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About

USTornadoes.com was founded in February 2012, as wintertime boredom and dreams of storm chasing mingled in the mind to create an idea. Our goal is simple: Provide the information people seek on tornadoes in the United States. We issue a 7-day tornado Threat Forecast twice a week during the “season,” and as needed for medium to large threats all year. We also examine tornado climatology, tornado history, tornado outbreaks, storm chasing and more.

All images and data on the web site are free to reproduce with proper citation.

You can follow us at: Twitter | Facebook | Flickr

Contact

Our e-mail is checked infrequently, so if you do send an e-mail, please let one of us know on Twitter through a tweet or direct message! Contact Ian or Mark.

If you come across an error (hopefully not!), feel free to send us a note. If you have an idea for a guest post we’d be happy to take a look as well! Heck, if you just have a cool tornado tidbit or story, we want to hear from you.

Site leads

Ian Livingston had a weather passion at a young age. It started in the deserts and mountains of California where any weather was amazing weather. As a teenager, he moved to north Texas and fell in love with severe thunderstorms, immersing himself in everything he could about them. Ian later moved to the East Coast, first residing in Connecticut and now in Washington, D.C. He is information lead for The Washington Post’s Capital Weather Gang. Additionally, he has been instrumental in creating several premier weather discussion boards on the Web, most recently the American Weather Forums. By day, Ian is a defense and foreign policy researcher at The Brookings Institution. In 2011, he made his first “expeditionary” trip to chase storms in the Plains with Jason Foster and Mark Ellinwood. He has returned in 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2016.

Washington Post page | Twitter

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Mark Ellinwood grew up with a fascination of the weather, which originated from watching thunderstorms on the porch with his father in their Upstate New York home. While still in high school, Mark took up weather photography with the aspiration of one day becoming a storm chaser and researcher. Once in college, he discovered the unique and challenging world of weather forecasting and chose to pursue that as a career. After earning his B.S. in Atmospheric Science from SUNY Albany in May 2009, Mark went on to do one semester of graduate school at NC State before getting a job as an Operational Meteorologist with MDA/EarthSat in February 2010. Mark is currently an Operational Meteorologist at Earth Networks (WeatherBug), which he joined in June 2014.

Web site | Twitter

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James Hyde believes it was not that he found the weather, but that the weather found him. After a childhood in the prairie of Oklahoma and the winter wonderland of Boston, James found himself watching tall cumulus towers build in the deserts of Arizona during monsoon season. James’s first encounter with a tornado was a brief F1 that went 1/3 mi from his home. James’s meteorology interests include radar, satellite/remote sensing and observational networks. James is a mesonet technician at the North Dakota Agricultural Weather Network. He holds a masters degree in Emergency Management from North Dakota State University and a bachelors in GIS from Millersville University. In his spare time; James enjoys exploring various topics related to aviation, space, electronics, and of course, storm chasing. He joined Ian and Mark for their 20-13, 14′, 15′ and 17′ chasecations.

Twitter

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Katie Wheatley became heavily interested in meteorology following the May 3, 1999 southern Plains tornado outbreak and the January 25, 2000 East Coast winter storm. She eagerly jumped into any geography course she could while in high school before enrolling at Salisbury University where she got a B.S. in Geography. While in college, Katie interned with Sue Palka at Fox 5 News in D.C. for a summer, creating the weather maps that went into the weather segments of the newscasts. Katie currently works as a GIS Analyst for EA Engineering, Science and Technology, Inc., PBC in Hunt Valley, Maryland. Katie has also contributed to CWG on mapping projects as well and was published in Ian Livingston’s book, Snowmageddon: Washington’s Record-breaking Winter of 2009-10. She is also a SKYWARN spotter for NWS LWX.

Contributors

Andrew Berrington was born and lives in the Greater Vancouver area of British Columbia. Watching tornado documentaries on television and seeing a waterspout in Mexico on a vacation at age five, he developed a passion for severe weather that became a drive towards pursuing a career in meteorology. Andrew is currently an undergraduate student in atmospheric sciences at the University of British Columbia and plans to attend graduate school in the United States, hopefully in a location where he can study severe weather and tornadoes in the field. In his spare time, Andrew enjoys drumming and music in general, sports and kayaking. He currently works as a lab technician at a veterinary diagnostics lab in Langley, B.C. and went on his first chasing expedition in May 2016.

Twitter

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Jeff Frame has loved the weather since he was about seven years old and is interested in all aspects of meteorology, especially severe weather and snow storms. He received his bachelor’s degree in atmospheric, oceanic, and space sciences from the University of Michigan and earned his master’s and Ph.D. degrees researching severe weather at Penn State University. Jeff has worked closely with the Doppler on Wheels mobile radars and has been fortunate to participate in several field projects, including the Radar Observations of Tornadoes and Thunderstorms Experiment (ROTATE; 2004-2005), the Verification of the Origins of Rotation in Tornadoes Experiment 2 (VORTEX2; 2009-2010), and the Ontario Winter Lake-effect Systems (OWLeS) Project in 2013 and 2014. Jeff is currently a clinical assistant professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and regularly teaches courses on introductory meteorology, synoptic-scale weather systems, weather forecasting, and severe thunderstorm dynamics. He also leads two two-week field courses to the Great Plains every spring, which focus on forecasting and visual observation of severe convection.

