(Community Matters 181) Not Just Entertainment: Michigan Storm Chasers Help Residents Stay Safe and Informed

Tornadoes in Michigan are no longer something only heard about in warm weather months. Calhoun County residents know the last few seasons have made that clear. 

Chandler Bos, Vice President of Michigan Storm Chasers, unpacks what it really takes to track severe weather in real time and why the most important part of storm coverage isn’t the video, it’s the decisions people make before and during a warning.

We also dig into how Michigan Storm Chasers evolved from storm chasing entertainment into a forecasting and public safety resource.

Episode Resources

Michigan Storm Chasers Website

ABOUT COMMUNITY MATTERS
Former WBCK Morning Show host Richard Piet (2014-2017) returns to host Community Matters, an interview program focused on community leaders and newsmakers in and around Battle Creek. Community Matters is heard Saturdays, 8:00 AM Eastern on WBCK-FM (95.3) and anytime at battlecreekpodcast.com.

Community Matters is sponsored by Lakeview Ford Lincoln and produced by Livemic Communications.

Transcript

Welcome And Michigan Tornado Context

Richard Piet 0:02

Thanks for being with us for Community Matters, a Saturday visit at 95.3 FM Saturday mornings, Battle Creek Podcast.com. All of our episodes are there, as well as more you haven't heard on radio. And if you want right on your device, the easiest thing to do would be look for it where you get podcasts. Calhoun County Community Matters. And just follow us there. It's a service of Lakeview Ford Lincoln. Well, we certainly have been acquainted with severe weather in our midst a few years ago, tornado in February, and then more recently one in March. Actually, more than one, but one in Calhoun County. And it's interesting because as I gather and monitor weather information, you may have noticed this too. The Michigan Storm Chasers have been out there, and more and more people are engaging with them on social media. You ever chase a storm? Some of you did recently. I don't know where you get the guts to do that in the midst of all of that. But Chandler boss can tell us because he's the vice president at the Michigan Storm Chasers, and he joins us today. Hello, Chandler.

Chandler Bos 1:16

How are we doing?

Richard Piet 1:17

Thanks for this opportunity. This is obviously a passion, or at least I think it is, right? Uh talk about your story and how you got started chasing storms.

The Scariest Tornadoes At Night

Chandler Bos 1:30

Yeah, so you know, I've always been into weather. And when I was a kid, you know, I thought the coolest thing in the world was being able to look at radar on my dad's Blackberry cell phone. And even when I wasn't supposed to be, right? I was up late at night looking at radar, trying to figure out what the storm was going to do because I couldn't ever sleep through a thunderstorm. And that was where it all kind of started. And I can't tell you how many nights my parents had to peel me away from the windows or had to peel me away from the glass sliding door we had in our house because I just wanted to see the thunderstorm. Or I was outside running around, did it during the day, during the night. It it didn't matter. Ever since then, I've always had a passion for uh for storms and especially storm chasing as I got old enough to drive and everything like that. One of my first storm chases, my dad went with me and we took his car. And he said, Chandler, I'm okay with everything. Just don't drive into any hail. I said, Okay, dad, I promise you we're not gonna go into any hail. Well, about five minutes later, we were in golf ball-size hail in his car. So he wasn't the happiest with that. Uh after I had just told him we were we were not gonna drive into any hail, but you know, it is what it is. And fast forward to today, you know, I've seen over 40 tornadoes in over 10 different states and a few of them here in our home state of Michigan, and all of that kind of mixed together, churned up, created what we have now Michigan storm chasers.

Richard Piet 2:57

What was the scariest tornado you witnessed?

Chandler Bos 3:02

The scariest tornado that I witnessed, fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it, I was out of town for these most recent events here in March, and then in May of 2024, when the Portage tornado came through, I was also out of town for that. So I wasn't able to experience that stuff firsthand here in the state of Michigan. But I have seen tornadoes that are over a mile and a half wide out in the states of Kansas, was one that was a nighttime mile and a half wide-wedge tornado. And then Missouri was the other one that was a mile and a half wide-wedge tornado. And the one in Missouri, unfortunately, we did see some loss of life with. I don't believe we saw any with the one in Kansas, but both of those tornadoes, when you're within a mile or two at night of a mile-wide tornado, it gets pretty intense. It gets pretty frightening.

Richard Piet 3:53

In the dark, how do you even know what direction it's moving in? If some debris is coming at you, there's a lot to be concerned with beyond a daytime tornado, I would think.

