Kevin Myatt is The Roanoke Times' weather columnist.

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On our way to presenting a program on severe storms for meteorology students at the University of North Carolina-Asheville on March 1, Dave Carroll and I learned the worst possible news about a severe weather outbreak we had been tracking far to our south.

Eight high school students were killed in Enterprise, Ala., when a wall collapsed on them as a tornado struck their school.

The irony of what we do each spring struck me right there: We take high school and college students toward tornadoes, not away from them.

Carroll, a Pulaski County High School meteorology teacher and adjunct Virginia Tech instructor, has been leading these storm-chasing ventures to the Great Plains intermittently since the early 1990s. I will be making my third trip starting Sunday.

The trip is always educational and often quite fun. The groups become close after a few days together, and the waits between storms give us the opportunity to sample the best of middle America's hospitality.

But there's an underlying seriousness to what we do. We're there to observe and learn about storms. We're there to experience a real-life atmospheric laboratory that no textbook, computer model or television program can duplicate. We're also there, if needed, to provide on-the-ground information to National Weather Service offices about the storms we see, information that could save lives.

Only a few dozen of the more than 1,000 tornadoes that hit the United States each year destroy homes, and only a handful kill anyone. But we have to remember, and respect, that for those who have been affected, tornadoes are only about death and destruction.

I can certainly empathize, having grown up in an Arkansas city that suffered two devastating tornadoes that killed a total of 37 people. I remember tornado sirens in the middle of the night. It's terrifying.

This was all driven home yet again this week when Greensburg, Kan., was obliterated by a tornado more than a mile wide with winds exceeding 200 mph. At least 10 people died, and as I discussed on Wednesday, it's amazing that far more didn't.

Anyone associated with Virginia Tech certainly has a frame of reference for such heartache and tragedy.

It's been eight years since a single tornado in the United States dealt as much death as that one gunman did on April 16. Only one month in the past four years has had more tornado-related deaths than the 33 who died that day.

Five Virginia Tech students will be among our team of 12 storm chasers. Life and learning will continue for those who survive, and in honor of those who didn't.

Our group of eight males and four females also includes two students from Carroll's high school meteorology class, two from the University of North Carolina-Asheville, and a Buchanan resident who has been studying at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Florida. I've got them listed on my blog.

Our goal is to put ourselves in the best position each day to safely intercept and observe a supercell thunderstorm, which may or may not produce a tornado. The emphasis is on "safely." No daredevil driving or flaunting traffic laws. No purposefully punching the core of a severe storm into blinding rain or windshield-smashing hail. We want to be just outside the storm, looking in, not swallowed by it.

We might come upon disaster scenes. Some storm chasers did that last weekend in Kansas and ended up helping rescue injured people. There is always a slight chance we could be doing the same. We don't want to get in the way of rescue efforts -- we will stay out of the way even if it means losing the storm.

We might just see pretty clouds over empty plains. We never know for sure.

Our storm reports might help save lives. Hopefully, it won't be necessary, that any tornadoes we see will just be uprooting scrub brush on vast tracts of endless rangeland.

Yes, there is some risk. Thousands of miles of highway travel is by far the biggest. Near storms, lightning is our most worrisome hazard. There's always a chance that unexpected storm shifts could put us in the path of high winds, large hail or torrential rain. And we obviously never want to be too close to a tornado.

We work hard to minimize each of those risks, and will bail out of a storm intercept if we perceive anything to be a serious risk to our well-being.

But all weather, even sun and rain, is potentially deadly, and all of life has risk. As we've all seen this spring, merely showing up for class carries risk.

So we will go, proudly posting Virginia Tech magnets on our vans, forever changed but not cowered by a tragic spring.

And with the residents of the Plains, we'll share the joy of life, the beauty of the sky and the heartache of loss, ours and theirs.