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Paddy: Do you ever get freaked out at all by the difference of you chasing the storm and the storm chasing you?

Pecos Hank: You know, when you get freaked out is when you're on dirt roads. A a mile wide tornado's coming towards you,

if the road is tilted, gravity is pulling you into the ditch and that's where the water and the mud is and that's where you get stuck. If you're following it, it's like, oh darn, I'm gonna get stuck.

I'm just gonna lose it. But what if you think I can beat this tornado across this road and be in the perfect spot to photograph it And you're driving and the road starts to deteriorate. Like, oh, what have I done? What have I done? What have I done? You have to slow down.

Paddy: That sounds

Pecos Hank: That is terrifying.

Paddy: Would you say that you get in that situation a couple times a season?

Pecos Hank: Uh, more than that, unfortunately. But it, I'm,

Paddy: Oh God, hank?

Pecos Hank: There's been a couple times where a surprise happens. . The tornado's coming, and then you're driving and then all of a sudden a downburst happens over your escape route. You didn't foresee that. Yeah. Now you can't drive 15 miles per hour 'cause you can't see anything. There's wind and it's like, oh my God, that tornado is still coming.

Paddy: I'm picturing this in my mind. I feel like I'm [00:01:00] watching a horror movie.

That sounds, that, sounds awful.

Pecos Hank: it is, it is terrible. It's is the, the feeling of am I going to survive is a terrible feeling. And I have that feeling too often.

Paddy: MUSIC

PADDYO VO:

If you spend time outside, you eventually deal with gnarly weather—I certainly have. Once, during a rafting trip on the San Juan, the up-river wind was so intense our oars acted as sails anytime they weren't in the water and we got pinned on the canyon wall for hours. When I ski patrolled, hairball weather was an everyday occurrence, like the time we were bootpacking a ridge that basically disappeared because the snow was hammering so hard.

Probably the most meaningfully bonkers weather I ever encountered was at my own wedding. Picture torrential rain, flash floods, and a lightning strike during our vows that was so close, it lit up the faces of screaming guests like a camera [00:02:00] flash. My wife was so scared, she nearly took off running down the aisle.

But, if you spend time outside, you eventually realize that puckering weather is also … kinda great. There was so much laughter about our predicament on the San Juan that it’s one of my favorite river trips ever. That sketchy ridgeline bootpack was followed by skiing a chute with waist-deep powder. And I remember kissing my bride and boogying so hard that I walked off the wedding dancefloor with a limp way more than the fact that my suit was soaking wet.

Objectively terrifying weather can be beautiful, even joyful. Just ask Hank Schyma, a guy who regularly stands in fields as tornados tear past him.

PAUSE PAUSE PASUE

Hank Schyma is a professional stormchaser, known to the world as Pecos Hank. He grew up in Cypress, Texas, and spent his childhood in the Pecos River Valley. [00:03:00] When he was 5, Hank was in the car with his mom and saw the black wall of a storm creeping over a field. Hail pelted the car and when Hank's mom told him what the goldball-sized iceballs were, her deep southern accent made it sound like, "That's hell." It was spooky, sure, but something about that ominous mystery captivated young Hank, and he's been on the hunt for the fantastical ever since.

Hank is also a talented musician and surfer, writing ghostly, nature-influenced songs and communing with the waves. But his passion and career have always been in Texas  and the central US, known as Tornado Alley, documenting storms.

Hank is not a thrill seeker—or, at least, that’s not the only thing that drives him. His real motivation is to get as close as possible to the part of the natural world that remains unknown to us. In his [00:04:00] decades-long career, he’s captured thousands of hours of mind boggling weather, gathering new data about how tornados work. He’s discovered anomalous weather phenomenon, like the widest tornado ever recorded and fascinating cloud-based electrical light shows known as transient luminous events.

All of this is extensively documented on his wildly successful Youtube channel, and in his new photo memoir and atmospheric science tutorial, Storm, both of which allow the rest of us to see what Hank sees—from a significantly safer distance.

MUSIC

first things first, burnt toast. what's your last humbling or hilarious moment outside?

Pecos Hank: just found out that. Stink bugs do not taste good.

Paddy: Dear God, man, i'm hoping that you were just like riding on a moped and like sucked one down by

accident.

Pecos Hank: Nope. I put it in there. I put it in my mouth unknowingly. Unknowingly,

Paddy: can you please explain the circumstances that [00:05:00] required you to put a stink bug in your grill.

grill

Pecos Hank: storm chasing and I was passing through a town in Texas and I came to a four-way stop and I looked out to the side and there was a barbed wire fence covered with Dewberry Vines. And I thought dinner is served and I parked and I was just putting dewberries in my mouth as fast as I could,

like the flavor of Dewberries in April is just like, oh, it's the greatest thing. And, and then something happened that was not very tasty and the stinkbug crawls and flies away. So I, I discovered it is almost impossible to eat a stinkbug. They have evolved to be the opposite of yummy.

Paddy: did you immediately stop chewing or was it that like you crunched down on this thing and like it has like such a, strong like exoskeleton that you couldn't

Pecos Hank: Didn't even get to the crunch. The second my lips closed, the stinkbug said, and it just flew out.

