Everyone can have the hobby they want, of course. The problem arises when your hobby isn’t collecting stamps from Nigeria or leveling up your Pokémon, but chasing tornadoes and storms, trying to record them as best as possible. It’s a risky job for meteorologists, and certainly not a hobby anyone in their right mind would choose for their weekend plans. But perhaps YouTuber Tanner Charles isn’t in his right mind.
Trapped in a hurricane
Have you seen ‘Twister’? Well, it’s a bit like that, but without Bill Paxton, Helen Hunt, or special effects. The YouTuber, armed with cameras, microphones, and a jeep, used to film different hurricanes and tornadoes, the kind that occur in the United States and seem like pure science fiction in other countries. The storm chasers in Cáceres must be extremely bored, I suppose.
The thing is, Tanner Charles faced an F3 category tornado in Illinois. That means winds between 230 and 250 kilometers per hour, capable of uprooting trees and ripping off roofs as if they were made of butter. Quite an exciting plan, right? So there he went with his team to capture some great footage for his 150,000 viewers, not expecting that this time he would get too close and end up being swallowed by the disaster.
The video, basically, is a nightmare: a lot of wind, rain, mud, disaster, and people saying “Please, let it end already, please.” They have 14 years of experience chasing tornadoes; they could have anticipated that this would happen sooner or later. The video, after which they miraculously survived, has accumulated less than 100,000 views, while the tweet with a clip that was later taken down due to copyright issues had been seen by 15 million people in two days. Quite something.
“I’m sorry, but what did they expect would happen?” read the viral tweet that, for once, was absolutely right. They survived, but maybe they will think twice before venturing out to chase tornadoes again as if nothing happened.
