Thrill of the chase: Meet the Kiwis chasing storms across the US

Steve Burrows remembers the day he was hit by a tornadic waterspout.

It was 2014, and he and his friend had just tracked down a waterspout forming out from the Ashburton river mouth. The pair watched it from the safety of their car as it swirled and swirled - and then, it broke on the shoreline.

"It hit us and you could actually feel the back of the car lifting up. It got smashed with pebbles and everything, and when the wind picked up we could feel the back of the car bouncing up and down."

To most people, getting caught in a storm probably sounds like a nightmare. But for Burrows, it was a moment of pure adrenaline - all part of the territory of being a storm chaser.

Burrows has been chasing storms since 2003, capturing thunderstorms, tornadoes and lightning on camera and sharing it with his community on the NZ Stormchasers Facebook page. He will spend hours in a car, tracking down storms using weather data and radars, all to experience the beauty and power of nature.

If you're the person making the decisions, you've got to be confident in what you're doing, he says.

"Being able to interpret data very quickly is important. You might have yourself and your chase partner, someone else with a laptop running the latest weather radar programmes, and then telling you where to go.

"You might be driving towards what you think is quite a dangerous situation, but someone's like, 'Nah, definitely drive this way, we've got a road in two miles on your right and it will take us out of danger'. You definitely need to be someone that can process information very quickly and make decisions ad hoc."

Burrows' passion has taken him all the way to the US, where he's chased storms across America's Tornado Alley - places like Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska, where tornadoes occur most frequently.

"We saw 12 tornadoes in one day in Dodge City in Kansas. That was in 2016, and it was quite an amazing experience ...

"Earlier this year when I was in Houston, I think they got hit by one thunderstorm that caused millions of dollars worth of damage, comparative to Cyclone Gabrielle, but it was just an everyday storm for them.

"Going to America is just a different kettle of fish. Storms are bigger, everything's bigger."

Burrows has travelled to the US to chase storms practically every year since 2007, usually accompanied by people he's met on the NZ Stormchasers page.

In the US, storms certainly are bigger and the weather technology is a bit more advanced - but Burrows says it's not all an adrenaline-packed adventure.

"One thing you actually need is patience. A lot of the time, it's driving long distances and doing nothing. It's sitting and waiting for a storm, just getting to the right spot at the right time and trying your best to capture something.

"It can be a lot of miles, I think my last trip to America, we did 8000 km in two weeks, which is about what I drive in a whole year in New Zealand."

But when the storm is finally in sight, the thrill kicks in.

"It's like when you go hunting. It's a walk in the hills until you see your animal, then this adrenaline takes over.

"You definitely get the thrill from the chase. The centre of a tornado is one of the most powerful things Mother Nature has. It's quite incredible when you see it, the sound of it is like a jet engine roar ... getting close to it, there's a sense of danger, but it's a calculated thrill. You wanna come back home."

Kim Watson has been fascinated by tornadoes and storms ever since she was a child. Growing up, her mum would always tell her stories about where to go if there was a tornado in the house. She thought about it so much, that she even started dreaming of them.

"It sort of kept happening as I was growing up. [Mum's] story was precautionary, I don't think anything happened. ...

"[Later on] I was working with racehorses in America and I saw some storms first hand over there, especially tornado warnings, and storm chasing sort of piqued my interest."

In 2017, Watson was planning a trip to the US to visit her friend, and decided to book a storm chasing tour on a whim.

"I literally just Googled 'storm chasing tours' and booked the first one I looked at. We ended up doing four states: New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas and Colorado."

Watson has travelled to the US almost every year since, usually during tornado season between April and July. On one occasion, she even ran into Burrows under a storm.

"I knew about him from the NZ Stormchasers page and I'd talked to him a couple times on Facebook.

"We were just out there watching a storm and next minute, Steve pulls up, we chat for a bit and then we have to take off because the storm's coming. It's quite cool that we actually met up over there for the first time."

2024 was the first year Watson arranged a trip to the US with Burrows and his crew. Together, they witnessed "the best tornado [she's] ever had".

"We were in Eldorado in Oklahoma, and just watching it from birth, letting it come towards us ... we moved just down the road and let it cross the road behind us. That's never happened to me before, and then we carried on chasing it after it crossed the road. It was a beast of a tornado.

"You don't focus on anything else around you, you're just in absolute awe of watching that tornado, something so powerful in front of you, it makes you feel small. ... You're seeing Mother Nature in her raw, powerful form, and it just makes you humble. It just makes you feel like you can do anything really.

"Every year you just inch that bit closer to being a bit more daring ... it's an empowering feeling."

Both Watson and Burrows plan on going to the US every year for as long as they can.

This year Burrows is expecting heightened interest due to the release of Twisters (2024), a remake of the originalTwister (1996) film that inspired so many storm chasers.

"A lot of people catch the bug from the original movie and you still see a lot of references to it now. ... It's an iconic movie around storm chasing and sparks a lot of people's interest.

"We get a lot of people saying it's a bucket list thing to do."