'Not Feeling It' Chase Burnout?

[JamesCaruso]

Dang...Gene's was one of the sites I used to check regularly for updates every spring when I was a teenager in the early 2000s (when that was the way you had to "follow" chasers; social media wasn't a thing yet let alone live streaming). He hadn't updated it in quite some time, so that's probably why I didn't notice, nor notice you'd mentioned it for another two years.

That’s one of the disturbing things about our digital world - the “fragility” of the historical record, which can vanish without a trace, risking whatever legacy we may wish to leave, or the legacies of others that are meaningful to us.

The positive side is that self-publishing resources are easily available, so it’s worth the effort to create some sort of printed record of our adventures to leave behind.

 

[JamesCaruso]

I thought I would feel less angst about the weather during my chase trip this year, because working remotely allows me to stay here through mid-June if I want (though obviously it’s not all PTO, which I’ll have to ration among better chase days). But my son only has two weeks, so I’m really bummed out that this period is not better for him. And I feel bad for not even bothering to chase on Thursday 5/21, for reasons I described in the state of the season thread. How am I going to feel if I am lucky enough to see something great in June without him?

Usually I feel a pull back toward home, especially during down periods, because of work. I don’t feel that this year since I have already announced my “semi-retirement” and leaving this job in the fall. But I’m feeling a pull to see my twin daughters, who were away for their first year of college. And to get back behind my drum set - I just started playing last October, and had practiced every single day since early November.

I said above that I’m not going to stop chasing, and in fact intend to chase more as my professional and personal responsibilities ease. But I can certainly feel the obsession easing, as a year like this drives home the futility of a pursuit that is so dependent upon uncontrollable variables. Even when all of those variables line up, a lot can go wrong. That part I’m fine with - the rarity of a highly successful chase is part of the magic when it happens, like winning the jackpot. But the weather not even being there to chase is like planning a cruise vacation and having to wonder if the ship is actually going to be waiting for you in port on the departure date. Or training for an athletic competition, only to find that the event was cancelled. This is why I can’t get motivated to “study” throughout the year - not only because the time investment may turn out to not be worth it, but more because I don’t want to get all hyped up for a season that ends up disappointing like this.

It’s also frustrating to make a chasing mistake and have no opportunity to redeem yourself; you may have to wait a year for another opportunity to chase, or longer for a particular similar situation to present itself. With drumming, I don’t have this problem - if I am struggling with something, I can keep working on it until I figure it out. If I make a mistake playing through a song, I can play it again tomorrow.

I won’t stop chasing, In fact, being able to chase more was actually a reason for my early semi-retirement, because it is something I love and 30 years of being constrained from doing it when and as much as I’d like is enough. But at the same time, I’m not going to get as emotionally invested in it anymore.

 

[John Farley]

I thought I would chase more when I retired, and I have. However, the notion that once you retire you can chase anything all the time is something I have found to be rather far from the truth. Even when work obligations are gone, there will be family and community events, medical appointments (both your own and for family members), and this is something that increases with age. For example, I thought a month ago that I had managed to keep the second half of May and all of June fairly clear on the calendar. But my wife needs cataract surgery in both eyes, and as it worked out it was either June or wait until August for the days the doctor is in our small town - otherwise drive an hour each way for each surgery, and schedule additional appointments beyond what is needed if it is just scheduled in June. So June it is, each eye 2 weeks apart with a follow-up appointment a week later an hour away. Now if she is doing OK and there is a great setup (which I do not really expect given this year's patterns), she could probably go to and from those on her own. But easier if I drive to and from those. So June is chopped up at best, though there are still likely some windows when I could go, but limited. At the start of this week, I had been holding off on signing up for an annual event we really enjoy, the welcome party for the acters in our local theatre group, which is this afternoon and evening. At the start of the week, things looked pretty dead chase-wise, so I signed us up. Then, of course, came Thursday in CO, which was OK because I was able to go and get back in time for today's vent, and I had an enjoyable day of chasing. But usually if a trip involves one or more overnights, which this did, I like to chase more than one day. Lubbock would have been easy yesterday from where I ended up, but that would not let me get back for today's event without an insanely early start and long drive. Which brings me to another point. While I have never loved doing really long drives to chase, one's tolerance for that really goes down as one ages. At least it is that way for me. The last time I did a 10+ hour drive home from a chase a couple years ago, I was totally exhausted and miserable by the time I got home. So now I usually try to stick with drives of around 6 or 7 hours, or less. That still gives me access to the panhandles, southwest KS, and much of eastern CO and NM. But central KS or OK, NE, etc. are pretty much more than I have any desire to bother with. And increasingly, congested zoos on big chase days, which makes them even less attractive. So what is my point in all this rant? Mainly, do not get your expectations excessively high for chasing in retirement. Yes, you will be able to chase more and with greater freedom, especially if you retire early, but it will never be unlimited and totally uninhibited, and there will be still things that get in your way, especially if you want to have a life outside chasing, which I most definitely do.

