Stormtrack was officially founded on October 9th, 1977. That means the community recently had its 46th birthday. That also means we are just under four years from Stormtrack’s FIFTIETH (that's 50, or the Roman numeral L) year as the place to go for all things associated with storm chasing, including vehicle technology, computer technology and the advent of mobile internet, advances in the understanding of atmospheric processes, advances in hazardous weather forecasting and information dissemination, photography, geography, education/academics, and just the evolution of the cultural influence of storm chasing on the broader world in general.
We want to celebrate this monumental achievement by doing something truly special. While we are open to other ideas about ways to celebrate fifty years of a storm chasing community organization, the initial idea that has gained traction among the staff is to create an anthology - essentially a book - highlighting every facet of storm chasing (see the list above of sub-disciplines that affect/influence the activity). And we want you all to be a part of this anthology, from supplying ideas of what to include, essays covering various subjects, chaser profiles, interesting tidbits, discoveries, or data collected, maps, trinkets, artifacts, antiques…whatever it is that you might be able to contribute.
The current idea is indeed to eventually make a publishable book out of this (and we do mean to an established publishing service and selling to the world). That will likely incur large monetary investment, but also a lot of planning and effort on the part of many people, not just the Stormtrack staff. But that is why we want to announce this now so folks can begin thinking about contribution ideas and also have time to gather and create the content needed for this project. You should expect that this idea will morph as time goes on through 2024 and 2025, and especially into 2026. However, we also have to acknowledge the potential that eventually we will decide we are unable to complete this project and have to do something different. But the more time we give ourselves to get into this, the more likely we are to have success.
One of the first things we plan to do for the anthology is send everyone a link to a survey so we can build profiles of chasers in the community. Participation is, of course, optional, but the more who participate, the more we will be able to do with the information.
So please, I invite all of you to suggest topics to include or your enthusiasm for participating in this in any way. If there is sufficient interest, we can create a committee devoted to this goal.
A few suggested topics to get the ball rolling:
-Evolution of gas/oil prices since the beginning of storm chasing
-How chase vehicle setups have evolved with the change in technology
-Of course we will include the "In Memoriam" section that will pull material from the obituary thread
We want to celebrate this monumental achievement by doing something truly special. While we are open to other ideas about ways to celebrate fifty years of a storm chasing community organization, the initial idea that has gained traction among the staff is to create an anthology - essentially a book - highlighting every facet of storm chasing (see the list above of sub-disciplines that affect/influence the activity). And we want you all to be a part of this anthology, from supplying ideas of what to include, essays covering various subjects, chaser profiles, interesting tidbits, discoveries, or data collected, maps, trinkets, artifacts, antiques…whatever it is that you might be able to contribute.
The current idea is indeed to eventually make a publishable book out of this (and we do mean to an established publishing service and selling to the world). That will likely incur large monetary investment, but also a lot of planning and effort on the part of many people, not just the Stormtrack staff. But that is why we want to announce this now so folks can begin thinking about contribution ideas and also have time to gather and create the content needed for this project. You should expect that this idea will morph as time goes on through 2024 and 2025, and especially into 2026. However, we also have to acknowledge the potential that eventually we will decide we are unable to complete this project and have to do something different. But the more time we give ourselves to get into this, the more likely we are to have success.
One of the first things we plan to do for the anthology is send everyone a link to a survey so we can build profiles of chasers in the community. Participation is, of course, optional, but the more who participate, the more we will be able to do with the information.
So please, I invite all of you to suggest topics to include or your enthusiasm for participating in this in any way. If there is sufficient interest, we can create a committee devoted to this goal.
A few suggested topics to get the ball rolling:
-Evolution of gas/oil prices since the beginning of storm chasing
-How chase vehicle setups have evolved with the change in technology
-Of course we will include the "In Memoriam" section that will pull material from the obituary thread
). I second Jeff's invitation to get involved *now* - the downside of starting early is that people don't feel a sense of urgency, but we are going to need all of the available time between now and then - after all, this isn't a full-time endeavor for any of us.
