Around 7 A.M. on September 20, 2017, the wind has become a roaring white wall. In his hotel room, Josh Morgerman presses his hand flat against the trembling glass of the patio door. He鈥檚 filming, and his left hand appears in the shot, heavy with the skull-shaped biker ring he bought on the Sunset Strip听and the pinky ring he had made in the shape of his brand logo鈥攁 lowercase i听over the meteorological symbol for a cyclone. The glass flutters under his palm.听

国产吃瓜黑料, Hurricane Maria churns over Humacao, Puerto Rico, nearly a Category 5 storm, winds moving at the speed of a jet at takeoff.听He feels the familiar gut clench of fear: primal, perfect.听

An older woman, a young woman, and a boy are huddled inside his bathroom. Strangers. The windows in their room exploded hours ago, and they took shelter here. Morgerman鈥檚 camera flicks back and forth between their grim faces and the chaos outside. He鈥檚 narrating, handing them pillows: 鈥淚 always say the bathroom鈥檚 the best place to be during the really bad winds.鈥� They look as if they鈥檙e at a funeral. He sounds like he鈥檚 at a birthday party. The wind rattles the glass.听

鈥淕ot to be some of the strongest winds of the morning,鈥� Morgerman says. He should stay in the bathroom with them, but, as always, he can鈥檛 stay far from the storm.

At 49, Morgerman has survived the inner cores of nearly 50 hurricanes鈥攂y choice. He is one of a small cadre of men (they鈥檙e all men)听who chase giant tropical storms around the world: wherever residents are trying to evacuate, Morgerman is usually on an inbound flight. If he鈥檚 lucky, he will be able to place himself underneath a huge rotating lathe of air and water听driven by the energy from heated oceans, spinning around a single cyclopean eye that can be as small as five听miles wide.听

He calls it an addiction. 鈥淚t鈥檚 like a hunger for food or sex,鈥� he says. 鈥淚t鈥檚 very innate, it鈥檚 hard to verbalize, and it drives you.鈥澨�

It鈥檚 a weird time to love hurricanes. Over the decades that Morgerman has been chasing them, the conversation around these storms has shifted. Scientists say it鈥檚 still unclear exactly how听our rapidly warming climate is affecting the normal on-again, off-again hurricane cycle. Still, a series of absolutely catastrophic hurricane seasons for the U.S. have changed how we think about these storms鈥攁nd听perhaps听about the kind of person who would spend their life chasing them.

Puerto Rico鈥檚 first people, the Taino, knew 闯耻谤补肠谩苍 as a god. Petroglyphs thousands of years old show , spinning in the same vortical spiral familiar today from satellite imagery. This part of the world has always been under the whim of weather.听

But Morgerman grew up in a gentler latitude. A child of the suburbs outside New York City, he had the misfortune of having been born in 1970, a lull in the hurricane cycle. The 听is a roughly 20-year weather pattern that alternates between warm periods, when storms are common, and cool periods, when they鈥檙e rare. The 1940s and 1950s had been a warm period, with ferocious storms. But in the cold period of the seventies听through the early nineties, storms were rarer and smaller鈥攚hat 鈥渘ice, well-mannered, housebroken hurricanes.鈥澨�

In 1976, Hurricane Belle swept over the Long Island house where six-year-old Morgerman was sleeping. It wasn鈥檛 much of a storm, but he remembers waking the next morning to find the world transformed: trees down, his family鈥檚 garden destroyed,听everything strange and gleaming in the poststorm sunlight.

鈥淚 was like, 鈥榃hat the fuck happened?鈥欌�� he recalls.

That pretty much started his obsession with extreme weather. (At least, that鈥檚 how he remembers it. His mother traces it to watching The Wizard of Oz when he was four.) 听鈥淧eople see me as this adrenaline junkie,鈥� he says, 鈥渂ut the genesis of it is, I鈥檓 really a Category 5听nerd.鈥澨�

Growing up, he sent a steady stream of pencil-and-paper letters to the National Hurricane Center in Miami, just to ask听questions. Sometimes its staff听even wrote back. He researched old storms听and tried to work hurricanes into his school reports.听

In 1985, Hurricane Gloria swirled up the coast, the first major cyclone to hit New York in 25 years. Newscasters called it 鈥渢he storm of the century.鈥� Morgerman was 15; he鈥檇 been waiting for a storm like this since he could remember. He tracked the eye as it crossed the Atlantic, barreling closer and closer. Finally, it was nearly on top of his Long Island suburb. 鈥淭he wind starts to go nutty, the house is shaking, trees are being blown down. Holy crap, I was so excited,鈥� he recalls.听As Morgerman and his family watched from indoors, the ground of their backyard heaved, and an enormous willow tree uprooted, a felled Goliath.听

Morgerman鈥檚 mother started to cry.

