Another issue was exposed Friday, and one that has bothered me for a few years now. This is the problem of the new storm chasers. Since the program Storm chasers aired and became popular, we have seen an explosion in the number of people who storm chase. It has gone from something a few weather geeks like myself and a few scientists do, to a mainstream extreme sport.
The chasers today are a different breed. They make group names for themselves, paint their vehicles up in fancy paint jobs with all kinds of lights and instruments, kind of a pimp my ride for weather geeks. The attitudes are not of sober concern, but of wild excitement, screaming like little girls while hanging out car windows. They disregard traffic laws and ignore law enforcement. Rather than being concerned with safety and reporting for the public, they are all out to be the one to get the great shot that will make the TV news and to be famous and rich.
This bravado has underestimated the danger involved and I think a sense that their own skills were superior enough to toy with death and walk away unscathed time after time. While no one died today, a number of these chasers got caught in today's tornadoes and nearly lost their lives in the process. It just emphasizes the exact thing that I had been concerned about for a long time. The Weather channel crew amazing survived relatively unscathed after being thrown across a field the length of two football field, crushing their vehicle. Other chasers were reporting damages to their vehicles and injuries to themselves, thankfully nothing too serious.
I've seen these guys clog roads, disobey traffic laws, argue with authorities, block emergency personnel, and behave like idiots. They park in the roadways, speed past other vehicles, stand in the roadways, block off streets, cut off drivers, and other such dangerous behaviors. They can turn and empty rural road into a bumper to bumper traffic jam in minutes. Once I came around a blind curve to find a tornado chasing tour group scattered about the road. Had I not been following the speed limit, it would have been disaster.
Something has to be done to curb this dangerous behavior. I am not sure exactly what the answer is and how to weed out the good safe and serious chasers and researchers from the yahoos, glory seekers, profiteers, egomaniacs, and ignorant. How do we reign in the madness in such a serious and dangerous activity?
In this video, the chasers got too close to the storm and the tornado did some unpredictable things, leaving them in a deadly drive for their lives. They should have been farther off to begin with and this could have been avoided. Instead, in the hunt for glory and money, they nearly lost their lives.
In this video the same thing happens and in their attempt to get away
were nearly impaled by flying debris. they never should have been in
this position.
In this shot, we see The Weather Channel crew making some poor decisions that nearly got them killed as their vehicle was thrown across a field the length of two football fields, tumbling and rolling, crushing their vehicle, and somehow escaping practically unscathed.
TWC Vehicle hit by tornado
This is a video of what happened as a result of bad advice by members of the weather media who told people to escape the oncoming tornadoes by driving south. This advice clogged roadways and made people sitting ducks in metal coffins unable to do anything about it. Those on the local media and at the weather channel who propose this should be fired immediately. 50 people were injured and 5 dead, almost all in vehicles.
Stuck in traffic Jam during tornado warning
I remember having a hat my Dad gave me from his job. On it were the words, safety pays in many ways. That is a motto that many of today's chasers need to learn. Another saying is this, discretion is the better part of valor.
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