What is the purpose of having a livecam?

Well, I am thinking about running a live cam just for friends and family to watch. Whether I run it thru Severe Studio's or not I don't know. But one thing is for certain........there isn't a saint in this forum that obeys all the traffic laws, especially if the TOR warned cell is within intercept. You can put a bib under your chin to wipe up your salivating juices if it is a confirmed tornado and the storm is cyclical. I think the live cam is an awesome thing, especially if someone is close to your area and someone you know is watching that cam. My girlfriend was watching Dennis Sherrods the day of the Quinter tornado and when I was on the phone with her it was like she was there watching it with us. Way cool! I don't chase for fame and glory, but if I get some cool footage, you bet your bottom dollar if CNN or FOX wants to buy it, I will sell it. Back in 2004 during the Elbert County outbreak here in CO I thought I would call 9 News here in Denver and see if they wanted some footage and the next thing I knew CNN, NBC, WB.......they were all calling. That paid for alot of gas!! Did I intend on 5 minutes of fame that previous morning when I woke up, no! The guy at WB wanted to interview me live on their morning show and I said no freaking way. But CNN called and by then I had my whits about me so I said sure, why not. I actually enjoyed it. Would I do it again, sure....why not? I think many of us in this forum would take advantage of that kind opportunity, especially these days with gas prices and everything else starting to sore thru the roof. I think it is unfair that some people get blasted left and right and some people are praised in awe when they get great/controversial/insanely stupid video and make a buck on it.
We are dealing with the unknown. Mother Nature is going to do what she wants. The minute you think you have her figured out is time you take a step back and think about what you are actually getting yourself into. You can see a storm do something a hundred times, but it may be that 101st time that you see it do something completely out of left field and next thing you know, you are in a really bad spot. One of these times, someone is going to choose unwisely and it is going to cost them. While I don't agree with the way those guys got their footage, I will say that if I were in the same spot and got that kind of footage, odds are I probably would have sold out too and it isn't because I want to be famous. Lord knows I would hate to log onto ST and see my name dragged thru the coals because Mother Nature thru me a curve ball and I happened to make a buck on it thru my own stupidity or pure luck or because I knew exactly what I was doing, whatever the case may be. I am glad those guys are ok. I still think the bigger question is why are so many of our community having these close run ins with tornadoes this season? I don't think it is because they are looking for the money shot.....but that is just IMO.
 
It was awesome when I had guests with me this year for their families to be able to sit at home and watch what we were doing on the road. Very very cool. It's also very cool that NWS and EMS can and are making use of the live streams. I love watching the streams when I can't be out there myself. I'll continue to use streaming from time to time (when I'm in good coverage areas ... otherwise I'm spending a lot of time messing around with reconnection, and that sucks).

EDIT - by the way, I posted a blog about the use of technology in chasing for those who are interested. I am not interested in contributing to debate in Stormtrack threads, but I do like to contribute to ongoing positive dialog concerning this thing we like to do. So read it if you're interested, and forget it if you're not.
 
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Unfortunately fame these days with media and storm chasing involves with a chaser being in the tornado. If you as a chaser are driving and going blind into the bears cage...then the odds of you being hit are pretty high. I do not like to tangle with the bear unless I have locked on radar data...and GPS mapping. Otherwise, its not worth the risk of being the only tornado fatalities from a given HP character supercell.

As far as the live streaming video goes....it is a neat tool but does come with its difficulties as I discussed with Mike Peregrine during our chase on Wed. The downfalls I can see is that every action you make on chaser cam is now on public record...and "You Tubable" ...so this could have very damaging results if you are doing one of those on the fly maneuvers and it does not sit well with those who are viewing your cam at the time. I plan on remaining a fairly simplistic "old-school" kind of chaser with no fanfare and no flashing lights or gawdy stickers. To me its a hobby and since the money for videos has seemingly all dried up....that it will stay. My hopes of catching flying cows still remains intact though :rolleyes: Best of luck and words of caution for those chasers who elect to do this on every chase. Just don't let it come back and bite you on the hind quarters.
 
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Shane Adams said:
FYI, I think hurricane chasers are f***in' nuts.

Anyone else notice on the video clip that the vehicle was still rolling even after the outer edge of the circulation was visible? You'd think a slamming of the brakes would be warranted in that situation, but what we see is a gentle roll to a stop, definitely not panic...in fact I'd say it was almost an attempt to target the tornado. But what do I know, I'm just watching the video.

Again, I could care less if they did it on purpose or not. But they sure as hell aren't all over television the past few days because they're worried about serving the public. How many times do I have to say it? Do what you want out there, pimp yourself to whoever you wish, but keep it real. Don't be a puppet on-camera and give the generic, typical "we're trying to save lives" BS interview because we know that ain't why you're out there.
Click to expand...

For those of us who didn't see any of the interviews, I'm curious as to what their response actually was.