 

[Brett Roberts]

Dang...Gene's was one of the sites I used to check regularly for updates every spring when I was a teenager in the early 2000s (when that was the way you had to "follow" chasers; social media wasn't a thing yet let alone live streaming). He hadn't updated it in quite some time, so that's probably why I didn't notice, nor notice you'd mentioned it for another two years.

Yeah, this was a big loss... with the thankful caveat that, for now, most of the site is still available on the Wayback machine. He had relatively high quality stills of big events from the 70s, 80s, and 90s that virtually no other chasers had. His shots of the 16 May 1977 outbreak in the E TX Panhandle into W OK (four strongly tornadic storms crossing I-40 within a few hours, IIRC) stood out as one of those sets that make you go: "wait, this really used to happen?"

I see it as yet another casualty of the shift from an open internet to social media effectively subsuming the internet. Many veteran chasers had websites with amazing content that have gradually fallen into the abyss over the past 10-15 years. I still actively maintain mine, but I'm paying $5/mo for a small VPS to host it and it generates zero revenue. The vast majority of folks will stop caring enough, or simply forget, over the years to do the maintenance and pay the fees required to keep their sites live (and if I get hit by a bus tomorrow, my site will probably go offline soon enough, too). And most of these folks long ago converted to using social media for everything. I know Gene has been relatively active on FB in recent years, and he still posts new chase content there. I think he was also active here on ST many years ago, but as with most veterans, FB completely replaced forum participation sometime circa 2010-2015.

I'm quite confident that the tandem of FB and X harbor an endless wealth of quality documentation for every good Plains storm of the past 15 years. The question is: how much of it is locked within private FB feeds that can only be viewed by the chaser's friends? How much of it is searchable for someone seeking out information about an historical event? What will happen to this content as the business and financial incentives for big tech rapidly change in the new AI era? It's pretty much all out of our hands, and the hands of the 97% of chasers who willingly put all their eggs in the Zuck and/or Musk baskets. The Chase Archive project is a very cool attempt to address some of this, but ultimately, it still relies on externally-hosted media so far.

 

[JamesCaruso]

Yeah, this was a big loss... with the thankful caveat that, for now, most of the site is still available on the Wayback machine. He had relatively high quality stills of big events from the 70s, 80s, and 90s that virtually no other chasers had. His shots of the 16 May 1977 outbreak in the E TX Panhandle into W OK (four strongly tornadic storms crossing I-40 within a few hours, IIRC) stood out as one of those sets that make you go: "wait, this really used to happen?"

I see it as yet another casualty of the shift from an open internet to social media effectively subsuming the internet. Many veteran chasers had websites with amazing content that have gradually fallen into the abyss over the past 10-15 years. I still actively maintain mine, but I'm paying $5/mo for a small VPS to host it and it generates zero revenue. The vast majority of folks will stop caring enough, or simply forget, over the years to do the maintenance and pay the fees required to keep their sites live (and if I get hit by a bus tomorrow, my site will probably go offline soon enough, too). And most of these folks long ago converted to using social media for everything. I know Gene has been relatively active on FB in recent years, and he still posts new chase content there. I think he was also active here on ST many years ago, but as with most veterans, FB completely replaced forum participation sometime circa 2010-2015.

I'm quite confident that the tandem of FB and X harbor an endless wealth of quality documentation for every good Plains storm of the past 15 years. The question is: how much of it is locked within private FB feeds that can only be viewed by the chaser's friends? How much of it is searchable for someone seeking out information about an historical event? What will happen to this content as the business and financial incentives for big tech rapidly change in the new AI era? It's pretty much all out of our hands, and the hands of the 97% of chasers who willingly put all their eggs in the Zuck and/or Musk baskets. The Chase Archive project is a very cool attempt to address some of this, but ultimately, it still relies on externally-hosted media so far.

