Faidley is a graduate from University of Arizona and Pima Community College

His very first tornado chase landed him in Saragosa Texas a small community that had been swept away by a violent F-4 tornado on May 22,1987. His professional career was launched in October 1988 after he took a photograph of lightning hitting a light pole in an oil and gasoline tank farm in Tucson Arizona. The image was published in Life magazine,billing him as a "Storm Chaser."

In 1997 Faidley was the subject of Stephen Kramer's book Eye of the Storm.