From Fear to Forecasting: How I Learned to Love Tornadoes

If you know me, it’s no secret that my love of tornadoes runs deep. Ever since I saw my first funnel cloud at two years old, I’ve wanted to be a meteorologist. I knew I didn’t want to be a broadcaster, I wanted to do “behind-the-scenes” research on tornadoes.

What is a secret though is that I’m deathly afraid of tornadoes.

Yes, you’re reading this right, a graduate student who is creating a tornado climatology for the Ohio Valley, is afraid of tornadoes.

This started after my high school and part of my community was hit by an EF-4 tornado on June 5^th, 2010. The air just had that feeling; it was hot and humid, a typical summer day just five days after my 13^th birthday. I was at a friend’s house for the night, a few miles north of my home, watching TV with her parents, as I got a sinking feeling in my stomach watching the storms roll our way. I kept in contact with my mom, just two miles away from all of the action, as everyone turned on the news right around 10:00PM and prepared for what we thought could be the worst-case scenario.

I don’t think anyone in northwest Ohio could have predicted what actually happened.

The tornado was on the ground for about 15 minutes, from 11:20PM to 11:35PM. Within that time, a small EF-1 intensified into an EF-3 as it hit Lake High School, and into a powerful EF-4 that destroyed a community. We lost a high school that we would be attending starting in 2011. Friends lost their houses. Millbury didn’t look the same for a long time.

To this day, I am terrified of thunderstorms that hit late at night. There are two ways I cope with this fear: 1) tracking the storms as they come in, intently watching the velocity scans for any signs of rotation and couplets forming, and 2) by studying them. Studying tornadoes and knowing the common traits and characteristics the atmosphere shows us is the only way I can start to get my fear under control.

This event, along with other tornadoes I’ve been a witness to in Ohio, are why I decided to go to graduate school. I pursued the start of my research as a fifth-year senior at Ohio State by writing an undergraduate thesis addressing Ohio Valley tornadic occurrences, which gave me the start I wanted for my graduate school research. Now, I’ll be analyzing certain events as case studies by examining the characteristics of the atmosphere during these times and looking for commonalities. For example, where was the location of the low pressure system? The cold and warm fronts? How fast was the 0-1km wind shear? How did these variables shift as the outbreaks occurred?

I don’t know if we’ll ever have an answer for why tornadoes happen or what factors cause them, but I hope my research makes a dent in it and we can be prepared for another night like June 5^th.

Alyssa Reynolds has loved the weather since she was two years old and saw her first funnel cloud. Maintaining this passion for 21 years, she has graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Atmospheric Sciences with research distinction from The Ohio State University in May 2020, and began a master’s degree at OSU in the fall. She has been an active member of the Scarlet and Gray Campus Weather Forecasting Team as well as the first female president of the club. She has also created her own weather blog and forecasting page on Facebook to keep herself informed on all types of concepts in synoptic and dynamic meteorology and to share her passion for weather, severe weather events, and weather research with enthusiasts of all kinds.