Training And Rules For Chasing

Chandler Bos 4:04

Yeah, you know, it's crazy because in Kansas, you know, that tornado's coming at us. We can always see on radar, right, which way the tornado's moving. So we try to strategically place ourselves outside of where it's going. The best way to chase a storm is kind of to the southeast of it. Storms generally, and tornadoes generally move from a southwest to northeast motion. And so if you're on the southeast side of things, typically it's going to be the safest place for viewing. So yeah, we tried to be there, but on this uh Kansas wedge, our path out back to the main road was blocked by a freight train that we didn't know was stopped on the train tracks. So we had to turn around and backtrack towards this tornado coming at us to hope and pray that the only road option between us and the tornado was passable. Thankfully it was, and we were able to take that and we made it with about 45 seconds to a minute and a half worth so to spare. But if we would have waited any longer, it would have been potentially a different story.

Richard Piet 5:08

How do you train for that? And I suppose somewhere in here I should make a comment about not doing this at home.

Chandler Bos 5:16

Yeah, no, chasing tornadoes is is not a good activity to do at home, especially at night. You know, I it's not really all that safe to begin with, even for us professionals, right?

Richard Piet 5:26

How do you prepare to chase a tornado? What's the training acumen that you go through?

From Entertainment To Weather Resource

Chandler Bos 5:31

There's a lot of training that goes into it. There are some classes that the National Weather Service will put on. It's a it's called Skyworn Training. So you can learn a little bit about, you know, fundamentals of thunderstorms, what to look for, and you know, how to track them safely. There's also a really good website called Tornado Titans, and they have a lot of different courses. They're free that you can watch just like a YouTube video and walk you through how to chase storms and what to look for. Those are a really good tool and resource, even for professionals, to catch up on their skills if they haven't been out for a while. I personally have gone through the majority of their catalog and uh I found it really valuable and still consult some of those videos for additional things. In addition to other multimedia resources that are available, a lot of it's just trial by fire, right? You know, you have to at some point go chase a storm no matter what. So it's best to find, you know, kind of a lower-end thunderstorm that really doesn't have any severe risks with it, right? No tornado risk, no massive wind risk, no golf ball and baseball size hail risk, and start there and then start working your way up from there.

Richard Piet 6:41

How do you approach it now? Michigan Storm Chasers has turned into something of a meteorological resource. And by that I mean not just chasing tornadoes. I mean, we've watched like our more recent blizzard up north. You were uh sharing information about that and and tracking that like you would anything else. Is that the goal then? You want to be a weather authority?

Chandler Bos 7:07

Yeah, you know, ultimately that is the goal. When when we first started Michigan Storm Chasers back in 2023, our plan was just let's bring some live storm chasing to Michigan, right? Because storm chasing is entertaining. There's not a ton of money in it for just storm chasing and streaming and selling footage or anything like that. Um, so we thought if we could just create some entertainment and have some entertainment value, it's fun, it's good, we get a little bit of fun money, everything's great, right? But it became obvious relatively quickly that you know this was a service that you know people actually started to count on. The August 23rd or 24th, 2023 tornado that went through Weberville and Williamson area up near Lansing. We did our first kind of severe weather coverage live stream on that tornado. And at the time, we only had about 40 or 50,000 followers, and we had over 20,000 people watch that stream. And so it became very obvious to us that people are going to use us as a resource. So then we decided to morph our business plan from entertainment focused to information focused, right? We still need to be entertaining, we still need to put a good digital product out there, but having information and real-time accurate updates be at the forefront of what we're trying to do really reshaped how a lot of Michiganders began to get their weather. And nowadays, that's all we try and do, right? Is have the most accurate forecast, be a great resource for people to find all of their daily, weekly, monthly, or per storm weather information.

Richard Piet 8:49

And now you have a chief meteorologist, and it's not just about chasing, it's about, as you say, a forecasting and becoming a resource.

Better Radar And Better Storm Reports

Chandler Bos 8:57

Yeah. You know, live storm chasing will always be at the core of you know what we do and everything, but having the resources and personnel on staff to be able to offer a validated professional opinion on what we believe our forecasting to be is a great tool for a lot of people.

Richard Piet 9:15

What impresses you about weather these days? People like to say, you don't like the weather in Michigan, wait a minute, it'll change. You know, all these things. From your perspective, is it really changing or are we uh just thinking it is? It's a little bit of both, right?

Chandler Bos 9:34

So with groups like ours, you know, obviously we're bringing a lot of awareness and a lot of you know exposure to what the daily weather is and what the storms are doing and stuff like that. But technology and reporting as a whole over the last 30 years has grown into something that, you know, it certainly was not 30 years ago. It's a lot easier now. And the radars that we have today are so, you know, advanced and such great tools for not only, you know, forecasting where storms are and what they're doing, but looking at trends and going back and being able to see what exactly happened during the event and what radar characteristics we can pull out of that, say, you know what, maybe this was a spin-up tornado, whereas 25, 30 years ago, they would have said, Oh, it was just some winds.

