ExtremeInstability.com discovers YouTube

January 26, 2007 6:54 AM

ExtremeInstability.com discovers YouTubeA taste of what you'll find on his awesome (one case where awesome is not a hyperbole) DVDs. Living on the Plains is anything but boring "come spring". Other fun tornado videos: Just about as close as you want to get to a tornado touchdown, DEFINITELY as close as you want to get to a tornado touchdown (wmv), and others: 1, 2 (language warning), 3 (language warning). It is funny to hear the calmer voices of the experienced chaser contrasting with the newbies. Even funnier when the calm chaser gets excited. Season begins in a little over 2 months!
posted by spock (12 comments total)

Chaser/tornado humor on The Onion: Tornado Violence: Are Tornadic Images In The Media To Blame?, Chasing Tornadoes Is All I Have, and Tornado Safety.
posted by spock at 7:02 AM on January 26, 2007

...something about man meeting nature, and nature kicking his sorry ass.
posted by dogwalker at 7:27 AM on January 26, 2007

Some of those clips are beautiful. I see in his FAQ that he does this alone -- which means he's driving while filming. Because just being in a tornado isn't dangerous enough.
posted by The corpse in the library at 9:24 AM on January 26, 2007

When you watch one of those videos after it finishes some related ones come up, for example this one, which is actually really scary because it wasn't filmed by tornado chasers but by farmers and halfway through they start panicking, you can hear the terror in their voices, it's frightening!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzcOx40UYUw&NR
posted by mokey at 9:53 AM on January 26, 2007

In link 3 to me it sounds like all of them are noobs, idiots, insane or all of the above.

While the footage of that F4 is pretty good, and while the zoom was probably making it look a lot closer, that thing would have ground up their bones like a rock mill.
posted by loquacious at 11:45 AM on January 26, 2007

Seriously cool! Thanks for the great post. I love extreme weather and cloud footage. His photographs are mesmerising and I enjoy his appreciation of the awesomeness of it all.

Sandstorms are cool too. Previously on MetaFilter.

Y'all probably seen this ten times already but I love the hurricane surfer video.

Water freezing in mid-air.
posted by nickyskye at 2:43 PM on January 26, 2007

And some more pretty pics of weather.
posted by nickyskye at 4:30 PM on January 26, 2007

Sigh. I miss Oklahoma.
posted by Brittanie at 4:33 PM on January 26, 2007

Given the number of cars oot and aboot while these tornados eat up the countryside, I have to ask: what's the fatality situation like? These extreme weather junkies, they often get sucked up into the eye? Die from some freezer-sized hail smokin' their crewcab? End up with a telephone pole through their ribs?

'cause if tornados are actually pretty safe, that'd be pretty much the coolest thing ever. All that power, all that unstoppability, that sheer massive nature of it, and without having to summit Everest...
posted by five fresh fish at 11:05 PM on January 26, 2007

The hurricane surfer video is a fake. The wave that you see the surfer riding in the middle of the video is Mavericks. The beginning and end of the video are from somewhere else.
posted by rdr at 5:24 AM on January 27, 2007

Thanks for wising me up rdr. It's still a fun vid. To be honest, the surfing the big waves, like at Mavericks, is so awesome-scary that there doesn't need to be any hurricane to make it more dramatic.
posted by nickyskye at 1:24 PM on January 27, 2007

'cause if tornados are actually pretty safe...

they're in the plains, they can see these things for several miles. their cameras are zoomed. storms containing tornados move in a predictable direction overall. stay far enough away and don't miscalculate, you can get some cool footage. fuck up and you can get dead.
posted by quonsar at 9:21 PM on January 27, 2007