Paddy: Is that what they do?

Pecos Hank: Based on what happened in my [00:06:00] mouth. That's what happens. Yeah,

Paddy: wow. Hank, This is a

first on the outside podcast.

Pecos Hank: yeah. yeah, it's a oily fart spray thing that is in your mouth. Yeah. I highly recommend you do not try it.

Yeah. alright, Let's get into it.

Paddy: PAUSE PAUSE PAUSE

Tell me the story of your most memorable storm chase. And because you're Pecos Hank,

Pecos Hank: Oh, okay.

Paddy: I want you to, hear into your mind's eye, your mind's ear, rather the theme song of, the good, the bad, and the ugly

Pecos Hank: Oh, that. Well, it's funny you say that because the photo that I got from this storm,

that's on my wall right here, is three tornadoes, and the title of this print is called Il Trio, which is the song played at the end of the Good and the Bad and Ugly. When

Paddy: at us. Hank,

Pecos Hank: Blondie and Angel Eyes are standing there.

I'm getting goosebumps. I look

Paddy: There you

Pecos Hank: that that's that song. So, so the day [00:07:00] was May 24th, 2016,

Paddy: Yes.

Pecos Hank: one man.

So there's this type of storm that I was always missing. I'm also a musician and so. Storm chasing came second to my first job as a musician, and that changed in 2013. But prior to that, was missing the big, what's called a cyclic super cell, which is this, think of it as a relay racers handing the baton to the next one, handing the baton.

And so you get several racers, but instead you get several tornadoes, sometimes two on the ground, sometimes three on the ground. And so you want a cyclic super cell that's high based, so the clouds aren't scraping the ground and you can't see they're, it's where you see the pretty obvious tall tornadoes, which is a different kind of, uh, atmosphere.

And you want, well, lighting, you want good lighting. In other words, you don't want it to be night. And so I got all of that. I finally got all that on May 24th, 2016, just south of Dodge City, and a [00:08:00] dozen beautiful tornadoes two and three on the ground. It was just a. Tornado palooza of beautiful tornadoes that on a Grided road network that you could work.

So you weren't dict, you know, the road didn't dictate what your shot was gonna be. You could work it and, and nobody was dying. And then the tornadoes went around Dodge City. So that day,

PAUSE PAUSE

Paddy: Your resume reads like someone took the biographies of several different humans and smushed them

together. You are a musician and a songwriter, both solo and with the group southern back tones. You've worked as a storm consultant on a major motion picture. You've written, directed, produce, and acted in an indie film. You've worked, in several capacities for news channels. You're a professional storm chaser. You're credited with discovering meteorological, I can't even say the word,

Pecos Hank: You did. You did. You, you bailed. You finished it and then you bailed.

Paddy: you are credited with discovering [00:09:00] meteorological,

is that right?

Phenomena? Do you ever look back at your life and wonder how the hell you got here?

Pecos Hank: Um, no,

let me think about that. It was, it was really by design for me, , because I couldn't do what everybody else could do. You know, I was terrible at school. Like, I'll just jump to the, the conclusion is that surfing changed my life.

And because I was like, as a, as a kid, I was terrible at school. I was terrible at skateboarding. All my friends were just boosting Ollie's and we had ran and they were just, I was terrible at it. I was not good at the guitar. I tried hard, but there was this one kid that bought a guitar, like, and within three weeks was better than me.

Later I found out you know, focus on the things that you're naturally good at and that's what you should do. And so, uh, when I was 18, I moved to Los Angeles and was going out there to be a rock star. ' cause I thought that's what you're supposed to do. You go to Los Angeles to be a rock rockstar.

And I fell in love with surfing. And I [00:10:00] remember after two months of being a human slingshot, you know, in the waves,

I, you know, started catching waves. And, you know, by, by four months I remember I'm taking waves from the locals in Huntington Beach and I was good at it. And I thought that was the, like, if you could go back to Houston, we were all skateboarding, the coolest people in the world were surfers.

Like, that was just so

Paddy: Oh, for sure. Yeah, for

Pecos Hank: now I realize I'm surfing like, f you back home. I, I I can do

Paddy: it make you feel like a cool kid?

Pecos Hank: Well, yeah, that, and it made me realize. I can do things cause I, I, I really thought I couldn't do anything good.

Paddy: you still surf at all?

Pecos Hank: I do, but not enough. It's my long lost love.

Paddy: Yeah.

Pecos Hank: where I want to be.

Paddy: Because you, you still live in

Texas, correct? Or, yeah.

Pecos Hank: crazy thing about Texas is we have good small surf, these small windows if you know how to forecast. And that was my introduction. To forecasting weather. So you get these winds, the onshore winds, [00:11:00] 20 knots for a few days, you know, just from the Gulf. And then as soon as a cold front comes through, you've got offshore winds that will kill the waves.

But you've got this three hour window of waste to chest high, sometimes head high. That's how we measure them here in the Gulf. You know, one, one to two foot waves, you know, in the West coast for three or four hours. And so once you, figure out how to do that, you can surf here in the Gulf.

Paddy: Is there a pretty good surf community in Texas?

Pecos Hank: They are cooksville and. I mean, Texas surfers love them.

