terms of awe, and to produce art that explored the phenomenon's natural beauty, while also moralizing about its meaning. Since the 1930s, American tornadoes have been less deadly: the country has much better early-warning systems, fewer people live in rural areas and tornado activity has largely shifted from the southeast to the thinly-populated Great Plains.
Storm-chasing—a scientific, thrill-seeking activity that most Americans found out about via the 1996 blockbuster film Twister, is still incomprehensible to many who don't practice it. "I find it difficult to explain to someone who hasn't chased what forces us to seek pleasure from risk," wrote Jennifer Henderson, a scholar and crazy storm-chaser, characterizing her feelings while chasing as "a sense of exposure and revelation tightly coupled".
