Storm Chaser films near death experience

[Stan Rose]

"I'm luck to be Alive"

This popped up in my Youtube feed this morning...don't know Chris but it aint often you see chasers post their nearly deadly decisions on social media, at least not this close to being fatal. He was very lucky.
What really got me about this post though was the conclusion. The chaser concludes by saying his mistakes were to lose situational awareness and not execute safe escapes when it was clear he was in danger.
Obviously mistakes, and whenever something like this happens, that is what we hear from other chasers.
What I'd like to know is the reason for wanting to get that close. I've never had the desire to risk my life while chasing, so it's completely foreign to me.
Is it really just for the 'thrill of it" as Chris implies in his comments, or is it driven by some need for social media attention and whatever (little) money flows out of that?
I suspect his post will just encourage more people to try to get closer, cause let's face it, it is dramatic video and it *will* get attention and it *can* be monetized. So what is the mistake made?

 

[Todd Lemery]

I had a shorter video sent to me from someone else. My big takeaway was how they could see the tornado, knew which way it was headed and still drove right into its path. You almost have to try and do that!

 

[Matt Zumbrunn]

Elsewhere in the animal kingdom its called natural selection

 

[Rick Schmidt]

Another mistake he made was screaming F-bombs and cliches into the mic like he was doing a Reed T. impression. I'm getting tired of 'chasers' doing that, rookie AND veteran.

 

[Jeff Smith]

Agree with Todd. It is harder to drive into a tornado than drive away from it--especially a relatively small hose. Yeah, they can be erratic and people do some stupid things when under pressure. However, there were at least 2 different escape options once he realized he had stayed there too long and he chose option #3 lol.

At least he thanked Mom and Dad for rescuing him...

 

[JamesCaruso]

At least from what I could see in the video, they drove toward the tornado with no visibility of it as it was getting wrapped in rain. I don’t think it had anything to do with situational awareness. Loss of situational awareness is when you don’t know what’s happening. They knew it was there and went the wrong way. Really don’t know why they went that way… It was just a stupid decision, not a loss of situational awareness.

 

[Tony Laubach]

"Learn from my mistakes..." No kid, you should've learned from Tim's mistake... if you hadn't done that, what in the world makes you think anyone is going to learn from your Redd-wannabe dumbbutt.

I've been hearing a lot of chatter on this the last few days. There was a point that the "new generation" is too young to know about what happened to Tim, Paul, and Carl. I think that's the biggest load of BS. For better or worse, it's chaser lore now. How anyone would even think about getting into chasing and not know about that incident is beyond me. That's the incident you should know and have learned from before you even step foot into chasing. Not the idiot decision making of some dumb punk, and that's exactly what this was, clearly due to inexperience.

No one cares he totaled his car... no one cares he didn't have video running... he's probably lucky if someone other than his mom and dad cared enough he walked away from that. Then he goes and has a "sense of humor" about it... there's nothing funny about this. In fact, it's a giant slap in face to the guys everyone one of these kids walks away from this and had the audacity to brag/poke fun at it. I don't wish death on these guys, I truly truly don't. But it's not fair... it really is not. And no, it's not "natural selection"... he's still here. It feeds the beast of "oh, nothing will happen to me."

High Risk Chris, whom up til a couple days ago, I had never heard of, is just another Reed-wannabe. I was digusted at his antics in the first minute of the video just him yelling and screaming like an idiot. He took a high risk and got away with it. Now he'll collect 15 minutes of fame, whatever money and followers he gets, collect a group of enablers, and the cycle will continue until one of these punks do get killed.

I hate it...but it is what it is... if no one learned from Tim, Paul, and Carl in the last ten years, they sure as $h!t ain't learning anything now.

 

[Jason Boggs]

His biggest mistake I think was being in the path in the first place. On top of that, he waited way to long to hit his escape route, and his so called escape route led right back into the path of the tornado. Folks, stay out of the path and use the zoom function on your preferred equipment.

 

[Jeff Smith]

Positioning on fast movers is the key to even getting a glimpse of a tornado. This kid put himself in front of the meso in order to see it, and had no business doing so. There are a very few chasers that I know of that have the skill and experience to do this, and he is definitely not one of them. My personal chasing style leads me to miss many tornadoes because i am not a core puncher nor do I like to position myself to the north of the tor/meso, but I have seen hundreds with my chasing strategies. Now if you want to play in the cage, go for it. But make sure you have the experience and presence of mind to be able to escape when necessary.

