Storm Chasing South Africa is run by me, Bryn De Kocks. The purpose of the website is to provide information to South African residents as well as those abroad with information regarding severe weather in South Africa. Storm chasing is a growing hobby (and job for some), it originally started in the United States of America- where the number of tornadoes annually is far higher than anywhere else on earth. Over the past few decades the activity of storm chasing has become popular in both the United Kingdom and Australia, not to mention smaller followings in numerous other locations.

Chasers all have different ambitions when chasing, some do it for the science some for the thrill and others for reasons of photography and just general interest. Personally my main objects involve photography and video recording of storms to develop a media archive of storms which have come and gone. This web site will host most of these documentations.

I have been interested in severe weather as a child and in 2003 I took it a step further by purchasing a digital camera and the very next month I was lucky enough to be witness to one of Cape Town's most memorable thunderstorms in the past 6 years. After that I was hooked on the idea of being able to capture rare cloud formations and began tracking South African severe weather daily. In 2004 I also began tracking hurricanes (a process which is done online), and more recently began following the United States tornado season (A dream to one day go chasing in tornado alley).

I currently reside in Somerset West, South Africa where severe weather is minimal and thunderstorms are a rare occurance. Though if there is potential you can bet that I'll be monitoring the situation with a charged camera and video recorder. I also plan to spend every summer for 2-3 weeks chasing in Gauteng in the hopes of intercepting a tornado- Yes, South Africa gets tornadoes too.

DISCLAIMER :  While I am able to read weather models used for forecasting my access is only via public model plots and this makes the accuracy suffer a bit. I am not a qualified forecaster, so do not plan around what I say. My posts are purely what I see, and can't be compared to trained meteorologists with decades experience and years of studying. Rather visit the South African Weather Service at www.weathersa.co.za for your forecasts.

I also have another base jumping related website: http://www.basejumping.co.za