Richard Piet 10:28

You know what I mean? So it gives you a clearer picture of what's happening or has happened. And even somewhat recently, I think today, uh, the day we're recording, you released uh information about all four of the storms, tornadoes that were present in this last go-round in March, to Kancha being, I guess, the baby of this group, uh, EF Zero, 85 mile an hour winds, which of course is still strong. But this kind of result, this kind of analysis that you're talking about comes directly from what you're talking about. You're looking at all that.

Chandler Bos 11:09

Exactly. You know, there's better radar, better reporting, more viewers are right, sending us pictures, they're sending broadcast media pictures, they're maybe consulting with the National Weather Service. So there's more pieces of the puzzle that the surveyors at the National Weather Service can put together to make sure that they're reporting things accurately and surveying them and giving the right result at the end of each survey.

Richard Piet 11:35

You bring up an interesting point. You know, there are authorities out there like the National Weather Service. How do you interact? And when you guys started getting more serious about forecasting and things, do they call you up and say, hey, do this right, will you? I mean, is there any interaction that you have with them and do you have to prove yourself?

Chandler Bos 11:53

Well, you know, there's I don't want to say there's a chip on the shoulder per se, right? But we do have quite a bit of forecasting experience. We obviously have degreed meteorologists here on staff at Michigan Storm Chasers. And, you know, a lot of forecasting is up to the forecaster. You know, I'm gonna look at weather models differently than our chief meteorologist will, who's gonna look at them differently than the National Weather Service, who's gonna look at them differently than the chief meteorologist for a broadcast station somewhere here in the state of Michigan. And so it's it all comes down to how can we communicate things effectively to the public? And that's where Michigan Storm Chasers really shines because while we are working hand in hand with the National Weather Service to provide them live updates on the ground so they can make sure they're giving the best warnings and the best lead time that they possibly can, we're also communicating the risks that they are trying to convey to the public in what might be a little bit more easier ways to understand for someone in the general public versus someone who has meteorology experience.

Richard Piet 12:56

Well, that makes sense. Sometimes when you read the verbiage of warnings and things, you say, Wow, that sounds scientific. And you and your counterparts elsewhere are the ones that are helping us interpret that, as you point out, which is uh important. So give us a sense of how you approach this. You know, severe weather is possible, right, in some given day. So you're ready to jump when you think the possibility is there, or you start to see some of the signals uh coming together using some of the resources you've referred to. And then what happens?

Beginning To End Severe Weather Coverage

Chandler Bos 13:36

Yeah, so at Michigan Storm Chasers, we have what we call our beginning-to-end policy. And what that is, is from the second there can be a threat of severe weather starting all the way till the event completely wraps up. That is what we strive for. So usually about seven days to four days ahead of, you know, these systems coming through is when we start to maybe see some signals. You know, the further out you go, the more it's like throwing darts at a dartboard with your eyes closed, you know. But as they come closer together, we start to see trends and we start to see similarities that paint a picture of, you know, hey, we could see the possibility of some severe weather this day. So within the next kind of one to three days before the event, we have meetings as a staff to talk about what forecasts we want to make and what we want our verbiage to say and what risks we want to highlight. And, you know, as we get closer to the event, right, we're trying to communicate this as much as we can to all of our followers. And, you know, we're talking with other meteorologists that we know and you know, some of those people at the National Weather Service as well. And when the event starts to happen, it's kind of drop everything and go. Like you said, we need to be live, we need to be, you know, on stream. Some of our streams can go over eight hours at a time. So we got to make sure we're ready for that. And, you know, once the stream concludes then, once the event is over, well, then it switches to what do we need to do now to help people? Do we need to do disaster leave? Do we need to do search and rescue? What operations do we need to carry out after stream concludes? And sometimes, fortunately, there isn't anything we have to do besides kick back and have a bottle of water and eat a snack and be like, ooh, all right. But other times we have over a week of disaster response to do, like we saw with this last round of tornadic activity.

Richard Piet 15:28

Yeah, so that's interesting. You are prepared to help if you can. Oh, yeah, in the process of the aftermath.

