Crash kills meteorologist as storm chasers stop for downed power lines, MN reports say

A meteorologist from Mexico who had been storm chasing in the Midwest was killed in a Minnesota crash, according to local reports.

Martha Lilian Llanos Rodriguez, of Mexico City, was in a car with three others when the driver stopped for downed power lines Wednesday, May 11, Minnesota State Patrol said in an incident report. The power lines had fallen across the interstate during a storm.

A semi struck the stopped car while also headed east on Interstate 90 in Nobles County, according to the report.

Llanos Rodriguez, 30, died in the crash, and one fellow passenger, 42, was taken to a hospital with life-threatening injuries, authorities said. The driver of the car and a third passenger were also taken to a hospital with non-life-threatening injuries. The semi driver wasn’t hurt.

“We were doing some storm chasing,” meteorologist Diego Campos, of Chile, told the Star Tribune. “The storm was really bad, and we were trying to get out of there.”

Campos, 37, was driving, according to the crash report.

This was his second time chasing a storm, the Star Tribune reported, and this was Llanos Rodriguez’s first time.

Prior to the crash on May 11, Llanos Rodriguez shared her first “chaser log” entry to Twitter.

“Day 1,” she wrote in Spanish, alongside a tornado emoji. “3 hours ago I arrived in Nebraska, we continue on our way north in search of some formation. Now in Iowa, heading to Minnesota.”

A third driver, headed in the same direction of the storm chasers and the semi, collided with the fallen wires in the incident, according to the crash report. He was taken to a hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.

Llanos Rodriguez is the fourth storm chaser killed in the past few weeks, the Argus Leader reported. Her death follows three University of Oklahoma meteorology students who died in a crash while driving home after storm chasing.

Nobles County is in the southwest corner of Minnesota.

This story was originally published May 12, 2022 at 2:32 PM with the headline "Crash kills meteorologist as storm chasers stop for downed power lines, MN reports say."