A meteorologist was killed in a car crash caused by severe weather while chasing a storm in Minnesota Wednesday.
Martha Llanos Rodriguez, 30, of Mexico City, died when a semitrailer rear-ended a car she was riding in on Interstate 90 after Rodriguez’s vehicle stopped short to avoid downed power lines, authorities said.
Rodriguez and three other weather experts had been chasing a severe storm system that brought damaging winds, flooding, hail and reports of possible tornadoes to the southwestern part of the state, according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
The victim, who wrote for the Spanish language outlet Meteored, had been chasing storms in Nebraska and Iowa before embarking on the fatal trip to Minnesota, according to her Twitter page.
Her death came after three other storm chasers had died in the Midwest over the last two weeks while tracking tornadoes, as severe weather pursuits like those depicted in the 1996 film “Twister” had been recently trending upward in the US, according to meteorologists and chasers.
“There is such a volume of chasers out there on some storms sometimes that it creates potential traffic and other hazards,” said Marshall Shepherd, director of the atmospheric sciences program at the University of Georgia.