They're, we are so kooky that it's,

Paddy: But is it, like a beloved kook?

Pecos Hank: it's a beloved kook. You know, when you go to Huntington Beach in Hawaii, like everybody's in shape. Everybody's

Paddy: yeah, yeah,

Pecos Hank: You don't wanna see Texas surfers naked

Paddy: yeah. The maybe a little too much barbecue.

Pecos Hank: a [00:12:00] little too much. Everything. Yeah.

Paddy: Oh,

Pecos Hank: bigger in Texas, including the cellulite.

PAUSE PAUSE

Paddy: do you ever get freaked out at all by the difference of you chasing the storm and the storm chasing you?

Pecos Hank: You know, when you get freaked out is when you chase the storm and you saw a community get hit but you are safe the whole time. So you're not, , besides being freaked out at what you see in the community. , But for your own life, you go to the hotel, you're lodging, you get outta the shower, you're falling asleep, and then the tornado sirens go off.

You're disoriented, you wake up. And there's a tornado warn storm heading your way, and you're like, which way is it coming? That's freaky.

And then of course I'll add when you do something stupid, like when hubris gets you to do something you shouldn't have done, and now you've lost your situational awareness, you're on dirt roads. You don't know if your car's going to escape and a a a mile wide tornado's coming towards you, you get freaked out.

You're at the mercy of the county's road [00:13:00] maintenance we call it the grid because you have like this square mile shaped roads. You never know. Really what condition? Like they can just turn from gravel. Gravel is good, but if they're not gravel and they get rain, they just turn into like, you don't sink in them. Like what happens is it's just like driving on ice.

If the road is tilted, gravity is pulling you into the ditch and that's where the water and the mud is and that's where you get stuck. It's a surprise. It's potluck. You never know if the road is gonna continue the next mile.

Paddy: That sounds terrifying.

Pecos Hank: Yeah. And it is. And so if, if you're in the path of the tornado, you know, if you're following it, it's like, oh darn, I'm gonna get stuck.

I'm just gonna lose it. But what if you think I can beat this tornado across this road and be in the perfect spot to photograph it And you're driving and the road starts to deteriorate. Like, oh, what have I done? What have I done? What have I done? You have to slow down.

Paddy: That sounds

Pecos Hank: That is terrifying.

Paddy: Would you say that you get in that situation a couple times a season?

Pecos Hank: Uh, more than that, [00:14:00] unfortunately. But it, I'm,

Paddy: Oh God,

Hank?

Pecos Hank: but it, it's all, it's all in your mind. You know, you like, if you can't, like if you're punching through a rainy storm, your brain tells you it's a mile wide killer, and it's closer than it, like, it's all, you just gotta stick to your calculations and fight and try not to make that calculation in the first place.

But there's been a couple times where a surprise happens. There's other things in a storm called a downburst, and so I'm thinking, oh, I've got, there's a mile wide tornado coming. I've got plenty of time. I've got five minutes to get out of its way. I'm just gonna film it until not the last second, but give myself a good lead time to get away from it.

And then you're like, okay, it's time to go. The tornado's coming, and then you're driving and then all of a sudden a downburst happens over your escape route. You didn't foresee that. Yeah. Now you can't drive 15 miles per hour 'cause you can't see anything. There's wind and it's like, oh my God, that tornado is still coming.

Paddy: I am mouth agape, like I feel like I'm, I'm picturing this in my mind. I feel like I'm watching a horror movie.

That sounds, that, sounds awful.

Pecos Hank: it [00:15:00] is, it is terrible. It's is the, the feeling of am I going to survive is a terrible feeling. And I have that feeling too often. I have it much less than I used to because I stopped doing stupid stuff. I've let go, which is a huge turnaround for me as I've let go. I'm just like, you know what?

Live to fight another day and that's gonna equal more tornadoes than if I die right now.

any nature loving person who doesn't value their life too much is probably gonna be blown away by all of these things we're talking about.

Paddy: Okay. So that, like I have a bunch of questions on that

line right there, right? Like, you call yourself a hunter, right? But in most hunting situations, the hunter is never at risk of becoming the hunted

of becoming the prey. Like, unless you're talking about like a zombie apocalypse situation, or the plot to the short story, the most dangerous game, you know, like, In your line of work, you're the hunter, but aren't you also kind of the prey.

Pecos Hank: Yeah, totally. That adds a different [00:16:00] dynamic to hunting. Yeah. I totally consider myself a hunter and I'm shooting it with cameras.

Paddy: So then do you have to seed some type of control then to mother nature that you wouldn't otherwise?

Pecos Hank: Oh, A hundred percent.

You might think I'm talking, sometimes I am talking about my camera, but you'll hear me just say, focus, focus. Like if I have to reach over and grab my safety goggles, because hail like, and your, your one white knuckle has the steering wheel.

Your hydroplaning, this is actually a common scenario for us. Drifting in, you know, 60 mile an hour crosswinds with hail cracking your window you focus on every muscle in your body to get that little thing task accomplished. And then your next task is, I need to.

