Tornado hunter Greg Johnson has seen some incredible scenes while chasing storms in the United States.
“The last week and a half has been unbelievable,” Johnson said. “You’re sort of just looking around and in 360 degrees everywhere you look, there’s a scene of devastation.”
The Regina native was in the States for some of the worst storms in several decades.
“April is now officially the worst tornado month of all time,” Johnson said.
Wednesday April 27 completely blew the old one day record from 1974 away – 165 tornados touched down and almost 300 lives were lost.
Johnson did not make it to Alabama, one of the worst hit areas, but he did capture images from Texas, Missouri and Arkansas.
“I personally witnessed the devastation at a town called Vilonia, Arkansas where about 200 homes were completely destroyed and four people lost their lives,” Johnson said.
Seeing those images had a strong impact on Johnson. As a storm chaser, being in the eye of the storm is part of his job. It is, however, difficult to be there while people are trying to pick up their lives.
“It’s life changing when you see it,” he said. “Unbelievable devastation, it was hard to take pictures of it.”
There is no doubt the storms can result in complete disaster and Johnson’s pictures and videos prove that.
“At 300, 400 km/h wind speed, these storms are traveling at 50, 60 miles an hour over land, there’s just really no way to get out of the way,” Johnson said.
He believes there is much more devastation to come.
“The entire month has just been wave after wave of storms and it doesn’t look like it will stop anytime soon,” Johnson explained.
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