This is why Stormtrack is so important. Unlike social media, it's curated and searchable. And it's a ready-made platform, without having to individually maintain a site or pay for hosting.

 

[JamesCaruso]

I thought I would chase more when I retired, and I have. However, the notion that once you retire you can chase anything all the time is something I have found to be rather far from the truth. Even when work obligations are gone, there will be family and community events, medical appointments (both your own and for family members), and this is something that increases with age. For example, I thought a month ago that I had managed to keep the second half of May and all of June fairly clear on the calendar. But my wife needs cataract surgery in both eyes, and as it worked out it was either June or wait until August for the days the doctor is in our small town - otherwise drive an hour each way for each surgery, and schedule additional appointments beyond what is needed if it is just scheduled in June. So June it is, each eye 2 weeks apart with a follow-up appointment a week later an hour away. Now if she is doing OK and there is a great setup (which I do not really expect given this year's patterns), she could probably go to and from those on her own. But easier if I drive to and from those. So June is chopped up at best, though there are still likely some windows when I could go, but limited. At the start of this week, I had been holding off on signing up for an annual event we really enjoy, the welcome party for the acters in our local theatre group, which is this afternoon and evening. At the start of the week, things looked pretty dead chase-wise, so I signed us up. Then, of course, came Thursday in CO, which was OK because I was able to go and get back in time for today's vent, and I had an enjoyable day of chasing. But usually if a trip involves one or more overnights, which this did, I like to chase more than one day. Lubbock would have been easy yesterday from where I ended up, but that would not let me get back for today's event without an insanely early start and long drive. Which brings me to another point. While I have never loved doing really long drives to chase, one's tolerance for that really goes down as one ages. At least it is that way for me. The last time I did a 10+ hour drive home from a chase a couple years ago, I was totally exhausted and miserable by the time I got home. So now I usually try to stick with drives of around 6 or 7 hours, or less. That still gives me access to the panhandles, southwest KS, and much of eastern CO and NM. But central KS or OK, NE, etc. are pretty much more than I have any desire to bother with. And increasingly, congested zoos on big chase days, which makes them even less attractive. So what is my point in all this rant? Mainly, do not get your expectations excessively high for chasing in retirement. Yes, you will be able to chase more and with greater freedom, especially if you retire early, but it will never be unlimited and totally uninhibited, and there will be still things that get in your way, especially if you want to have a life outside chasing, which I most definitely do.

Thank you John, I appreciate your perspective as someone who already has experience in the stage of life I hope to enter... I know what you say is true, and I already expect it. But it is encouraging to hear you say that despite all that, you are still chasing more than you did while working, it's just not completely uninhibited and you're not 100% free of commitments. I definitely get it with the family commitments, I mean even this year I was going to head out on May 11th, delayed a week because of the pattern, and got myself sucked into a commitment on Friday May 15th that threatened to keep me from flying out until Saturday. I ended up finding a way to fly out late Friday night, and Saturday I didn't go after the main threats anyway because of quality/distance considerations, but the point is it's very easy to get sucked into even fun things if you don't fix a chase trip on your schedule.

If anything though, this validates the decision to (semi) retire early, to take full advantage of the time that (God willing) hopefully exists before personal and/or family health issues begin to be factors, or even before good things that tend to happen in the spring, like when my children, nieces and nephews reach milestones like graduations and weddings.

 

[John Farley]

Thank you John, I appreciate your perspective as someone who already has experience in the stage of life I hope to enter... I know what you say is true, and I already expect it. But it is encouraging to hear you say that despite all that, you are still chasing more than you did while working,

A slight clarification. As of this month, I have been retired for 20 years. I did retire as soon as I could, and was fortunate to have a good pension. I certainly did chase more after retiring than when I was working, but for a variety of reasons including the kinds of schedule conflicts I mentioned, the effects of aging, and the limited number of good chase days in my preferred chase territory the last few years, I would not say that I am NOW chasing more than before I retired. But if a different pattern comes along next year, who knows? And one other thing retirement does do, sometimes, is let you chase the less frequent local events that pop up from time to time that require minimal travel but do require a flexible schedule. Now as I said my schedule is not always flexible, but it is flexible more of the time than when I was working.

