Young photographer chases his dream of darkening clouds and gathering tempests as he pursues the majesty of nature, Wang Qian reports.

A supercell evolves into a squall line in Hulunbuir, Inner Mongolia autonomous region, taken by photographer Liu Yijing in August 2020. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)

When storm clouds gather, and the wind howls in anger, the natural reaction for most people is to seek shelter. But some run toward the danger. Photographer Liu Yijing is one of that rare breed, as he captures and frames nature's wrath.

For the past year, Liu, 21, has traveled about 24,000 kilometers across 11 provincial-level administrative regions in China, chasing and recording thunderstorms. From the first signs－a stronger breeze developing into a gale, a turbulent sky, and birds fleeing－he prepares for what appears to be a daunting task. In 2021, he took more than 48,000 time-lapse photos, showing Mother Nature at her most violent.

It is a typical supercell and I still have a vivid memory about how thrilled I felt the moment it formed. While recording, I couldn’t control myself and kept screaming.

Liu Yijing, 21, photographer

Liu has received a great deal of recognition for his work. His photos captured a complete supercell structure that occurred in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region on Aug 22. The image has been picked as the cover photo for the May edition of Advances in Atmospheric Sciences, a key publication in its field.

"It is a typical supercell and I still have a vivid memory about how thrilled I felt the moment it formed. While recording, I couldn't control myself and kept screaming," he says, adding that the picture and video have gone viral on the internet, even among meteorologists.

The term supercell is used by meteorologists to describe a type of long-lasting thunderstorm that rotates and is usually accompanied by dangerous weather conditions, including hail, damaging winds and sometimes tornadoes. It contains a deep and persistent rotating updraft called a mesocyclone.

A classic supercell thunderstorm in Damao Banner of Baotou in Inner Mongolia in July, taken by Liu. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)

He was invited in September to give a lecture on his storm-chasing experiences at Peking University's School of Physics. He appeared on popular Chinese talk show Day Day Up by Hunan Satellite TV in February. Invited as a guest cameraman, he worked on China Central Television's documentary The Power of Nature, which premiered in January.

On social media platforms, such as Bilibili, Douyin and Sina Weibo, known as Range Sifang (Four Directions), he doesn't only want to show how awesome these natural phenomena are to witness, but also tries to explain the danger and how to minimize damage.

Many social media users nicknamed him "storm chaser". A Sina Weibo user named Guanwaidelin comments that Liu's photos and videos show how amazing and powerful nature is and how insignificant humans are. Another, called Lucia Wei, says that before Liu, storm-chasing photographers were rarely heard of in China and that it is a career for those who are not only brave, but also armed with sufficient meteorological knowledge.

He captures the stunning photos of a storm in Inner Mongolia's Chifeng in July. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)

Gone with the wind

Born and raised in Nanchang, Jiangxi province, Liu became fascinated with thunderstorms as a child. His favorite picture book in kindergarten was one that illustrated the manifestation of different scales of wind. While his classmates in primary school watched animated shows, his favorite TV program was the daily weather forecast.

During junior middle school, he joined amateur meteorology groups on instant messaging program QQ, which attracted input from experts working in the field. This communication helped him study the subject intently. He read numerous books related to weather and climate and studied meteorological affairs online.

"I realized in senior middle school that meteorology was what I wanted to do," Liu says, adding that he opened his own account on social media to forecast weather and spread the science of meteorology.

It was around that time he was diagnosed with chronic colitis, a bowel disorder, but he still managed to pass the national college entrance exam, yet failed to achieve a high enough score to get into his ideal school to study his dream major. On campus though he became interested in landscape photography and, in early 2020, he purchased some equipment, such as cameras and a drone, and opened a photo studio with a friend.

A supercell thunderstorm with lightning strike, over Ulaanqab, Inner Mongolia, in August 2020, taken by Liu. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)

Again, fate dealt him a bad hand, as the COVID-19 outbreak interrupted the project and he returned home due to lockdown.

Just as the old saying goes: "when one door closes, another opens", with Liu's studio plan delayed, he started thinking about what he was really interested in recording. The majesty of thunderstorms came to mind.

