In Roland Smith’s 2011 adventure novel, Storm Runners, three middle-grade students struggle to survive and find shelter during a hurricane after their school bus crashes. While a team of rescuers drives toward the disaster in search of the missing kids, the three students use all their skills and brainpower simply to stay alive.

Award-winning author Smith spent decades working as a zookeeper and world-traveling animal rescuer. He has turned his experiences into award-winning novels and non-fiction books for young readers, including more than 50 titles in several series. Storm Runners is the first of a three-book saga about young adventurer Chase Masters and his storm-chasing dad, John Masters. The ebook version of the 2011 first edition of Storm Runners forms the basis for this study guide.

Plot Summary

Thirteen-year-old Chase Masters finally decides to repair his kid sister’s treehouse—she and their mom died a year earlier in a car wreck—but he leaves his dad’s tools outside. In the morning, it rains, and when Chase’s dad, John, goes outside to retrieve his tools, he is struck by lightning. Shortly after he recovers, the economy collapses, and his work as a home builder suffers. He sells his properties, turns over the business to his brother, loads up a semi-truck and a travel trailer, and takes Chase on a trip across America in search of storms.

At each stop, John and his assistant, Tomás, visit a city where a storm threatens and offer free help to homeowners to prepare for the bad weather. Many grateful residents later hire them to do cleanup reconstruction. By training, John and Chase always keep with them backpacks called “go bags” filled with emergency essentials. As Hurricane Emily approaches Florida, they park at a large property owned by Tomás’s brother in the northern part of the state. It’s the winter quarters for a traveling three-ring circus and a sanctuary for rescued animals, including lions, a giraffe, a bear, ostriches, parrots, monkeys, and a leopard.

John and Tomás look for work in St. Petersburg while Chase stays at the circus compound. There, he meets the manager, little person Marco Rossi, and his daughter, Nicole, a regular-sized, lively and smart 13-year-old competition swimmer and animal keeper to whom Chase takes a strong liking.

Chase also meets Momma Rossi, Nicole’s little-person grandmother who has a knack for knowing past and future facts and believes the hurricane will swoop over the compound instead of St. Petersburg. She also knows about Chase’s family tragedy and that he was a Boy Scout.

The next morning, Chase and Nicole take the school bus to Palm Breeze Middle School, where Chase is placed in Nicole’s classes. The skies darken as the hurricane moves toward land, and everyone watches TV news reports. By the end of the day, parents have picked up most students, but a few dozen remain to be bussed home. Chase has a strong sense that the center of the hurricane will make landfall here. He asks the principal to keep the remaining students inside the school overnight, but she turns him down, and he and Nicole board the bus for home.

The bus struggles through whipping wind, torrential rain, and traffic jams, slowly returning the kids to their homes. When three students remain—Chase, Nicole, and a sixth-grade girl named Rashawn—the bus is struck by a gust of wind that knocks it over, and it slides down into a lake. As it fills with water, Nicole and Rashawn escape through the rear emergency exit while Chase frees the unconscious driver. Chase kicks out the windshield and, lungs bursting, pulls the driver out with him; Nicole dives back underwater, brings them to the surface, and helps Chase drag the driver to shore.

The driver is dead. Chase has a broken tooth, but Nicole and Rashawn are okay. They’re at the bottom of a levee, and the water is rising. The levee is on a miles-wide animal refuge next to the Rossi property; it’s where Rashawn lives with her father, who manages the refuge. Chase climbs the levee and finds that the road at the top is being washed away by the storm and by water pouring through from the lake.

While Chase is up top, Nicole dives down to the bus and retrieves his go bag. From it, he hands out energy bars, water bottles, and ponchos. Using Chase’s GPS, they begin a dangerous, storm-tossed walk toward Nicole’s home, five miles away. They escape a giant alligator, are swept into a churning lake, and, arms linked, struggle toward shelter through hurricane-force winds.

In St. Petersburg, John befriends TV news reporter Cindy Stewart and invites her and her cameraman, Mark, to join him on a trip north to search for Chase. She reminds him that all roads there are closed, but he assures her he and Tomás will find a way through. Despite the risks, including being fired, she agrees to come along. Driving in John’s 4x4, they work their way around roadblocks and meet up with Tomás, then drive in the direction where Chase might be. Flying debris damages John’s truck, so they transfer to Tomás’s truck and continue.

Stopped by a huge erosion gap in the levee, they glimpse two lights in the distance; John also finds skid marks from a school bus. They realize that Chase and companions are just up ahead, but they can’t drive through to save them. John reaches Chase by satellite phone long enough to tell him to head for circus headquarters, where they’ll all meet shortly.

Chase, Nicole, and Rashawn push their way through howling winds and make it to Nicole’s home on the circus grounds just as the eye of the storm passes silently overhead. The farmhouse lies in ruins, but the circus barn house remains intact, and the trio finds Momma waiting there, alive and well. Outside, an escaped leopard hunts the other animals while the hurricane whips up its fury once again, and floodwaters begin to rise inside the barn.