SHREDDED WHEAT, OK – Frustrated and disappointed after years of chasing radar blips of storms across the Plains states with only rare sightings of their darling tornados, Storm Chaser videographers this year have implemented a change of tactics. Now Storm Chasers rely on something which frankly scares the bejeezus out of them: statistics. And what those statistics conclusively show is that for the highest odds of a violent tornado encounter, they need merely go to a trailer park.
Examination of 50 years of tornado-strike data through December 2008 by the Statistics and Numbers Manipulators (SNM) shows that 95% of all tornados ever to touch down in the U.S. strike trailer parks, typically accompanied by utter devastation and large loss of life. The remaining 5% strike mobile homes while on the road being towed to trailer parks. Closer inspection reveals that every mobile home neighborhood in the U.S. is leveled by a violent tornado at least once a year, and 25% are flattened three or more times in the average storm season. Like most statistical studies, however, this one was completely ignored and forgotten.
Credit sixteen-year-old Wendy Hayle, an SNM intern and daughter of videographer Gayle Hayle, veteran Storm Chaser at the Oklahoma Ominous Photography Society (OOPS), with making the critical connection. After Hayle’s February 2 OOPS lecture describing a mobile tornado intercept success rate of only 0.4%, Wendy said, “Mommy-o, instead of, like, totally driving all over, like, everywhere and totally, like, striking out so much, why don’t you just, like, go to a trailer park and, like, wait? You’re, like, totally bound to get totally hit by a, like, really big one. Statistics don’t , like, lie.” The OOPSters and Storm Chasers immediately embraced this, like, totally rad idea. As it turns out, Wendy was right.
Now calling themselves Storm Squatters, these brave storm chroniclers, photographers, and videographers immediately began scattering among trailer parks across the Great Plains to simply wait for the tornados to come to them. Sure enough, intercept rates have hurtled skyward. As predicted by the historical statistics , already an average of 10% of the mobile home Squatters have received a direct hit by an Armageddon-like storm every single day during this spring storm season. No single Squatter has gone more than three weeks in a trailer park without at least one devastating tornado observation. The Squatters are totally stoked.
As a result of this change in tactics, capturing awe-inspiring videos of nature’s most violent storms has become almost trivially easy to pull off. Unfortunately, remaining alive to tell the tale has not gone as well. With trailer park tornado strike survival rates historically being only 5%, the Storm Squatters this season have verified those unattractive odds. Of the 1,000 Storm Squatter members who entered the mobile home encampments only 50 remain alive and squatting today. The 950 who perished, however, did furnish totally freaking awesome videos of widespread mayhem and utter destruction leading up to their violent and unfortunate demises.
A library of Storm Squatters’ incredible footage is now available on YouTube on the OOPS Tornado home page. There anyone can witness firsthand Mother Nature’s graphic, raw, uncensored, painful birth of Trailer Trash.