Now, to all the "zero meter" crowd (which I believe was this kid's intention IMHO), why even try? You just end up with a destroyed car and potentially much more. I simply do not get it. I suppose Storm Chasers on the 2007 vintage started all this zero meter stuff, but it boggles my mind.

 

[James K]

I've never heard of that guy before that guy before reading this thread. (& I'll admit I watch a reasonable number of storm videos on YT)

----
So this now makes Three chasers just in the past couple weeks who's almost gotten themselves El-Reno'ed by getting too close...
At this rate if these crazy guys keep it up, scary thing is one of them might not "walk away with only minor injuries".

 

[Stan Rose]

Positioning on fast movers is the key to even getting a glimpse of a tornado. This kid put himself in front of the meso in order to see it, and had no business doing so. There are a very few chasers that I know of that have the skill and experience to do this, and he is definitely not one of them. My personal chasing style leads me to miss many tornadoes because i am not a core puncher nor do I like to position myself to the north of the tor/meso, but I have seen hundreds with my chasing strategies. Now if you want to play in the cage, go for it. But make sure you have the experience and presence of mind to be able to escape when necessary.

Now, to all the "zero meter" crowd (which I believe was this kid's intention IMHO), why even try? You just end up with a destroyed car and potentially much more. I simply do not get it. I suppose Storm Chasers on the 2007 vintage started all this zero meter stuff, but it boggles my mind.

I completely agree, and thats' why I posed the question about motivation. Cause I don't think it was an 'unintentional mistake' as he claimed, or even 'inexperience' mentioned by Tony L above (although I agree it was stupid) Seems to me it was a very conscious decision to get as close as possible for the 'money shot' and then pass it off as a bad decision later. So if that's the case, is there any solution to keep people alive? Maybe like Tony said it is just inevitable, you can't censor media. I guess just making people aware of how dumb it is, stigmatizing it, is all you can do. Someone like Reed should probably do that.

 

[Andy Wehrle]

I admit my own situational awareness was not stellar during my Keota intercept on March 31 (with the storm unexpectedly cycling right in front of me minutes after I got onto it), but because I was deliberately giving the initial tornado a wide berth I still had some margin for safety when the new tornado formed much closer to me. I could see it had clear left-to-right motion and would cross Highway 92 to my west. I knew I absolutely did not want to get into a situation where I was racing down the road a few hundred feet from the tornado, debris striking my vehicle and no confident escape route.

 

[Michael Towers]

I admit my own situational awareness was not stellar during my Keota intercept on March 31...

The only thing not stellar was keeping your vehicle facing west on the north side of the road instead of doing a U-turn and parking on the south side before getting out to film. But that’s easy to critique in hindsight, when you come upon a tornado in progress the natural urge is to get out and film/shoot ASAP and with a ready spot available (which is not always the case) you took it. But since you didn’t get too aggressive you still had a buffer when the second tornado spun up, albeit less margin for error if that one took a bad turn and even less if a third one spun up:

Watching the video of @TonyB at the 21 second mark it looks like a third was possibly in the making but never transpired, if it had it likely would have happened very close to my position and I wouldn’t have had a clue because I was transfixed on the second tornado while still keeping tabs of the first tornado with no thought that a third tornado could happen simultaneously.

It’s another reminder about tunnel vision and keeping your head on a swivel and taking that extra precaution when choosing a spot to park, if possible. Makes me think of Rozel and how shocked I was when I saw video from a chaser filming from a distance that showed I had a tornado at my six as I was filming the EF-4.

As for High Risk Chris I’m glad he’s okay and while I may be wrong I think he was just a kid in way over his head and was overtaken by panic. He had a near death experience and I think it will likely have a positive impact on how he chases (if he chases) going forward.

 

[Andy Wehrle]

The only thing not stellar was keeping your vehicle facing west on the north side of the road instead of doing a U-turn and parking on the south side before getting out to film. But that’s easy to critique in hindsight, when you come upon a tornado in progress the natural urge is to get out and film/shoot ASAP and with a ready spot available (which is not always the case) you took it. But since you didn’t get too aggressive you still had a buffer when the second tornado spun up, albeit less margin for error if that one took a bad turn and even less if a third one spun up:

Watching the video of @TonyB at the 21 second mark it looks like a third was possibly in the making but never transpired, if it had it likely would have happened very close to my position and I wouldn’t have had a clue because I was transfixed on the second tornado while still keeping tabs of the first tornado with no thought that a third tornado could happen simultaneously.

