New to this community: Getting to know more weather enthusiasts

[Ali Premjee]

Hey everyone! Im Ali Premjee and I currently live in South Texas, about 40 minutes west of Houston. I have just joined storm track a few days ago and would love to meet more weather enthusiasts like me. I am still in high school but about to graduate in a couple years. I am currently 18 years old and have been a weather Enthusiast since i was 5. I have been fascinated by severe thunderstorms, hurricanes, tornadoes, etc, but i have only recently considered storm chasing. My long term goal is to be a professional meterologist and work at the National Weather service or The Weather Channel. I also would love to be an advanced storm chaser, but for now I have to take small steps as i'm just a beginner. Everything that i have learned, I have learned it from weather documentaries of severe, youtube videos from advanced storm chasers, and books. As i am now part of this community, I am hoping to learn more from everyone around me.

I am very motivated and can't wait to get out there on the field for my first chase of this year's tornado season of 2018. Thank you!

 

[ericjkelly]

Welcome Ali! Good luck finishing school and taking the next steps towards your dreams and goals!

My best advice.....find someone local and jump in on chases with them! Getting connected with a more experience chaser(s) can propel you light years ahead in your chasing!!!

 

[Bill Giles]

Hi Ali! Welcome to Stormtrack!

There's a lot of people here way more qualified than I am that might be able to help you down the road to becoming a meteorologist. However since you're also interested in storm chasing, I'd recommend looking into a Skywarn class near you if you haven't already. That'll give you real world examples to help with identifying storm structure accurately in the field , as well as get you a spotter ID if you decide that you want to report what you see. Also, a lot of spotter classes go into the weather phenomena that you will experience in your neck of the woods. For example, we don't really see a lot of wedge tornadoes here in eastern Colorado (though it's happened before), but we see things like virga a lot and depending on how it presents, it can get misreported as a funnel cloud.

If nothing else, you might meet like-minded people in the spotter training class. Potential local chase partners are always nice.

Other than that, the best advice I can give you for chasing isn't necessary weather related but it makes chasing a lot easier.

Learn (and test) any equipment that you plan on bringing into the field BEFORE heading out. If you recently bought a new camera or gadget for chasing, give it a try on a test run or three. You can do things like take advantage of a weak storm and set up near it, or even just do a timelapse of a sunset or clouds racing across the sky.

I hate plugging my blog because...well, I don't know really, but it's literally a Start-to-Now diary of sorts of my storm chasing experiences, along with the test chases I did (and the lessons they taught me). Take a look if you like, and start at the bottom. There's also a guide of sorts in there too. And some miscellaneous rambling.

Finally, good luck out there, have fun, and stay safe!

 

[Ali Premjee]

Thank you so much guys!

 

[Jacob Parrish]

Nice to meet you Ali.

 

[Tim Bejster]

Good luck this season. Be prepared to fail a lot but don’t let that discourage you by any means. Learn from your mistakes and understand it’s okay to not see a tornado in your first year chasing.

There’s some good chasers out there and also some bad apples. Don’t let the bad ones discourage your dreams though.

As mentioned, take a spotter course to get some sort of direction. On days you can’t chase or targets are to far off, there’s always armchair chasing that can help you with radar identification and understanding if you need more experience in that. If there’s a local chaser/spotter, see if you can tag along and learn.

Best of luck to you and I hope you can achieve those dreams!