Storm chaser drives wrong way down highway chasing tornado

[Jamie Simms]

We cannot confirm the identity of the chaser involved. Watch a storm chaser drive the wrong way down a highway whilst chasing a tornado here.

 

[Warren Faidley]

He may have been on the wrong side of the road, but the white car suddenly pulled out right in front of him without looking.

 

[Brian OConnell]

It appears that this video

was being shot by the occupants of the black car at the time the above posted video was taken, 11:20 in the video I linked appears to be about the start time of OP's video

IMO the biggest safety problem here was deliberate driving into a developing multiple vortex tornado in a town, and not any particular driving maneuver

Besides the obvious extreme danger to ones self in driving into a tornado on purpose, and the even more extreme danger of driving into the early stages of what could easily be a violent multi-votex wedge (I'm really baffled why anyone drives into a tornado on purpose without dominator or tiv), driving into a tornado in a town endangers others as well, as it leads to panicked decisions like the white car swerving into traffic without looking, distracted driving (which may have contributed to the black car hitting the white car) and risks obstructing emergency vehicles or residents trying to flee

My personal view of this is that both cars were at fault for putting themselves in this kind of situation, but I am not sure why OP's link says there were injuries?

I'm not saying this to bash anyone personally, but since I recognized this tornado if there was going to be a thread about this incident I wanted to add context and point out where I think things went wrong, as hopefully discussion of safety problems in the past can help us all to avoid them in the future

 

[Warren Faidley]

Very poor road network, aggressive chasers and locals, deviant tornadoes, low-or-no quality data service. What could go wrong?

 

[Brian OConnell]

Very poor road network, aggressive chasers and locals, deviant tornadoes, low-or-no quality data service. What could go wrong?

I see a lot of talk lately about deviant tornadoes getting chasers in trouble (eg in the 5-4-22 chase van incident), but I am not sure what this means? I thought tornadoes changing direction was something normal that chasers were supposed to prepare for, and looking at the damage survey of the Selden tornado I don't see anything that odd, just a curve to the left (north) as is common when a supercell occludes

In this particular video the chasers appear to approach from the SW, and are not caught by any change in direction, they simply choose to drive into the tornado for some reason

I'm also not sure how lack of data contributed to this, as the tornado and mesocyclone was clearly visible, it looks to me like these chasers chose to be in this position

 

[Michael Towers]

I see a lot of talk lately about deviant tornadoes getting chasers in trouble (eg in the 5-4-22 chase van incident), but I am not sure what this means?

Just that the tornado takes a different path than the parent storm, although it happens most do not deviate and that can take people by surprise. Here's a write-up on the subject:

Anticipating Deviant Tornado Motion Using a Simple Hodograph Technique

Abstract The paths of tornadoes have long been a subject of fascination since the meticulously drawn damage tracks by Dr. Tetsuya Theodore “Ted” Fujita. Though uncommon, some tornadoes have been noted to take sudden left turns from their previous path. This has the potential to present an...

journals.ametsoc.org