For a lot of folks in the Irish-dominant enclave of Beverly on Chicago's far south far side, life doesn't expand much beyond the few square miles where the street names transition from double-digits numbers into the 100s.

So it was for Mike McDermott, who grew on South Leavitt Street, attended Brother Rice High School down the street and matriculated to college, where he had vague notions of extending his football-playing days.

But a spine injury sustained while diving on a fumble in practice forced him to choose between the gridiron and possible paralysis, so Mike set his sites on getting his degree and moving on to the real world.

Chicago is really two different cities divided by the Loop, the Chicago Transit Authority track the encircles downtown. With the exception of a few well-heeled south-side neighborhoods like Barack Obama's Hyde Park, the money lies north of the Chicago River.

Mike's services took him north more often than south, and he found more and more occasions to visit one of his sisters in the northwest suburbs. The more he visited, the more he became intrigued with the curriculum at another college, which offered meteorology courses.

Mike sampled as many as he could schedule around his full-time gig and the brutal commute -- sometimes approaching two hours -- back home. Now in his early 30s, was hooked.  Mike took a week off work to chase tornadoes with his fellow classmates in the spring of 2001 and 2003.

"There was a lot of driving and there was a lot of hand-written analysis back then, because the internet wasn't really widespread," he noted. "The teacher would supply us with all this raw material and we'd have to forecast where tornadoes would be, and I was pretty good at it. A lot of times I'd get it right. I remember thinking how much easier this would be if we had some of these digital tools onboard."

On his 2003 trip, the students hit the mother lode: six tornadoes in a week. "It was amazing," he said. "But then life happened."

Two decades passed before the winds of fate blew this way. Now in his early 50s, Mike arrived on the doorsteps of a new flooring client in early 2023. He was greeted in the driveway. "Mike? Mike McDermott?" the client inquired. Mike was stumped. It took him a few minutes to recognize the adult version of a kid named Stan from his south side neighborhood.

As the job progressed, Mike and Stan became reacquainted. At the conclusion of one hard day's work, Stan began poking Mike about his dreams and aspirations. Mike admitted that he had once been fascinated by weather forecasting and tornado chasing. Stan, gobsmacked, finally revealed his profession: an executive with he a Southern California company called AnythingWeather, founded by Gregg Potter -- the same Gregg Potter who started F5! Tornado Safaris nearly a quarter-century earlier.

As partial compensation for his craftsmanship, Stan sent Mike on an F5! Safari in 2023 -- as a crew member specializing in navigation.

"I'm looking at all this equipment, including onboard Doppler radar," Mike said, "and it's all coming back to me. You have everything at your fingertips now. Everybody does."

But his return to meteorology wasn't without a gastronomical storm. Mike developed a nasty case of food poisoning, which peaked at precisely the moment the F5! crew and their clients rolled into the National UFO Museum in Roswell, N.M. Mike saw his first alien -- captured for posterity below -- and immediately beat a retreat for the bathroom.

"After a week on tour in 2023, I knew he would make a great fit on the F5 crew," Gregg said. "Mike always had something interesting to say. There are a lot of long hours on flat highways in the chasing game. We want crew members that the clients like to be around. Mike fit the mold."

Mike's return trip to a chase vehicle in 2024 will make him an official crew member. He's not sure where it's all heading, but he's not concerned with reading the tea leaves, either.

"I feel grounded in Beverly," he said. "I live two miles from my mom. But having a place like this to come home to makes traveling all the more special. I feel lucky to be doing this with Gregg. I'm having fun. Wherever it leads me, it leads me."