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Storm Chasers: Too close to the storm?

by Becky Kellogg , on May 20, 2010 11:19 am ET

EDITOR'S NOTE: This week, weather.com did its first web series. It was an
exclusive look at the growth in the cottage industry of storm chasing. One of the
biggest issues raised was the explosion in the number of chasers and how those
expansive numbers are creating very dangerous conditions for everyone on the
road.

After our series, VORTEX 2 scientist Josh Wurman sounded off about his concerns
surrounding storm chasers during a recent chase in Oklahoma. He said the sheer
volume of chasers kept his team of meteorologists from being able to gather
important scientific information about tornadoes. Below are his thoughts as well
as links to the entire weather.com series, "Storm Chasers: Too Close to the
Storm?"

PART 1 Storm Chasers: Too Close to the Storm?

PART 2 Editorials from Chasers

Close Enough to the Storm
Getting Close, but Staying Safe

PART 3 Storm Chasers: What's Next

Josh Wurman, Ph. D, CtrSevere Weather Research

There were huge crowds of storm chasers yesterday (Wednesday, May 19) and thosechasers did direct
harm to Vortex 2 science. There were hundreds of them andthey were traveling at the same speed as
the storm and they were preventing myability to get ahead of the storm to outflank it and to get ahead of
it and V2 has an important mission. We’re trying tostudy tornado genesis so that the warnings are made
better. I think that’s more important than gettingclose up video of a tornado but apparently these
hundreds of chasers didn’tthink that and they wouldn’t let us by. It’s always easy to say it’s a few bad
eggs but no body let us by we hada hundred cars right in front of us there were chase tour companies
armaturesout there trying to stay as close as they can to the mess cyclone and notletting the scientists
by. I think it’sreally disgraceful they’re not letting us do our important mission

Oklahoma has the most. It has big universities and there are lots ofstudents graduating from those
universities who are graduating from theirclasses now and they’re out there. But there are also chase
tour companies who arevery interested in the weather. I thinkit’s great people appreciate the weather, I
support storm chasing. It’s likehiking or rafting. People are out appreciating nature but please let the
sciencevehicles by. We have an importantmission. We’re trying to make the towns you live in safer by
learning how tomake better warnings

I’m hoping by saying this I will help these chasers understand andthese tour companies understand that
we have an important mission. We’re notjust another chaser behind you. When aDOW (Doppler on
Wheels) is behind you with big flashing amber lights and wants to get by. We’re notout there trying to get

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video. We’re not out there giving a chase tour to get abetter view of the storm. Pull over 30 seconds. It
doesn’t take long for a bunchof our vehicles to get by and you can get back on the storm and see it and
getvideo to your heart’s content. But we are out there trying to make tornadowarnings better. Let us do
our job.

What Vortex2 has to do is get radars out and other assets outahead of the storm. We were ducking
under the storm the other day trying to go60 on a 60 mile an hour road to get ahead of the storm. The
chasers going 30 mph just wanted toparallel the storm so there was a rolling road block that consisted of
maybea hundred vehicles which we couldn’t pass it was very frustrating.
For my operations and for Vortex2 it meant we did not get duelDoppler storm for nearly the
periods we needed to do to do our science and myarray of 16 tornado pods did not get
deployed. We did not get low leveltornado data of those tornadoes so science really took a
hit yesterday (Wednesday, May 19) becausechasers did not let us get past.

More Links:
Storm Chaser's Survival Guide
T-storm outlook next 12 hours
T-storm outlook 12-24 hours
Interactive Radar
Weather Alerts
TWC Tornado Introduction page
Your tornado risk by month
Vortex2: The Great Tornado Hunt
iWitnessWeather tornado photo gallery

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