While I agree putting yourself in the middle of an HP mess, with obvious strong couplets heading your way is not good samaratin work, it's in my opinion that live streaming can help the NWS and media outlets with public safety issues.

As far as them being on TV, so be it! I just hope they made it clear that they were not in a safe situation to begin with. I'd hate to have a slew of copycats trying to get hit by a tornado based on the fact that these guys actually survived it!
 
"Where is that rotation on radar?!"

I'd venture to guess somewhere around your location.

As has been said... look out the window once in a while.

I'm not trying to get at anything, but I do wonder why they're always so quick in replying in other threads promoting things like severestudios, but unless I've missed something I haven't seen anything from them in this thread.
 
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Andrew, you seem to have a personal stone to grind with these guys. They are apparently on tour right now and probably could care less about everyone's little stabs at them in here right now. I know if I were going through the same thing, ST would be the last place I would be trying to explain myself, considering the fact that there is very little reasoning here in instances such as this, as has been proven time and again.
It’s Saturday night – surly there is something more to do than demand a public statement from SS or the people involved…
 
No stone to grind, I don't even know the guys and have never interacted with them before. That was only my second post in this thread, anyway. I guess I have more of a stone to grind with the situation.

I realize we have all made mistakes, and this is not the first time someone has been hit by a tornado while chasing. This just seemed like one of the more avoidable situations. It's not as if the storm quickly blew up a new circulation or something. It had a couplet already, and they simply put drove into it. I've seen the list of excuses, and as someone else mentioned, I don't see them so much as excuses as I do huge red flags that should have said "maybe we won't see a tornado today, and can try again tomorrow".

Whether or not they were really doing it to help get warnings out we won't know, but I think there are some times that ground truth just is not worth it. I don't see the point in seriously putting your life in jeopardy in order to try and save others. I understand to a point you can say our lives are already in jeopardy while chasing. My point is they already had tornado warnings out for this storm so I don't understand why it was necessary to get into the core and attempt to see the tornado to help increase warning.
I know a lot of this has been covered, but as I see it...

Losing radar - invalid excuse as you should be going visual that close.
Poor roads - Generally using a mapping program you know ahead of time if your storm is moving into poor road networks, and you can base your strategy off of that. If I see my storm moving into a poor road network the last thing I think is, 'hey, I can get close to this thing!'
Tornado taking a right turn - You should be accounting for that as well. While you can't predict a tornadoes motion, I'd figure you should take that into account and try to give yourself a cushion in case that situation arises.

My girlfriend won't be back in town for another couple hours, so til then I got time to kill this Saturday night. ;)
 
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Ryan McGinnis said:
BTW, I stumbled across the video at Liveleak of the incident that everyone here is talking about:

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=02c_1213413712
Click to expand...

Thanks for posting that! That is much better than that tiny clip they had on their site. I thought like Shane did on that other, that it looked like it was maybe on purpose. Now having seen this longer clip I don't think that at all.

That is pretty damn cool though! You can see right when they are in the calmer middle of the thing! Then bam the stronger backside gets them and turns the car sideways.

What highway were they on exactly? NWS may want to revisit their tornado track map if they were on 183. Maybe they weren't on 183 though.
 
What would have been cool is to have had an RM Young anemometer with their digital data logger to capture the winds in that sucker. Josh Wurman et al have tried to put probes in these things for years and one goes over an experienced chaser's vehicle and there is apparently no anemometer. Bummer. Glad they lived through it, but boy, what a chance to have captured some excellent ground level wind data.
 
For all we know they didn't even get paid. FOX news contacted me and wanted to use my footage of a tornado crossing I-57 that I got last week. They even interviewed me and stuck my ugly mug on TV along with the footage.

Total pay to me = $00.00

So maybe I got totally ripped off cuz I never asked for money and they never offered [I dont really care because I thought it was a neat experience getting a tour of the studio and meeting Amy Freeze whos a total cutie lol] but its wrong to assume that they're swimming in cash over this.

Everyones dream as a kid is to make money doing what they love, if I could make enough money to survive off chasing you can bet I wouldnt be working my miserable 9-5 job in downtown Chicago everyday...
 
While I guess one can't assume, I can almost promise you they're making money off of this, and not cheap change either.

Adam, you def. got ripped off. Neeeever give your stuff away to a big network like that. They have the money, and you spent the money getting the shot.

Let me add that I don't have an issue with them selling the video. I just sold my footage of the Chicago area tornadoes, so that's not an issue I'm debating. If you can make some money back, go for it!
 
I can only imagine the amount of money one could insist on and get it, for something like that...from each of the networks and programs it has been on so far. A person would be dumb not to, especially if it's going to be aired anyway. Then you have all the many "documentary" type shows that would want it later. Yeah, if they want, they'll be sitting pretty. All the "standard" amounts, which shows never want to pay anyway, go out the window with something so rare like that.

And people worry watching others do something crazy will make others want to. No, but that kind of money sure might! lol
 
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