Sarah Hasan Al-Sayegh stood on the roof of a Kuwaiti house at sunset and waited with her camera, hoping to capture the moment the sun dropped below the horizon.
Instead, she saw a cloud in the distance, and it was quickly approaching her. The friend who was with her knew exactly what it was: a sandstorm.
“It was an adrenaline rush,” says Al-Sayegh. I. “I was so excited and scared at the same time. The wind was fast. Big billboards were just falling on cars.”
Taking the opportunity to photograph the approaching storm, they quickly returned to the building. “It hit us when we got to the elevator,” she says. “We arrived just in time. When we got to the car it was dusty, dark and windy. It was a huge storm.”
The 40-year-old had photographed rural and urban landscapes before, but after that first experience in March 2011, thunderstorm photography turned into an “addiction”. “I just wanted to gain knowledge,” she says, “to know how and why this happens.”
Extreme weather events have “dominated the natural disaster landscape” since the turn of the century, according to the United Nations. Between 1980 and 1999, 4,212 disasters were attributed to natural disasters worldwide. Over the next 19 years, that number nearly doubled to 7,348 events, leading to 1.23 million deaths and affecting 4.2 billion people.
“These storms need to be documented,” says Al-Sayegh. “This is what is actually happening on the ground. Things change. There is climate change.”
She began spending her free time from her main job as an accountant. “If there was a thunderstorm, I would just go outside and try my luck,” she says. “But I really didn’t know anything.”
She followed Mike Olbinski, an American storm chaser and photographer, on social media and in 2015 heard that he was organizing a tour to photograph the rainy season in Arizona. “I thought, come with me,” she says.
She spent a week with Olbinski in Arizona, where she learned how to make weather forecasts, check radar, use maps and identify weather patterns.
![Tornado Alley is the informal name for the area of the United States (or, by some definitions, even southern Canada) where tornadoes are most common.[1] The term was first used in 1952 as the name of a research project to study severe weather in parts of Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, South Dakota, Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, New Mexico, Colorado, North Dakota and Minnesota.[citation needed] It is largely a media-created term, although tornado climatologists differentiate peaks of activity in different areas.[2] and storm chasers have long recognized the Great Plains tornado belt.[3] Although the boundaries of Tornado Alley are not clearly defined, its core extends from North Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas to Nebraska.[4] Research shows that tornadoes are becoming more common in the northern parts of Tornado Alley, where they reach the Canadian prairies.[5] Storm Chaser Photographer Sarah Hassan. Image courtesy of Sarah H. AlSayegh.](https://wp.inews.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/SEI_180979960.jpg?w=760)
They tracked and photographed the monsoons, and when she returned to Kuwait, she felt she had the information she needed to improve her storm hunting back home. Lack of access to forecasting technology available in the United States “made the task much more difficult,” but Al Sayegh persevered and pursued the storms in Kuwait despite the risks.
She recalls finding herself alone in the Kuwaiti desert, searching for a thunderstorm, shortly after her first visit to the United States.
“I was so nervous,” she says. “My Jeep did not have the 4×4 option. I was hoping I wouldn’t get stuck.” She had to flee shortly before the storm reached her: “I barely escaped with my life.”
Most of the time she returns to Arizona to learn more from Olbinski, and on one of those trips she was able to photograph her first tornado—from a distance. “I couldn’t believe I was witnessing this,” she says. “I saw him from the very beginning until he fell to the ground and disappeared in the rain.”
She also had one of her scariest moments with Olbinski in the Texas cornfields in 2016 while they were tracking a supercell thunderstorm, the most severe category. “You could hear the thunder so close. Then lightning struck a few meters away from us. We dove in fear. We thought this was the end.”
![Tornado Alley is the informal name for the area of the United States (or, by some definitions, even southern Canada) where tornadoes are most common.[1] The term was first used in 1952 as the name of a research project to study severe weather in parts of Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, South Dakota, Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, New Mexico, Colorado, North Dakota and Minnesota.[citation needed] It is largely a media-created term, although tornado climatologists differentiate peaks of activity in different areas.[2] and storm chasers have long recognized the Great Plains tornado belt.[3] Although the boundaries of Tornado Alley are not clearly defined, its core extends from North Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas to Nebraska.[4] Research shows that tornadoes are becoming more common in the northern parts of Tornado Alley, where they reach the Canadian prairies.[5] Storm Chaser Photographer Sarah Hassan. Image courtesy of Sarah H. AlSayegh.](https://wp.inews.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/SEI_180980175.jpg?w=760)
Although she is fascinated by weather patterns in the United States, Al-Sayegh is committed to documenting extreme weather events in her area. She believes storm chasers like her can impact meteorology in the Middle East, but says they are not taken seriously.
Al-Sayegh hopes her images will make a difference as extreme weather events, including sandstorms, floods and even tornadoes, increase in the region.
She’s lived through at least 50 hurricanes, but admits it’s dangerous because “you can never predict the surprises” and there’s always an “exit plan.”
“In 2018, I came all the way to the desert,” she says. “I just knew it was going to be really bad. “I turned around and I’m grateful I did it.”
The storm she attempted to chase ended up causing severe floods that would have left her trapped if she had chosen to remain in the desert.
“My mother thinks I’m doing a ‘man’s job,’” she says. “She’s scared and tells me to look for something beautiful, like a sunset.”
But Al-Sayegh wants to show girls from Middle Eastern cultures that if they love science and storms, they can “make it”: “I want to change the lives of all women.”
Source: I News
I am Michael Melvin, an experienced news writer with a passion for uncovering stories and bringing them to the public. I have been working in the news industry for over five years now, and my work has been published on multiple websites. As an author at 24 News Reporters, I cover world section of current events stories that are both informative and captivating to read.