I Survived the Joplin Tornado, 2011

by Lauren Tarshis

  Of course Dad insisted on a personal tour of Dr. Gage’s SUV, which had been specially equipped for storm chasing. There were the extra-strong metal plates bolted to the sides to protect from flying rocks and debris. There were oversized tires for driving at high speeds across flooded fields and rocky ditches. The cluster of antennas gave Dr. Gage instant access to the latest weather data.

  And that was just the outside. Inside were three different computer screens, all mounted to the dashboard. There was even a mini freezer in the back.

  “For keeping hailstones frozen,” Dr. Gage explained, grinning like a kid showing off a new LEGO set.

  When they finished with the tour, Dr. Gage told them about their plan for the day. He and Dex would be chasing a big storm that was charging in from the west.

  “It’s already a supercell.”

  Dex knew that supercells were the most violent and dangerous thunderstorms, the storms that could unleash tornadoes.

  “We’ll head over to Galena and see if we can catch it as it heads north.”

  And Dr. Gage had a surprise for them. “Dex will be helping me with a research project.”

  It turned out Dr. Gage had been working with a team of scientists.

  “We’re trying to figure out if a tornado makes a sound just as it’s beginning to form inside a storm.”

  “The cry of a baby tornado,” Dad said.

  Dr. Gage chuckled. “In a way. We believe some animals can sense when a tornado is coming, long before it touches down. Our theory is that they can detect sounds that we humans can’t hear.”

  “Fascinating,” Dad said.

  “If there really are these sounds, and we can find a way to detect them, we could have much earlier warning before tornadoes touch down.”

  “Tell us about the research,” Dad said.

  Dr. Gage’s face lit up. He hit a button on his key chain, which popped open the tailgate of his SUV. Inside was a large cardboard box filled with metal balls. Each was the size of an apple.

  “I call these sound pods,” said Dr. Gage, handing one to Dad and one to Dex. “Each has a little recording instrument inside.”

  The metal ball was surprisingly light.

  “How do you get them up into the storm clouds?” Dad asked.

  “That’s the fun part,” Dr. Gage said. He reached behind the box and brought out what looked like a toy rifle.

  “It used to be a paintball gun,” Dr. Gage said. “I tinkered with it, added a wider barrel. So now it’s my official sound-pod launcher.”

  He loaded one of the silver balls into the barrel and handed the rifle to Dad.

  “Give it a try,” he said.

  Dad smiled excitedly as he aimed the rifle into the blue sky.

  He pulled the trigger.

  Phfffft!

  The ball hissed out of the gun, a silver blur. And then,

  Pop!

  A small balloon inflated in the sky, like a mini parachute. But instead of drifting down, the balloon shot up farther into the sky.

  “The balloon will lift the sound recorder up about ten thousand feet,” Dr. Gage explained. “And the sounds are transmitted back to my lab. So far I’ve collected sounds from fifteen different storms.”

  “Any theories yet?” Dad asked.

  “Some,” Dr. Gage said, looking at Dad. “Sure you can’t come along today?”

  Dad shook his head sadly. “The graduation starts at three,” he said. “But how about you join us for dinner tonight? We can talk more then.”

  Dr. Gage agreed, and they said their good-byes. Dex couldn’t decide who looked sadder about being left behind, Dad or the dog.

  Dr. Gage turned on the engine, and the three computer screens came to life. Dex studied the screen in front of him, which showed a weather radar map. Splotches of different colors pulsed on the screen like jellyfish.

  “There’s our storm,” Dr. Gage said, pointing to a patch of bloodred.

  His eyes narrowed.

  “It’s going to be a monster.”

  They headed out through the downtown, the oldest part of Joplin.

  “I love this street,” Dr. Gage said, admiring the brick and stone buildings that had been watching over Main Street for more than a hundred years.

  “That used to be my great-grandfather’s diner,” Dex said as they passed a squat brick building that was now a gift shop.

  “How long has your family been in Joplin?” Dr. Gage asked.

  “Since 1925,” Dex said. “My great-grandfather came here when he was sixteen.”

  Dr. Gage raised his eyebrows.

