A strange thing happened to Jim Reed on his way to a successful career in film-making and screenwriting.  It wasn’t just that his productions regularly ran afoul of stormy weather, but that he felt more inclined to focus his camera on the storms than on the actors or politicians he was supposed to be shooting, and that he kept bumping into meteorologists who piqued his long-standing interest in the weather by predicting a dramatic worsening of our climate in coming decades. 

In 1992, Reed decided that the weather was trying to tell him something.  He left Los Angeles and moved to Wichita, Kansas to begin a new career as a storm-chasing photographer.  In Kansas, the heart of tornado alley and the nerve center of storm forecasting, Reed expanded his network and his knowledge. 

‘I’ve been blessed,’ he says, ‘by association with so many people who know so much more than I do.  They’ve taken me under their wing, and each one has taught me a couple of points you couldn’t learn in meteorology school.  I’m science-driven but I also like to be able to step back and look directly and simply and draw my own conclusions about what’s going to happen.’

© 2005 Jim Reed

Reed’s first self-assignment was slightly on the ambitious side.  Called Heaven and Earth: Through the Eyes of a Storm Chaser, it was conceived as a three-decade photographic study of our changing climate.  The underlying premise was that we were in for a prolonged period of severe and unusual weather, which would come upon us gradually during the 1990s, reach a climax during our current decade, and probably settle in to stay after 2010.

Reed’s original impulse was toward fine art and documentary photography.  But in 1995, two events combined to raise the public’s weather awareness and increase editorial demand for his pictures.  The first was a hurricane season that ranked among the busiest since record-keeping began.  The second was the hit movie Twister, which elevated storm chasers to the status of obsessed and adrenalin-driven culture heroes. 

More about Intercepting than Chasing

Reed enjoyed the movie but his approach to storm-chasing is very different from the Hollywood version.  His goal is to capture the most photogenic storm of the day at its highest level of energy and intensity.  For that, he needs to get out there early, get in position, let the storm pass over and then follow it.

‘For me, it’s really more about intercepting than chasing,’ he says.  ‘I don’t want to be racing after anything.  That’s a misconception in the media.  Chasing is stressful.  It gets the adrenalin going.  Adrenalin rushes make me feel nauseas.  They make my hands shake.  Those are not good qualities when you need to make split-second decisions in hazardous conditions.  But don’t get me wrong.  If you think you’ve got a storm, and you see it starting to take shape, and you see that sort of flying-saucer edge to the mesocyclone…Yeah, I get excited.  Every time, as if it was the first time.’

A bolt from the gray

Behind many of Reed’s photos are stories that illustrate the challenge and unpredictability of his craft.  A prime example is ‘A Bolt from the Gray,’ which won first place in the National Press Photographers Association’s Nature category and was the public’s favorite on the MSNBC website.  

Thunderstorms were moving across Kansas on the day he took the photo but Reed had no plans to chase.  Instead he dropped in on a friend, meteorologist Jon Davies, and watched the storms on radar.  Late in the afternoon, they spotted a single cell heading in their direction.  They drove out to intercept it, guided by a portable radar device on the windshield of Reed’s trusty Ford Explorer.  Up close, the storm looked like a non-descript cloud mass with a lot of rain. 

 ‘I hate rain,’ Reed admits.  ‘That sounds strange for a storm-chaser but I hate getting wet, and I hate getting my equipment wet.’ 

The two men stayed with the storm, however, and watched with growing excitement as it ‘began to morph into a mesocyclone that looked like an upside down cinnamon roll coming out of the sky.’  When Reed pulled over to start shooting, a culvert collapsed under the Explorer’s front wheel.  The chase would have ended right there if two vanloads of meteorology students hadn’t come along to offer a helping hand.

Back on the road, Reed saw the opportunity for a unique shot.  The sun was going down behind the storm, and there was no rain, but the light was rapidly failing and a row of trees blocked the view.   Reed just had time to clear the trees, set up his tripod and start shooting when a bolt of lightning streaked from cloud to ground.  He nailed it.

‘That really embraces what I love about storm chasing,’ Reed says.  ‘We had watched radar, familiarized ourselves with the storm, worked really hard, gotten a little help from our friends, and managed to set up our equipment.  We found an opportunity that provides everything I look for in a weather portrait-- interesting shape, texture, motion, color.  And then it’s like Nature says, these guys have worked so hard, let’s add one more element, and out comes that bolt of lightning, clean, bent, and all by itself.  Like wow!’

Katrina came as no surprise

The record-smashing hurricane season of 2005 did not take Reed by surprise.  In an article published way back in 2000, he wrote, ‘This period (2001 – 2011) will likely include the documentation of what media sources refer to as "Hurricane X," a powerful tropical event  predicted to strike and cripple one or more major U.S. cities.’

As Katrina took aim at New Orleans, and the head of FEMA was fretting about which tie to wear with his button-down collar, Reed was loading his trusty Explorer with camera gear, food, water, clothes and emergency medical supplies.  The Corbis stock agency and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration had asked him to document the hurricane as it struck.  Reed’s photos in the eye of the storm would differ from those of most photojournalists who concentrated on the aftermath, and would later be collected in a book called Hurricane Katrina: Through the Eyes of Storm Chasers.

