A tornado blew through town last week in the form of Ricky Forbes, a crewmember from CMT’s Tornado Hunters and a Saskatchewan native. He gave presentations at the local elementary and high schools as well as at Discovery Ford Humboldt on March 12 about tornadoes and what it was like chasing them.
Forbes spent time explaining that he’s on the road six months of the year with his crewmates, Greg Johnson and Chris Chittick, chasing storms and documenting them. He used a slideshow to present some photos and videos of his travels, including the dangers they’ve come across and the amazing things they’ve witnessed. During his presentation, his respect for nature was apparent.
“When you get beside a tornado, I relate it to like riding a bull out there. As much as a bull rider thinks he knows the behaviour of a bull, there are still the unknowns,” said Forbes. “We can predict 80 per cent, but there’s still the 20 per cent unknowns and things could happen like being caught in a tornado and stuff like that that you don’t want to happen, so you definitely have to respect it.”
After giving at least three one-hour presentations at the schools, Forbes was at Discovery Ford Humboldt in the evening since they were responsible for inviting him to Humboldt. He gave two condensed 20-minute presentations, autographed some posters, and showed off his Tornado Hunter vehicle, which was newly cleaned courtesy of Discovery Ford.
“It was a great presentation. They were in the service bay and he used a lot of visuals and had interesting stories to tell. It captured the interest of the people and the kids,” said Matthew Lietz, the marketing assistant at Discovery Ford. “The kids had seen it earlier in the day and they brought their parents … we got a lot of people that said it was really educational and said they learned quite a bit.”
The show is into its second season, but Forbes said he’s only been doing this for three years. When asked how he got into it, he said it all started with the movie, Yes Man.
“I was like, I’m going to do that, so I started saying yes to things,” he said. “When I went to university, I didn’t have a snowboard or a dirt bike or anything. I was chasing material goals. I wanted the Lamborghini and everything and then that movie made me realize I had it all wrong. I went the completely opposite direction and got back into snowboarding and dirt biking and one thing led to another and I said yes to going out on a storm chase. I had no idea where it was going to be. I saw my first tornado and I was like, ‘this is where I need to be.’ I’ve been doing that ever since.”
For anyone who is seriously thinking about going into storm chasing, Forbes says the most obvious route is to take meteorology in school. However, because that covers the whole gamut of weather, Forbes also recommends asking a lot of questions and doing a lot of research.
“Almost all storm chasers have meteorology background. The three of us on our team actually don’t have that background. We have business/marketing degrees,” he said. “I would start talking to other storm chasers and try to find a mentor or ride along and go from there … It’s really hard to make money because you’re paying for your own gas, so they’re just pumped to have someone else come along and help pay for the gas.”
Considering storm chasing isn’t exactly a well-paying gig, it’s obvious that people like Forbes do it because they love it. Before he and his crew landed the CMT TV spot, he was on the road six months of the year and spent the other six months working to pay for it. The only income they had while on the road was from the small amounts of money they made from selling pictures and videos of storms. Nevertheless, Forbes said it’s his passion and he loves being able to witness the scenes in nature that nobody else gets to see.
“When you get beside a tornado and it’s ripping through the middle of an open field, nobody’s being harmed and it’s not doing any damage and you get to be beside it and feel the electricity and you get to hear the thunder of that jet engine, to see Mother Nature at her most furious, at her most powerful and to be in that moment, to be beside it, is absolutely incredible,” he said. “We get to see things that nobody else gets to see and experience Mother Nature in no other way and I wouldn’t trade it for the world.”
With the way Forbes talks about these storms, it’s almost romantic in a way. It’s passionate and exciting and so easy to forget that these creations of nature can easily turn deadly and disastrous. As Forbes explained, the wind tunnels, as massive as they may be, are still only a small tail of the real storm. They can brew up to several kilometers in diameter high in the sky where people can’t even distinguish the full size of it and tear up swathes of land, leaving devastating destruction in their wake.
“We were in Arkansas last year and an F4 (tornado) went through a town of 5,000 people and flattened the whole town and when you pulled up, you saw everything you can imagine; it was like a bomb went off,” said Forbes. “You can’t tell where one house starts and another one ends, fire hydrants are ripped from the ground and vehicles look like crumpled metal balls. It’s absolutely incredible and all the tragedies that come with it.”
Since Forbes and his crew are first responders, they’re usually first on the scene hours before even an ambulance arrives. They are trained in first aid response, so they’re helping anywhere and any way they can for hours after a storm has passed. Forbes has said that even to this day, those sights and sounds still bother him.
Moreover, he and his crew aren’t safe from the dangers either. As storm chasers, they’re constantly taking a risk that the tornado they’re hunting will turn on them. It wouldn’t be the first time, and his first experience was one Forbes won’t soon forget.
“I guess the scariest time was when we were caught inside the tornado. It was the world’s widest tornado … it went from an adrenaline rush to, ‘oh [expletive], I think we are too close,’ and then to, ‘Okay, our ears are popping while we’re inside.’ Then it all kind of just left and I was really sad,” he said. “To tell you the truth, the first thought that came to my mind was I was sad for my mom, because I thought this was it and I was angry at myself that I was going to leave this way and leave so young and my mom was going to have to find out about this. At that point it goes from being fun and being scared to just being pushed too far. I thought we had gone past the edge and that was it.”
Their crew has also had some other hairy moments when Forbes said they knew they would come out the other side; they just didn’t know how much it was going to hurt. They’ve had hail the size of golf balls rain down on their car to the point of almost shattering their windshield.
It was due to moments like these that Forbes has said it’s shaped a special kind of relationship between him and his teammates. While he trusts them “100 per cent,” he also has enough experience now to second-guess some of their decisions. He’s the driver and they’re usually the ones monitoring the equipment and weather reports, so while he goes where they tell him, that doesn’t mean he’s always ready and willing to drive into the maw of danger. He takes a few seconds to ask them some questions to confirm they’re making the safe call and not the risky one for the sake of a good shot. However, since everyone has a reason to want to stay alive, Forbes said that’s part of his reasoning for trusting them so explicitly.
“(I trust them) up to the point that they’re judging the weather, the radars, and the forecasts, but then there comes a point when they’re out there to get pictures and videos and there are some points when they stop watching the weather and they’re so focused on the lens—we call it getting caught behind the lens. What I mean by that is sometimes people kind of remove themselves, a kind of out of body experience in a sense, where they don’t feel the danger,” he said. “The question I always hear is, who’s the first to pull the pin and I am. Mainly because everybody’s life is in my hands, as well as my own, and I’m the first to pull the pin because someone has to be.”
In the end, despite all their close calls, traumatic experiences, and tragic scenes they’ve witnessed, Forbes said he doesn’t have a single regret. There was a time last summer when he said the team was thinking of calling it quits, but the TV show offer gave them a reason to go on. Now that they actually have someone paying them to do what they love to do, they plan to go for as long as they can. It’s not glamorous, but it pays the bills.
“It’s already a dream come true, but if the show keeps working out, it might be even better,” he said. “Storm chasing is important for two reasons: one, to document them. If nobody ever gets to document them, nobody’s ever going to get to see them again. They only happen for moments in history. The second reason is to warn the public.”
Out of all three crewmembers, Forbes is the only one who’s footloose and fancy-free. He’s 28 now, but he thinks he’ll keep at it for another three to four years. It’s a lonely lifestyle, but it’s a sacrifice he’s willing to make.
“I’m on the road for six months, so it’s tough to hold down any kind of relationships, friendships and everything else,” he said. “I’ve never regretted one move with it though; it’s been the ride of a lifetime.”