 

[Warren Faidley]

I have given up on the "big" tornado days, except for targeting secondary areas where the odds are just low enough to keep the Klingon Empire away. I will still document major disasters, like Joplin. If it was not for the monsoon, fire and hurricane seasons, I would be somewhat depressed about the overall situation. The lucky veteran chasers—many on this site—were fortunate to chase before the insanity set-in.

 

[Todd Lemery]

I’ve been retired for five years now and can confirm John’s position on chasing everything when retired. Family commitments are still there along with important medical appointments to go with other things that pop up. Unless you’re like someone like RT and devote your whole life to chasing, you’re gonna have to miss setups. I don’t go more than 4-5 hours one way for a one day chase anymore. You get to a point where the juice isn’t worth the squeeze on those long drives

 

[Tony Laubach]

I consider myself blessed that I have been able to do this the other way around, chase as a career cause it's likely I when (IF) I am able to retire, it'll be a retirement from chasing, certainly full time anyway. My chase partner, whom retired years ago, has definitely faced that reality of family, and other commitments, which he has stated have definitely cut into what we was hoping would be more full time chasing. To his credit, he has several years being out on various projects, so he did get a few good years in there, but it's definitely been more and more difficult in recent years. I feel for him in that regard.

While I believe (and certainly HOPE) that I have many more years left in me to do this, I definitely am on the downslope side of the bell curve now at this point, and while there are aspects of that I hate, I also have to acknowledge the years I have had, even being in this early enough to get a sample of the golden years. But there are many more years behind me than in front, and it's been a growing topic of conversation with me in recent years about how long I want to do this in the capacity I am doing it now. I think age, health, desire, stamina, and the over-arcing state of storm chasing now are all factoring in a lot more now.

But I've been blessed; I truly have... so few people have made a legit career in this, and somehow, I am among those that did. And I got to enjoy this in my prime, and hopefully will continue to do so for a few more years. But every year, the idea to step back takes a baby step or two forward. And so does the acceptance of wanting to do that.

 

[JamesCaruso]

I don’t go more than 4-5 hours one way for a one day chase anymore. You get to a point where the juice isn’t worth the squeeze on those long drives

I’ve always pretty much had that same attitude, even on chase vacations with limited opportunities, even when younger. I might raise my threshold to 6 hours for a higher-end event. I still end up kicking myself when that choice makes me miss stuff though. Like Sunday in SD - I never could have made it there from LBB if I wanted to, but if I had been up in Colorado would I have made the trip? That would have still been about 7 hours so I would have likely deemed it not worth it (unless I could have flown home from OMA), but then I’d probably regret it. I guess using hindsight is just not a valid way to think about it - our choices and decisions can only be judged relative to the probabilities at the time. It’s always a cost/benefit decision. But yeah you have to chase everything if you want those once in a lifetime events.

there are many more years behind me than in front,

For me too - but just about all of the years behind me consisted only of 2 weeks max chase vacations, so I’d like to think I might still have more total chases ahead, even with the cautionary perspectives on how much freedom there really is to chase in retirement…

 

[Tony Laubach]

I don’t go more than 4-5 hours one way for a one day chase anymore. You get to a point where the juice isn’t worth the squeeze on those long drives

Obviously I have much bigger threshold for how far I will drive, but there's definitely added variables that work with this (i.e. covering big severe weather events for work).. but the last few days have seen chasers doing from Texas to South Dakota back to Texas for VERY low end setups... yes, every setup has the potential to produce a mesoscale miracle, but on paper, it's highly unlikely. Back in my 20s, I did do a few of those crazy back and forths, but that didn't too long, and I would often take the down day in the area I would come back to and skip out on the one-off 8 hours or more away unless it was REALLY good.

I know for the content generators, there is some incentive to do that, not sure how it balances out now, particularly at $4-$5 gallon. But even in a limited window chase vacation, I would've stayed in Texas the down day and skipped South Dakota to avoid that round-trip beating, even with a 'travel day' yesterday... just not worth it anymore IMO...

Kudos to the chase everything crowds, give them credit where it's due; they're gonna see in ten years what took me 30 to see, just because they step up to the plate 3-4 times more than I ever did/would. But hindsight being what it is, you wonder how long they'll last hawking all these insane miles in short windows before they flame out.