Looking at surface maps and computer tracking models, listening to discussions on the Internet and consulting with meteorologist Jon Davies, Reed decided that he had the best chance of intercepting the eye of the storm as it crossed over Gulfport, Mississippi.  For better or worse, his projections were dead on.

Astronomical Twilight

Accompanied by fellow-photographer Mike Theiss, Reed reached Gulfport the afternoon before the storm made landfall.  He checked into the Holiday Inn near the beach and went to work, continuing to shoot even after the sun went down. 

‘The evening before Katrina,’ he recalls, ‘I saw the leading edge of the hurricane approaching Gulfport.  I had committed photography-error 101A by forgetting my regular tripod back at the motel.  But I slapped my camera onto a flimsy little desktop tripod, put it on the hood of the car, held it tightly and fired off three or four shots with a remote cord.  I managed to capture the outer band in this beautiful blue that comes with astronomical twilight (when the sun is six degrees below the horizon).  That’s one of my favorite times to shoot.’  U.S. News & World Report eventually ran one of those twilight shots as a two-page spread under the title ‘Anatomy of a Disaster.’

Motel horror stories

When it comes to motel horror stories, Reed’s experience at the Gulfport Holiday Inn early on the morning Katrina hit town has to rank right up there with the shower sequence in Psycho.  The motel was about 50 yards from the beach, and the photographers had planned to shoot Katrina’s onslaught from a nearby parking garage.  But the speed and strength of Lady K caught even these veteran storm chasers off-guard.  Unable to reach their planned outpost, they cruised Highway 90, shooting from their research vehicle as dawn broke.  When the winds got too strong to stay on the road, they raced back to the Holiday Inn, arriving just as the motel’s massive sign came crashing down.

Katrina soon let them know that the Holiday Inn was no haven.  Minutes after sunrise, the storm surge began breaking against the hotel.  Salt water swept into the lobby.  The photographers and a handful of remaining guests, including three sailors due to ship out for Iraq, watched it rise until a massive wave made everyone race for a stairwell.  By the time photographer Mike Theiss reached the stairwell door, the weight of the water in the lobby had wedged it shut. 

‘It reminded me of one of those old-time submarine moves,’ says Reed, ‘where they’re spinning the wheel to close the hatch and there’s one man left outside, staring through the glass as the water floods in.’  Reed and the three sailors managed to push the door open just far enough to pull Theiss to safety.  The waves slammed the door behind him with enough force to shatter the glass. 

Animalistic

‘Scientists don’t like to attribute human characteristics to storms,’ Reed points out, ‘but Katrina was animalistic.’ As the waves chased them up the stairwell, Reed kept shooting, using a wide angle to work in the confined space.  ‘Both my strobes went down because of all the salt water.  But my Nikon D2X kept working under incredibly adverse conditions,’ he says.  ‘It was so dark that Mike and I were shining flashlights on the stairs.  The only existing light was coming in from outside, and that was excruciatingly bright because we were very near the eye of the storm.’

The water receded from the stairwell as suddenly as it had rushed in.  ‘It was like someone pulled the plug on a swimming pool and sucked it right back out,’ says Reed.  ‘I’ve never seen anything like that.’ 

He went back down to the lobby but Katrina had more surprises in store.  A renewed surge sent a car crashing through the glass doors of the hotel.  Somehow the lights of the driverless car had been turned on by the storm.  ‘The lights of the car and the lights of the lobby were reflected on the water,’ he says, ‘creating red, white and blue stripes, like the flag.  It looks like we Photoshopped the hell out of the picture but it was entirely natural.  I wanted to get as close as I could to shoot it,’ says Reed.  ‘But the water was full of debris that you couldn’t see, and of course there was glass and who knows what underfoot.  The odds of injury were pretty high.’
 

Never saw it coming

Injury came minutes later, when Reed and Theiss ventured outside of the hotel, convinced that the worst of the storm had passed.  ‘We were in the southern eye-wall, which was not as violent as the northern wall,’ says Reed.  The surge was already going back out to sea, and the photographers were able to walk on ground that had been under 20 feet of seawater earlier that morning. 

Wearing a rock-climbing helmet for protection against flying debris, Reed listened to the wind.  Hurricanes sounds fascinated him even though they were affecting his hearing.  Theiss walked around the side of the building, shooting video.  Before he got back inside, the wind started gusting at around 100 mph.  Theiss grabbed a street sign and held on for dear life, giving Reed one more great shot of his partner in peril.  But it was Theiss who returned to the lobby unbloodied while Reed got his nose broken by something he never even saw.

‘I was 20 seconds from going back inside when I turned around and bam!  It was like somebody had come up and punched me in the nose,’ Reed recalls.  ‘But I was able to keep taking pictures till one of the Navy guys told me there was blood all over my face.’

