Storm chasers: take the best photos without risking your life

the International Weather and Climate Forum, an event of which Futura was a partner, was held in Paris from May 14 to 17. More than 7,000 visitors, including nearly 1,500 schoolchildren, came to take part in the workshops and attend the numerous conferences on weather reportthe climatethe biodiversity and sustainable agriculture. The Forum began with a day devoted to weather enthusiasts, the Meet Up Weather, which brought together amateurs, TV presenters, experts and researchers for debates and encounters. The session ” Thunderstorms and tornadoes: love at first sight » was devoted to chasing storms, with the intervention of Serge Zaka, meteorologist hunterthunderstormsand Stéphane Schmitt, storm warning specialist for Weatherstorm.

It is difficult not to marvel at the anger of the sky and to be tempted to capture in images the beauty of storms and lightning. But most of the time, the result is nothing but a dark, blurry photo. For some, setting off on the roads during stormy weather and immortalizing the clouds thunderstorms and the phenomena they generate (flashhail, tornado…) is a real passion: it is about storm chasers, whose spectacular photos sometimes seem unreal. In 2021, Serge Zaka won the prize for the best weather photo in the worldfor his shot taken in Cannes, by the Royal Meteorological Societythanks to public votes.

Storm chaser tips and tricks

If you can’t compete with the best storm chasers, how can you take a storm photo with a clean and bright result? ” The smartphones recent ones make great pictures, but storm chasers prefer to use a SLR. However, the most important thing is the tripod because the storm photo lasts several seconds, so you must not move. A SLR also always gives better quality if you want to make an enlargement and print it. Smartphone photos, on the other hand, have sufficient rendering for social networks. On the laptop, you must use the mode fire artifice, but on a Reflex it’s up to us to adjust the sensitivity with the manual mode”, says Serge Zaka. But still it is necessary to know where and when the storm will burst: five days in advance, the hunting zone, the region, is determined. Two to three days before we can determine the department, and only the same day do we know where to position ourselves approximately in the department and then we reposition ourselves during the hunt. The storm chaser is an adventurer who adapts to the situation! To forecast the storm, I like to use the Arome model from Météo France, and in the longer term the ECMWF and GFS models which are available online on the websites Weathersky and Infoclimate », announces the storm chaser.

If in the United States, a country where the greatest storm chasers are real stars, the photos are often very retouched, this is not the case in France according to Serge Zaka: ” in France, our storms are not as sensational as in the United States, so we bring out the beautiful and not really the exceptional. We retouch our photos very little, to keep a little poetry. I didn’t need to retouch the Cannes one because the Moon was very present that evening. We just introduce blue, but it’s a rather natural introduction because the light pollution gave a slightly yellow rendering on our photos ».

The most violent storms are not necessarily located where you think they are

The organization Météorage designs tools for lightning detection for customers and warnings from observations. It is therefore possible to know which are the most struck areas of France, but also to determine the intensity of the lightning: ” the Gard, the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, and the Vaucluse and generally the South-East gather the majority of the flashes. Conversely, Brittany is the least struck area in France. The city of Nîmes, for example, is 30 times more struck down than Quimper, explains Stéphane Schmitt. But there is a difference between the number of flashes and their intensity: Brittany is one of the areas with the most powerful lightning in France, there are very few impacts but very powerful impacts. In this region, one impact in five is violent, ie it exceeds 50 kiloamperes, sometimes even 200 kiloamperes! You should know that a human heart stops beating at 40 milliamps. It is difficult to explain this peculiarity of Brittany. »

Storm chasing is a dangerous activity that cannot be improvised alone

Storm hunting is indeed a dangerous activity for several reasons: the road first, because of the risk of falling asleep, the possibility of hitting an animal in the middle of the night, or even a pile-up in the hunting excitement. But lightning is obviously a real risk for anyone who stands on an open spot with a tripod in full electrical activity: “ about ten ago lightning-related deaths per year, most of the time we survive, but with injuries. We must break this myth of the golfer struck down or the hiker, most of the people struck down are simple passers-by in a street, or walkers in a park or a forest. The accidents do not occur only in case of orange or red alertness, but 84% of lightning strike cases occurred in yellow alertness, with low or moderate electrical activity. One should not underestimate the isolated local phenomena, and know that even if there are more lightnings in summer, thunderstormswinter have a proportion of more violent flashes”, specifies the storm warning specialist.

Also beware of received ideas according to Stéphane Schmitt: “ The 30-minute rule that says you can get out if you haven’t heard thunder for 30 minutes is wrong, accidents can still happen. And lightning can obviously strike several times in the same place. »

Finally, the best advice to give to those who want to hunt storms is never to venture alone without an experienced person by your side, insists Serge Zaka: ” You have to be at least two on the road and be accompanied by experienced storm chasers, you can easily find other enthusiasts on social networks in regional associations. I have already almost died several times, and a few years ago, walkers were struck down 40 meters from me on the coast. »