Photo by Milton Morris
Chris Jackson
Age: 37.
Resides in: Cayce.
Claim to fame: Storm chaser with a growing following on YouTube (@ChrisJacksonSC), Twitter (@ChrisJacksonSC) and Facebook (@MySCWeather).
Side hustle: Jackson is the meteorologist for the University of South Carolina baseball team. Before every home series, he works with the grounds crew and coaching staff to ensure no major weather disrupts the game. “That’s a fun part of the job,” he says, “because I’m a baseball guy.”
Fair warning: Jackson is quick to remind you it’s water, not wind, that’s the leading cause of deaths in hurricanes. “If you have moving water across the road,” he says, “you should never drive through that.”
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In the storm
Naturally, a storm chaser like Chris Jackson must speak of his hairiest, scariest bad-weather moment.
“We were chasing storms at night, east of College Station, Texas, and we actually had a tornado develop and hit us,” he says. “Thankfully, the main suction didn’t get us—we got caught on the outside—but we had trees and all kinds of debris flying across the road in front of our vehicle. That was a little scary.”
Jackson tells this story with the verbal shrug of a man who’s seen a thing or two. After all, he left a 15-year career as a firefighter in Lexington County to pursue another lifelong passion: storm chasing. He’d always wanted to be a meteorologist, he says, and always “enjoyed seeing the power Mother Nature has.”
“Basically, what I do is go out and document storms, whether it’s in video or picture form,” he explains. When a major system is brewing, Jackson gets to the landfall area a few days beforehand—to scout the area, post cameras, find buildings that provide protection, and talk to people on the ground.
“Once you decide you’re going to chase, for example, a hurricane, and you want to see the worst of it, you better be prepared to live on your own for about a week,” he says. “All your infrastructure is going to be gone. No power, no running water. So, we prepare for that.”
Still, there are considerable rewards to the inherent risks. Besides the followers he’s amassed on social media and the appearances he’s racked up on national news shows, he says he cares most about helping people in weather-stricken need. “Being able to be there and to use the skills I’ve learned over the 15 years in the fire department is real rewarding.”