Storm chasers Jim Edds and Jeff Gammons reveal the gadgets they use to capture Mother Nature wreaking havoc.

Watch tonight's episode of "The Screen Savers" to learn about the store-bought and customized gear professional storm chasers Jim Edds and Jeff Gammons use to capture catastrophic weather on camera. Click the video links to the right to see incredible footage of violent storms Edds and Gammons shot themselves.

The life of a storm chaser

Weathervine is a small family of chasers. Most of us started as hobbyists back in the early '90s, chasing local storms in Florida. Over the years we moved to chasing storms across the nation during regional storm seasons and hurricane seasons in the late summer.

Now chasing is half-business, half-hobby. We sell most of our video today to The Weather Channel and other TV productions as stock video. There's an archive of our stock videos on the Breaking News Video Network (BNVN) Storm Chasing Videos page.

When we're not chasing storms, we travel across Florida during the off-season and teach severe-weather safety to schoolkids. We also keep Weathervine.com updated with our latest chase encounters, so site visitors can follow us via photos and video footage taken during and after the chase.

Great gear for chasing storms

You'll need a little bit more than an umbrella and a pair of galoshes to chase storms. Here's what we use when we're on the road.


  • Sony Vaio laptop with 1-GHz clock speed
    We use the laptop to download weather information from the Internet, capture footage from the video camera, and FTP encoded video files to The Weather Channel and BNVN's "DeathStar" server.

  • GPS unit with USB connector
    It's critical to know exactly where you are in relation to a storm, tornado, hailstorm, or anything else Mother Nature throws at you. The USB connector means I don't need batteries for the GPS unit.

  • DeLorme Street Atlas USA software with GPS
    Street Atlas is the software I use to track my position with the GPS.

  • Sprint PCS Connection Card and Connection Manager software
    I couldn't live without the Sprint PCS card. It lets me download critical Doppler radar data, satellite loops, and hurricane updates anywhere from Brownsville, Texas, to Virginia (that's hurricane-chase territory). I can download at around 110 Kbps and upload at 60 Kbps with Sprint's PCS network.

  • Proxim Orinoco 802.11b/g PC Silver Wi-Fi card
    This card lets me access Wi-Fi hot spots on both 802.11b and 802.11g networks. I might skip this card, because I like the EnGenius one better!

  • EnGenius 200mW high-power Wi-Fi card with 5dB gain rubber ducky antenna
    The EnGenius card allows much greater standoff range and has double the outpower of most Wi-Fi cards. I also like the higher gain antenna.

  • Boingo Wi-Fi sniffer program
    I use this to automatically scan for Wi-Fi access points.

  • Specially modified underwater camera housing for shooting in hurricanes
    It's the only surefire way to keep a video camera dry when Mother Nature throws storm surges and horizontal rain at it.

  • Sony TRV900 three-chip MiniDV camcorder with FireWire
    This small, lightweight camera goes into the underwater housing.

  • Sony VX2000 three-chip low-light MiniDV camcorder
    This is the storm chaser's camera of choice. I use this on a tripod and record wireless interviews with it.

  • Adobe Premiere
    My quick-editing software, with an MPEG-2 encoder plug-in for converting AVI files.

  • Handheld Brunton Sherpa wind gauge and barometer
    This gives me an idea of how close I am to the "eye" or lowest pressure point of a hurricane. The wind gauge lets me clock the winds at my location and report pressure and wind speed to the National Hurricane Center's communications section.

  • Handheld ham radio
    All the chasers use this to keep in touch in a convoy.


Run for cover

Here are some of our favorite websites for watching storm footage, researching weather, and modeling hurricanes.