鈥淪he loved that tree,鈥� he says. 鈥淚t was the biggest tree in the whole neighborhood, a hundred-year-old giant tree. And I remember鈥擨 felt really bad.鈥�

Then Morgerman鈥檚 father turned to him and said something听he never forgot: 鈥淭his is what you wanted, right?鈥�

This is what he wanted: it鈥檚 almost dawn in Humacao, and outside his hotel room,听the wind has started to hurl itself against the glass door. Sometimes听in a storm this bad, Morgerman forgets it鈥檚 just a natural process happening on the planet, just a bunch of moist air that rose too quickly. Instead it seems as if it鈥檚 something with a mind, something angry. A monster. Or a god.听

When he talks about being this close to a storm, he uses language that he knows is frankly erotic and听a little creepy. 鈥淭hat inner core, to me, it鈥檚 almost like pornography,鈥� he鈥檒l say later. 鈥淲hen I look at a radar shot of a really perfectly formed hurricane,听I just imagine getting inside that.鈥�听

He鈥檚 currently single听but says he always makes it clear to prospective partners that his hurricane habit is nonnegotiable. 鈥淚t鈥檚 why I鈥檓 not married and I don鈥檛 have kids,鈥� he听says. 鈥淚t sounds very selfish. I just didn鈥檛 want to be encumbered.鈥�

At home in West Hollywood,听Morgerman听keeps a constant eye on computer models like Global Forecast System, which predict weather systems weeks ahead of time. When he catches the scent of a storm, he undergoes a werewolf-like change. 鈥淚 start getting into hunting mode,鈥� he says. 鈥淭he closer it is to hurricane time, more and more adrenaline, less and less appetite, less and less sleep.鈥澨�

Now听he hasn鈥檛 slept in 24 hours, riding a mixture of terror and joy. Everything feels sharp and real. This is the feeling he鈥檚 always chasing. This is the feeling he always feels guilty about later, when the sky clears and he can sleep again.听

Behind him, the older woman says something in Spanish, but the wind drowns it out as he slides the door open and steps out into the storm.

In 2004 and 2005, hurricanes started demolishing American cities again. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a听鈥榥ew era鈥櫶齩f hurricanes,鈥� 听after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans: 鈥淗urricanes aren鈥檛 behaving like many of us are used to them behaving. They鈥檙e bigger and meaner,听and more numerous than many people have seen.鈥澨�

The pendulum had swung back, the hurricane cycle switching from cold to warm. That was normal, meteorologists said. Max Mayfield, then-director of the National Hurricane Center, testified before a Senate subcommittee in October 2005听that these destructive new storms were the result of 鈥渘atural fluctuations,鈥� and 鈥渘ot enhanced substantially by global warming.鈥� Another NHC meteorologist assured the senators that the effect of climate change on hurricanes would be 鈥渕inimal for the foreseeable future.鈥�

At the time, Morgerman听was 35听and living in landlocked Prague. He hadn鈥檛 become a meteorologist; instead, at his father鈥檚 insistence, he鈥檇 gone to Harvard for a liberal arts degree, and eventually started his own brand consultancy with a friend. Post-Soviets were good clients鈥攖hey needed all the branding help they could get鈥攕o he had moved to the Czech Republic, which was fine, but he pined for storms.听

In the past, he鈥檇 occasionally tried to deliberately place himself in the path of a hurricane. The first time was in 1991, when he was still in college; he鈥檇 taken a train to Rhode Island . He only got rained on. His second attempt was in 1999. Morgerman had called his business partner, Michael Horton, and disclosed a desire he鈥檇 never told anyone about before. 鈥淗e very shyly confessed he wanted to chase these storms,鈥� Horton recalled. Horton told him to go.听

So he went鈥攖o Texas, where he was able to . It was his first taste of a real Gulf hurricane, a wilder creature than the neutered East Coast hurricanes he鈥檇 experienced as a kid. He drove into the听core听and stood in the fury of the storm.听He was hooked.

He flew to the Everglades to chase 听in 2005. Two years later,听he headed to Mexico for . In 2008, he was in Texas again for , then Louisiana for , then back to Texas for . Chasing storms, first a hobby, became a听vocation.

鈥淗e invented it for himself,鈥� Horton recalled.

