Chasing will always be a realm owned by the young, like we all once were. I remember Chuck Doswell lamenting on his blog many years ago that "storm chasing has passed me by". I increasingly feel that same sentiment now. It's a rite of passage, I think. Everyone will wind up in this sort of place between ages 30-50 (sooner if you have kids).
Today's youngsters who are on top now will be going through the same thing in 15 years. They'll be dealing with the teenagers of their day scoring *everything* with the advanced weather models and 3d 20K-resolution AI cell phone drones and who knows what else that will make our stuff today seem as worthless and uninteresting as black and white film reels.
So few of my peers from the early 2000s are still out there. For most of them, it's because life happens and pushes chasing out of the way by necessity. And indeed, 95 percent of my successes (and ability to chase as much as I still do) in the past 15 years are a direct result of not having kids. It's the #1 reason longtime chasers have to step so far away from the way they were at their peaks.
To echo Tony, I'm increasingly feeling that a major crossroads is on the horizon regarding my own participation in the hobby. I've been blessed to see and capture everything I've ever dreamed of and more. I've met all of my lifetime chase goals. What more is there to do? I haven't reached that point yet, but I realize that if I stopped even now, very few would notice. My web site's traffic is a tenth of what it was 3 years ago. Even when I try to play the fool's game of posting on social media, it's like shouting into the abyss, never producing anything meaningful.
Case in point: most probably haven't noticed that Gene Moore's iconic web site chaseday.com went offline some time ago, like so many others have. It vanished with no fanfare, no news articles, no social media posts about it from others wondering what happened. If the online presence of one of the greats in storm chasing ends like that, we can all expect the same for ourselves. Our era, at least as we've always known it, has passed. Like the veterans of the 70s, 80s and 90s have, we have to each figure out for ourselves what is next. And there is nothing wrong with it if that includes *not* chasing.
