The day before he went to Europe to chase his sports-related dreams, a Stony Mountain man drove to South Dakota for a different type of chase.
Ethan Caners has delved into the adrenaline-saturated venture of storm chasing, which led him on a last-minute excursion on Sept. 23 — the day before he was scheduled to leave for Germany for soccer trials.
For the first time, 18-year-old Caners led a team of storm chasers on a journey that resulted in them catching a tornado near Bruce, S.D.
“That was the first one I ever caught while leading the team. I still have a lot to learn, so even though I was the lead, my chase teammate Jordan Carruthers helped me on my calls. It was definitely a very surreal moment to be able to make all the calls and actually be able to produce from them,” he said by phone from Germany.
“We’re always looking at the forecast and all the new models. A week before, we saw that there was a high Theta-E trough, which indicates instability and convection.”
Caners and his team decided to keep an eye on the system.
“Two days before, we saw that nothing changed so we figured we’d make plans to make it to target. We went out the same day, a six-hour drive, caught the tornado and came back — just like that,” said Caners, who has been fascinated with storms since he was a young boy.
“When we were down there, we met up with about 10 other chasers along the same route. So every photo of this tornado is almost on the exact same road from the exact same spot because it was the only storm that produced for the entire day. We nailed it.”
The storm chasers were well equipped for their adventure, he added.
“We had a multiple radar system so we could see the velocity, which is right-to-left rotation at all times, and the precipitation composition, which basically shows us how heavy the rain or hail is and what type of precipitate it is. It shows us everything we need to know to be able to do this safely and efficiently,” Caners said.
“You look up and there’s one area of rotation here, another area of rotation there. You’re trying to look at everything at once and, all of a sudden, one just drops a funnel and everyone focuses on it. I have about a four-minute video of the entire cell’s tornado genesis. We sent it in to the National Weather Service and they confirmed that the touchdown was there, which is kind of the trophy as a chaser.”
Of course, Caners was also keeping an eye on the clock since he had an international flight to catch the next day.
“It was definitely something that I thought of while I was planning this. I was talking to my parents about whether this was a good idea, but I have really supportive parents who allow me to chase my dreams like this. They have my back,” he said.
“But everything ran smoothly, just as we thought, and I hopped on the plane to Germany the next day.”
It’s not common for a tornado to touch down in that area so late in the year, he added.
“It was very late into the season. With climate change right now and the shifting of Tornado Alley, anything can be possible. That Theta-E that we saw is usually an April to May sort of model, and for it to be this late in the year is almost unheard of,” he said.
“Crazy things are happening climate-wise right now that are keeping us on our toes. Anybody in the industry knows that climate change is affecting everything, for sure.”
Tribune photos submitted
