Welcome to Weather Gods Tornado Chasing Tours.

Welcome to Weather Gods Tornado Chasing Tours.   My name is Mark Lingl, I am the owner/operator of Weather Gods Inc.  You may have seen my tornado videos on the Weather Channel, ABC, NBC, CBS, and several other tv stations, showing some awe inspiring shots of natures fury.  Here is why you should choose Weather Gods Tornado Chasing Tours, it is simply because we are the most successful tornado chasing tour company in the business.   Our success rate is on our home page.   100%.   With Weather Gods you will be in the action daily traveling in clean, comfortable, air conditioned vans.   Then staying in quality hotels at night.  On top of all that Weather Gods Inc. has an excellent safety record.

 I have been a severe weather enthusiast since I was a kid. My tornado chasing started while I was at Northern Illinois University working on my meteorology degree.  It was Mothers Day 1988, a fellow meteorology student and I ended up seeing twin tornados in De Kalb County, IL.  Since then I have been hooked.

What separates Weather Gods from the rest of the group?  I am an award winning forecaster,

and a have a degree in Meteorology (Click here to see a photo of my degree).   I am the best severe weather forecaster around.   That is the key, and it will usually get me in the game.  Second I have excellent storm chasing abilities.  Fellow chasers say that I have a great model of storms in my mind.  So not only will I put you in the battle zone with my forecasting abilities, but we will also get you to the spot in the storm where you need to be and when you need to be there.    Third I am what tornado chasers call a ground pounder.  I put in a lot of miles in a week long chase.   You have to put in the miles to be in the right place at the right time.   Also Weather Gods limits the boundaries and obstacles when we chase.   Other chase groups will limit the area’s that they will chase in, distances they will travel, or are just busy trying to emphasize chasing more of as a learning experience.   The one thing that we are here to do is to show you a tornado, from a safe distance.   That is our objective.   From my 20 years experience I learned that to be successful you need to look at every angle, every detail, and push yourself to the limit if you want to see a tornado. 

For equipment we have a variety of tools to help me with my forecasts, now casts, and chasing.   Weather Gods has a lightning detector that can detect lightning strikes as far as 300 miles away.  Mobile internet access, laptop computers, in motion satellite trackers, GPS with mapping, anemometers, thermo hygrometer, and the list goes on.  We don’t want to emphasize our equipment.  The reason why is, all of the equipment that we use are just tools.  You need to have that instinct or sixth sense about storms to really be successful.

Myths about tornados

All tornados don’t look like this.  

Three out of four tornados are F0 or F1 on the Fujita scale.   That means winds less than 112 mph.   They look more like these pictures. 

The reason for bringing this up is so that you don’t have an unrealistic view of tornado chasing.  Violent tornados, F4’s and F5’s, are extremely rare.  Violent tornados alone comprise less than 2% of all tornados.   Don’t get me wrong, seeing any tornado is fantastic. 

If you are expecting to go out and see a monster F4 or F5 tornado on your first chase, the odds are against it, however that could happen.  The other approximately 25% of tornados are classified as strong which is an F2 or F3.  See picture to the left. 

Which chase company should you decide to go with?  What you need is a tornado chasing team that is consistent and professional.   One that sees tornados or funnels every week they go out.   If you look into it, several other chase companies in the heart of chase season can go weeks with out seeing a tornado.   All of the other chase companies don’t even post their success rates.   I wonder why that is?  You can decide that.    The one thing that I promise you is that on my home page that Weather Gods weekly record for every chase team will be on our web site.  This past year again, we were 100% successful.