“With the help of movies like ‘Twister,’ storm-chasing has become an international phenomenon,” says assistant professor Carla Barbieri, co-author of the study.
“While more than half of the surveyed travellers lived in North America, 11 percent came from Australia and nearly a third travelled from Europe to get a close encounter with a tornado.”
But rather than looking for mere risk, the study found that these “tornado tourists” are seeking a unique and unconventional opportunity to experience nature’s raw power—something veteran storm-chaser Ron Gravelle can attest to.
Owner of Storm Chasing Tours, Kitchener, Ont.-based Gravelle is the only person in Canada who organizes trips to famous Tornado Alley in the United States, the core of which runs through Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska.
“It’s more of an adrenalin type of vacation, you don’t do it all the time. But a lot of people around the world, just because it’s so rare I think, have the goal of seeing a tornado,” he says.
With years of researching storm activity under his belt and using computer model graphs and weather charts, Gravelle does his own forecasting. Among the equipment he uses to track down storms are a live satellite link and a GPS overlay on the radar that’s zoomable down to 100 feet.
Still, tornadoes can be elusive, he says.
“There’s so much rain, and the storms are so large that unless you’re in the exact viewing angle in relation to the storm, away from the rain, you actually won’t see one. You have to be fairly close. It’s so dangerous, but it’s such an awesome sight when you see one you’ll never forget it.” 
In the 13 years that he has been chasing storms in Tornado Alley, Gravelle has seen 250 “jaw dropping” supercell thunderstorms and over 98 tornadoes. Of the four classifications of thunderstorms, supercells are the least common and have the potential to be the most severe.
“Any storm identified as a supercell is dangerous to the public and should be avoided for safety reasons,” he says.
