Joe Gatelli is the kind of guy who keeps six portable weather radios in various spots of his house, loves nothing more than checking out radar patterns on his nifty iPad app and who once won a trivia contest hosted by the public television show, "Weather World."
Those who know the South Scranton man know his love of weather runs deep. For years, the now-retired teacher got to share that passion with students in his physics class at Scranton Central and West Scranton high schools.
No doubt, his enthusiasm rubbed off on a great number of people, including his daughter, Jeana Gatelli.
With her serving as his faithful sidekick, Gatelli recently had the opportunity to check off one of the major items on his bucket list when the two spent a week chasing tornadoes out on the Great Plains.
Three days into their trip, they hit pay dirt in Simla, Colorado. They watched five Enhanced Fujita-1-scale tornadoes over an hour span. During that period, they were witness to the extremely rare sight of two tornadoes hitting the ground at once - the fabled "double tornado."
Their guide, renowned tornado chaser Warren Faidley, kept them at a safe five-mile distance from the action.
"It wasn't like 'Twister,' " Jeana said, referring to the popular 1996 film about storm chasers. "We would have liked to have gotten closer."
They couldn't quibble about much else, though, given Faidley told them afterward, "You guys saw more than anyone I ever took."
After all, some don't see any at all.
"We were very lucky to see what we got to see," Joe said.
Finding a guide
Joe had been pondering a storm-chasing trip for years, well before the phenomenon came into vogue thanks to "Twister" and TV shows like "Storm Chasers."
"If you're a weather junkie, it's one thing that's on your list," he said.
Gatelli's wife, former Scranton City Councilwoman Judy Gatelli, thought the idea was bonkers, and told him so. His daughter, however, was intrigued.
"Because of my dad, I've always been interested in weather and science," Jeana said, before adding with a laugh, "Nobody else had the cajones."
Finally, they committed, and began planning for the trip about a year ago.
After researching tour guides, they went with Faidley, a photojournalist whom many consider the first person to pursue a full-time career as a storm chaser. Joe had been highly impressed with Faidley since seeing him speak at Penn State Worthington Scranton campus many years ago.
Faidley's expertise doesn't come cheap. A tour with him runs about $10,000.
"But what we liked about his (tour) was that it was only Jeana and me, and not some big bus tour," Joe said.
He and Jeana set off on their trip on May 31. They flew into Amarillo, Texas, then drove up through the Texas Panhandle into Oklahoma, then Colorado.
"It's flat as a pancake," Jeana said of the terrain.
"But we were actually 5,200 feet above sea level," Joe said. "It's the front range of the Rockies."
'Hotbed of activity'
They arrived to what Jeana called "a hotbed of activity." They and Faidley met up with a number of other storm chasers, most of them well seasoned.
The group included Stan Rose of the National Weather Service, and a guy who had built his own storm-chasing tank.
"They all seemed to congregate in the same places," Jeana said.
The next couple days were spent traveling to different locales with conditions ripe for a tornado. Excursions didn't start until early afternoon, given the storms typically build off of the Rockies between the hours of 2 and 4 p.m., Joe said.
These locations weren't big population centers by any stretch. The scenery mostly consisted of cattle farms and wind turbines, Joe said. Because of heavy rains, the ground was a lush green.
"We could see Pikes Peak from where we were," Jeana added.
Faidley's gadget-filled SUV featured state-of-the-art GPS mapping and two radars for up-to-the-minute storm tracking.
"The Weather Bureau info would come in and every minute or two you'd have a new picture," Joe said. "It's as close to live as you can get."
Faidley was "very careful" throughout, Joe said. While radar has helped significantly in the tracking of storms, tornadoes often don't "go by an exact set of rules," said Joe, mentioning three noted tornado researchers who were killed not long ago due to a tornado that took an unexpected path.
Showtime
For all the moving around, the Gatellis and Faidley didn't see much at first. They'd set up at a good spot, and tornadoes would be in the vicinity, but they weren't visible on account of the high precipitation producing what chasers call a "rain wrap."
"We saw them, but we didn't see them," Joe said. "Low precipitation is what you want."
That's what they got on their third afternoon out, when the skies quickly turned ominous, and the temperatures went from warm to jacket-chilly in an instant. Some storm chasers went off to another spot around the Nebraska-Kansas border, but Faidley had "a good gut feeling" that the tornadoes would come down in Simla instead, Joe said.
His intuition proved correct as a "caterpillar line" of vehicles formed to watch the first tornado drop from its wall cloud and develop into a swirling funnel.
An exhilarating rush of adrenaline washed over the Gatellis as they took in the multiple-tornado show over the next hour. At several points, Joe found himself yelling out, "C'mon, baby!"
When it was over, the other chasers cheered on the two newbies.
"We were tearing up," Jeana said.
"It's like when a rookie hits his first home run, and everyone else is happy for him," said Joe, who was wearing a "PSU storm chaser" T-shirt that he got through the university's celebrated meteorology department.
Like the veteran storm chasers he met on the trip, Joe said he's now completely hooked on the experience.
"I can't wait to go back," he said.