It’s another reminder about tunnel vision and keeping your head on a swivel and taking that extra precaution when choosing a spot to park, if possible. Makes me think of Rozel and how shocked I was when I saw video from a chaser filming from a distance that showed I had a tornado at my six as I was filming the EF-4.

As for High Risk Chris I’m glad he’s okay and while I may be wrong I think he was just a kid in way over his head and was overtaken by panic. He had a near death experience and I think it will likely have a positive impact on how he chases (if he chases) going forward.

Haha, I did in fact turn the car around and pull it to the south shoulder a few minutes later. You can see me at 1:12 in this video:

I'm just annoyed with myself for losing track of the fact that a cycle had occurred and the old tornado was still going on as a rope to the south of the highway (it had become shrouded in a dust cloud that the new tornado appeared to emerge out of from my perspective). Could have been bad if it had pulled some shenanigans like accelerate cyclonically around the periphery of the new mesocyclone as has been known to happen (ex. Pilger). Fortunately it just followed the new tornado to the northeast before bending a bit to the left (due north) in typical occlusion fashion.

 

[Jonathan Scrogham]

This has been an issue for a little while, but it seems more and more people are hopping on the zero meter train as of late. It seems most major chases this year have had someone caught in a bad spot or zero metering, and it gets the spotlight. I fear that because it is getting more publicity, more people are going to try to get as close as possible, and not take account for their safety or the safety of others. I feel like people forget that they have influence, especially veteran chasers, over younger folks like myself. I'm not getting on anyone in particular, but this is an issue all across the WX community. And if people keep making the same mistakes, someone is going to get seriously hurt or killed. It's a miracle people have walked away from these situations unharmed so far.

 

[James K]

And the fact that more & more people are taking the risk of zero metering is pretty scary, especially because they're doing it in just normal vehicles!
I don't know if its a "it'll never happen to me" thing? or these guys don't realize just how powerful/dangerous those storms can be?
(and/or the fact that a tornado can change direction)?

If they had a Dominator-type vehicle and were doing it, it wouldn't be so bad (still not completely safe, but atleast the heavy & armored vehicle would offer a better level of protection if/when it gets hit).

 

[Andy Wehrle]

I'm a bit disturbed by this stream from 3/31, too...these guys core-punched through the back side of the core through blinding rain and some hail to emerge right in front of the original EF3 Martinsburg tornado, with the Keota EF4 already starting to spin up to its northeast (closer to the highway, but further ahead from their perspective).

I thought my situational awareness was bad, they seem to stop on Highway 92 almost right in front of the old tornado and barely acknowledge it until later. Per the updated DVN track map, the first tornado crossed 92 probably not long after the new one, just before it dissipated.

They pass the spot where I was at around 3:14:55, I must have just left to head east down 92. In retrospect I should have caught a north road sooner than IA-1 to Kalona, but with the storm speed and this being my first time on such a violent tornado I wanted to give myself plenty of road to work with.

 

[J Holder]

Buckle up, this is gonna be bumpy...

After reading the thread on Reed Timmer and this one I'm convinced that the chaser community gene pool needs chlorine. Remember all the past threads about cops hating chasers? It shouldn't surprise you now. Every year the lack of situational awareness, disregard for safety and flat out grandstanding for fun and profit by chasers gets worse. What's worse is there has been zero repercussions for bad behavior and in fact reward for too many. Clearly people in our community have forgotten the lessons from Tim Samaras that even the safest chasers can get killed, the public hate Sean Casey got for his reckless driving as well as the warnings that should have been learned when Roger Hill nearly killed 12 people in 2019.

Science and public safety have taken a back seat to social media likes, Youtube subscriptions and crowdfunding money. I started weather spotting and chasing storms in Eastern Kansas when I was 16 and 35 years later I don't recognize what I'm seeing anymore. I may not have a BS in Meteorology but it doesn't take a 4 year degree to know you don't core punch supercells and drive in front of a tornado to livestream your Wizard of OZ moment on Facebook. Back then we were tech poor but chasers were field savvy. Today we have more tech and data in our vehicles than the last freaking space shuttle being used by chasers with zero common sense or worse. Yes, I know these metal midgets are in minority but they're also the only ones seen by the public. Like it or not that by default makes them and their asshattery the representation of the community.

Now the question is what can we going to do about it? Because I've got no answers.

 

[Mark Gressman Jr]

The simple answer is nothing.... nothing can be done by the community that hasn't already been tried! After spending the last 18 months pouring through older threads on this site, I've seen the calls for civility, I've seen the calls for outing the bad behavior, and I've seen the pleas for RT to set better examples. It's not going to change anything.

