Lucas Munzlinger Photography

Before we get into the story about how I got into storm chasing, I thought that it would be best to talk about where I am from first. I am from a very fairly decent sized town in Missouri named House Springs, This town has 14,306 people that live there, I lived there until September of 2017 when my whole family and I moved to a small, rural Missouri town named Dittmer.
Now on to the story!

One evening when I was 4 years old, my sister and I watched a movie together. That movie we watched was the movie “Twister”. The movie sparked an interest and made me curious about weather. So, as years go on, my curiosity about weather started to build and I would be watching weather and storm chasing documentaries. I’d also be viewing storm chaser movies, storm chaser TV shows including the Twister Sisters, “Storm Chasers” on the Discovery Channel, “Tornado Hunters” on TruTV, along with reading books about weather and storm chasing.
There where even some severe weather events that really started to ignite my passion in weather. There was one severe weather event in 2010 when a hail core went through my neighborhood. I walked out on the porch, took off my shirt, grabbed a throw pillow, and ran out in to the yard yelling like a hillbilly. I wish my parents recorded that (haha)! There were two occasions when tornadoes went through my town very close to my home. These tornadoes were on May 31, 2013 and September 1, 2014. Both tornadoes were rated EF1.
In August of 2014, I was at a church youth group and a few people found out that I was interested in storms. A fellow church member took me to meet a local storm chaser, I was pretty awestruck and shy. He was pretty excited to meet me that evening. We spent an hour or more talking about storms and how we got interested in weather. He showed me some pretty cool storm photos. That day is when a new friendship was formed. He also has mentored me on photography and taught me a lot about severe weather. I definitely appreciate the things he has taught me and helped me pave a path to where I am today.
Fast forward 2 years
In August of 2016, He took me on my first storm chase. It was local and it was fun. We saw lots of lightning including a power flash from a lightning strike. In September of 2016, he again took me on another local storm chase just a few counties south of where I live. We saw a few nice wall clouds and a possible landspout. That was while still in my sophomore year of High School. That’s when I began to research and learn more on how to forecast storms and how severe weather happens.
In September 2018, I got interested in photography and my parents gave me a Canon EOS Rebel T6 DSLR camera for my birthday. It was now my senior year of High School. On March 24, 2019, He once again took me on a local storm chase. This is when I got to see my first major supercell thunderstorm. This storm did produce a tornado, but it dissipated before we got to see it. After that storm chase, I couldn’t do much more storm chasing due to my graduation and family vacation plans.

Present day

2020 would be a year with a lot of firsts. My dad and I went on a storm chase together. I also had the opportunity to go storm chasing in plains for the first time. I began figuring out my own forecasts and figuring out the best positioning for viewing storms.
On May 3, 2020, I packed up some clothes and camera gear and met up with my good friend Richard Thies. We headed to Overland Park, Kansas to meet up with our friend, Brian Stertz. The next day would be my first storm chase in the plains with Richard and Brian. We intercepted a high based supercell that had penny sized hail at our location near La Cygne, Kansas. Later that day, we got onto a storm that looked promising. It gave us a wall cloud and lightning show, but just could not produce a tornado. It was definitely a great first plains storm chase.

My family and I where camping down in Steelville, Missouri. I definitely did not know that the next day, June 27, 2020, I was going to finally see my first tornado. I was alerted through a text, on a weather chat my friends and I had created, of nearby thunderstorms. I asked my friend, Calvin Thomas, for an updated radar scan of the storms on radar. There was a severe warned storm that looked good coming our direction, so I grabbed my camera gear and opened up the camper door, looked at my dad and said, “Dad, look at this storm. It’s gonna produce a tornado. I know it. I can feel it in my gut. Please take me up there!” He said “OK”, so we hopped in the truck and headed out of the campsite toward our target spot near Cuba, Missouri to position for the storm. As the storm came into view, I witnessed my very first tornado in the distance. I was so excited to finally see a tornado after 5 years of storm chasing. I had to wait until Monday morning, June 30, 2020, to find out that the National Weather Service in Saint Louis, Missouri completed their survey and officially rated the tornado an EF-0 on the enhanced Fujita Scale. This tornado had peak winds of 85mph with the maximum width of 100 yards and a path length of 0.8 miles. A nice reward for a storm chase that only lasted about 20 to 30 minutes.

This year, 2026, a friend of mine, Mike Thorton, helped reignite a passion of mine. That is advocating severe weather safety. My goal is to make my community more weather aware and mitigated for severe weather!
Now, I’m going on my 10th year of storm chasing. I’m excited for what’s to come in the future. I will continue to keep my passion for weather, storm chasing, and promoting weather safety, raw and true!
A big thank you to my Family and Friends for supporting me and helping me pave a path to where I am today! A Big thank you to Richard Thies for proofreading and tidying up my blogs. check out his website he has hours of fun storm chasing blogs to read! Click Here to go to his website.