So You Want to Be a Storm Chaser

The long months are here for storm chasers. Winter, the season of convective inactivity. The time some of us love but most of us simply endure. Three months–four, really–lie between now and our favorite time of year when the spring storm season begins to ramp up.

These are not idle months, though, or at least, they shouldn’t be. Now is the time for chasers to be cracking the books, reading papers, doing what they can to hone their forecasting skills. One great tool for achieving that objective has been the chase cases on Stormtrack.

For those not familiar with them, the chase cases are a user-based initiative in which, for a given case, a forum member volunteers to supply suites of data commonly used by chasers to pinpoint their targets. The data is typically gleaned from NOAA archives of actual weather events, with the first batch of maps, soundings, radar, satellite images, and SPC text products usually time-stamped 00Z on the night before the event. Chasers consult the data and determine their initial staging areas, then adjust their positions as subsequent forecast suites are released over time. A typical chase case can take three days or more to complete, depending on how busy the person supplying the data is.

At the end of it all, the players get to check their positions with the final radar images and storm reports and determine how they fared. Since these virtual scenarios are based on actual severe weather events that include verified tornadoes, the value of the chase cases is obvious. Besides being just plain fun, they allow participants to compare notes with what others are noticing in the forecasting tools and how they’re interpreting that information. They really help a person sharpen the razor during the snowy season.

Chase case number 5 ended last night. A northwest flow event, it was a tough nut to crack, and a lot of people busted, including me. At one point, six of us selected Woodward, Oklahoma, as a place to hang out under a boundary. It was a virtual chaser convergence, one of several that occurred on this case, and it got me to thinking. Forty-four people participated in case number 5–not many, given the vastness of the territory actually involved; yet many of us wound up clustering in the same places and wound up on the same storms. My question: What fraction of actual chasers out on a real chase day did we represent? In real life, given a major chase event, you can bet that the number of people pursuing storms would far outstrip forty-four.

It’s no secret that the hordes are increasing rapidly every year. Thanks to media shows such as Discovery Channel’s highly popular Storm Chasers series, what used to be a pretty solitary activity practiced by a relative handful has spiraled into a circus out on the Great Plains. Today it seems like everybody under the age of 30 wants to be a storm chaser, or at least, they think they do.

Far be it from me to separate between a host of yahoos who mistake opportunistic lunacy for the art and science of chasing storms, versus the far fewer individuals whose interest is rooted in something more trustworthy than reality TV. It’s your right to chase storms if you want to, and everybody has to start somewhere. Shoot, I’ve been chasing for coming up on 15 years now, and I still consider myself rather green. Number of years doesn’t automatically translate into expertise. Nevertheless, I’ve seen enough to have formed some opinions about where storm chasing seems to be headed as more and more new blood flocks to Tornado Alley. To those of you who, inspired by what you’ve seen on television, plan on heading to the Plains for the first time this coming spring, I have this to say:

Don’t be an idiot.

I mean it. I’m not saying don’t go. I’m saying, before you go, learn about what it is that you’re getting into. There’s more to it than you realize, and if your knowledge thus far comes from watching a TV series or a handful of YouTube videos, then honestly, you don’t know jack.

Start with this thought: Storm chasing is not about getting as close as you can to a tornado. “Extreme chasing” is a fairly new phenomenon that has been glorified by the media to the point where it has, in impressionable minds, set a new and dangerous standard. But it’s not the historical norm. The reality is, most veteran chasers have generally maintained a safe distance from tornadoes. So banish any images of driving to within 100 feet of a tornado. Hello? It’s a freaking TORNADO. And you’re not Reed Timmer or Tim Samaras. Those guys have knowledge and experience you can’t even imagine, and what you’ve seen of them on TV has been just one highly condensed, scripted, edited, incomplete, and not altogether accurate part of a much bigger picture. Trying to shortcut what is in fact a pretty involved learning curve could easily get you killed or maimed for life.

Getting close to tornadoes is just one style of chasing. I have friends who practice it; it’s a choice they make based on their level of experience and situational awareness, which I respect, and I’m not going to knock them for it. They know the risks. For that matter, I’ve been pretty close myself on a few occasions, not always by choice. Every storm is different. In general, though, keeping a good mile or more between you and a tornado isn’t wimpy, it’s smart.

Enough about that. Here’s my next bit of advice: Respect others who are on the road, and respect locals whose lives can be impacted both by the weather and by your own actions. Chasing a storm doesn’t accord you some sort of elite status to which traffic laws don’t apply. Parking your car in the middle of a traffic lane in order to take pictures of a storm is selfish, inexcusable behavior; either find a damn turnoff or else keep moving until you locate a place where you can pull over onto the shoulder. And driving 30 miles an hour over the speed limit endangers not only you, but others as well, particularly in a rainy storm environment where hydroplaning is a real danger. Last May in South Dakota a bunch of chasers, including me, had to deal with a very pissed-off sheriff whose attitude toward us had been provoked several hours prior by a chaser who blasted past him at 90 miles an hour. The sheriff was preoccupied at the time; otherwise he’d have busted the guy. As it stood, one thoughtless driver gave that LEO a bad impression of chasers in general, and he took his anger out on us. So remember, you don’t own the road. And no, being a rugged, individualistic American citizen doesn’t give you the right to conduct yourself in ways that negatively affect other people.

I could probably have lumped both of my preceding points together by saying, educate yourself and use common sense. First and foremost, learn about storm structure and morphology. Discard any high-octane media images you may have of storm chasing and instead find out what it takes to chase safely and successfully. I highly recommend West Texas storm chaser Jason Boggs’ educational resource site–it’s a gold mine of information. So are severe weather forecasting guru Tim Vasquez’s books, available through his business, Weather Graphics. If you can only afford one book, get The Storm Chasing Handbook. It’s a great introduction to the nuts and bolts of chasing storms.

Storm chasing is an incredible avocation with rewards that extend beyond the beauty and drama of the atmosphere to other dimensions, aesthetic, intellectual, interpersonal, and spiritual. But by its very nature, chasing storms is also a potentially dangerous activity. If you’re going to take it up, the smartest way to go about it is to exercise humility and restraint, and to make learning your priority rather than an adrenaline rush. Pursue that first objective and the second will come in due time.

Be safe. Be smart. Be courteous. The Plains have gotten smaller and more crowded in recent years. How you conduct yourself on them, and the attitude you display, makes a difference for everyone.