written by Lois Feaver, DiscoverEstevan.com | Saturday, Mar 07 2026, 2:00 PM Taken from Diascover Estevan. 

Storm chaser Chris Chittick turned the Hillcrest School gym into a weather lab for an hour, a series of big‑screen clips, tight bursts of science, and the kind of field stories that make thunderheads feel close enough to touch. He kept the room with short explanations followed by video resets: “If we’re hitting with too much science, you hit them with a cool video. Kind of brings them right back into the conversation.” Some of those clips showed tornado intercepts; one was a major lightning sequence that drew a collective “whoa” from every corner of the room.

He built from the basics so that every grade could track. “I want to be able to give a whole school style presentation so I can speak from grade 1 to grade 12, but not speak over anyone’s head.” Warm air and cold air, the life cycle of a severe thunderstorm, why wind shear matters, each concept landed, then the next clip snapped attention back.

He placed Hillcrest inside a wider swing through the Prairies. “Earlier this week, I was up by Davidson Outlook, Kyle, Saskatchewan. And then yesterday was at McLeod Elementary, Carnduff, and today was at Spruce Ridge, and then here.” The credibility behind the footage was plain enough: “I started chasing in 1998, I’ve documented 651 tornadoes and then 15 major hurricanes.” He smiled at how that schedule works at home: “My wife is amazing to let me go storm chasing,” adding that since COVID, “hurricane season is right after tornado season,” so those trips are rarer. And on local skies: Saskatchewan’s been “kind of cold the last, say two years, no tornadic stuff.”

The room went still when he moved from awe to risk. “Broken bones, almost lost my ear,” he said, then broke the tension with a wink about field fixes, he’d “superglued” the ear, “a great remedy instead of stitches,” he joked, clearly as a laugh, not advice. There was another wince when he added he’d “broken all 10 toes” in a single hail incident.

Hillcrest’s biggest roar came during the gear talk. “We go through quite a few windshields throughout the season, six or seven of them,” he said. That set off the all‑too‑familiar “6… 7…” chant that has become last year’s hallway soundtrack. He grinned and gave the inside line: “Let’s just say SGI is not our friend.” On the follow‑up about hardware, he said the chase truck wears “quite the coating on it” to blunt hail.

The reel of landmark storms gave students anchors for what they were seeing: “El Reno, Oklahoma... was May 31, 2013, 4.2km wide,” “Pilger, Nebraska… those were twin tornadoes,” and “the Kansas City, Iowa day… the drone shot.” The point of the reel wasn’t spectacle; every example circled back to what to do, and what not to do, when skies turn.

Hands shot up for questions across grades, and he clearly relished it. “Kids are the best,” he said. “They kind of sometimes stump you a little bit.” The proof came minutes later when principal Shannon Brown quizzed the crowd on types of tornadoes and a few key terms; multiple students answered correctly without blinking.

He closed the way a lot of students will remember. “Obviously, it’s safety and education when it comes to storms,” he said. “But also like, follow your dreams. Nothing is unattainable. You just got to put in the work and put in the time, and you can get there.” When asked how that started for him, the origin story was as simple as a summer sky: “I had nothing else going on that summer day and decided to go chasing, and I just fell in love with it, kind of that Nomad, Bohemian lifestyle.” And for anyone already wondering how to see it up close, he left one last breadcrumb: “I also run tours… take people out for like seven, eight, or ten-day trips.”