How did I become a Storm Spotter?

When I was a kid; I saw mother nature's fury in a negative way. I had no experience and I was scared out of my mind whenever, there was lightening outside. At Carmel Indiana we had the most intense thunderstorms. I remember some of them. My first experience with a severe thunderstorm occurred outside my family home. It was in the spring and it was warm outside. As always I was playing basketball as usual. The sky immediately became dark. I stopped playing basketball knowing that lightening can hit a basketball hoop. So I decided to sit on the front porch watching the sky. I noticed that there was an unusual cloud rotating inside the main storm.   It did not touched down, it was just rotating around like a circle.  The news was on when I came inside. They said that a tornado had touched down from that rotation from a town far away from my county. We were lucky.

That storm sparked my interest of becoming a storm spotter. So I attended an nearby Storm Spotting Seminar in 2005. During the 2005 storm season I armed myself with my knowledge of storms and safety rules and my video camera, I started filming thunderstorm action even though my parents advise me not to. I was quite confident however since my knowledge of the safety rules are in my head. The next blog will be about the differences between storm spotting and storm chasing.