Storm chasers gain respect on leading edge of tornado research

[Warren Faidley]

During the early days of NWS Doppler Radar, we would often call in reports to NWS offices and describe what we were witnessing so they could get a better idea of how specific storm features looked on radar. This was especially true of classic SP LP storms.

Genuine researchers and scientists had been doing that for years and they deserve the full credit - not a chaser who was technically forwarding "spotter" reports. Glad I could help, but that does not make me a "scientist" even if I had a pile of degrees. I was not employed by the Government, nor did I officially report my findings / data to any supporting institution where my information benefited a collective effort. I often chased with working scientists and meteorology professors who, despite their education and credits, never used their credentials to somehow "work" the system to make a profit by misleading people. Back then, it would have been called "unprofessional."

I reported information because it was a: fun and b: made me feel like I was contributing something to meteorology other than running around photographing storms for profit. I was not embarrassed by the fact that I was only a photojournalist or that my intentions were to make money (and keep chasing). I did not feel the need to misrepresent myself to the media, friends and others in order to make my efforts appear more legitimate and place myself above everyone else.

W.

 

[calvinkaskey]

I storm chase for fun but I think it is more meaningful if I can help if it is needed. Recorded severe weather can be used by scientists and is the observation part of scientific method. I took very shoddy video of what looked like a developing tornado. How did I figure that? The motion of the clouds was higher than the 40 mph movement of the thunderstorm reported by the NWS simply because the vertical movement was more than the horizontal movement. Since the storm was moving ESE and I was positioned SSW of the thunderstorm so if I could estimate my distance from the thunderstorm (using maps and radar) I could start to estimate the winds by triangulation from my fixed position. Doing this I painstakingly estimated cloud movement in the thunderstorm and came up with an estimated 40 mph storm relative rotation of the meso along with violent 50 plus mph winds in the updraft region in the sw side of the storm. Right behind this updraft speed was a funnel shaped cloud structure that I finally saw rotation with for a few seconds after looking at the video for a month. I found out that there was a tornado warning that expired 5 minutes after observing the storm and recording it. Everything verified including a bird struction on radar. Next year 4 people died in possibly the deadliest tornado in New York history and it also didn't have tornado warning. I showed people my video and explained it and that there wasn't a tornado warning with it at the time. Anybody can help with a little knowledge if people will only listen.

 

[Michael Snyder]

I agree, it seems like anymore people are too afraid to just say they storm chase as a hobby. I storm chased for 13/14 years and I never did so to save lives or contribute anything to the science, it was always a hobby for me because I was fascinated by storms and tornadoes. I was the selfish chaser, so to speak. I didn't chase for any other reasons but for myself and my own enjoyment. I never felt the need to justify my chasing by claiming to be saving lives and doing it for science. Anymore it seems like every other chaser is out chasing to save lives or to contribute to science, in reality they are contributing jack squat to science. There are the exceptions such as Tim Samaras, but chasers like that are far and few between. I'm sorry folks, but slapping a cheap, consumer grade anemometer among other equally cheap junk equipment on your vehicle and live streaming your chase isn't contributing to the science. You'll never see a published scientific article quoting data collected from a cheap Davis weather station mounted on a car.

Chasing is a hobby, nothing more than that. If you're lucky enough and have the brains and intelligence to do so, then maybe, just maybe you can make it into something more than that. I doubt it, but if you claiming to chase to contribute to the science makes you feel better, than by all means claim that. I'll just continue to call BS on that and ask you to show me your scientific data that you've collected and what scientific journal it has been publishes in.

Your point is well taken, however Ill disagree on this. Hear me out...

Observation is a huge factor in any science. If you are on a storm, report a tornado, wind damage or hail size and that data is seen by someone using storm reports to improve forecasting, then there you have it , you are doing good... for SCIENCE! (Thomas Dolby)
Observation in the form of Storm reports are a huge factor in helping forecasters increase forecasting skill. The importance is greatly amplified if you are the only one on a storm, or the only one on a storm reporting storm information.

In this day and age we are also getting closer to being able to access data from barometers on cell phones and then contributing to science by just being near storms with a smart phone.
The smart phones don't even need to be calibrated properly to see pressure tendencies. This allows forecasters, or anyone interested to be able to see pressure tendencies near severe weather with much greater detail, hugely important data!

http://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2013/02/smartphone-pressure-observations-take.html

So while many(most) chasers aren't publishing scientific papers, there is a good chance that you are contributing to the data of those whom might publish those journals....if you are making good storm reports. OR as data collection becomes better , using a smart phone/tablet.

 

[JamesCaruso]

I am in the hobbyist camp as well and do not pretend to be doing anything for "science," especially "science" properly defined as involving research, rigid application of the scientific method, etc.

But I think we all contribute in some way to the general body of knowledge that is out there. Think of any subject you can imagine; there is both an academic knowledge base as well as a mainstream knowledge base that includes the contributions of "regular" people, with that knowledge multiplying through sharing and "connecting the dots" as facilitated by the Internet. Consider an analogy of book reviews on Amazon; the readers posting reviews are not professional literary critics, but they are still contributing to the body of knowledge around books and the subject matter of those books; maybe it brings some aspect of "more serious" reading to the masses that did not exist 20 years ago, even if the Amazon reviewers remain a world away from true literary critics. To bring it back to chasing, anyone for example trying to write a mainstream book about a historic tornado outbreak would be foolish to ignore the wealth of chaser experiences and insights before, during and after the event that are documented on here, on chaser websites, or on social media. That body of knowledge simply did not exist 20+ years ago. Past threads on the need to preserve historical information on this site, lamenting the sad loss of that history via broken links, unmaintained websites, etc., illustrates the value of chaser-generated information. So again my point is not to try to claim it is "science," but that we are somehow contributing to the overall body of knowledge, which I think consists of more than just strict "science" alone. We are sort of a bridge between science and the mainstream public, which is more likely to learn something about storms from our community than from the latest scientific journal.

Separately, I do like Dan's idea about a mobile instrument pack of some sort. Crowdsourcing of data is a big trend not just in meteorology (such as the precipitation crowdfunding project and app, IIRC I think it's called mPING) but in numerous other fields as well. Don't airplanes include instruments to collect and transmit upper-air data? Seems the same principles could extend to vehicles.