“I call it the Manitoba monster. It had 7 funnels that were kind of doing an egg beater effect.”
That’s what Greg Johnson (photographer, storm chaser, and star of Netflix’s Tornado Hunters) has to say about one of the most memorable storms he’s seen in his 15-year career.
The fact that the tornado stands out in Johnson’s mind attests to the incredible storm potential in Manitoba. In November, Johnson will be in Winkler to offer a class that will help teach photographers how to capture the world-renowned weather phenomena in the area.
Extreme photography
Johnson is uniquely positioned to teach the photography course. He has gathered knowledge from all over the world.
“I've been across the country and across North America. I’ve travelled into the deep south of the United States pretty much every year for the last 15 years,” he says. “Across Canada, I've been to the Yukon and Nunavut and Northwest Territories. I've been to Newfoundland and BC and all points in between.”
Johnson, who is based in Saskatchewan, says last April, he also left the continent to take photos in Tanzania.
“On a Sunday afternoon I was photographing a pride of lions that had taken down a zebra,” he says. “By Wednesday afternoon, I was photographing a tornado in Nebraska, and I remember . . . going through my photos [at the end of the week] and thinking, ‘This isn’t real life. This can’t be real life. Who gets to do this?’”
"There’s something about the prairies”
Although Johnson travels all over for his work, the prairies hold a special place in his heart. The storms in this part of the country have even helped establish his career as a storm chaser.
“I moved out to the prairies from Ontario in 1995. I had never seen an [actual] thunderstorm before. I mean, I've experienced weather and storms and stuff, but there's something about the prairies,” he says. “You can see that thunderstorm coming from 100 kilometres away. It's to the west and it’s coming across the landscape — that's something you only get on the prairies. I was just totally into it right from the first one that I saw.”
The prairie storms helped solidify Johnson’s interest in inclement weather and transformed the nature of his photography. He jokes that before storms, he used to shoot “awful things” like “weddings, babies, plates of French fries, and pickles.”
As he became involved in capturing storms, it was clear that the subject matter resounded with audiences.
“I had the opportunity way back in 2009 to start photographing the weather and making a few bucks at it,” he says. “It wasn’t something that I consciously made a decision to do, but it turns out that everyone in this country . . . is fascinated and impacted by the weather.”
Broad interest in looking up
Johnson says that especially recently, what happens in the sky has everyone’s attention.
“If you just look at 2024 on its own, [there is a large] number of crazy weather stories . . . . There was [also] the comet, the aurora, and what's been going on with the hurricanes down south,” he says. “Weather drives the news, weather drives everything, and certainly for a community like Winkler or Morden, . . . [for] so many people, their livelihood depends on the weather.”
Johnson's enthusiasm and talent as a photographer along with the aspect of humanity that is naturally interested in the weather combined into a unique phenomenon in its own right — the legacy of "The Tornado Hunter," and his incredible successes.
“People are tuned in, and I just sort of tapped into that, that desire for weather information,” he says.
One of the successes of Johnson is a large social media following. On Instagram alone, he (@tornadogreg) has 143k followers. In 2015, he was also the star of Tornado Hunters, a series on Netflix that outlines the electrifying process of chasing storms.
“My high school guidance counsellor definitely owes me an apology,” he says. “Here I am at 54 years old, and, for the last 15 years, I've been making my living chasing tornadoes and hurricanes and crazy stuff like that,” he says. “I definitely think I'm blessed, and I have a really cool gig, and I just like to share that story with as many people as I can.”
A harrowing instance of wrong place, wrong time
Johnson’s spectacular photos and footage of storms have not come without a cost. Each time he chases a storm, there is risk involved, and occasionally, there have been close calls.
“I’ve had a couple of standout moments, one being inside . . . the largest tornado ever recorded. It happened on May 31st of 2013 in El Reno, Oklahoma,” he says. “It was a tragic day for a lot of reasons, and it was one of those days [where] you’ll never forget who you were with and what things smelled like and what people were wearing . . . . I can recount it [off the] top of my head, even though it was more than 10 years ago.”
The tornado in El Reno claimed the lives of 20 people, including a well-known storm chaser who had devoted his life to the purpose, Tim Samaras. The tornado, the largest on record, marked the first recorded instances of storm chasers losing their lives in their pursuits. It reverberated through not only the storm-chasing community but also North America overall.
Johnson found himself at the centre of the behemoth in El Reno.
“It was not purposeful . . . . I don't know if you've ever heard the baseball joke. I couldn't understand why the baseball was getting bigger, and then it hit me. That's kind of what happened to me that day,” he says. “We were watching [the tornado] from maybe 2 miles away, which is a relatively safe distance, [and] it was an average size for a tornado, but then it grew from a few hundred yards wide to 2.6 miles wide, over 4 kilometres wide. It did that in about a minute and a half.”
Johnson says the tornado “engulfed” his vehicle. He says that all the glass on the bulletproof vehicle was broken and that he and his colleagues were tossed around in it.
“I certainly wasn't trying to be there on purpose. I wouldn't want to do it again. It was a scary day,” he says. “It was kind of a 9/11 moment for me. There was a fair amount of damage in the community, and unfortunately, there are a fair number of people that lost their lives.”
A destructive, heartbreaking lesson
While no one took pleasure in how the tragedy developed, Johnson and others on the scene were able to provide information about the storm that offered insight into the behaviour of tornadoes — data that will hopefully prevent similar tragedies in the future.
Even so, Johnson is sombre about that fateful day.
“It was terrifying,” he says. “But looking back on it now, it's a little bit of a badge of honour.”
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Johnson says that for those who would like advice on how to stay safe during storm-chasing, there is only one sure-fire method: Don’t do it. There will always be risks.
In the public view
As Johnson has gained a larger and larger following through the years, public scrutiny has become another storm to weather. He says that when he began with Tornado Hunters, he drove around in a distinctive vehicle that was easily recognizable, but since then, he has moved away from being so visible.
“The reason, believe it or not, is that people kind of suck,” he says. “In 2019 we were chasing a storm in Nebraska, and [it was] a very, very safe situation in terms of the roads and stuff, but I went through a stop sign . . . . It became this giant thing online.”
Johnson says that on another occasion, during a high-stress situation when he was storm-chasing, a “bad word” slipped out.
“You would think that I had killed somebody,” he said of the attention the utterance garnered online.
The overwhelmingly negative response to simple human errors has changed how Johnson conducts himself.
“I just kind of stopped doing that stuff, and [now I] just quietly do my thing and sell footage,” he says.
Sharing knowledge and experience
Amid the excitement of high winds, life-altering tornadoes, media flurries, and all the other moving parts of his career, at the end of the day, it comes down to Johnson sitting quietly and going through the photos he has captured along the way. He’s a photographer at heart.
In the last 15 years, Johnson has managed to teach “thousands” of people how to use a camera even as he chases storm after storm. While valuing simplicity in such a complicated career might seem counterintuitive, it is the driving force of Johnson’s photography.
Anyone who would like to learn from Johnson is invited to register for his photography course in Winkler on November 28th and 29th.
Click here for more information.
With files from Connie Bailey