Chandler Bos 15:36

Yeah. Once the storms move out, sometimes the coverage of them can go away. But with our beginning-to-end policy that we have, it's extremely important that we are able to help those who are affected, whether it's either financially or whether it's through other resources or whether it's through bringing in supplies. There are a lot of ways that we want to be able to step up and help out. You know, we have one of the largest social media audiences in the state of Michigan. And so when those who are impacted maybe don't have anyone else to turn to, we want to make sure that we can help and we can offer those who follow us an opportunity to make a difference in the life of someone who may have just lost everything.

Fighting Hype Fatigue And Staying Safe

Richard Piet 16:22

Yeah. Yeah, we saw some of the reporting out of Union City, of course, where uh folks and Three Rivers. In fact, I was at an appointment and happened to meet up with someone from Three Rivers, and she started talking to me about having participated in some of the uh relief efforts that were going on, and her own home was not affected by that, but an illustration of what we saw there and in in Union City as well, with folks uh trying to band together and help. You know, I'm reminded of days gone by when I was in the news business and somebody of note said to us, weather is news, talk about it. Okay, do you ever run into a sort of maybe a cynic's point of view that uh it's not gonna be that bad? They're just hyping everything. Do you fight against that when conditions could be serious? Do people take it seriously?

Chandler Bos 17:19

Well, that's part of what our mission is too. You know, we want to change someone's inactive mindset, you know, which is like, oh, it can't happen here, right? Or or something else like that, and change it to a reactive mindset. So that's, you know, okay, if it does happen here, what steps can I take to make sure that we, you know, as a family or as a group of people are going to be okay, right? And that's a huge part of what we're trying to do because weather education and awareness can always be improved, right? There's no like set level or set bar for it, but we can always do better tomorrow than we did today. And that's one of the other things that's important to us at Michigan Storm Chasers is how can we continue to educate people and make sure that they are prepared when something like this happens? Because this last spout of tornadic activity is a really good example. One of the videos that we saw, ice on a lake was still present in the video. There could have been people out ice fishing, but yet there's an EF3 tornado going through the city limits of Union City. So obviously it can happen. And so we want to make sure that people are as prepared as possible when something like that happens. As best of a resource as we can be. That's what we want to do.

Richard Piet 18:35

You know, speaking of that, there was video shared far and wide from someone on the lake in Union City filming that tornado going by, and they were on one side of the lake and the tornado was going across the other side of the lake. Talk to us about the temptation to get your phone out and do that versus doing what would be the safe thing and taking cover. How do you help people, speaking of education, manage that?

Chandler Bos 19:04

It's tough, and every situation is gonna be different, right? If you can see the tornado is here and it's not moving towards you, right? You can see it moving, you know, in a in a parallel direction to you. Well, then most of the time you probably are gonna be safe. You still want to be taking shelter because you know, you are in a tornado warning and they have what is called deviant motion, and tornadoes kind of can get a mind of their own and start moving any which way or the other, or just, you know, all of a sudden grow a half mile within 30 seconds. We've seen that many times. You know, there's, as a matter of fact, a couple storm chasers who were killed back in 2013 because of some unexpected tornadic motions. And while it's never a great idea to be standing outside filming it, you always want to be taking shelter and heeding those warnings. A good rule of thumb is if you're looking at a tornado and it's not moving left or right, but it's getting bigger, that means it's coming right at you. And you don't have a lot of time in most situations. So the sooner you can get into shelter, the better.

Richard Piet 20:06

There's the word from the storm chaser himself. Take that to heart.

Chandler Bos 20:10

That's what we're there for, is to get the pictures and video, right?

Citizen Videos And How To Send Tips

Richard Piet 20:13

Yeah. So we used to hear about spotters and I guess what you'd call civilians who might offer perspective firsthand accounts of things they see in weather situations. Is that helpful for you? And do you you use quote unquote civilians in your reporting?

Chandler Bos 20:31

So there are still quite a few Skyworn spotters who aren't associated with us, but have a certification through whatever National Weather Service office that they are closest to, whether it be Grand Rapids, Northwebster, Detroit, Gaylord Marquette, right? And they are oftentimes beneficial with emergency management, helping on a local level to relay what they're seeing real time. But a lot of our best pictures and videos that really help us paint a story and can tell that story back to the National Weather Service is pictures and videos that come in from civilians, from someone who says, Hey, I was on my porch. This cloud looks kind of funny, right? Or, you know, some of the videos that got sent into us from Three Rivers or Union City. A lot of that stuff is extremely valuable, not in a financial sense or anything, but in an informational sense, because it really paints a picture of what the atmosphere was doing and what was happening in real time. So when the National Weather Service goes back to survey, or when we're trying to convey to people to take shelter, we can be like, hey, look at this tornado, probably want to take shelter instead of just, hey, we think something's going on here or something might be happening.