My iPhone from radar to, visible satellite and just taking your finger that's doing this on the bumpy road and hitting that button is like a, you focus on just that. And most importantly, while looking straight ahead at the traffic, uh, you know, 'cause you're, you're going 50 miles per hour,

Paddy: PAUSE PAUSE

[00:17:00] how much of this is your job and, pushed by science and discovery, and how much of this is thrill seeking?

Pecos Hank: I think, um, it started as thrill seeking for me, it's, it's beautiful seeking, it's all beautiful to me. I don't want to go to the Grand Canyon and, and be somebody screaming next to me. Like, oh my God, look it, I just want to take it in and go, oh my, look how beautiful this is. Look how amazing.

So to me, I'm addicted to the beauty of it. Maybe I'm lying to myself. Maybe I'm BSing myself. Maybe I am.

It is about the adrenaline and I'm just not admitting it, but my, my primary goal is to see and document the most beautiful things that I can.

Paddy: Is that why in your book. You compare a, good storm chaser, a good professional storm chaser to a soul surfer,

Pecos Hank: Yes

Paddy: and talk to me about that comparison.

Pecos Hank: you know, in the surfer community, you only have to surf once that you, you learn that there's something called a soul surfer. And for them, it's not about how cool your [00:18:00] wetsuit is. It's not about, being caught on camera, boosting in air. It's about you being with the waves, with the dolphins, with the water, with the wind, and just loving it for what it is.

And I just thought, wouldn't it be cool if there was something called a soul chaser? Because there's this one guy, Dr. Anton Simon, who's the epitome of, he doesn't care when he misses tornadoes generally, you know, he'll go, oh man. But then he's just out there. He always chooses the, the non-popular target.

Like there's the obvious tornado target. And this drives me crazy because we chases a team sometime and he's like, no, I'm going to Colorado for the much less significant chance, but I'll be alone. So I just thought, how cool would it be if chasers could catch a wave of soul chasing, just 'cause it's a healthy way to be and not that one's good or one's bad.

Sometimes it's cool to thrash, you know, on the point break and compete with everybody. But other times it's cool to paddle off and take the leftover waves all by [00:19:00] yourself.

Paddy: To me a soul surfer is not somebody who's surfing, the gigantic, uh, waves of like mavericks or jaws, right? Or the perfect, north Shore

tubes, you know, in Hawaii it's somebody who's on a reasonable, soft looking wave, a five footer

Pecos Hank: being goofy on it. Hanging 10, hanging five, doing a, doing a twirl. You know,

Paddy: a ton of kind of slow motion cutbacks and, and and so is that what you mean?

Pecos Hank: Perhaps it's an attitude that I want for myself. 'cause I am that guy in the lineup. But I'm not that guy. I'm getting caught up in competition. I'm getting caught up with my hubris and I'm trying to, gauge that or regulate that with this idea of soul chasing. And it's helped me enjoy it because the last three years my competition has just kicked my ass.

And every time you miss a big event, it's a failure. And for like the previous 10 years, I just hit everything. It was all luck. I was just lucky. You [00:20:00] know, baseball players, you have streaks. And I know my, my unlucky streak will end and it kind of did this year finally.

but I still missed a lot of stuff, whereas before I had this ego 'cause I was always there. And so to deal with the frustration of failing. Which is ridiculous that I even think of it as failure. I need to adopt more of this soul chasing idea. Like it's who cares. But, uh, because of my YouTube channel and because, the more better you do, you have financial incentives.

Paddy: Yeah.

Pecos Hank: If you look at it from that perspective, I've largely failed the last three years. And that's considering how much work and energy you're putting into it and all those miles at the end of the year to realize I failed is hard. It's hard to swallow year after year, so I needed to correct it.

And that's where I started thinking like, I need to regain this attitude that the surfers have, which is this soul surfing attitude.

Paddy: See, this is really interesting to me, for a couple of reasons, because most of us, right, [00:21:00] especially a soul surfer, most of us go outside for some measure of like peace and quiet connection. Serenity. To me, storm chasing seems like the opposite of that. Does it feel like the opposite of that for you?

Pecos Hank: It can be and it can't be. But when I first started storm chasing and I was missing all the pretty tornadoes, I didn't care. I was having so much fun roaming the roads, catching turtles and seeing bison it, you know what I mean? It was like the whole package.

Paddy: It was

Pecos Hank: Yeah. And now how many tornadoes you get as a measure of your success.

I've lost track of that. but it, it can be, just like surfing.

Paddy: So we've kind of caught you then, like in the pursuit of reconnection to the goods of like your rookie season where everything was new and exciting and even the most, what you might find the most tedious or mundane thing. Now it was like, oh my god, a turtles in the middle of the road.

You know, I ate a bug sick, you know?

Pecos Hank: [00:22:00] Totally. You know, it, it's like we have these dumb proverbs that we, everybody says, but stop and smell the roses. They're there for a reason. They're, they're, there's a lot of wisdom. I, to my shame, drifted away from that and now I've, it's, it was effective. So this year when I missed the big events, most of them, some, there was a couple that stung for briefly.

I just let it go and laughed it off and didn't, and didn't, genuinely did not care.

PAUSE PAUSE PAUSE

 PADDYO VO:

More from professional stormchaser, Hank Schyman aka Pecos Hank, after the break.

