{"id":37623,"date":"2025-02-28T16:20:27","date_gmt":"2025-02-28T22:20:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/?p=37623"},"modified":"2025-02-28T16:20:27","modified_gmt":"2025-02-28T22:20:27","slug":"storm-lands-a-seat-at-the-unicameral","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/?p=37623","title":{"rendered":"Storm lands a seat at the Unicameral"},"content":{"rendered":"

Above: Sen. Jared Storm gives a thumbs up from his G-164B ‘Grumman AgCat’ airplane.<\/em><\/p>\n

One of the first things you learn when speaking with Sen. Jared Storm is that flying a turboprop plane is harder than Alfred Hitchcock made it look in the classic film \u201cNorth by Northwest.\u201d<\/p>\n

Storm explained that piloting such planes entails \u201cpulling Gs\u201d the entire time one is in the air, referring to experiencing acceleration forces that are greater than gravity.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne positive is that I always drop a little weight during crop-dusting season from a combination of the heat and the energy it takes to fight the G-forces,\u201d he laughed. \u201cThe negative is that you\u2019re also always thinking a little bit about not dying.\u201d<\/p>\n

Storm comes by his love of flying naturally. He grew up in Scott City in western Kansas and knew from an early age that he wanted to be a pilot like his father. His dad owned a crop-dusting business and Storm earned his pilot\u2019s license at 18.<\/p>\n

But the District 23 senator isn\u2019t only fast in the air. A track and field standout, he attended Kansas State on an athletic scholarship and ran middle distances for the university.<\/p>\n

After earning a degree in exercise science, Storm set out on what he thought would be his ideal schedule: teaching during the school year and flying in the family business in the summer. A brief stint as a middle school teacher in Kansas City, however, proved pivotal for the freshman senator.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt turned out, teaching just wasn\u2019t my thing,\u201d Storm said. \u201cI decided instead to focus on agricultural aviation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Storm took a pilot position with a crop-dusting company in Wahoo in 1996 and set out on his own in 2004 to start an aerial application business. The company, now called Storm Aeronautics, has expanded and diversified over the years.<\/p>\n

While he enjoys innovating and being at the helm of his companies, Storm\u2019s heart remains in the pilot\u2019s seat.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s nothing like the intensity of flying low to the ground in one of those planes,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s probably the closest thing a civilian can get to combat flying.\u201d<\/p>\n

Storm\u2019s family life is equally full. He met wife Colleen through a Catholic singles site back in 2004, before online dating really took off. She lived in Dallas, Texas, and was \u201cblown away\u201d by the Saunders County Fair when she came to Nebraska for a visit, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cBeing from such a big city, she\u2019d never seen anything like it,\u201d Storm laughed. <\/p>\n

The couple dated for a year before marrying and now have six children, five of whom are still at home. <\/p>\n

So far, life at the Capitol has offered some surprises for a man who is used to being an expert in his field and at the top of a company organizational chart.<\/p>\n

\u201cHonestly, it\u2019s a little bit humbling,\u201d Storm said. \u201cAs a freshman senator there is an immense amount to learn, but I\u2019m enjoying myself so far. There are a lot of good people here on both sides of the political spectrum who are all working for the betterment of the state.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the first things you learn when speaking with Sen. Jared Storm is that flying a turboprop plane is harder than Alfred Hitchcock made it look in the classic film \u201cNorth by Northwest.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37625,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[18],"tags":[305],"class_list":["post-37623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-senator-features","tag-sen-jared-storm"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/Storm_blog.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37623","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37623"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37623\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37627,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37623\/revisions\/37627"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/37625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}