Well yes, there is. In particular, there are two individuals who work tirelessly to catch these types of violent weather phenomena . They are Joan Boscà and Toni Rubio . They are members of the Valencian Meteorology Association and have worked as professional storm hunters since mid-2017 for the French company Météorage.
The managers of this company from the neighboring country needed two people who would be able to calibrate their lightning detection network in the Iberian Peninsula , and they hired Boscà and Rubio, who had spent several years chasing storms in an amateur way – they have been together since 2004 -. To carry out their pursuit, they use “an ultra-precision camera similar to that of the TV program El Hormiguero to record the entire process of the lightning from the first millisecond , a GPS to locate the exact point, an electromagnetic radiation detection antenna and material to interconnect everything ”, they explain.
Knowing precisely the direction of fall and the place of a lightning strike is very valuable for very diverse sectors. “For example, for different breakdowns, for the work of insurance companies, for those responsible for golf courses, for locating latent rays or to end forest fires sooner, among other utilities”, they add. Boscà and Rubio believe that Météorage will probably not require their services this year, because they have already carried out the calibration, “and it takes a while until it has to be done again.”
The economic issue is key in this activity, which is sometimes quite risky and is not paid as much as it should be. “Normally they pay us between 50 and 250 euros per storm hunted , in addition to allowances and travel expenses. Working four to five months a year is not enough to live on. It is also very dangerous and requires a lot of experience ”, emphasize Boscà and Rubio. In the United States, much more is charged for this work. According to this pair of experts, “there are about fifty professionals who work for various televisions, government agencies and even in the so-called tornado tourism”, which attracts quite a few curious travelers to the so-called Callejón de los Tornados or Tornado Alley, the vast area of the plains of the center of the North American country that includes the states of Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, Kentucky, Iowa, Minnesota, Dakota of the South and Dakota of the North. In any case, Boscà and Rubio assure that they will continue hunting storms, with or without business obligations.