MIDROLL MIDROLL MIDROLL

Paddy: Most of our conversation has been about the passion and the excitement and the splendor and the awe and wonder. And you can't help but feel those things when you see the footage and you hear the excitement in your voice you get the passion.

You understand, uh, or allow, feel some sort of connection to it. But I believe we would be remiss if we didn't talk about the fact that this is [00:23:00] dangerous, this is destructive, this has impact. And you've said that storm chasing has brought you too many close calls and that you increasingly just wanna make it home to your wife at the end of the day.

Have you experienced something during a chase that made you feel, you know what? I think this is it. I think I might be done here.

Pecos Hank: Yeah. Yeah, it's a terrible feeling

It's usually an error that you made it's always the big rain wrapped tornadoes. It's never the little skinny, obviously visible one. It's always the, the one that's gonna take you 60 seconds to just clear its path

and it's wrapped in rain and you can't see much. So it's, it's, you know, what you can't see is even more scary. Uh, and also in all these, this wind and rain, the environment is terrible. you don't know if the roads are gonna give out and you kind of prepare like, okay, at any second my car is going to roll and be airborne

Paddy: Oh

Pecos Hank: and, and you can panic.

But you know that the only chance in hell you [00:24:00] have of surviving is if you stay cool and focus and take it one meter at a time. Stay on the road. Don't go so fast that you lose control and trip and fall while the the zombies chasing you. Right. You don't wanna trip and fall. You know, let's take it, let's maybe even slow down a little bit.

You know, when I remember there was this one case where, this is the classic one, because I was in the, in the craziness of trying to punch into a rain wrapped core to see the big monster tornado that I knew was lurking in there. I skewed my maps. You know how like, you know how when you change your map it'll, for some stupid reason, it doesn't lock on north and it skews and so I thought my road was going north.

No, my road was going northwest. On a collision course. Right. And so, and I was in kind of a ravine and I'm waiting, okay. Like when I get out of this, this ditch, I'm gonna go up and, and get a visual of the tornado to see how close I am. And so I drive up this [00:25:00] rocky pothole, gravel embankment, and I get to the top of the ridge and here's this massive, probably quarter mile wide tornado, just the condensation cup, you know, that you can visible.

Of course the, the tornado force winds are extended beyond that coming right at me.

Paddy: Oh my

Pecos Hank: I've got, I have to back and now I have to back up, go backwards down the gravel potholed road with, and if I go into the ditch, I'm stuck. I'm dead. And so what do you do? You slow down and you just make sure you get that right.

Then I got onto the paved road, I punch it, and then you're just hoping, and of course I cleared it by, I had probably 20 seconds. We even say 30 maybe I, I'm exaggerating, but even that is too close. And I mean, there's so many things that can go wrong around a tornado. They have satellite tornadoes that can come and get you that orbit around them.

even just the winds around a tornado can roll your cars. So, so that's,

Paddy: like that though, do you ever think like, that's it,

Pecos Hank: yeah. You think I could be You don't think, you [00:26:00] don't think you don't give up? At least I haven't yet. I imagine that if, if I calculated that there was no way out of this, I would still think there's a chance and you have to fight for that chance.

Paddy: But I guess what I mean is, is I, I absolutely agree, like fight tooth and nail to get out of it and get safe. But I mean, like afterwards, are you like, that's it, I'm done with this profession. I'm gonna go,

Pecos Hank: No,

Paddy: you know, sell knives door to door or something.

Pecos Hank: here's the stupid thing is like right after that tornado, once I cleared the path. I did it again, so not, not as bad, but I, I drove back and then I got this great shot. It, it, it was entered in its rope phase and so the tornado shrinks and shrinks and shrinks and shrinks and it gets, and when it gets skinny, it starts to wiggle and do all these crazy weird dances.

And the rope phases are just, just so cool to see. And so then I got the same tornado in its room, but not from its path following it.

PUASE PAUSE PAUSE

Paddy: You had a pretty close call when you witnessed the widest tornado [00:27:00] ever recorded in 2013 in Oklahoma. Can you tell me about that day?

Pecos Hank: Yes, I can. So it was, it was May 31st, 2013 six in the 6:00 PM 6:01 PM And, uh, when it touched down, and I had a scary situation, but it wasn't nearly as scary as many of my colleagues one of the many things that made this tornado so dangerous is that it was invisible.

And in that the tornado force winds extended way beyond the visible tornado. So you thought, I've cleared the condensation funnel yet you're getting slammed by 90 mile an hour winds, you know, a hundred mile an hour winds. It's just wind, it's not a tornado. And so I got hit by those. It was sliding the car sideways.

That's all that really happened to me. But my friends. Some of my colleagues were actually impacted by the tornado. And then of course, this was the first tornado and the only tornado to kill storm chasers

Paddy: Does a day like that make you rethink your [00:28:00] profession?

Pecos Hank: a hundred percent. Here's the thing, back then, um, chasers were as crazy as they were. They're not nearly as crazy as they are now, and they're not, they weren't nearly as stupid as they are now. So now they have the machines tell them where to go, but they don't know where to go based on looking at the clouds and the currents.

