A STORM CHASER'S TERRIFYING ENCOUNTER

 

Bear's Cage: a storm chaser colloquialism. From Wiki: The "bear's cage" refers to the area under a rotating wall cloud(and any attendant tornadoes), which is the "bear", and to the blinding precipitation (which can include window-shatteringly large hail) surrounding some or all sides of a tornado, which is the "cage". Most chasers strive to avoid this part of the storm.

The veteran storm chaser came across a nasty one in west Texas. F2 if not larger, at least a half mile across, reddish brown in color from the dust it was picking up. Thanks to the road system in that part of the state, he had to make a difficult approach but managed to stay in front of the beast. It was coming in from his right at about 60 degrees. Suddenly, it picked up speed forcing the chaser to make a split-second decision: outrun or hang back. He decided on the former and gunned his car. The roar of the twister was quite loud now and bearing down on him at 90 degrees, resembling a violent brown mist. He had to keep an eye on the road too and it's just as well. He remembered an Indigenous folktale warning against staring too long at the spinning wind lest it hypnotizes you into inaction and the storm ingests you.

He managed to get past the twister and prepared for the  heavy winds, hail and low visibility chaos in the Bear's Cage. He had been here before.The car was pelted with golf ball-sized hail that cracked his windshield in three places and blew out his rear window.  As the hail tapered, he took a good look around and to his left, saw another tornado forming up behind her older sister. He was in between them. He was heard to say "Had to do it" while the camera showed eight seconds of RFD horizontally pushing a brown mist around him. The video ends.