—As told to Amy S. Choi

Weather Man

Storm Chaser

"The first time I ever went tornado chasing, I ended up in Saragosa, Tex. Maybe 30 people were killed, and it was absolutely heart-wrenching. Here I was working, and it was a disaster for these people. That was when I realized storm chasing had a really ugly, dangerous side to it. Still, I wanted to be my own boss, and chasing storms gives me the artistic freedom I was missing. When I started, this was an adventure frontier nobody had ever heard of. I’ll do it as long as I can.

A lot of chasers will tell you their closest calls are weird things, like traffic accidents or food poisoning after a storm. The scariest situation I’ve ever been in was probably in ’95, trying to get away from a tornado in western Kansas. I was just trapped on a lonely road with gigantic, baseball-size hail coming in through the windshield. I don’t think I’m an adrenaline junkie—it’s all just part of the job.

WHO: Warren Faidley, 50
WHAT: Faidley is a photographer who sells weather photos to news organizations, advertising companies, and photo agencies.
WHERE: Tucson
EMPLOYEES: None
REVENUES: $200,000
HOW HE DID IT: Faidley was a photographer with a local newspaper in the mid-1980s when he was assigned to shoot a storm. Craving gigs other than “boring city council meetings,” he says, he started selling weather images to stock photography firms. He left the newspaper business in 1989.