For a group of students at St. Cloud State University, a fun Saturday night would be to pile into Nick Corbett's 2004 Chevy Blazer, drive several hundred miles over strange rural roads, search for Internet access and eat a lot of lousy food, all for a chance to get caught in some really bad weather.
Plan B would involve the same thing, but in Katie Klarkowski's '99 Blazer.
"It involves a lot of sacrifices, but those couple of minutes are worth it," said Klarkowski, a meteorology student and president of the student Storm Chase Club, apparently the only student club of its kind in Minnesota and one of a relative few in the nation.
Founded in the spring of 2009, the club has attracted dozens of students, most of them in the school's meteorology program, the only such undergraduate program in Minnesota. The goal, of course, is to get in the presence of the holy grail of storm chasing -- a tornado.
Corbett and other members did that in June, taking dramatic photos of an EF-3 and an EF-2 tornado in Nebraska during a 950-mile, 18-hour round trip. On June 17, 2010, working on three days' advance notice from the national Storm Prediction Center, they zeroed in on Wadena, Minn., photographing the massive black EF4 that flattened nearly a quarter of the city's homes and businesses on a day when a record 48 tornadoes pummeled Minnesota. They stopped about 2 miles away from the powerful wedge.
"We could see the suction vortices. As soon as it touched down, it was a monster," Corbett said. "I love the weather, and it's great to see what we're learning in textbooks in action."
Members describe the club as bringing severe-weather lovers together to learn more and pool funds to support what Klarkowski called "an expensive hobby." Gas near $4 per gallon hasn't dampened their enthusiasm, but Corbett said he's currently worried that the wheel bearings in his Blazer might need replacing.
Getting going