Tracking the Twisters

Professional storm chaser Jeff Gammons has been chasing hurricanes and tornadoes for three decades. JEFF GAMMONS, STORMVISUALS / COURTESY PHOTO

Days before Hurricane Milton arrived, people all over Palm Beach County were getting ready. Storm shutters went up. Gas tanks were filled. Stores of bottled water and non-perishable foods were stockpiled. By the time the storm finally started to reach our area, residents were prepared for a hurricane. What they weren’t prepared for were the dozens of tornadoes that swept through neighborhoods from the Everglades to Fort Pierce, leaving a path of destruction in their wake.

“We weren’t even in the cone of the storm,” says Ilene Rein, a resident of Palm Beach Gardens’ neighborhood Regency in Avenir. “I was more worried about friends in Orlando,” Rein recalls debating with her husband, David, about whether or not to bring their new grill in from the patio.

Then, around 5 p.m. on October 9, Rein got an alert on her phone, then another one. “I heard rattling. We ran into the closet and hunkered down,” she recalls. When the couple emerged from the closet, they weren’t sure what had happened.

Ocean lightning at Jupiter Beach captured on camera by South Florida-based storm chaser Jeff Gammons. JEFF GAMMONS, STORMVISUALS/ COURTESY PHOTOS

“The roof tiles on all the houses behind us were gone,” says Rein. “I didn’t even know it was a tornado.”

Rein’s home is one block from the street where the EF3 tornado traveled. The street is described in news reports as “a war zone.” Images of homes that look like they were peppered with machine gun fire, crumpled cars, roofs ripped off, and a dumpster impossibly embedded in one home’s roof tell the story of the tornado’s path of destruction.

Yet just one lot line over, Rein’s home remains intact. “Our windows are shattered in the front and the back of the house, and our garage door looks like it was hit by a machine gun. It looks terrible, but it’s still standing.”

It’s a phenomenon that is not uncommon in neighborhoods where tornadoes hit — some homes are obliterated while others are left untouched. In the Wellington neighborhood of Meadow Wood, Nancy Stellway was one of the lucky ones. Stellway was outside her home and saw a frightening scene in the distance. “I wasn’t sure where it was coming from, but all I could see was debris flying.” Stellway, her husband and her son sheltered in the bathroom. They emerged to see their neighbor’s house impaled by a tree and missing half the roof. All around them, windows in houses and cars were shattered, trees uprooted, vehicles were flipped upside-down, and in one case, a car had landed on a roof. Stellway’s home was undamaged.

While chasing storms may seem exciting, Gammons cautions that tornadoes can easily turn deadly.

But just two years ago when Hurricane Ian spawned a tornado, it also came through her neighborhood and caused major roof damage. “What are the odds,” she asks incredulously.

The nature of where tornadoes hit and how they travel may seem random to many. Still, professional storm chaser and local weather spotter Jeff Gammons says tornadic activity is not as random as it seems. “Tornadoes are common with hurricanes; however, they are more common on the outer feeder bands of the hurricane and proceed the hurricane coming on shore. In all the hurricanes I have documented, they always produce tornadoes to the east or the northeast side of the storm.”

Professional storm chaser and local weather spotter Jeff Gammons says tornadic activity is not as random as it seems.

Gammons explains that because Hurricane Milton came from the Gulf Coast, the communities along the East Coast, like those in Palm Beach County and the Treasure Coast, were on the east side of the storm, where tornadic activity was common. “We had the perfect textbook setup with Hurricane Milton. The storm’s right side raked the Florida Everglades all the way through the Treasure Coast and up to Orlando. That, combined with some daytime heat earlier that day, destabilized the atmosphere and set up a perfect scenario for tornadoes.”

Gammons has been chasing hurricanes and tornadoes for over three decades. Originally from Fort Lauderdale, he now lives in Okeechobee. He documented one of the storms from Milton as it came across Lake Okeechobee. “These tornadoes were moving at 30 to 50 miles per hour. We watched one cross three to five miles over the lake in just a few minutes.” At the same time, Gammons was watching another storm forming over the western part of Palm Beach County, the same storm that would hit Meadow Wood in Wellington, then Avenir in Palm Beach Gardens, then Jupiter. “They were all erupting simultaneously. At one point, I counted 12 tornadic supercells from Lake Okeechobee eastward that all had tornadoes on the ground. Out of all the hurricanes I’ve chased in Florida, that was the first time I saw that many tornadoes in progress at the same time.”

Once formed, tornadoes are fluid, often morphing from narrow cones to wide funnels, lifting off the ground at times and then touching back down. “Tornados are very concentrated points of wind,” says Gammons. “They can go from a large wedge tornado then morph into a small cone tornado. They change their shape and strength as they move along their path. So, you will have tornadoes that take out five or six houses, then cross to the next block, change shape, and only take out two houses. That’s why when you look at tornado damage, it can be fascinating to see that it didn’t touch this vehicle, but the neighbor’s car is on the roof.”

As speculation grows over whether Florida can expect more tornadic activity in the future, Gammons says if we continue to have violent hurricanes, tornadoes are likely. “If you’re in Palm Beach County and you see a hurricane within 100 miles of the west coast, you need to pay attention. You’re going to have severe weather to the right of that storm.”

Over decades of chasing tornadoes in Florida and across Hurricane Alley in the Midwest, Gammons has learned a few things about staying safe when a tornado is eminent. “Have an app that lets you know when there are tornadoes in your area,” he says. Gammons uses a paid app called RadarScope but says there are also free apps, such as the ones from the Weather Channel and AccuWeather. He also recommends Floridians check the National Hurricane Center online. “They update in real-time so you can get that information before your local press gets it,” he says. Lastly, he encourages people to have their location turned on in their phone’s settings. You will not get alerts from the National Weather Service if your location setting is turned off.

While chasing storms may seem exciting, Gammons cautions that tornadoes can easily turn deadly. “There are quite a few people I saw standing in their backyard filming the tornado coming through their backyard as their glass sliding doors explode in their faces. If that was me, I would have been in a closet,” says Gammons. “You want to hide from the debris. Most people who perish in tornadoes, it’s not because the building collapses on them; it’s from flying debris.”

For more on storm chasing, follow Jeff Gammons at www.instagram.com/stormvisuals/.

The post Tracking the Twisters first appeared on Palm Beach Florida Weekly .