 

[Andy Wehrle]

Obviously I have much bigger threshold for how far I will drive, but there's definitely added variables that work with this (i.e. covering big severe weather events for work).. but the last few days have seen chasers doing from Texas to South Dakota back to Texas for VERY low end setups... yes, every setup has the potential to produce a mesoscale miracle, but on paper, it's highly unlikely. Back in my 20s, I did do a few of those crazy back and forths, but that didn't too long, and I would often take the down day in the area I would come back to and skip out on the one-off 8 hours or more away unless it was REALLY good.

I know for the content generators, there is some incentive to do that, not sure how it balances out now, particularly at $4-$5 gallon. But even in a limited window chase vacation, I would've stayed in Texas the down day and skipped South Dakota to avoid that round-trip beating, even with a 'travel day' yesterday... just not worth it anymore IMO...

Kudos to the chase everything crowds, give them credit where it's due; they're gonna see in ten years what took me 30 to see, just because they step up to the plate 3-4 times more than I ever did/would. But hindsight being what it is, you wonder how long they'll last hawking all these insane miles in short windows before they flame out.

Another thing to keep in mind too is...I've been seeing a lot of stuff lately about how unreliable newer vehicles are. Particularly acute with certain GM models of SUVs and trucks (which are popular among chasers)...lots of reports of premature engine/transmission failure (as in under 50K miles or even 10-20K). I foresee this having implications on chasing, with or without the traffic problems. Chasers put lots of miles on their vehicles (especially when doing the as-described "back-and-forths" for targets on opposite ends of the Plains within a day or two of each other) and may drive them hard/aggressively more often than average...these vehicles run $60-100k and you can't even trust them not to strand you in the path of a tornado within the first two years.

 

[Brett Roberts]

Another thing to keep in mind too is...I've been seeing a lot of stuff lately about how unreliable newer vehicles are. Particularly acute with certain GM models of SUVs and trucks (which are popular among chasers)...lots of reports of premature engine/transmission failure (as in under 50K miles or even 10-20K). I foresee this having implications on chasing, with or without the traffic problems. Chasers put lots of miles on their vehicles (especially when doing the as-described "back-and-forths" for targets on opposite ends of the Plains within a day or two of each other) and may drive them hard/aggressively more often than average...these vehicles run $60-100k and you can't even trust them not to strand you in the path of a tornado within the first two years.

You're touching at least one aspect of a vague fear I've had around the long-term feasibility of chasing (say, in 20 years): the cost per-mile of owning and maintaining vehicles suitable for all types of conditions required on a chase. I worry the auto market could evolve in ways that make that cost rise dramatically, even after adjusting for inflation. This could happen in a variety of ways, one of which is a cratering of long-term reliability -- due in large part to over-complicated component designs and excessive computerization, "lifetime" sealed transmissions without dipsticks, etc. -- compared to what seems like a reliability peak sometime in the 2000s-2010s.

One way I think about this: the capabilities we need for chasing (especially if you heavily use wet, unpaved roads... but even more straightforward chaser stuff like our extremely high mileage per year, and need for safe highway-speed traction in 99th-percentile torrential rain) are rare edge cases among the general consumer base. We're fortunate that to this point, most of those capabilities have fallen inside the envelope of what automakers feel compelled to design for in many popular vehicles, so we get them for free while paying the same price as a soccer mom who doesn't need them at all. But as electrification and other technology-driven changes (some potentially radical) impact the auto market, and design tradeoffs are reconsidered, we could find some of our niche requirements falling outside what automakers consider mandatory. This is up there with the excessive and growing chaser crowds in making me feel like I need to appreciate each year we continue to escape these looming threats as much as possible.

 

[JamesCaruso]

Another thing to keep in mind too is...I've been seeing a lot of stuff lately about how unreliable newer vehicles are. Particularly acute with certain GM models of SUVs and trucks (which are popular among chasers)...lots of reports of premature engine/transmission failure (as in under 50K miles or even 10-20K). I foresee this having implications on chasing, with or without the traffic problems. Chasers put lots of miles on their vehicles (especially when doing the as-described "back-and-forths" for targets on opposite ends of the Plains within a day or two of each other) and may drive them hard/aggressively more often than average...these vehicles run $60-100k and you can't even trust them not to strand you in the path of a tornado within the first two years.

I wonder if livestreamers have properly factored this into their financial projections (assuming they have done any financial projections). Just like with Uber drivers, I think vehicle replacement cost is underestimated (not necessarily in absolute dollars, but in the average cost per year from an accelerated depreciation rate at such high mileage while beating on the car in adverse conditions).