  “You’re Joplin royalty,” Dr. Gage said.

  Dex had to laugh as he imagined a king eating Mom’s Saturday night chili, or a princess lounging on the couch covered with Zeke’s fur. Dex loved his house. But it wasn’t exactly a castle.

  “I bet Joplin is a great place to grow up,” Dr. Gage said.

  “It is.” Dex nodded, surprised how much he meant it.

  Sure, there were more exciting places. Mike Sturm was always bragging about his family trips to New York City, where the buildings scraped against the clouds, or Las Vegas, where wild parties lasted all night. In Joplin, the tallest rooftops were mostly the church steeples, and the best parties were backyard barbecues.

  Dex knew that one day he’d travel the world. But he also knew he’d always be happy to come home to Joplin.

  * * *

  The land flattened out as they drove toward Kansas, and soon there was nothing but bright green cornfields. Dex scanned the sky, which was clear blue except for some hazy clouds. It was hard to imagine that a violent storm was somewhere nearby.

  They came upon a beat-up pickup truck on the side of the road, at the edge of a field. A young man and woman were standing there, video cameras aimed up at a patch of gray clouds. Dex guessed they were storm chasers, too.

  Dr. Gage smiled wide as he pulled up next to them and rolled down his window.

  “Jimmy! Sara! How are you?” he called out.

  “Norm!” the two chorused.

  “Hey, Jimmy, how’s the leg?” Dr. Gage asked.

  “Thirty stitches, Norm. But healing up nice.”

  “Sara, keep your buddy out of trouble today, will you? I want you guys to be careful.”

  “We promise, Norm,” said Sara, her brown eyes shining out through round glasses. “Who’s your assistant?”

  “This is Dex James. His dad and I went to college together.”

  Dex was relieved Dr. Gage didn’t reveal how they’d met yesterday — with Dex almost getting squashed by Dr. Gage’s SUV.

  “Dex,” Jimmy said. “You know you’re chasing with one of the best guys in the world.”

  Dex smiled.

  “We’re heading northwest,” Dr. Gage said. “What about you?”

  “We’ll probably see you later,” Sara said. “You going to get some pods into the sky?”

  “We’re about to,” Dr. Gage said. “You both take care. And, seriously, be careful!”

  After they’d driven away, Dr. Gage told Dex how Jimmy got his thirty stitches.

  “Last month, he and Sara were chasing in Mississippi, and they got too close to an EF-5 tornado.”

  Dex knew that EF-5 tornadoes are the strongest tornadoes, according to a system called the Enhanced Fujita Scale, which scientists use to rate the strength of tornadoes. An EF-1 is the weakest — a breeze funnel or little rope tornado that can knock over a chicken coop but not much else. The EF-5s are the killers, the violent twisters that wipe out whole towns.

  “The wind shifted,” Dr. Gage explained, “and the tornado they were chasing started chasing them. Their car got thrown, and Jimmy sliced open his leg. Luckily the tornado changed direction again and missed them. But they could have been killed.”

  Dr. Gage shook his head like a worried father.

  “I’m hoping they learned their lesson,” he added.

  “Do you really think we’re going to see tornadoes today?” Dex asked, sudde
nly wondering if that’s what he really wanted.

  “We can never be sure, not even with our radar and satellites and computers. All we can do is warn that a tornado might strike, and usually we’re wrong.”

  That sure was true in Joplin. The tornado sirens went off practically every week, always false alarms. They were like watchdogs that growled at every squirrel. Most people in Joplin ignored the sirens.

  “Can’t you a see a tornado on the radar?” Dex asked.

  “No,” Dr. Gage said. “You can see clues — high wind speeds, a storm that has what we call rotation, or spinning clouds. But tornadoes form deep inside the clouds, hidden from satellites and radar. We don’t know a tornado is coming until someone actually sees it with their own eyes.”

  Dex glanced out the window, half expecting a black funnel to explode out of the sky.

  Dr. Gage went on. “But the most dangerous tornadoes are the ones you can’t see. They hide behind walls of rain and clouds and nobody can see them coming.”

  “Those are called rain-wrapped tornadoes, right?” Dex asked.

