Epic Timelapse Shows Tornado’s 77-Minute Life in 1 Minute

A storm chaser captured adrenaline-inducing video of a tornado raging in Nebraska and compressed it into one awesome timelapse.

Aaron Jayjack tells PetaPixel that it was one of the best tornadoes he’s ever seen. “It was extremely photogenic and I was able to position myself to the west of the tornado for the backlighting from the sun onto the tornado, making it appear ghostly white,” he says. Not only that but the tornado was “extremely slow-moving” allowing him to stay in place for upwards of five minutes or more at a time.

“It was also out in the middle of nowhere and didn’t cause any damage except to a few trees and power poles,” he adds. “And finally, it was on the ground for an extremely long time, over one hour! My 360 camera was rolling for 77 minutes to capture the entire lifecycle of the tornado.”

Jayjack put the conditions to good use, editing the 77 minutes of footage down to just one minute for a stunning timelapse video that looks almost unreal at times.

“This tornado was an erratic moving tornado,” he explains. “In most cases, tornadoes will move in an easterly direction, sometimes north sometimes south. But very rarely do they move westward. And that’s what I found this tornado doing, actually chasing me down the road to the west for a while. Fortunately, it was an extremely slow-moving tornado; I could’ve kept out of its way even just on foot.”

Nevertheless, tornadoes can be dangerous and aside from the twister itself, there is debris falling from the sky to worry about. But for Jayjack, it was an absolute joy describing the tornado near the village of Wallace as “absolute bliss.”

“There’s nothing I crave more than to stand toe to toe with a tornado, open road in front of me, not another human in sight. I accomplished that with this tornado; a rare feat these days with so many chasers out on the roads,” he tells PetaPixel.

Jayjack says that he’s been fascinated with tornadoes ever since he was a child. He films them for the adventure and the process.

“Heading out on the road in search of something that is very hard to find, not knowing where I might end up, being out in nature and tuning myself into the atmosphere to be a part of that atmosphere; not just as a human living and breathing IN the atmosphere, but to breathe and live WITH the atmosphere in search of nature’s greatest fury,” says Jayjack.

“But it’s not all just fun and passion; I’m also trying to provide warning to the public during severe weather events. And lastly, I want to inspire folks to get out into nature, and if for some reason they cannot, and let’s be fair the vast majority of humans will never see a tornado in their lifetime, I want to provide an opportunity to experience what I experience through my 360 virtual reality videos of tornadoes that I shoot with the Insta360 cameras.”

More of Jayjack’s work can be found on his Facebook, X, and YouTube.

Image credits: Aaron Jayjack