Storm chaser: Eye on the Sky meteorologist taking weather sabbatical

ST. JOHNSBURY — While most people try their best to avoid thunderstorms and tornadoes, Eye on the Sky meteorologist Chris Bouchard can’t seem to get enough of them.

Next week, the 31-year-old Bouchard is leaving his post at the Fairbanks Museum and taking off to the infamous Tornado Alley, where some of the country’s most intense tornadoes are most likely to occur, with a team of storm researchers chasing down the season’s biggest twisters.

“We’re basically going out after super cell thunderstorms that have rotating updrafts and are responsible for the stronger tornadoes that happen,” said Bouchard, who has been a meteorologist for the last six years.

Bouchard will be joining 28 other researchers and meteorologists with the Center for Severe Weather Research, which is based in Boulder, Colo. The group has been featured in the Discovery Channel show “Storm Chasers.”

The research will take place during the seven-week period when the most powerful storms normally occur. His sabbatical is unpaid.

“We will be sticking to the plains west of the Mississippi where there are fewer trees,” said Bouchard. “From south Texas up to North Dakota. We’ll basically be living on the road that whole time.”

Bouchard said while he isn’t particularly looking forward to weeks of fast-food restaurants and hotel living, he’s up for the adventure.

“This is something I always wanted to do,” said Bouchard. “When I found out there were still spots on the team, I thought about it for a week and had the sneaking suspicion that if I didn’t do this I would be kicking myself later.”

Bouchard said not only will he be utilizing his forecasting skills to help predict where and when storms are most likely to hit, but he will also be joining in the effort to collect data.

Bouchard will join Josh Wurmen, and Karen Kosiba with their Doppler on Wheels, or DOW, radar truck and also will work with teams placing heavy probes around the storms, often deadly, to collect data. “The heavy probes are expected to stay on the ground and gather data right inside the storm,”

“We’re going to target individual storms and drive several vehicles in and around these storms to gather data,” said Bouchard.

Bouchard learned about the volunteer opportunity from Claudine Pirerz, a Lyndon State meteorological student, interning at the Eye on the Sky, after she saw Wurmen and Kosiba showcase the DOW at the American Meteorological Society meeting in New Orleans earlier this year.

Bouchard said he has always been drawn to extreme weather, and while studying meteorology at Lyndon State College he worked with Nolan Atkins, professor of atmospheric sciences, to study extreme weather events by doing wind damage surveys following severe storms.

Bouchard said people back home will be able to track his adventures on the Eye on the Sky Facebook page and on the museum’s webpage www.fairbanksmuseum.org/forecasts.