  Dex was showing off; he’d learned that term on Dr. Gage’s show.

  “Yes. We call them black walls of death.”

  Dex didn’t like the sound of that.

  “Have you ever been up close to one of those?”

  Dr. Gage didn’t answer at first.

  “Too close,” he said finally, looking at Dex.

  He pulled up the sleeve of his shirt, and Dex tried not to gasp. There was a thick purple scar zigzagging from Dr. Gage’s wrist up to his elbow, as though a monster had tried to chew off his arm.

  “What happened?” Dex asked.

  Dr. Gage took a deep breath. And then, as they drove through the cornfields of Kansas, Dr. Gage told Dex the story of the tornado that nearly killed him.

  “It was Wednesday, April third, 1974,” Dr. Gage began. “My eleventh birthday. I got a brand-new bike, and after school all I wanted to do was ride around town to show it off.”

  Dr. Gage grew up in a small Alabama town called Jasper, with his parents and two little sisters.

  “Beautiful place. Quiet and friendly. A little like Joplin.”

  The day was hot and very humid, not unusual for Alabama in the springtime. There were thunderstorms forecast all around the South, up into Ohio. That wasn’t so unusual, either.

  But there was nothing usual about these storms. They were supercells. While Dr. Gage was happily riding his bike along the peaceful streets of Jasper, storms were already unleashing tornadoes for hundreds of miles in every direction.

  Boom!

  A tornado touched down in Cleveland, Tennessee, destroying the entire downtown.

  Boom!

  Another took aim at Xenia, Ohio, wiping out a neighborhood of brick houses, destroying a high school, and killing thirty-two people.

  Boom, boom, boom!

  Tornadoes struck in Kentucky, Indiana, and Georgia.

  At five fifteen, the skies in Jasper grew suddenly dark, and it began to pour.

  “I figured it was just a thunderstorm. I was more worried about my bike getting rusty than anything else.”

  The town had no tornado siren, so Dr. Gage had no way of knowing that a massive, rain-wrapped tornado was heading right for him.

  “I pulled to the side of the road to wait out the storm. I waited there under a tree, thinking about the cake my mother was making for me. It started to hail, huge stones that pounded down. My ears started to pop like crazy. I didn’t know that was a sign that a tornado was coming. The air pressure is so low inside a tornado that the sudden change in pressure makes your ears pop, like when you’re in an airplane.”

  Dex had never heard that.

  “And then there was a sound, like nothing I’d ever heard before. Most people say that a tornado sounds like a speeding freight train. But every tornado sounds different. This one was roaring and hissing, like some kind of snake. Stuff started flying through the air — leaves, branches, and roof shingles. That’s when I realized what was happening.”

  “What did you do?” Dex asked.

  “There was a big ditch right at the side of the road. I dove in and wedged myself under the root of a huge tree, held on for dear life. I got pummeled pretty badly. A tractor came flying out of the sky, and crashed down about ten feet from me. The tree I had been standing under was ripped out of the ground. My arm got sliced by a hunk of steel pipe that hit me at one hundred fifty miles per hour.”

  Dex shuddered.

  “But I was incredibly lucky,” Dr. Gage said. “I made it. And so did my parents and my sisters. They rode out the storm in our basement. The house was pretty much destroyed. But we felt blessed. Twenty-three people in our town were killed, including two of my friends.”

  It turned out that the EF-3 tornado that hit Jasper was part of what would become known as the Super Outbreak of 1974. Over twenty-four hours, 148 tornadoes touched down in thirteen states. By the time the skies had cleared, more than 330 people were dead.

  “You’d think that after that, I’d stay as far away from tornadoes as I could. But I decided to learn everything about them. I became obsessed. The more we know about tornadoes, the better we will be able to predict when and where they’ll hit. You know, last month, there was another super outbreak of tornadoes, all across the South. That’s where Jimmy and Sara got caught. It was as bad as the one in 1974 — we lost three hundred twenty-one people. So we haven’t made much progress, Dex. We need a much better early warning system so that people aren’t caught by surprise.”

