Chasers: Roll those cameras this week!

[Dan Robinson]

With a few active days ahead that include the state of Kansas, there will be a 'high risk' of more negative media articles on storm chasers. So, we need "all hands on deck" for video documentation. We need every spare camera you have -GoPro, dashcam, streaming cam - mounted and recording full-time. Be sure to save the footage at the end of each day!

What used to be boring footage of an all-day chase is now valuable in the face of the recent waves of allegations against chasers clogging roads and causing mayhem.

And of course, if you're one of the very few chasers who likes to do things like park/stand on the roadway, speed excessively, pass in no-passing zones, etc, do us all a favor and stop. The media would love nothing more than to catch one or two clips of things like that and plaster that all over the world. It doesn't matter to them that the bad apples are one out of every 300 chasers. Media thrives on controversy, legitimate or not, and I guarantee they WILL use any isolated examples to paint an unfair picture.

That's why we need a tidal wave of full-chase video from as many vehicles as possible to counter any such thing.

Your video will make a huge difference in shaming the overdramatizing news pieces, swaying public opinion and maybe restoring some of the lost goodwill in the places we love to observe storms the most.

 

[Todd Lemery]

Just wanted to add my two cents for what it's worth. Just got done chasing Mon-Fri of last week and was really paying attention to how everybody was handling themselves while chasing. I was even keeping an eye out for the yellow car with the black hood.
I'm pleased to say that I didn't see anything of questionable behavior. The words were busy at times and I couldn't find one single thing to complain about. Keep up the good work everybody!

 

[Dan Robinson]

Same here, Todd. I didn't chase in Kansas, and May 8 in North Texas was the only day I saw more than 5 other chasers. I'm working on my dashcam timelapse from that day and I'm hoping we'll see some from Kansas/Colorado coming in as well.

 

[Marcus Diaz]

I still have the video of the Cavalier (aka Storm Stalker) from April 16 where he was parked on the road, not at all off it whatsoever. I'll try to get it posted tomorrow.

Also, I'll admit I didn't completely get off the road on a few occasions, simply because A) some of these highways in TX don't have shoulders and B) the heavy rains made me very weary of having all 4 tires off pavement. That said, there weren't too many times where this was a problem to anyone else driving by. I made sure to park on the parts of the road that didn't have blind hills or corners. I had a couple of instances of people pulling out in the line of chasers on May 9 in SW KS. Also, recorded an incident on May 8 near Throckmorton where a fire truck was traveling 45 mph in a 75 mph zone with a line of chasers behind him trying to get ahead of the massive HP supercell. This irked me a tad, but a couple minutes later he finally sped up.

 

[Drew Terril]

I don't have a dash cam (it's on the wish list for the future), so I wasn't able to have any cameras rolling while I was out. That said, I only encountered a handful of chasers, and the only ones stopped on the road had news station markings. First one had channel 6 markings (guessing out of Wichita Falls) and was near Electra, TX (and they were standing in the road to boot), and the other in Loco, OK. I want to say the second one was either KOCO or Channel 9 out of OKC, but it had gotten dark enough to make it difficult to see which station. I wish I had thought to take pictures.

 

[Todd Lemery]

I still have the video of the Cavalier (aka Storm Stalker) from April 16 where he was parked on the road, not at all off it whatsoever. I'll try to get it posted tomorrow.

Also, recorded an incident on May 8 near Throckmorton where a fire truck was traveling 45 mph in a 75 mph zone with a line of chasers behind him trying to get ahead of the massive HP supercell. This irked me a tad, but a couple minutes later he finally sped up.[/QUOTE

]Hey Marcus, I was on the road when that fire truck went by. I have no idea what he was doing because I later saw him parked down the road. Was he acting like some sort of warning siren or something?
There were a lot of cars on the road and I was started to worry about losing the windshield once we were getting tapped with hail. Traffic was moving about twenty miles an hour under the speed limit away from the hail. It seemed painfully slow, but it's hard to move that many cars smoothly

 

[Todd Lemery]

Inserted the quote wrong. Marcus, I was on that road when that fire truck went by. I later saw him parked down the road. Do you have any idea what he was doing? The only thing I can think of was that he was trying to be like a rolling tornado siren. Any idea?

 

[Marcus Diaz]

Not sure. We were well outside of the city limits with no houses around. Either he was trying to be a Billy Bad-ass or they were gawking at the storm. Either way, they were running their emergency lights, with no emergency towards the direction they were going.

 

[Robert Forry]

I'd still love to find the guy who decided to stop in the middle of some road in NE a few years ago and then turned left into the back quarter of the Jeep as we attempted to pass (at 65 MPH). That I do have dash cam video of.

 

[Chip Redmond]

Had at least two different chasers pass us on a dirt/sand road in CO on Saturday. This is fine but: 1) we were doing 55-60mph already (putting them at a completely unsafe speed), 2) there wasn't enough room for 2 cars easily, 3) there was muddy spots/standing water that we were navigating through, and 4) they nearly took out our second car because of all of the above. They came within inches of side swipping our cars for no reason what-so-ever besides to get a mile ahead of us and stop. From now on (and I don't know why I wasn't doing this earlier...) all video. Not letting people who have no respect for others get away with that crap. I have an idea who it was and can't wait to run into them again...

Chip

 

[Brandon Jenkins]

Also of note, we have come across several chasers running red/blue lights this year, if you're not an emergency vehicle please don't pretend you are.

 

[JeremyS]

I think I remember seeing 3 storm chasing vehicles with flashing red/blue lights last Wednesday in Kansas. Very annoying.....

 

[Dan Robinson]

Here's my dashcam time-lapse from Friday the 8th in North Texas. ~6 hours compressed down to 20 minutes, this took 5 hours to render out. No complaints here, other than a chaser with an extremely bright amber lightbar in front of me between Throckmorton and Graham that was seriously blinding in the heavy rain. That's the first time I've realized first hand on how badly those things hurt your eyes/visibility.

 

[Dan Robinson]

I would caution against posting short clips of chasers doing stupid things. That's exactly the type of thing the media will use to paint a bad picture of all chasers. They're waiting like lions ready to pounce on things like that. Everybody knows that the bad apples are out there - what we need to show is that they are the exception, not the rule.

 

[Alex Heimberger]

Had a good chase on Saturday with few problems on the road. Had a guy in cheyenne wells walk into the middle of the road and stop. Close to where Chris Heater got break checked. Our incident happened before his. Wondering if the guy decide to jump in his car and cause more trouble. We were going the speed limit. Maybe the parade of cars freaked him out. He easily could of been hit. Then we had a Subaru Legacy with ghost busters light on the roof pull out in front of us. Wasn't crazy bad but still was like wtf? Then decided to pull off abruptly shortly after. Other then those two everything went good. Didn't have gopro running for those two incidents.