I'm David Farrier in New Zealand at Accidently Marooned in America, and I want to figure out what makes this country tick.

Now, 1996 was a huge year for action movies.

We had Independence Day, Mars Attacks, and the first mission impossible film.

We also had Twister.

Twister introduced me to the world of storm chases, Americans who put themselves in the middle of hideous weather just for the thrill of it all.

Before Twister, storm chasing wasn't really all that well known to me, and today of course is everywhere thanks to various reality TV shows and YouTube channels.

And while people do chase storms the world over, America is where it really pops off, getting craziest in May and June in a place charmingly called tornado alley, the Great Plains of the United States.

There are about 1200 tornadoes in America each year, and so what else was I to do but set off for tornado alley to see what all the fuss was about.

I sent out to meet some of those who chased the storms, but I also wanted to find out what it was like for those that weren't chasing.

For those that were out there having a normal day in America, only to have a giant tornado arrive on their doorstep and change their lives forever.

So, grab your weather gear, GPS, and heavily fortified vehicle, because this is the storm chases episode.

When you first told me that you were thinking about doing this episode, this was while we were at the DMV the first time.

Yeah, it seems like a lifetime ago.

It really does. He said, I'm considering looking into these storm chasers and going with some storm chasers, and that's right, and getting sucked into a tornado.

And then that's where my artistic self and my personal self combined and conflict, because I don't want you to go into a tornado, but I knew it would probably be a good episode.

Yes. Look, two sort of alien fears that you had, and this is a bit of a spoiler, I went to Oklahoma, and the time of the month that storms were meant to be the biggest.

The weather was beautiful. It was amazing. So I'm saying, I'm fine. Don't worry about it. I did not ride shotgun in this episode, but the storm chasers I spoke to, they were great.

The next year, I've got a few offers to come out with them and try again. It was basically just incredibly bad timing.

And what time of year was it? What is the time? May June is the time when it kicks off, and it just happened, honestly, it was the nicest weather of all time.

Have you ever been near a big storm in America? Georgia has tornadoes. So I've been in them. We used to have tornado drills all the time.

This is what, see, this is what's so far. What was that like living, knowing that that could happen? You could just be randomly hit by a tornado.

Well, at school, we'd have tornado drills, like you had fire drills, which is just basically you just get under your desk, I'm pretty sure that was it. We just practice getting under our desk.

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