Richard Piet 21:47

And whatever they share with you, you can look at through your professional lens and know some things about it. All right. So if somebody wants to offer Michigan storm chasers information. Information when storms come through, how do they do it?

Chandler Bos 22:02

They can reach out directly to our Facebook page. Our DMs are always open. Usually we have about 2,000 to 3,000 messages per storm system that comes through. I personally go through the majority of them. So, you know, I always tell people I don't need to see pictures of a rainbow or some really small hailstones. I enjoy seeing them, but I don't need to see them. The more severe the weather is, that's what's most informationally important to me and can help convey to the team real time.

Richard Piet 22:34

Yeah, I think I saw uh some kind of a post during this latest event that you actually had to stop your DMs for a minute so you could try to get through them. What more could you ask for? Lots of interaction.

Chandler Bos 22:47

Yeah, you know, it kind of came through at a at a tough time. I was out of town for these uh tornadoes. Uh our chief meteorologist was prepping to go out of town. We had another two staff members who were, you know, headed out of town that weekend. And so it was a little bit of hectic on an operational side of things, but we were still able to do everything that we needed to do to keep people safe.

Richard Piet 23:09

We might need your vacation schedule published so we know when severe weather's coming.

Chandler Bos 23:14

Yeah, trust me, that is a joke inside our organization. Trust me. I missed these ones and I missed the one in Portage.

Richard Piet 23:21

So these are at this time of the year, anyway, we're not supposed to be having tornadoes now, but is that an indicator of changing weather dynamics, or it just happens. It can happen.

Chandler Bos 23:34

The short answer is it can just happen. Yeah. You know, we talk about all sorts of uh different early-in-the-year tornadic events, and you know, you look at us now, right? Two weeks ago we were having severe weather, and now for the majority of Michigan, you know, look at northern Michigan, they're snowed in historically, and you know, down here we've got snow on the ground here, and it's been, you know, in the teens and twenties, but ultimately each and every weather system is different, each weather setup is different. So it's not, truthfully, it's not that uncommon to have some warm, unstable air work their way into the Great Lakes, and then you just need enough forcing to get a storm to happen, and then dynamics and thermodynamics play the rest. And it's just another reminder of what can happen.

Funding The Work And The Long View

Richard Piet 24:18

It seems like this year, at least, and it's been true in other years, when we're on the cusp of seasons, there's a lot of back and forth, and we'll we've certainly seen that this year, it seems. So before you go, talk about how you keep the lights on. Money talks, and you know what walks. This is your dream, it's growing, but how do you keep it going financially?

Chandler Bos 24:42

We're very, very blessed to have multiple revenue streams to help keep us going. You know, we offer our own merchandise on our website, which certainly is not the big moneymaker, but we do offer it. We have quite a few different businesses who we partner with on sponsorship levels so that way, in the event of you know, happenings like this, they can work directly with homeowners to get them fixed back up and deal with insurance for the homeowners. So that way they don't have to worry about it. You know, the potential is there where they could have just lost everything. Last thing they want to do is talk with an insurance adjuster in some high-rise somewhere, talking about why their claim is getting denied, right? So having these partners come in and be standing by ready to help, you know, we do take a little bit of money from them, but the majority of it is just simply because of our large audiences on social media and our continued dedication to providing live, real-time updates when these storms happen. And that's what we'll always continue to do.

Richard Piet 25:43

What's the dream? So you'll continue to do that, but as you contemplate five years, 10 years from now, what would this reporting look like? How will it have advanced, do you suppose?

Chandler Bos 25:56

That's a tough question to answer because we're doing things this year that you know we didn't think would necessarily be possible last year. And from our grassroots starting out in 2023, we're already, you know, years ahead of where we thought we were going to be. So we have a saying here at Michigan Storm Chasers that there's no such thing as a ceiling unless you believe there is one. And we really try and embody that. We really try and make sure we're not building a ceiling or believing that we're capped in any way, shape, or form. Because as far as we're concerned, no pun intended, sky's the limit.

Richard Piet 26:35

Sounds like a good place to leave it. Meanwhile, to support you, the best thing to do is to follow you. Is that true?

Chandler Bos 26:43

Yeah, give us a follow on social media and make sure that you're engaging with our posts on social media, whether it's liking, sharing, commenting, sending it to your friends, tuning into our live streams to stay safe. Those are the best ways to give us your support.

Richard Piet 26:58

All right, Chandler Boss, Michigan Storm Chasers. We appreciate this uh peek into your operations and your view on weather and chasing storms. We'll stay in touch.

Chandler Bos 27:10

Thank you. Really appreciate it.

Richard Piet 27:12

Thank you.