So you get this herd mentality of just lines of chasers driving where they shouldn't be and, and putting themselves in these extremely dangerous situations. The next El Reno, 2013, like the one we just talked about that happens, it could take out 200 chasers, like. We have this thing called spotter network where everybody beacons their location and you can see, and it's like measles, all chasing the storm.

And you can look at a really scary storm and see like, oh my God, these people are gonna get killed. And then the tornado lifted for, you know, like they do. It was weak when it went over 'em, but if it intensifies, it's just gonna take out a conga line of them. So [00:29:00] I don't wanna be in that conga line

Paddy: humans have long tried to tame nature, and there are some ways you could argue that we've been successful in that, especially in the outdoor community, right? We've made it relatively safe, even normal for people to go out and climb the world's tallest peaks, free dive, hundreds of feet below the surface of the water, run days long, ultra marathons in the most extreme terrain and weather, and on and on and on.

We have the gear and the tech and the experience that sometimes have made the outdoors almost seem less wild. But even in that, we have managed to impact nature, impact the wildness to the detriment of ourselves, especially in recent years. There have been. An incredible amount of destruction and lives lost because of natural disasters, including the very recent and very tragic floods In your home state, you've documented disasters and been the first on the scene very often. What is the relationship for [00:30:00] you between your love of these storms and your profession and acknowledging the destruction that they can cause?

Pecos Hank: Yeah, lots to talk about on there. First off, I chase the stuff that's beautiful, tornadoes. Most of them are causing very little damage that I see.

But then there's that 10%

Paddy: Right.

Pecos Hank: that comes through and kills people. And so when you're there and you see that, it's in, it's incredible seeing a tornado launch a house into the air.

And it's devastating when you find out that you went, oh my God. And some guy died. I talk in the book about, like, I was looking at the most beautiful, crazy tornado in South Dakota and I was just like, oh my gosh, this is so amazing. And then later I found out at that time there was a husband and a wife were in their basement.

Their house had gotten swept away debris, parts of their houses were raining on them and, and hitting them and injuring them. So it's this just mixture of these things that you, you solve. But it, it's a, [00:31:00] it is a buzzkill when the community gets hurt and, and the mood turns bad, and then you turn into help mode.

Any way I can sometimes help is getting outta there and clearing the roads for the emergency vehicles. But other times, you're the first guy there and you're looking for victims and you're helping, I call 'em zombies. They're, they're covered in blood and mud, you know, and they walk around with the spacey look in their eye and you know, you walk up to 'em and you go, Hey, I always distract 'em.

Hey, what's going on? You know? Wow. That was crazy. Wasn't sit down. Why don't you sit down? Let's have a seat.

You don't wanna go to 'em and go, holy shit, you're bleeding. You know? You know, so, so you help those people, you can take 'em to the hospital and maybe that then the emergency vehicles can pick up somebody else, you know? and then you want to get out their way.

PAUSE PAUSE

We lose track of, probabilities and numbers so often, you know, here you are climbing rocks, hiking, you know, rock could slip.

You know, anything can happen on those rocks. I remember one time I was walking around, you know, in California scaling around a ledge, and I, I hear this buzz and I [00:32:00] parked myself on a cliff right in front of a nest of honeybees. And they were,

Paddy: Oh my God.

Pecos Hank: you know, you know, anything can happen,

but how often does it happen?

10 times. But every time you drive through Denver, that is how you're likely going to injure yourself. Just getting on an interstate, you know, what is it? 60,000 people, die in the United States in car accidents. I don't know what the, the figure is. Four storm chasers have died from tornadoes. A lot have died from just not even being near the tornado car crashes.

Four storm chasers have died, been killed from tornadoes, but one in four. Americans will die of heart disease,

Paddy: Yeah.

Pecos Hank: but nobody sees the fast food signs and goes holy, you know? So there's this

Paddy: that's interesting.

Pecos Hank: disassociation with logic that if you remind yourself it's you, you don't stop climbing mountain because there's risk, because you would never, my wife isn't gonna stop driving to work every day,

Paddy: Mm-hmm.

Pecos Hank: we all subscribe to different levels of risk.

So [00:33:00] keeping a healthy understanding of the actual numbers can, can, might help you enjoy it more.

PAUSE PAUSE

Paddy: You and your fellow weather photographer Paul Smith, are responsible for the initial documentation and naming of a phenomenon called the Green Ghost. Great name, which despite its name. Is natural rather than supernatural. This is not a comic book thing, though it does sound like a comic book superhero. Can you explain what a Green Ghost is and tell me how you found it,

Pecos Hank: you know what a bad beat is in poker.

Paddy: uh, when you're just not getting the cards

Pecos Hank: Well, no, it's when, let's say you and I are playing poker and I stay in with a crap hand and you've got pocket ACEs, but then the river flops, the last card and miraculously against all odds I win. That's what my discovery of the Green Ghost was. Paul should have been the first one to see the Green Ghost.

Paddy: Okay.

Pecos Hank: Paul kind of was helping me, teaching me how to capture these transient, luminous events. [00:34:00] And then I, the one who actually found, made the discovery, but because Paul, it was kind of, it was a joint thing because Paul, um, helped me. I learned a lot from him. We were coordinating, we were a team and he knew the science at the time.

