Storm season brings renewed interest in Tyler Tubbs, better known as Hempfield's "Tornado Boy" who shot last spring's YouTube video sensation.

Tubbs, who was home alone when the F2 tornado tore through Westmoreland County on March 23, 2011,, documented his experience using his iPod camera for a 90-second video.

The highlight comes in the last eight seconds.

"Oh, my God! It landed! Tornado! Tornado!" Tubbs yells, as the camera changes focus from the funnel cloud to his feet as he runs through his house.

Tubbs, 16, a 10th-grader and a pitcher on the baseball team, was just too busy last month to honor a request to march in the St. Patrick's Day parade in Pittsburgh.

"He was on the radio again recently, they keep re-running the video, and he was featured on the A&E "Disaster Guy" show that aired in September," said Sharon Tubbs, Tyler's mother. "Different things come up here and there."

She turned down a request by storm chasers last season to let her son go ride out Midwest tornadoes in a weather pod clamped down into the earth.

"Tyler still goes out with his camera when weather warnings come in," she said. "His personality really came through and they've made some good come out of the video. It's been fun."

The video transcript was printed in the shape of a tornado on T-shirts and 2,000 were sold worldwide, raising $10,179 to help the victims of the storm that caused widespread damage throughout Hempfield.

The money was distributed through the United Way to ensure that local victims would receive the funds, said Tubbs.

"I'm still blown away by the amount of global publicity Tyler received from his YouTube video," said Aaron Steinly, the West Hempfield Middle School principal who was the Hempfield Area High School administrator handling calls coming in last year for the T-shirt sales.

"It was really fascinating," Steinly added. "I was getting 10 to 20 messages a day. It was for a great cause so I didn't mind."

The tornado YouTube video now has 550,000 hits, said Tyler, who has been approached by Google Ads for the option to make $20 for each batch of 10,000 new views.

He certainly knows firsthand how a few moments of video could put someone on the world's radar.

"It got a good bit of viewers from 120 different countries," Tyler reported.

His favorite interview experience out of Jimmy Kimmel Live, CNN, Good Morning America, Fox News, The Weather Channel and all the local media, was CNN because they did it through Skype.

Tyler said it was "kinda cool" to be asked by video parody guy Chris Benson, of the Benstonium website, to be in the St. Patrick's Day parade.

Benson, another Hempfield native, said he has yet to meet Tyler.

"Since uploading the yinzer-laced video depicting how he overcame the wicked wind of Westmoreland County, Tyler was heralded by all the small-time YouTubers in YouTube-land as the biggest viral video success this area had seen...," Benson wrote in an email.

"To the dismay of Benstonium, and presumably a large portion of the St. Patrick's Day crowd, Tyler would not be able to march with us in the parade, as he had baseball practice or something," Benson said.

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