Twitter

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Brendan Heberton was born and raised in Denver, and has been tracking the weather along the Front Range his entire life. He studied meteorology for two years at Pennsylvania State University before getting a degree in Geography and certificate in GIS from the University of Colorado, Denver. Brendan founded Weather5280, a Denver weather blog. He is responsible for directing content, leading in forecast creation and discussion, and managing front and back-end development there. Brendan worked at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory on the Open PV project and later joined GeoIQ as a developer. Brendan currently works as an engineer at the Environmental Systems Research Institute (Esri) developing mapping software and data analysis tools. He is also the co-founder of FreshyMap, a real-time snow reporting application (powder to the people!).

Web site | Twitter

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Tony Lyza‘s interest in severe weather began somewhat unlike that of many severe weather weenies. Though he was interested in all types of weather as a child, a fear of severe weather and tornadoes eventually evolved into an intense passion that some (or most) might call an obsession. During his undergraduate career, he performed several severe weather research projects, including studies of relatively rare wintertime severe weather and tornado events in the Midwest and of tornado debris detection in and potential wave interactions with tornado-producing quasi-linear convective systems (QLCSs). Upon graduating with a B.S. in Meteorology cum laude from Valparaiso University in Valparaiso, Indiana in May 2012, he took a trip down south to the University of Alabama in Huntsville, where he is currently an M.S. student and graduate research assistant in the UAHuntsville Severe Weather and Radar Research Group, studying under Dr. Kevin Knupp. His current focus of study is on how topography influences supercell intensity, tornadogenesis, and tornado intensity. When he’s not studying tornadoes and severe storms from his office, he likes to be outside observing them, either chasing them locally or on the Great Plains.

Twitter

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Cameron Nixon found his passion for storms when his parents first put a camera in his hands one Christmas. A chaser at heart, he believes there’s a rhyme and a reason why storms look, feel, and behave the way they do, as much as each one may seem like a happy little accident. This has lead to his endless fascination with the hodograph (a snapshot of how winds change aloft), a tool he believes can predict everything from “mothership” supercells to “twin” tornadoes, and even storms that change direction without warning. After graduating from Valparaiso University and Texas Tech, he is pursuing a PhD at Central Michigan University, but will faithfully return to his true home, the Great Plains. 

Web site | Twitter

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Kathryn Prociv has loved weather since age six. Like most kids, Kathryn was afraid of thunderstorms until her fear transformed to awe one day when a green funnel cloud screamed over her head while caught outside in a severe thunderstorm. The rest is history, and she has since dedicated her life to the science of meteorology. Kathryn received both her B.A. and M.S. at Virginia Tech in geography with an emphasis in geospatial technology and meteorology. Her master’s research investigated the influence of the Appalachian Mountains on the intensity of supercell thunderstorms and associated tornadogenesis. While a lover of all weather, severe weather is her passion. A member of the VT Hokie Storm Chasers 2010-2012, Kathryn has intercepted nearly a dozen tornadoes on the Great Plains. Her most notable intercept includes the Bowdle, SD EF4 tornado on May 24th, 2010. She is currently teaching meteorology and geography at Northern Virginia Community College, and is a meteorologist and contributor for the Washington Post’s Capital Weather Gang. She is a member of the American Meteorological Society (AMS), National Weather Association (NWA), an amateur radio operator (KK4BWP), and a SKYWARN Spotter. Her hobbies include local storm chasing, playing guitar, and amateur photography. If there is a storm approaching, you can find Kathryn outside with camera in hand!

Web site | Twitter

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Jim Tang has been interested in meteorology ever since he grew up in Texas as a young boy. The heavy downpours, brilliant lightning, and mammatus displays of Plains storms captivated him from a young age. He would tune in to tornado documentaries on TLC or Discovery, and spend evenings watching severe weather warnings scroll across his television screen. Now living in California and working as a software developer, Jim’s fascination with meteorology has not skipped a beat. As an undergraduate at UC Berkeley he worked with an atmospheric sciences professor on global climate model research. Still eager to experience the next storm, Jim flies out to the Great Plains every spring to immerse himself in some of the wildest weather on Earth. In his spare time, Jim enjoys photography, ping-pong, and the occasional excursion into the mountains.

Instagram | Twitter

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Quincy Vagell has been passionate about weather since the age of six, when he knew he wanted to be a meteorologist. After earning his B.S. in Operational Meteorology from Western Connecticut State University (WCSU) in 2009, he stayed with the University to help oversee Weather Center operations. In the years since, he has both on-air broadcasting and digital editorial experience with television stations such as WTNH-TV, WREX-TV and The Weather Channel. After spending significant portions of 2014 and 2015 storm chasing, he has recently made the switch in 2016 to full-time storm chasing, which has become a passion that he hopes to turn into a career. Being a fan of photography, research and traveling, Quincy is working to combine these hobbies to capture, study and experience severe weather on a day-to-day basis. In addition to his work on the job and in the field, he has also been a presenter at several weather conferences and periodically speaks at local schools about meteorology.

Web site | Twitter | Flickr