I didn't know anything about the science of them. He was the one that first hypothesized that it was oxygen. I'm getting way ahead of myself. Okay. So anyway, Paul and I. Teaming up to try to document red sprites, which are these electrical discharges that happen above thunderstorms. It sounds crazy, but there are these giant, 50 kilometer by 50 kilometer red discharges that happen above thunderstorms, and they're just beautiful.

And I was obsessed with them and I was out documenting 'em one night and I was like, what, what the hell did I just see after a red Sprite? There was like this really small aurora

Paddy: Uhhuh?

Pecos Hank: lasted for a second, sprites last microseconds, you know? And then this thing lingered for a second and I got it twice.

And I knew, I was like, nobody has ever seen this. And so I, I, I said, Paul, Paul, what is [00:35:00] this? And he was like, holy, holy shit, dude. And, you know, and then of course in, in the field of science, you want to, fish out the skeptics. You wanna see like, am I seeing something? Because red and green are complimentary colors.

And so, I was using a camera with really high sensitivity. Maybe it was an artifact of the bright flash on the camera sensor, but you could tell that it had structure and it drifted in the wind. It was a real thing. And then a couple weeks later, Paul sealed the deal with several of his own Green Ghost captures.

And so we keep it in the theme of all the other transient, luminous events, which are red sprites, elves, trolls. We wanted to, we did Right, right. It gets super nerdy, so we did the same thing with ghosts, so we're calling them excitation of green oxygen and Sprite tops.

So you can kind of shoehorn ghost out of that.

Paddy: It is just a aurora, like it's just oxygen burning off on top of

the storm.

Pecos Hank: It's so, auroras are.

Paddy: Oh my God. That's like the first [00:36:00] science question I think I've ever

gotten right.

Pecos Hank: Yeah. It's really, it's really that, it's almost that simple, like aurora's form when particles from the sun slam into oxygen and they, when they excite, like, uh, think of a hammer strike in a bell. The hammer is the particle from the sun. The bell is, the oxygen. When it hits it, it emits sound, but with light, it emits light with these particles.

And so you get this little one molecule or atom lights up green, and you, of course, you get trillions of them and you can see the auroras. And the same thing is happening with a ghost, except for the particle is being accelerated by a, electrical charge difference. You have this negative charge at the top of the thunderstorm and a positive charge about a hundred kilometers up, and that charge rips the particles apart.

So imagine an atom, think of a proton. Let's just say hydrogen with a electron. those positive and negative charges feel the pull of the opposite charges. So the electron gets ripped off of the atom and races [00:37:00] towards the positive charge, and now you've got this electron flying through the air and it slams into a oxygen particle and lights it up green.

Paddy: You know, for somebody who says that they weren't good at school, you seem like a genius to me.

Pecos Hank: I've got you fooled then. Yeah.

Paddy: Well, are the TLEs or the Transient Luminous events your favorite part? I mean, just, just as like a total Don't know nothing. Newbie. I think for me, they might be my favorite part just because they have these wild names, these sci-fi names. Green Ghost, blue Jet, red Sprites Dancing, sprites Jellyfish Streamers.

Trolls. Halos, elves. Blue Starters, secondary Jets. Gigantic Jets. Okay.

Pecos Hank: Bravo. Bravo.

Paddy: like I th ta Thank you. I try, I try, I try. These are things like straight out of a sci-fi or fantasy movie or

novel. are they your favorite part of all of this stormchasing

Pecos Hank: You know it, it's hard to say. However, I will say this. When I see tornadoes, I tend to be really [00:38:00] quiet and I just observe them. You know, it's hard to talk when your jaw's on the ground, but when I see a Sprite, I scream. just like, oh my God, I just like, it's, it's, it's, so maybe it is my favorite

Paddy: Does it wake up? Something childlike in you? It's like, it's

like when, when you're a kid and it's like 4th

of July

Pecos Hank: hundred percent.

Paddy: are, when I was a kid, I used to look forward to the fireworks. Like that was the thing, right? It was like, okay, going to the pool and the

cannonball contest and like, you know, the eating of hot dogs or whatever, like the games, you know, like sure, that's fine. But it was something about like watching the explosions happen and light up a night sky. It seemed otherworldly to me, but this is all, you know, human made stuff. Are the TLEs so magical to you? Do you get so excited and childlike because it's like, this is other worldly, but it's happening right here

Pecos Hank: YI think you just nailed it. Everything you said, you know, you have brain to mouth moments that you just, just boom. Oh my god. You know, you,

Paddy: yeah,

Pecos Hank: know, so, so usually people do that with the [00:39:00] tornadoes. Like I, I. Took my wife. I don't like taking her storm chasing, but you know, I took her and she saw two her first she seen like 10 tornadoes, but they were all ugly or dark and they didn't look good.

Finally got her first pretty tornado and she was just, oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my god

Paddy: do you still feel that every time you seen a tornado because, uh, by my count now, since you've done this for several bajillion years, you have seen multiple bajillion TLEs and and tornadoes. Do they still freak you out and excite you in the same way as your first one?

