Doctor by day, storm chaser by choice: Colorado man helps communities prepare for natural disasters
As Colorado heads into another severe weather season, one storm chaser is already watching the skies.
Dr. Jason Persoff has spent more than 15 years chasing storms across Colorado and the Midwest. From tornadoes to tennis ball-sized hail, he's seen it all.
"I have not seen this ever before," Persoff said.
One of the most defining moments of his storm-chasing career happened in Joplin, Missouri, on May 11, 2011 -- the night of the seventh-deadliest tornado in U.S. history.
"It had gone from nothing to showing a debris ball on radar indicating a very violent tornado moving through that area," he said.
Persoff, a hospitalist, rushed to help at the only hospital left standing after the storm.
"I ran into a police officer; he had told me one of the two hospitals in Joplin had been destroyed by the tornado," he said.
He volunteered 16 hours of his time at that hospital, an experience that changed his life.
"I dedicated my life at that moment to try and improve disasters and how we respond to them," he said.
Persoff brought that mission back to Colorado, where he now focuses on emergency preparedness, especially in hospitals.
"Right now, a lot of my work focuses on improving emergency preparedness, mostly in hospitals," he said. "We are learning how to turn a hotel into a hospital in two to four weeks."
But Persoff still chases storms whenever he can -- often with friends.
"Now, one of the things that they're very firm about is that Colorado is not worth chasing, which is a complete and fabricated lie," he said. "Colorado is a phenomenal place to chase. It's just very challenging because it does not obey the rules."
His chase gear includes a camera, a tablet loaded with weather data, and a ham radio to communicate with his partners. Preparation, he says, begins the night before.
"When we're wrapping up a chase day, we actually have to do some forecasting for the next day, because the ideal situation is we're actually in position when we wake up in the morning," Persoff said.
That kind of planning helped him capture one of his most iconic images: the Campo tornado, with a sunset and wildflowers in the background.
"There were wildflowers to the west with the sunset off to the west and just this amazing textbook tornado -- one of the best of my life," he said.
Even his favorite photo didn't involve a tornado.
"There was absolutely no tornado with that, but man, that thing was spinning like a top," he said.
