DeKALB – Walker Ashley estimates that he drives between 10 and 15,000 miles each summer chasing tornadoes and other severe weather systems through the Midwest and Great Plains states.

" I think I started chasing storms virtually from the couch watching the Weather Channel early on,” Ashley said of his childhood in Georgia. “It was when I went to graduate school in Nebraska that I really blossomed as a storm chaser.”

Ashley got his master’s degree in geosciences with a meteorology/climatology specialization at the University of Nebraska. He later got a Ph.D. in geography from the University of Georgia. He is an associate professor in the meteorology program at Northern Illinois University.