Pecos Hank: what if I would be lying if I said yes,

Paddy: Do you think? It's kind of

Pecos Hank: it's like there's another,

Paddy: just the thing at the office.

Pecos Hank: now it has to be an amazing,

powerful tornado to make you go, oh my God. Like it, us i tornadoes are, are clouds whirling? And most of them, 80% of tornadoes. Are very weak. Like that's the thing when, when people think of tornado, they think of, oh my gosh, death, EF five, it's gonna destroy my whole house.

But most of them you know, knock down [00:40:00] fences and trees and maybe tear your roof up. That's it. So if, if I set a tornado's come into your house, the odds are it's just going to break windows. Most tornadoes that you see are weak, nebulous, not these beautiful things that you see on the internet that rises above the white noise of typical

tornadoes.

So when you see those typical tornadoes, the first time, even just seeing a spin up on the ground, you go, oh my God, oh my God. Now you go spin up.

Paddy: Well, is the, draw to go back and to do all this chasing, to get to the thing that you haven't seen or to get to one of those tle that's very rare what keeps you coming back then if it's kind of just like going to the Xerox machine at the office. It's just kind of this routine thing now what's the thing that excites you

Pecos Hank: yeah, that's a good question because you've been surprised so many times by things you, when you thought you weren't gonna be surprised, you can just assume I'm gonna be blown away again. I don't know what it's gonna be. It's, it's gonna, it could be something I've never seen [00:41:00] before.

It's gonna be something the world hasn't ever seen before. Lightning did something really weird. It struck a power line right next to me. You never really know. What you're gonna get. Which, which makes it tough to get outta bed sometimes but you know that if you do get outta bed, you just increase your chances of seeing something.

Wow.

It's like you have faith that if you do this for a season, you're gonna see something you've never seen before and you usually that's the case. It has been every year for me

Paddy: is there something that we can take away from your work? Or rather, is there something that you hope we gain because of your work?

Pecos Hank: I would say that finding beauty and educating yourself leads to blissful childlike happiness. That's it. It makes some people happy.

Paddy: Hank

Pecos Hank: I'm not saying it's gonna save the world, it's just, it make like, remember Steve Irwin just like, like, I love him. He's my hero. And because one, [00:42:00] he's the real deal.

He knows how to talk to these animals and, and, uh, of course he's putting himself out there every single day. It's just a matter of time before you have an accident. He was very unfortunate, but his passion and the love, think of how much joy he spread to the world. Getting people to like these who might have been afraid of these things.

So I, I'd like to follow his footsteps.

I'm trying to live, be happy here in the now and then the whole thing, like every hiker, which is comparable to soul chasers, leave the world a better place than you found it.

I hope that I left the world a better place than I found it. That's it.

MUSIC IN THE CLEAR FOR A BEAT

Paddy: It is now time for the final ramble. One piece of gear you cannot live without.

Pecos Hank: Well, since. Chasing tornadoes can get pretty hairy. And I have long hair. I'm gonna have to go with a hairband.

Paddy: Do. Wow. Wow. Did not see this going at all this way. [00:43:00] Really

a scrunchie, a

Pecos Hank: a scrunchie can really go south for me really fast. Yeah.

Paddy: best outdoor snack.

Pecos Hank: apples,

Paddy: You know what's shocking? I've heard so many different things for answers to this question. Not once has somebody said, apple

Pecos Hank: they sit in my glove box for days in the heat and don't really necessarily, like a banana goes bad pretty fast,

Paddy: bananas don't travel. Even though they, they come with their own carrying case.

Bananas don't travel what is your hottest outdoor hot take?

Pecos Hank: Ooh, I feel strongly about this one.

Paddy: Oh, this is gonna be spicy and I like it.

Pecos Hank: Okay. Um, the world would be a much better place if we sterilize all the slow drivers who accelerate when you try to pass them. I mean that from my heart. We should sterilize them. We should round them up. Uh,

Paddy: Hank is speaking with his chest right now, folks. Do you hear this? Oh, man.

MUSIC

PADDYO [00:44:00] VO:

Hank Schyma is Pecos Hank. His new book, Storm, is available now. Do yourself a favor, buy the book. It is mesmerizing. As is Hank's YouTube channel, named Pecos Hank, which you should subscribe to and spend many hours digging into. It's wild. Hank was also nice enough to lend us some of his original music for this episode. You can listen to more on streaming services under Pecos Hank and his band, the Southern Backtones. And you can find out more about Hank, buy prints of his fabulous pictures of tornadoes, or support his Patreon via his website, pecos hank dot com.

 And, remember lovely listeners, we want to hear from you. Soooo send us your guest nominations, show reactions, any and all podcastery thoughts in an electronic letter known as an email to ¹ú²ú³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏ Podcast At ¹ú²ú³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏ Inc Dot Com. We are, afterall, making this show for [00:45:00] you and your lovely ear holes.

The ¹ú²ú³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏ Podcast is hosted and produced by me, Paddy O'Connell. But you can call me PaddyO. The show is also produced by the storytelling wizard, Micah "I'm not a contrarian, you're a contrarian" Abrams. Music and Sound Design by Robbie Carver. And booking and research by Maren Larsen.

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