Whenever dark clouds creep over the horizon, Illawarra storm chaser Simon Angell ventures out to catch nature’s ferocious side. BEN LANGFORD talks to him about the thrill of the pursuit.
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Driving long distances in the middle of nowhere, fixated on radars and laptops, poring over the intricate details of weather forecasts. That's what Simon Angell does for fun.
And if he ends up being away for five days, chasing his quarry here and there, he'll usually call that a roaring success.
Angell likes to chase storms, placing him in a breed characterised by an obsession with weather, a willingness to hit the road without an itinerary, and an eye always on the horizon.
''I witnessed amazing motion on this storm and I was excited at what I was seeing - until I realised it was going to come straight over me.''
From childhood, he loved the weather report on the news, and has been hooked since his first chase, a small-scale affair while he was still a teenager on a pushbike in Canberra.
"I had seen on the radar a storm heading towards Canberra from the [north-west] and got myself into an open spot about five minutes' ride from my house in Latham," Angell said.
"I witnessed a beautiful gust front and amazing motion on this storm and I was excited at what I was seeing - until I realised it was going to come straight over me. Fear took over and I rode, faster than I have ever ridden before to the local shops ... made [with] five seconds to spare as torrential rain, strong winds and lightning hammered down."
This chase ended with the storm chasing him. But these days it works the other way round.
Angell is one of the founders of the Illawarra Stormchasers group, a dedicated band of weather fiends who have found themselves a strong following through their Facebook page.
Their following grew after they quickly - earlier than authorities - identified the storms that hit Kiama in early 2013 as a ''family" of tornadoes. They posted an updated weather forecast each evening, and they remember storms, and their characteristics, like a test cricketer remembers each delivery of an innings.
Angell's best storm-chasing trip was a few years ago, starting with a drive out to Bathurst, where he'd forecast some storm activity. And they were in luck, spending days witnessing severe weather - or as he puts it, "getting storms".
"We drove four days out in the north-west NSW, trying to get storms. I was very much an amateur back then, so we got storms, and were quite happy with what we got."
He hopes he will have more time this year - balancing a real job as a bottle shop manager in Shellharbour - to spend days on the road, seeking severe systems, trying to predict their movements.
But when you chase a storm, what do you do with it when you catch it? Is it like a dog chasing a car?
Or less kindly perhaps, Don Quixote and his windmills, or Captain Ahab and his white whale? For these two chasers, it was pretty clear what they would do once they finally cornered their quarry: run it through with a long, sharp spear. For storm chasers, what they do improves with experience; their weapons are cameras and their memories.
Ask Angell what it means to "get a storm", and the answer's not easy to explain. For many chasers, it's all about getting photos or video footage. Though photography is certainly part of it for Angell, the thrill seems to be just as much in accurate meteorological predictions, and beholding the sheer power of nature - witnessing the storm's structure.
One time, he and friend Stephen Jarrett spent an hour watching radar at Appin, before heading down to what they call the "storm factory" - the area south of Goulburn, between Canberra to the west and the mountain range to the east.
"We shot down there and got some great lightning shots, some great storm shots, and there were some interesting features on the storm," Angell said.
"It was a good storm day and the feeling was that one, we picked a target and we got storms. So we won - we won against Mother Nature. Two, we got some great photos, and three, I think it was a relief to get a target and just get it right."
Of all the appeal of a severe storm, Angell names as his favourite part the "structure" of the system. It's an intellectual pursuit, perhaps more than one of adrenalin.
Storm chasing could be a rather macho scene, and it's easy to draw blokey connotations from hunting, chasing nature, achieving the conquest. At the higher end of the game, the hardware gets more punchy - fast utes, high-end camera gear, tech envy. Success described or measured by the size of testicles. In the United States, tornado chase channel TVN Weather sells T-shirts proclaiming they have been "dominating" since 1997. It's a popular word among US chasers. Other websites proclaim "Tornado Glory", and newbies wonder whether they'll "be ballsy enough".
All the members of the Illawarra Storm Chasers are blokes. But it's different from the US "dominators". There are plenty of women active on the Facebook page and no sign of the macho language. These are weather geeks more than wannabe warriors. They love the beauty of it and the science. And, while they may talk of "beating" the storm, that simply means beating its unpredictability, successfully predicting where it was going so you can get to a good angle first to experience it.
"It can be very dangerous - and as a younger person it was [trying to] just get to a storm and wait for it to barrel over you," Angell says. "Now, as an older person with a bit more knowledge, it's more about positioning yourself near the storm but not in the way of the storm.
"You can get strong winds and lightning, it's quite deadly. Large hail can do a lot of damage to your cars. Looking at the severest of all the storms, the supercells, their potential danger zone is not just underneath the core, it's to the north-west of the storm, where the inflow interacts with the storm. You try and position yourself in a position to see these things. If you're under the core, you don't generally see it."
As the Kiama tornadoes showed, severe storms are no laughing matter, with their potential for massive human and economic destruction.
Most residents of the Illawarra don't need reminding of the damaging power of an east coast low, or in the case of Kiama and Gerringong, tornadoes.
People who live in the more risky cyclone and tornado-prone areas will often go through a transition in how they feel about the prospect of experiencing a severe storm. A newcomer might think a cyclone would be fun to experience, a hoot. After a few years and conversations with cyclone survivors, however, a much more sober and wary view has formed, one based on seeing photographs of entire suburbs, just nearby, levelled by winds.
Storm chasers have previously been criticised by people who accuse them of revelling in destruction, celebrating disaster. For Angell, though, the appeal is more about understanding the power of storms, and learning how they behave - preferably away from population centres.
"We don't want to see big, bad, dangerous storms doing damage to people and property," he said. "But we do like to see big bad storms elsewhere."