Tyler's Closing Thoughts

Hi everyone,

Thank you so much for following our journey the past few weeks. It's been a pleasure to share everything with you. I hope you enjoyed reading our words and seeing our pictures! (Hi Mrs. Barrett) SWIFT has been a surreal experience on so many levels and I am beyond grateful that I was able to be a part of it. To be able to learn about severe storms and tornadoes from our amazing professors, LCDR Burich and Dr. Barrett, and then, no joke, apply everything we learned in the field, was life changing.

Before this trip, I had neither been to the Midwest nor had I seen a real life tornado. However, I felt a personal connection to this trip from the beginning. My connection was with learning about severe storms, yes, but it was also with the people that have been and continue to be effected by severe storms and tornadoes in this region. In October of 2012, Hurricane Sandy ravaged the east coast, centering on the Jersey Shore where I have lived my entire life before college. Many of my friends and family lost everything from this storm. Luckily, my immediate family was hardly effected, but I can still vividly remember walking through the beachfront of my hometown, seeing everything destroyed. Here's a picture of my town's beachfront the day after Sandy made landfall:

This personal connection was felt most strongly during our trip to Joplin, MO on day 3. Walking through the beautiful memorial that was erected after an EF5 tornado destroyed much of the town in 2013, I couldn't help but think back to 2012 in Manasquan, NJ. On both of those days, people's lives were flipped upside down from the power of mother nature. Before we had even chased a storm, I was firmly reminded why I decided to apply for this training. 

(Joplin Tornado statistics located at the memorial)

I'm not going to go in depth on any specific days during the trip because we already did that, but just know that ever expectation I had for SWIFT was surpassed. I'm upset that it's over, but I can't wait to share the stories and memories with friends and family throughout my summer. I hope you have a great day and don't forget to look up in the sky every once in a while. The atmosphere is always doing amazing things.

-Tyler