drop down a little bit. despite the risk, john continues to record, a dangerous distraction in an already tense situation. again, very dangerous. this is borderline stupid. just all kinds of things you have to be ready for. there s heavy rain, strong winds. very strong winds. gusts easily up to about 50, 60 miles per hour. potentially damaging hail and, of course, tornadoes, some of which may be wrapped in rain that you can t even see. but as he nears the back edge of the powerful storm, he makes the mistake of thinking the worst is behind him. i relaxed somewhat as i got to where i wanted to be and realized i was probably okay. wrong. very well-defined rain shaft over here. we ll get a better shot of that pretty soon, since we re in the clear. john is about to get a shot,
like neither of us could believe what had just happened. here s a flat tire. you can see where the lightning went in, right there in the corner. and it also got the back tire. this one. again, you can see where the lightning actually went, connected on through. the lightning current was so strong that even though the tires were made of rubber, there was enough steel in the tires to channel the electricity and to you cause them to instantly go the flat. the lightning takes quite a toll on his equipment. what happened was that it hit the radio antenna for a happen radio, and it used to be right here. big antenna going up about that high. you can see there s some scorch marks on the back of the truck here. john is lucky to escape with his life, with unbelievable footage.
john makes the risky choice to chase alone today. he does, however, make sure to stay connected. over here is the ham radio. you can see some of the antennas there. after three hours on the road, he sees the development he s been waiting for. behind me is a fully formed cell. i m on the eastern side of it now, which means that i want to get around it. coming in behind the storm is the safest part of the storm, because you re not threatened by the storm coming at you, but at the same time, you re in the part of the storm where any tornadoes will typically form. to his dismay, he sees he s in exactly the wrong place. unfortunately, it looks like i m headed more into the center of the cell than i d like to. unfortunately, i realized i had to drive through the thunderstorms in order to get to the backside of them. we re in a tornado watch that has been issued until 8:00 this evening. this cloud here is starting to
i thought i was going to be electrocuted or suffocating in smoke. and i totally thought i was going to die. so i absolutely panicked. even for a battle-scarred veteran stormchaser, taking a direct hit like this is a bone-chilling moment. i started honking on the horn because there was an rv in front of me. i thought i would try to get their attention, but they just sped on ahead and i actually don t blame them at all because they might have thought that they were next. alone, john pulls out his cell phone. i need to stop. i need to call 911 right away. as john calls for help, his footage is cut off for several minutes. the thing about the 911 call is that they didn t know exactly where i was and neither did i. so, it took them about 15 minutes to get there. now that the storm has passed and help has arrived, john begins to film, again. i m here with the nebraska sheriff and the truck was just
despite the risk, john continues to record, a dangerous distraction in an already tense situation. again, very dangerous. this is borderline stupid. there s all kinds of things you have to be ready for. there s heavy rain, strong winds. very strong winds. gusts easily up to about 50, 60 miles an hour. potentially damaging hail and, of course, tornadoes, some of which may be wrapped in rain that you can t even see. but as he nears the back edge of the powerful storm, he makes the mistake of thinking the worst is behind him. i relaxed somewhat as i got to where i wanted to be and realized i was probably okay. wrong. very well-defined rain shaft over here. we ll get a better shot of that pretty soon, since we re in the as soon as we re in the clear. john is about to get a shot, but not the kind he expected.