By this time, there were other weather nerds hanging out together on message boards. Anyone with a Midwest address and a truck could chase a tornado. But there were only a handful of storm lovers who had听the means and the liberty to chase hurricanes across the globe, and over the next decade and a half, Morgerman would become one the most prominent members of that small club. To finance his habit, he made a second career of it: since 2014, his chases have been completely funded by media companies like CBS, the Weather Channel, and WeatherNation, and later this month, he鈥檒l star in , a documentary show from听UKTV and BBC Worldwide.听

He also started recording video footage and taking atmospheric readings. He鈥檚 not a scientist, he stresses, but sometimes he鈥檚 the only person there to do it.听A 2018 detailed how the data Morgerman recorded during Hurricane Odile (where he鈥檇 hid听under a desk in a hotel lobby听as the windows imploded) ended up disqualifying Mexico from a desperately needed insurance-bond payout. Morgerman had measured the pressure at the center of the storm at 943.1 millibars, nine听millibars too high for the terms of the bond.听

Morgerman agonizes over being painted as a disaster tourist听or a meddlesome amateur. At the same time, the brand consultant in him recognizes that any coverage builds his profile.

Comparing himself to a rock musician, he says, 鈥淚 feel like a season is an album, and each chase is a single. There is that pressure every year as a chaser, that you鈥檙e only as good as your last smash, your last chase, your last hit.鈥澨�

Then he adds: 鈥淚 probably sound like a dick, describing as smash hits听these events that kill people.鈥�

His greatest chase鈥攁nd the worst death toll he鈥檚 ever seen鈥攚as Super Typhoon Haiyan in 2013.

In Tacloban City, Philippines, Morgerman was shooting footage of the monster storm when he heard people screaming for help from his hotel鈥檚 ground-floor windows听as the storm surge rushed in. When a family emerged from the fragile building across the way and stumbled into the waist-high, filthy water, he put down the camera and staggered out to aid听them. His memory, he says, is a blur鈥攂ut film shot by another stormchaser shows him pulling a grandmother across the water on a raft, carrying a weeping girl up the darkened hotel stairs to higher ground.

Later, he鈥檇 stay in touch with this family, even donate money to help听rebuild their house, something he鈥檚 never admitted publicly before.听鈥淚 wanted it to be a righteous act,鈥� he says.听

What he does remember, though, are the corpses he saw after the cyclone passed. Over 6,000 people were dead. Morgerman went back to streets he鈥檇 walked the day before, where there was now nothing but wreckage.听His high had disappeared. When he got home to L.A., he鈥檇 be听a mess. But for now, he shut down whatever he was feeling.听

It鈥檚 what he does sometimes with strong emotions: he freezes them. Like when his father died unexpectedly in 2008, and their last conversation had been a stupid, petty argument. 鈥淭he grief I had was so toxic, so profound, the only way I could manage was, OK, I feel this, but I鈥檓 going to put it away, how that day I wasn鈥檛 a good son,鈥� he says.听

As he surveyed Haiyan鈥檚 damage, he did the same thing,听packing away his emotions. Now wasn鈥檛 the time to react to the horrors he was seeing.

Soon he realized his hand felt too light. The flood water had stripped off his father鈥檚 ring鈥攖he one he鈥檇 worn since his father died. He felt a pang, an echo of loss, but it seemed stupid to him to grieve over losing an heirloom when everyone around him had lost everything.

Then someone called out to him: Hey, look over there!听He looked. There in the mud and wreckage was a gleam of gold. It was his father鈥檚 ring.听The storm had given it back.

On the other side of the world, the United Nations Climate Change Conference was meeting in Poland just as Haiyan struck. At the conference, Filipino UN delegate听Yeb Sano, in tears, , calling for action to prevent 鈥渁 future where super typhoons become a way of life.鈥� Others declared the storm a 鈥�.鈥�

Scientists who had been cautious to comment on whether climate change was having an effect on hurricanes were starting to be more bold. 鈥淚n a warming world, [scientists] say,鈥� one recently, 鈥渉urricanes will be stronger, for a simple reason: warmer water provides more energy that feeds them. Hurricanes and other extreme storms will also be wetter, for a simple reason: Warmer air holds more moisture. And, storm surges from hurricanes will be worse, for a simple reason that has nothing to do with the storms themselves: sea levels are rising.鈥�

It鈥檚 still impossible to determine how any individual cyclone might be shaped by global warming, and different models lead to different predictions. But it鈥檚 becoming clearer and clearer that the climate is changing in a way that will lead to fiercer, more devastating storms.

Morgerman stresses that he鈥檚 not a climate-change skeptic鈥攂ut he doesn鈥檛 take a position on climate justice or its lack thereof. 鈥淚 just hunt the hurricanes,鈥� he said.听

It鈥檚 daylight in Humacao.听

At some point, the family huddled in the bathroom left with the hotel staff. He never learned their names; he will never see them again.

国产吃瓜黑料, the sky is clearing.听The wind has slowed. Rubble covers the streets: roof tiles, bits of metal, tree limbs. On the hillsides, there are no leaves left on any of the trees, just a skeletal range of jagged branches. He films everything.听

His heart rate is slowing, exhaustion coming on. The high is fading, but it鈥檚 all right. There will be more storms to hunt. They will only get stronger.

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