  Something in Dr. Gage’s voice — a steely edge — reminded Dex of Jeremy, how he sounded when he talked about his missions. They were alike, Dex realized. Both were trying to make the world safer. But both were risking their lives.

  Both were hunting killers.

  Dex wanted to know more about what had happened to Dr. Gage that day.

  But just then Dr. Gage pointed out the window at a whirl of thick gray clouds rushing in from the west.

  “There it is!” he exclaimed.

  It was their storm.

  The chase was on.

  They followed the storm east for about three miles, and then they pulled off the road. They got out and stood at the edge of a cornfield.

  The air was steamy and thick, and the wind was stronger. The corn plants rippled like waves on a stormy ocean.

  They stood for a few minutes, watching as the metal-gray cloud grew thicker and darker. Before Dex’s eyes, the cloud formed itself into a giant circle. The bottom was perfectly flat, and the top towered up into the sky, as though it would bump into the moon.

  Dex thought it looked like a UFO. But Dr. Gage had a more scientific name for it.

  “That is a perfect cumulonimbus cloud.” He stared in awe. “Those are the clouds that make tornadoes.”

  Dr. Gage walked to the back of the SUV and popped open the tailgate.

  “Let’s get some sound pods into the sky,” he said, grabbing the rifle. “Would you like to do the shooting?”

  Dex took the rifle, trying to act as if it was no big deal.

  But inside his brain an excited little voice was screaming, I get to shoot the pods! I get to shoot the pods!

  Dr. Gage grabbed four of the silver balls.

  He took a quick look at the weather radar. “I think the storm is actually losing strength.”

  Sure enough, that UFO cloud was already melting apart, like gray ice cream left out in the sun.

  “But let’s shoot some pods up anyway. I’m curious to hear what’s going on in there. We’ll go into the middle of the field. The winds will be better.”

  Dr. Gage led Dex into the middle of the cornfield, where stalks rose up past Dex’s knees. He helped Dex load the balls into the rifle.

  “Pull the trigger four times with about five seconds in between.”

  Dex aimed up at the cloud.

  Phhttt!

  Phhttt!

  Phhttt!

  Phhttt!


  Each of the silver balls streaked up into the air, and then,

  Pop!

  Pop!

  Pop!

  Pop!

  One by one the pods burst open, releasing the balloons. They rose up through the sky, like four brave soldiers ready for a daring mission.

  “Perfect!” Dr. Gage exclaimed.

  Dex’s heart leaped up, and he thought of Jeremy. His brother would love this! Dex could imagine Jeremy’s chiming laugh, how his blue eyes would gleam, how they’d talk about this for weeks.

  And then came the familiar gut stab of worry, as Dex wondered where on earth his brother was. He closed his eyes, trying to block out the pictures of exploding bombs and burning tanks that flashed through his mind.

  And then, boom!

  For a second, Dex thought a bomb had blasted out of his mind and into the field.

  But when he opened his eyes, he saw bolts of lightning tearing open the storm cloud. The cloud had turned black and was billowing like smoke.

  Boom!

  Dex could actually feel electricity pulsing through the air. The hairs on his arms stood straight up from the shock.

  Boom, boom, boom!

  Lightning bolts shot out of the cloud, like flaming spears.

  Kaboom!

  Dr. Gage grabbed Dex’s arm. “I was wrong about this storm! It’s dangerous. We need to get away from this lightning.”

  Kaboom!

  A tree at the edge of the field got hit and exploded into millions of pieces.

  The skies burst open, and rain came pouring down in sheets. In seconds Dex’s hair and clothes were soaked. He ran with Dr. Gage, slipping in the mud, blinking away the raindrops that splashed into his eyes.

  And then came the hail.

  The stones were small at first, but soon Dex and Dr. Gage were being pummeled by big rocks.

  “Cover your head!” Dr. Gage boomed.

  Dex put his hands over his head, but it didn’t help. It was like getting hit by baseballs pitched at a hundred miles an hour.

  They were just a few feet from the car when a huge hailstone smashed into Dex. He saw a burst of stars, and next thing he knew, he was on the ground.

  Dr. Gage helped Dex up and practically dragged him to the car.