Emotional toll

Reed prefers to focus on the fury of the passing storm rather than its aftermath because he finds it hard to stare at the suffering left in the wake of an event like Katrina.  But storm-chasing also takes an emotional toll.  ‘It may not affect me consciously at the time,’ he says, ‘but I still have dreams about Hurricane Charley.  I hear roaring and things breaking.  I’ve been around dead bodies and severely injured people, and it never gets any easier.  The best storm chasers always stop to help people in need. You pull victims out of a house or a pile of rubble.  You focus on those you can help and tend to their immediate concerns.’ 

The fate of animals in harm’s way also troubles Reed, who often stops to pick up abandoned pets.  Many a stray puppy or kitten has ridden shotgun while Reed was chasing a storm.  ‘It’s hard to think of a major event where animals haven’t been part of it,’ he says.  Asked for examples, he mentions a cat in Katrina.

A cat in Katrina

‘The Holiday Inn had a pretty black cat with white paws and yellow eyes.  The night before the storm slammed in, it was outside, howling non-stop.  It knew something bad was coming,’ he says.  Afraid that cat wouldn’t survive outside when the hurricane hit, Reed and Theiss did everything they could to lure it into the lobby.  But with typical feline obstinacy, the cat climbed up into the wheel-well of the hotel van and eluded their well-meant efforts.  The next morning they found the twisted shell of van where the storm surge had dropped it.  There was no sign of the cat.  ‘Cats are very resilient,’ says Reed.  ‘And this one might have been able to swim in the surge or get up on a roof.  But it’s hard not knowing, and it still bothers me.’

Even more disturbing to Reed is the horror that befell a herd of cattle during a mile-wide tornado he photographed in Texas.  ‘We all laughed at the flying cow in Twister,’ he admits, ‘but it takes on a whole different perspective when you see it in reality.  The tornado hit a barn with a substantial number of cows, and it just shredded the herd.  Some were dismembered; some impaled.  When we came up on them, the dying cattle were making a sound like I’ve never heard before.  It was almost like crying.  That was in 1995 and I still have occasional nightmares about it.’

It’s important to be frightened

Lightning is another occupational hazard that Reed dreads, even though he has been close to at least a dozen strikes.  Staying in the vehicle during electrical storms offers some protection but digital cameras have recorded lighting bolts penetrating windshields.  Seventy-three people die from lightning strikes each year in the U.S., and hundreds more suffer debilitating injuries.

‘Lightning scares the hell out of me,’ he confesses.  In Wichita, a bolt hit a utility pole 50 yards from where he was shooting.  The charge ran through the ground and right up his legs.  His feet went to sleep and he had ‘the proverbial headache for an hour or two.’  But that was nothing compared to his experience in an electrical storm in Wyoming.

‘It was to lighting what Katrina was to hurricanes,’ he says.  ‘We went from shooting in the middle of a field, to rushing back to the vehicle, to getting into the vehicle, to curling up into a ball on the seats to avoid touching metal, and finally to taking evasive action to get away from the core of the storm.  It was very frightening.  But it’s important to be frightened.  It reminds us that there are some very significant risks associated with what we’re doing.’

One of the first new genres in many years

Interviewed at the end of this year’s horrific hurricane season, Reed sounded both exhausted and exhilarated.  He was physically and emotionally drained by the relentless succession of storms and looking forward to some boring weather during which he could rest, recuperate and reassess.  Mid-way through his 30-year project to document Heaven and Earth, he was wondering whether he had the stamina for another fifteen seasons like the last one.  The suffering caused by lack of preparation for storms like Katrina also disturbed him.

At the same time, he was excited by the fact that the issue of severe weather has finally achieved a prominent position on the national radar screen.  Suddenly people want to learn more.  Radio and TV shows are eager for interviews with Reed, and editorial outlets are calling him for stock and offering assignments.  ‘The weather has become so active and has produced so many record-setting storms,’ he says, ‘that extreme weather photography is becoming a category in itself.  It’s one of first new genres in photography in many years.  The combination of the Internet, digital photography, more active weather and more weather-watchers makes this an incredible period for storm chasing.

Personal responsiblity

Having walked so closely to the awesome forces of Nature for such an extended period, Reed seems the right person to ask for some big-picture, philosophical comments.  He’s reluctant to sound like a pundit but with a little prodding, the insights start to flow.  ‘Reverence is a very private matter,’ he insists, ‘but my reverence for weather, for the force and fury behind the weather, has never been higher.  I have a deep respect for nature and the environment, and a deep love for people, and it breaks my heart to witness the two not getting along.  We’re out of sync, and not doing what we have to in order to save lives.  To have this be the deadliest weather-related year in America since the early 1900s is embarrassing and inexcusable. We’ve all dropped the ball.  And we all need to take more personal responsibility.’

Among the steps we should all take to prepare for a stormier future, Reed recommends paying more to attention to weather forecasts, understanding what we need to survive for 72 hours without civilized conveniences or government help, learning first aid, getting in tune with all the good things we have, and putting the golden rule into practice if we’re ever around to help out in the aftermath of a disaster.