Free Republic

Ty Schmitt is a landscape photographer by profession, but his true passion is for the angry sky above. For the past eight years, Schmitt has been chasing storms, a lifestyle many were first exposed to in the 1996 blockbuster Twister. The photographer spent the past five of those years closely tracking storms in the Midwest, and the three years before that shooting monsoon thunderstorms in Arizona. “People come from around the world to chase storms in the Midwest as it produces the most photogenic storms in the world,” Schmitt tells me over email. “The Great Plains is the Mecca for...

Eighty years ago today and Monday, an immense hurricane -- stronger than Katrina when it struck New Orleans -- ransacked South Florida. The Great Miami Hurricane of 1926 killed hundreds and left bodies floating in Biscayne Bay. The Atlantic swamped much of Fort Lauderdale, Hollywood and Miami Beach. Ten thousand buildings were destroyed or damaged. 'The houses all around us were blown down,'' Grace Wisell of Miami wrote a few days after the storm. ``Trucks with mattresses in them are used for ambulances and they are piling dead bodies on top of each other.'' Can a similarly monstrous storm hit...