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Charleston man follows storms across the country
Jul 09, 2009 (The Charleston Gazette - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) --
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- When Dan Robinson leaves his Charleston Web site design business to pursue his second job, the commute could involve a drive of several thousand miles -- and with any luck, a close encounter with a tornado or a hurricane.
In addition to designing duties for CIS Internet, Robinson is a professional storm chaser, capturing photo and video images of extreme weather for The Weather Channel, National Geographic, The Discovery Channel, CNN, The History Channel and other outlets. He has also been profiled on The Weather Channel's "Storm Chasers" program.
"I've had a fascination with storms since childhood," said Robinson, 34, who began chasing them fresh out of high school, after receiving a camera and a book with a chapter on photographing lightning as graduation presents.
"I tried it and really liked it," he recalled. "I realized why many of my friends like going out hunting. Instead of going out with a gun to get something to bring home and put on the wall, I go out with a camera.
"But you've got to be equally dedicated. Instead of sitting all day waiting for a shot, I do a lot of driving."
Robinson started out by shooting images of lightning and posting them on , which he's maintained since college.
"I kept posting more and more lightning and weather shots, and by 2002, I started getting calls from researchers from places like National Geographic and The Discovery Channel wanting to know if I had any footage to sell," said Robinson.
"I thought that since I was already out shooting for a hobby, I might as well take along a video camera, too, and try to sell something. I bought my first video camera in 2003, and I now have three, including a new high definition camera."
Robinson starts out every day by going online and checking out weather models for prospective storm formations. If the signs are promising, he may follow the weather data all day long and plot out a route to intercept a storm.
"My employer, CIS, has been extremely accommodating in allowing me to pursue storm chasing," he said. If a promising storm starts to develop over the Great Plains, and he can arrange his Web work around it, Robinson said he has the green light to give chase.
"I may get called up to cover a hurricane and work full time for as long as a couple of months," he said.
Robinson worked as a contract videographer in and around Port Arthur, Texas, when Hurricane Rita stormed across the Gulf Coast in 2005. He works through a news agency, Minneapolis-based Breaking News Video Network, which connects broadcast sources with videographers and their work. "They handle the network contacts and I send them video," he said. "It's a good arrangement."
The Weather Channel is one of Robinson's main buyers. "A lot of what they want is shots of people just being out in the weather," he said, along with "establishing" shots of a skyline or some other landmark to identify the location in which the weather is happening.
"In October 2003, on my first day shooting for The Weather Channel, I went to the Fort Hill I-64 Bridge, with downtown Charleston in the background, for my establishing shot," Robinson recalled. "I had my camera pointed at the bridge, and just by chance, a car spun out in the rain, blocking the fast lane and causing a three-car, chain reaction accident."
Robinson returned to the bridge during times of snow and ice and captured other skid-out scenes, which have appeared on The Weather Channel and other networks. "I get two or three events a year there," he said.
His sliding car footage from the I-64 bridge may have played a role in the state Division of Highways' recent announcement that an anti-skid surface would be applied to the bridge's road deck and approach ramps later this year.
During his 16 years of storm chasing, Robinson has sought extreme weather in every state east of the Mississippi except Michigan. In recent years, he has put nearly 300,000 miles on his vehicles. He now drives a Ford Ranger pickup equipped with GPS, a satellite-linked weather data system and his laptop computer.
His experience at intercepting and photographing tornadoes across the Great Plains and Midwest led to an assignment last year as a storm-chasing guide for an overbooked tornado-hunting outfitter.
His clients were a couple from India, who traveled to Amarillo, Texas, to begin their weeklong tornado hunt. "A lot of storm-chasing tour clients come from overseas," said Robinson. "The storm season on our Great Plains is the most prolific in the world."
From Amarillo, Robinson and his clients tracked two big storm systems across the plains, traveling through parts of Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas.
"We picked the wrong storms at first, but on our third day, we caught the right one. We saw four tornadoes in Oklahoma. Seeing their reaction to their first tornado intercept was great."
Robinson recently launched his own Storm Highway Storm Chasing Guide Service, offering clients personalized trips to the Tornado Belt and beyond. Unfortunately for the business venture, it's an unusually quiet storm season. "A lot of the veteran storm chasers have seen no tornadoes so far this year," he said.
The Charleston man said he sees the guide business more as a sideline to finance another couple of weeks of storm chasing in the Great Plains than as a major new revenue source.
Robinson said storm chasing is not a particularly dangerous pastime.
"The most dangerous part of it is driving all those miles," he said. "No storm chaser has been killed by a tornado, but some have died in crashes while trying to get to them."
By being aware of a twister's path and the available escape routes, storm chasers can get to within a half-mile or so of tornadoes without much risk, he said.
"You need to get within a mile or two to really see and photograph them," he said. "And then they only come down for a few moments. They're very hard to get to see. You can easily drive days to see a few seconds of a tornado."
Robinson said he enjoys photographing lightning as much as he does shooting tornadoes, giving him a severe weather subject that doesn't necessarily involve a long drive.
While he has captured some spectacular images of lightning strikes in and around Charleston, he recently traveled to Chicago to photograph lightning striking the Sears Tower, and plans to drive to Manhattan to shoot lightning strikes on some of New York City's iconic skyscrapers.
He would also like to photograph a West Virginia tornado someday.
"On average, West Virginia has one or two tornadoes a year, and I'd eventually like to see and photograph one here," Robinson said. "I'd also like to photograph 'thunder snow' here -- when thunder, lightning and snow are happening at the same time."
Robinson said he is attracted to extreme weather because it showcases the raw, awe-inspiring aspect of nature's power.
"I'm not on some kind of death and destruction kick," he said. "I just want to see nature in action. Most of these storms happen away from people and their homes and businesses."
In 2007, Robinson intercepted and photographed the tornado that wiped out 95 percent of the city of Greensburg, Kan., and killed 12 of its residents. While capturing images of such a powerful tornado would ordinarily have been an exhilarating proposition, knowing the toll it took on human life greatly diminished the experience.
"I don't celebrate that intercept like I do other, less powerful tornadoes where no one was hurt," he said.
Robinson said he is interested in increasing awareness about the hazards of icy roads, since they take a much heavier toll on human life than more violent forms of weather. Using data gleaned from the Internet, he tracked the number of people killed last winter on icy roads across the nation, and found that they totaled at least 477 -- nearly twice the number of fatalities caused by tornados, hurricanes, floods and lightning combined.
He developed a Web site devoted to the topic () that includes video footage of slide-outs and collisions on a variety of West Virginia roads, along with numerous tips on how to drive safely and detect unsafe road conditions.
Future goals include capturing video footage of a West Virginia tornado -- a challenge since they happen only once or twice a year, on average, and are difficult to visually track due to hilly terrain. "I would also like to photograph 'thunder snow' here," he said. "It's something that occurs when thunder, lightning and snow are happening at the same time."
Robinson doubts that he would ever be able to turn storm chasing into a full-time career.
"I felt blessed to be able to do it as a hobby, and I feel blessed now to make a profit doing something I enjoy," he said. "And there's no place I'd rather be than the open road. This gives me plenty of reasons to be there."
More information on storm chasing and numerous photos and video clips of extreme weather scenes captured by Robinson can be found on his Web site, .
@tag:Reach Rick Steelhammer at rsteelhammer@wvgazette.com or 304-348-5169.
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