A closer look at storm chasing
DENVER - One of the country's most respected storm chasers is from right here in Southern California.
With the changing climate and increasingly severe weather, chasers like Bill Reid work to warn others as tornadoes touch down.
We are in Eastern Colorado's Great Plains, home to some of the most extreme weather on Earth.
"We're going to get a tornado on one of these, more likely this one. So let's go!"
That's Inglewood-born, renowned storm chaser and Tempest Tours tour director Bill Reid.
"I storm chase because I like to see what the weather will do. I'm a weather nut. Every day is different, you never know what you're going to wind up with," Reid said.
He has been chasing these storms for more than 30 years.
"I'm a California boy. Took my first storm chase trip in May 1991, been coming back every spring since. I have been on a handful of killer tornadoes."
In 1998, he was there as a deadly F4 tornado tore through South Dakota, killing six and injuring half of the small town of 320.
His location reports of the storms are often the first warnings residents get that a tornado has formed.
"I'm trying to help with the warning process."
Reid was leading a Tempest Tours group in 2013 in El Reno, Oklahoma, when a 2.5-mile-wide monster tornado formed - the widest ever recorded.
Per mobile radar data, it clocked in at EF5 level winds of 200 mph.
On this Colorado tour, chasers from Canada, Ireland, and Australia came to bear witness to the ire of Mother Nature - their life's dream.
Lesleyanne Ryan took this breathtaking video of a supercell forming in Montana.
"I'm proud I'm able to fulfill people's dreams of storm chasing," Reid said.
But the biggest danger ahead is not the ominous sky.
"The primary risk is all the driving… confirmed tornado straight ahead."
Things are heating up.
One of our vans is hit by a small forming tornado.
Our ears popped, and the car whipped to the side for a brief moment.
"Maybe a weak developing one. There's one developing there, can you see it? Several twisters start to form all around us," he said when we asked if we were just in a tornado.
"Looks like we have a new funnel cloud... Makes it six."
"A tornado is a violent circulation of air in contact with the ground, which is associated with a convective cloud. To produce a tornado, you need wind shear, lift, instability, and moisture. We got it all," he explained.
As we watched in awe, another bigger storm was brewing east.
A tornado siren wails.
"We're here in Akron, Colorado, a big storm, a large tornado," Reid said.
We're trying to get south of this activity, but roads are closed due to power lines down.
A rare sight in a climate usually considered more dry.
The next day, back near Denver, an even more rare phenomenon developed as a tornado hits the populated city of Highlands Ranch.
The EF1 carried winds up to 110 mph.
The National Weather Service said this was historic.
Greg Heavener, meteorologist at the National Weather Service, stated that they found continuous damage along an 8-mile path.
This tornado is the longest in their 70+ years of storm data. As NOAA researchers say the changing climate will shift these storms east to more vulnerable areas, Reid's focus remains on helping to warn residents and keep his fellow chasers safe while respecting the incredible power of Mother Nature.
"There are circumstances I wish I wasn't here right now. Let's get out of here. You have to make sure you have your exits available, make sure I don't get cornered," he responded when asked if he ever gets afraid.