'I might not know there is a tornado lurking close to me, until it's on top'

From tornadoes to soft ball sized hail stones, Matthew Cappucci has seen it all.

The US based storm chaser lives and breathes wild weather and often finds himself running towards a thunderstorm rather than running away.

It started all for Cappucci when he was a young teen, saving up his money to buy a video camera so he could “storm chase”.

He would ride his bike around his home-town looking for thunderstorms to report on and when he was 11-year-old, he began weather presenting on local television. 

“I started practicing with a small green screen and I was doing weather maps much it’s been like think ever since,” he told Weekend Today.

“It is a dream come true.”

Cappucci now works a handful of jobs and covers the most extreme events, including Hurricane Ian in Florida earlier this year.

Despite his work being pretty dangerous, he doesn’t get deterred by much.

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“As a scientist, the more I know about something, the more comfortable I am around it,” he said.

“When you are chasing in rural areas, you can’t get cell service, you can’t get weather data, I might not know there is a tornado lurking close to me, until it’s on top of me I can’t see it.

“If you are training a wild animal, you still have to give it respect. It is nature, it is going to win. The more I’m out there, the more I can get folks to understand that.”

The support and love from his family and friends have allowed him to follow his passion, Cappucci said.

“They have been unbelievable by supportive,” he said.

“When I was seven years old, I would wake up in the middle of the night and if there was a thunderstorm, they would drive me to the beach to watch it.”

Cappucci also also recently written a book, “Looking Up,” published by Simon & Schuster.