When a storm hit his hometown in 2020, Liu operated his drone to take a time-lapse video. This kick-started his career as a storm photographer.

In July 2020, he went to Inner Mongolia for his first storm-chasing trip. The location was carefully chosen as, for Liu, the region meets three conditions for photographing storms: having flat prairie terrain with no valleys or mountains, being sparsely populated and with relatively low humidity.

"A strong storm can move at a speed of 50 to 60 kilometers per hour, which means that if you want to catch its pace, the average speed of the car should be about 70 km an hour," Liu says, adding that, in crowded cities, it is almost impossible to drive that fast. On the wide-open prairies of Inner Mongolia, however, that is not the case.

"Dry air facilitates high visibility, enabling us to see storms forming even hundreds of kilometers away," he explains. "It is important for storm chasers to be able to predict a storm's direction."

Liu Yijing, 21, photographer. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)

Although his first attempt was not fruitful, on a second trip to Hulunbuir, Inner Mongolia, in August 2020, he took a photo that he treasures to this day.

"It was a supercell evolving into a squall line. In front of it, there was a shelf cloud hanging in the air like an incredible long wall, rushing toward me. To capture the complete time-lapse video of it, I stayed until the last possible minute, the point when the gusts became too strong," Liu recalls. The wind speeds were beyond the top of the range, recorded at 24.5 to 28.4 meters per second. This was confirmed later when he listened to breaking news on the car radio.

The strong wind smashed one of his cameras and Liu had to grab hold of the roof rack on his off-road vehicle so that the wind would not blow him away. The gale lasted about five minutes before the hail descended with a venom.

"Although it was dangerous, the images and videos gave me confidence and encouragement that I can handle storm photography as a lifelong career in China," Liu says.

For him, a safe distance for shooting is between 5 km and 10 km away from a storm. He always emphasizes in his posts that storm photography is quite dangerous, warning people not to take unnecessary risks.

His photo appears on the cover of Advances in Atmospheric Sciences, a meteorological journal. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)

Beauty and the beast

A storm may be, in a sense, beautiful, as nature displays its raw power. But, for farmers and herdsmen, it is a question of their crops, herds and livelihoods potentially being wiped out.

Liu learned this lesson during one of his trips to Ulaanqab, Inner Mongolia, in 2020. After shooting for about five minutes, he heard a strange sound that was not the wind, rain or thunder. He felt an unknown danger and called to his driver, and the pair clambered into the car just in time. Within seconds, hailstones, about the size of ping-pong balls, started hitting the car's roof. If they had been exposed to them, they would have suffered serious injury.

That night, Liu encountered a herdsman. When he heard that Liu was a storm photographer, he got upset, saying that photographers like Liu should direct their lens toward the damage caused by storms. The herdsman, in tears, told Liu that the hail ruined his harvest.

"It was the first time that I really reflected on the relationship between nature and humans. Although I have read a lot about the damage and injuries caused by thunderstorms in books and reports, they are just figures and numbers, and I couldn't really feel the pain," Liu says.

"Previously I was just purely attracted by the storms－their astonishing beauty－but the herdsman's words made me realize that these things that I love can mean disaster for others," Liu says.

As a result, he decided to do something that will help people further understand meteorology and its influence on daily life.

In August, he posted a six-minute video, introducing Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis, an annual report of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Based on his own experiences, Liu says in the post that last year, for him, was a harvest year, which indicates that there was an increase in extreme weather events in China. Many strong tornadoes and some extremely heavy rainfall hit big cities such as Wuhan, Hubei province; Suzhou, Jiangsu province; and Zhengzhou, Henan province.

Last year alone, 42 heavy downpours and 47 strong convective weather events, including tornadoes, were recorded, according to the China Emergency Information website, run by the Ministry of Emergency Management.

At the end of the video, he calls on everyone to take action to restrain climate change and protect our planet.

"Through my videos, I hope more people will learn more about extreme weather events and be prepared before they occur," Liu says.

Contact the writer at wangqian@chinadaily.com.cn