IN HIS OWN WORDS: Thomas Knepshield's Summer of Storm Chasing

UNC Greensboro senior cross country and track student-athlete Thomas Knepshield has always been interested in weather ever since Hurricane Katrina back in 2005. This past summer, he chased his dream and traveled through the country for what would be the most thrilling three months of his life. 

Hurricane Katrina became the size of the Gulf.
“Get close and shoot wide,” was all I could hear. 

Whenever there was a storm forming, my dad would have the radar up, I would sit and watch it with him. However, he is not a weather geek like I became.

2005 was the turning point of when I knew I loved storms. In 2008, when I was eight, I knew I wanted to chase storms. 

The TV series called Storm Chasers, that was another turning point. That got me wanting to drive right in. 

Since 2008, when I knew storm chasing was on my list of things to do, I had been a “couch chaser” – one who follows other storm chasers and storm reports from home. This year, I said that I was ready to do it, to go out in the field. 

This year, I took a giant step. I bought a car, told my parents what I wanted to do with it, and began the road less traveled on May 16 and didn’t look back until August 7th. 

Day 1

I thought, “What am I doing?”

I pulled up to a gas station in Tahoka, TX scanned the pumps, and immediately went wide-eyed. Reed Timmer.  

Timmer is an American Meteorologist and storm chaser, most known for starring in a Discovery Channel series called Storm Chasers. He is one I have looked up to over the 16 years of couch chasing. Reed’s car is perfect – completely destroyed from rain and hail. I want my car to look like Reed’s. Right now, I have a broken windshield, and definitely not as many dents. It’s not good enough, I want more dents. I was upset when I didn’t completely shatter my windshield this summer. It’s cracked, but that’s not good enough.

Twitter has been a place for me to communicate with other storm chasers and find some meeting points. During my two-week trip, I also met two brothers, Connor and Ethan Moriarty from Massachusetts, both around my age. They ended up also chasing one of the same storms as I was, and after 10 days of tagging along we talked about chasing together more next year. I also met up with some storm chasers that were looking for people nearby that wanted to play football. I joined in. 

It’s year one. I am already working on year two.

Day 2

Weather models told me to stay in Texas. Something was brewing.

A tornado popped up right in front of me. It swirled over my head and dropped in a field in front of me. Hail damaged my car. I hopped in the field and was one of two people there. Usually there are hundreds of people around. 

For the two weeks of chasing, I slept in the back of my car and when the sun came up, I was up. I would start at 6am, I would run, I would then open the weather models and start seeing what storm I would catch. When someone chases storms from 6am-10pm, eats, sleeps and does it all over again the next day, you learn what is open for food. 

Applebee’s. That is what is open late at night. That is also another spot that is known to attract storm chasers, solely because it is open late. 

Because we were just off a break from cross country training, my mileage was low, only 4-5 miles a day. Being in the middle of nowhere half the time, I ran on a lot of dirt roads. One time I was running, and I passed a house with some aggressive looking dogs. I thought that they must have a shock collar on, but nope, they started running at me and barking with their teeth out. That was probably the only day I did not hit my mileage. 

I was training well, but then Colorado approached, and the altitude was not my friend.

Back to chasing. 

I thought my car was ready. I put a piece of plexiglass and mounted it to the top, I put magnets on it so it is east to remove it and duct taped it so there would be no draft. This was to help protect my sunroof while driving through a hailstorm

Day 13

My alignment went. Tires were about to split. 

I visited a local car shop and got my Subaru back in business. 

Since 2005, I have learned that I need to look at more than just the radar. I need to look at the dew points, wind, surface winds, surface observations, and convective available potential energy (CAPE).

Besides Timmer, I grew up following Jim Cantore – an American meteorologist, best known as an on-air personality for The Weather Channel, Tim Samaras – founder of a field research team called Tactical Weather Instrumented Sampling in Tornadoes EXperiment (TWISTEX), and Mike Olbinski – my favorite storm photographer. 

What did I learn:
-Having a hotel room along the way would be nice. And showers.
-Every time I second guessed myself, I missed out.
-Put me next to a tornado, I am fine. Put me next to a lightning bolt, get me out of here.

My goal with storm chasing?
I want to be in the eyewall of a category 5 hurricane. The strongest part is the right side of the eyewall. What inspired me was that one of the guys I met, he chased Hurricane Harvey and showed me a picture of stars in the eye, and I wanted that shot as well. 

When I graduate this year, I will have a degree in computer science, and I hope to go elsewhere for meteorology. Meteorology and computer science goes hand in hand because all of the weather models are done with computers. 

My perspective of what I want to do after college has changed. I wanted to work for the National Weather Service be one of the people that issues warnings, I wanted to be the one that does it for the whole country outlooks, now I want to live in my car and be a storm chaser. 

Knepshield and the men's and women's cross country teams open the season at the “Friday Night Lights” Elon Opener on Friday, September 3. The women's four-kilometer race will start at 8:15 p.m. and the men will run their six-kilometer race at 8:45 p.m.