I believe I have an outside view on this since I've never had the chance to chase a tornadic supercell. I dislike the way RT yells and screams, which makes watching his vids unbearable, but he seems to be damn good at what he does. It's a shame he won't use his popularity to influence better behavior, but that's his choice, and he alone will have to answer to any unfortunate event that may unfold due to his style.

Some people are always gonna have to learn the hard way through life experiences, we just have to hope those experiences don't involve us or innocent bystanders. I fall into this category too as I typically learn lessons the hard way, but I also have zero desire to document storms for the masses. My only goal is to just be there for the fulfillment related to the experience. I guess the chase community could take a page from the B.A.S.E. jumping community and legit tar and feather offenders, but I don't think that'll work in this day and age, lol. I really feel the need for likes and followers drives most of this insanity though, and until that is removed from the equation, this behavior will continue.

 

[JamesCaruso]

I'm a bit disturbed by this stream from 3/31, too...these guys core-punched through the back side of the core through blinding rain and some hail to emerge right in front of the original EF3 Martinsburg tornado, with the Keota EF4 already starting to spin up to its northeast (closer to the highway, but further ahead from their perspective).

I thought my situational awareness was bad, they seem to stop on Highway 92 almost right in front of the old tornado and barely acknowledge it until later. Per the updated DVN track map, the first tornado crossed 92 probably not long after the new one, just before it dissipated.

They pass the spot where I was at around 3:14:55, I must have just left to head east down 92. In retrospect I should have caught a north road sooner than IA-1 to Kalona, but with the storm speed and this being my first time on such a violent tornado I wanted to give myself plenty of road to work with.

OT, but interesting and disturbing altercation with a local firefighter at around 3:16 or so...

 

[Jeff Wright]

Let me run this flag up and see if anyone salutes it.

Stopping your car---a complete halt mind you---and putting a finger up to the funnel where it is near a pole to see which way the storm is really headed.

It looked to me that Bettes' driver was moving toward danger during the flip---but when the car is moving it can mask storm motion.

 

[Jeff Duda]

So let me get this straight (first time I've watched the video).

This guy puts himself in the path of the storm, witness a tornado at a reasonably safe distance, recognizes that he is in the path and needs to move, but chooses a right turn that makes him cross the path of the tornado (it had been heading just off to his left on the horizon, so the reality is if he had stayed put he probably would have had an entertaining close intercept but not be hit), then gets to a decision point and chooses to turn a back around and into the tornado's path once again?

That's not just stupid...that is illustration that he has no business being out there to begin with. I guess if someone is suicidal and wants to get video of them trying to kill themselves then it's not on me to stop them. But this is the kind of panicky idiot that could get someone else killed, too, if he were to drive recklessly or block a road and cause someone else to get hit.

 

[Matt Zumbrunn]

 

[Mike Smith]

OT, but interesting and disturbing altercation with a local firefighter at around 3:16 or so...

Jim, thank you for bringing that to our attention. I just watched it. Really bad by both parties.

I have a nephew who graduated from the Kansas Law Enforcement Academy not too long ago and he told me there is zero (literally) instruction in or discussion of weather, let alone tornadoes.

While it was much more polite than the above, I've had my encounter with a firefighter in Barber Co. Kansas in 2014.

My point: I simply have no idea where police and fire people get them impression they are more expert in tornadoes than storm chasers. What makes this especially tragic:

• 2007, deputy sheriff killed in Kansas by the second tornado after Greensburg.
• 2008, firefighter killed by tornado in southwest Missouri.
• 2017, (not certain of the year), motorist killed in Indiana after highway patrol blocked Interstate highway in the wrong place and stopped motorists in the path of the tornado.

While I am 100% in favor of being polite and, especially respectful (the latter is what they seem to crave) -- I told the fireman that I had every right to be there (had pulled into a public drive, wasn't on/near roadway) and that he had no authority to make me leave. I also told me he was welcome to stay and watch with us. He wasn't interested, which didn't surprise me.

When we had Chasercon in Wichita, I assembled and moderated a law enforcement (KS and OK) and EM (KS) panel on this very topic. All said they instruct their people to be respectful of storm chasers and to use them as a resource during severe weather. I think we have mitigated the problem in those to states. The others.....

 

[Jeff Duda]

Staff note
The last few posts have drifted off-topic on this thread. Let's keep the topic of future posts germane to the incident at hand. I believe there are existing threads on storm chaser interactions with LEO/EMT folks that these latter posts would fit better in.