I was chatting with a long-time chaser friend yesterday and we got no the subject of new waves of chasers and how they come into the fold. I, lumped in with the Twister-era starters (to be fair, I just timed out that way cause that's when I got my driver's license, I consider myself an "Enemy Wind" chaser haha), were often looked down at because of the timing to which we got in to chasing. For a while, we were the new wave, and I think everyone got over that animosity pretty quick. Back in those days, we lacked social media, CAMs, and all this stuff that makes chasing so much easier. We were actually forced to learn the ropes, forced to engage with others in the field. Actually learn how to do this. Hell, it was 8 years after my first chase before I even had a computer in the car. I think a lot of folks who suffered through a few bad seasons fell out, and of course, freelancing video wasn't main stream yet, so it was truly a major financial investment to do. I'd LOVE to get a count of how many folks who started in the late 90s (Twister-era) are still around with some regularity.
I think a lot of the Twister-era surge came and went, as many who were like, "hey, that looks awesome", fell out due to lack of success. After my first chase/tornado in 1997, it was three years later when I saw #2, and three years after that I saw my next 5. The 2004 season was my first BIG successful year, including the May 12 and May 29 days. It took stamina, patience, and time. A lot of time. Something that as a whole (extending WELL beyond chasing and weather) is not even a thing. Instant gratification has topped the patience and making a career out of it (or just sticking with it til you actually got better). I don't think anyone coming into this over the last, oh say 10 years, has any clue what investing in this is (and I am talking beyond just buying gear, lights, whatever). I'm talking time investment. And again, why should they, it's basically handed to them on what I'd call a .300 average.
When Discovery Channel came out, we were in a completely different age as opposed to post-Twister. Models were better, but social media was taking over. And that immediately just blew everything up. As mentioned above, a few particular folks have aided into the spread of this fire a bit. But there is definitely a generational gap between Twister-era folks like myself and the Discovery-era/social media folks.
Because of the availability of high-rez models, social media, spotter network tracking, chasing is easier. The need for Meteorology is almost null (in terms of reasonable success ratio). Hell, kids getting out now-a-days are just as successful as multi-decade vets. And of course, the exposure has infinitely expanded, which just further fuels this fire. Now anyone can get a tank of cash paid for through selling a few seconds of video, and with help of social media, and easily find people to split costs with, so that's another factor I think in why this trend continues.
I dunno, I feel this is a giant ramble (I cut this into two parts as I ran some errands in the middle of this). Hopefully this makes sense. It is always better sounding in my head. But case-in-point, here I am jotting all this down from home instead of chasing a moderate risk. While I'll inevitably have a few higher-end risk days to cover here in KS for work, I am starting to wonder if my days of going out of my way for high-stress/higher-risk setups are numbered. The desire to do that just isn't there. There will always be tornadoes to chase, and I live in Kansas for crying out loud. While there is always plenty of money to be made in the freelance world on days like this, I just don't think the stress is worth it anymore. I'm definitely settling into a much different era of my chasing life, and I think I've turned the corner to just enoy the lower-key days cause they are as close as I'll get to reliving what I consider to be the good ol' days.
While general road taxes pay for all roads, you pay extra to use the turnkpike since it isn't required that you drive on it. Suggesting that people who already pay taxes for weather data should now pay extra in order to keep chaser convergence to a minimum just doesn't pass any sort of common sense test available.
