School administrator thrives on chasing tornadoes
By Sylvie Belmond belmond@theacorn.com

Larry Brown spends most of his days managing finances for the Moorpark Unified School District, but when he goes on vacation, he transforms into an adventurous thrill seeker who enjoys seeing tornadoes close up.

Brown's fascination with the fast-paced excitement of storm chasing all began when, as a young boy, he watched the tornado scene in the movie "The Wizard of Oz."

"I've always loved the weather," said Brown, who grew up in Phoenix, where big lightning and dust storms occur every year.

Equipped with a slide show and videos showing close encounters with tornadoes of all kinds, Brown blended scientific facts and personal experiences to hold the interest of students in Jennifer King's science class at Chaparral Middle School last week.

"There's a thrill to this. Chasing thunderstorms is like a game: You try to predict where the storm is going and where the tornadoes may develop," Brown said.

The assistant superintendent of business services is preparing to go to the Midwest next week for another round of adventure.

"Massive storms are awesome and when the whole sky rotates around you, you're sort of put down in your place," he said.

Although he enjoys the excitement of pursing volatile weather phenomena, Brown said he uses common sense to stay out of harm's way. He doesn't take unnecessary risks to capture the twisters on camera.

Unpredictable, the twisters come in all shapes, sizes and strength and they can change from a skinny funnel into a devastating wedge within minutes.

"I like to be well-prepared with a plan and escape routes," he said.

Storm chasers must have reliable vehicles and a laptop computer to do forecasting. They spend many uneventful hours driving on the open plains hoping to encounter tornadoes, but there are no guarantees.

"You can predict conditions that are ripe for tornadoes, but this never means one will develop, Brown said. "It's boring for a lot of the time, but when you get to the actual storm, it's fantastic."

Storms capable of producing twisters occur when cold air comes down from the north and meets with warm, moist air from the south, pumping energy into the atmosphere.

When conditions are right,

storms form isolated super cells that can be up to 55,000 feet tall and capable of producing dangerous twisters.

"These storms look like an atomic bomb blast," said Brown. Cloud Nine tours, the group that he travels with throughout the Midwest, was, in 1995, the first

team to successfully place a specially protected video camera in the path of a tornado to capture images of an active twister passing through.

The experiment yielded good sound bites, but no images, because the dirt covered the lens

of the camera as

the tornado approached, Brown said.

While tornadoes may be thrilling to those who seek them, they are traumatic for those who live in their paths. Entire towns have been destroyed by passing twisters, which can be up to two miles wide.

Furious winds can lift heavy objects like cars and trucks and turn a twobyfour into a projectile, Brown said.

A 1925 twister killed almost 700 people as it traveled through Missouri, Illinois and Indiana over its 3½-hour lifespan.

"This was the longest recorded tornado, but there was no weather forecasting at the time," Brown told the students.

Advances in forecasting have saved many lives, but twisters still cause a lot of property damage in many parts of the country, he said.

At the end of his presentation, Brown fielded several questions from students who wanted to know how close he came to a twister and whether tornadoes occur in Arizona.

When he's not chasing storms, Brown enjoys scuba diving in far-off places.