• A friendly and periodic reminder of the rules we use for fostering high SNR and quality conversation and interaction at Stormtrack: Forum rules

    P.S. - Nothing specific happened to prompt this message! No one is in trouble, there are no flame wars in effect, nor any inappropriate conversation ongoing. This is being posted sitewide as a casual refresher.

Who's Who of Storm Chasing!

Attention storm chasers! As a small part of the development team with the "new" Stormtrack I have taken on a shared role of spearheading the "Who's Who of Storm Chasing" portion of the forum, located here:

https://stormtrack.org/whos-who-in-storm-chasing/

If you remember, I was the creator of "Chaser Profiles" back in 2012 and it was a hit while it lasted. We are trying to bring that back, bigger and better than ever. Below I am going to attach the template for "WWIC" and if you choose to participate please email me at [email protected] or private message me here on ST with your answers.


First name, last name
Your current City, State
Year you started actively chasing
Number of tornadoes documented
Web site URL
Blog URL
A short 1-paragraph bio

URLs of all social media, video and photo gallery accounts (Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, Flickr, etc)

A headshot of yourself (optional)

Five of your favorite storm chasing photos* PLEASE HYPERLINK OR ATTACH PHOTOS TO YOUR EMAIL OR POST

One video of your favorite encounter while chasing

Q&A Section:

- How did you realize your love for weather?
- When did you decide you wanted to storm chase?
- How long have you been actively chasing?
- Do you chase for a reason?
- Do you see passion as a good or bad thing?
- Do you prefer to chase alone or with a group?
- Have you ever considered going on a storm chase tour?
- How do you feel about the current state of storm chasing?
- Which era of chasing would you prefer to exist? Old-school or new-school?
- How far are you willing to travel for a good set up?
- What are your favorite areas to chase? Least favorite?
- What is you favorite type of set up to chase? Least favorite?
- What is your most memorable chase? Least memorable?
- Have you ever feared for your life?
- Are you afraid to make dangerous maneuvers while chasing? [I.E - core punching/hook slicing/living in the bears cage]
- Do you have any superstitions?
- Would you sacrifice a salaried job with full benefits, but only 2 weeks out of the year to chase for a paycheck to paycheck life with unlimited chasing?
- Are you currently doing anything job related to the weather?
- Have you ever been to ChaserCon?
- Are you more likely to hang out with other chasers while waiting for initiation, or sit alone on a country road watching the sky?
- What is your favorite storm chase and why?
- What date burns in you [think bust] and why?
- Do you always know why you made the wrong or right decisions to chase a particular day?
- How did you learn what you know about forecasting and meteorology?
- Do you consider the day a success even if you don't witness a tornado?
- Do you feel short changed if you see a tornado from a greater distance to you than you prefer?
- How do you feel about the post "Storm Chaser" generation?
- Do you feel like the scientific community should get the same respect as emergency vehicles around storms?
- How you do you feel about the media in regards to the weather and chasing?
- Who are the most influential people to you out in the field?
- Would you considering getting your children into storm chasing?
- If you didn't know anything about storm chasing, how would you react if your child said they wanted to be a chaser?
- What do you fear most about a storm?
- What type of storm do you prefer to chase? [Ugly HP/sculpted LP/classic/squall line]
- Do you stop your progress toward a storm for a great photography opportunity?
- How do you feel about law enforcement immediately around a tornadic supercell?
- Should storm chasers feel more entitled to be around storms than law enforcement or locals?
- Do you have a job that supports storm chasing?
- Do you have a family that supports storm chasing?
- How long do you plan on chasing?

Do not worry about formatting as we will take care of that. Just follow the template above if you choose to participate and be added to the "Who's Who of Chasing" section of the new ST. Thank you!​
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Just to add to Danny's post - the Who's Who is a legacy feature of StormTrack that is being revived. It will be more prominent and should get a lot of traffic and interest! This will be a great way to get some traffic to your web site and blog.
 
Here is a short FAQ on the new Who's Who:

Who can have a Who's Who in Storm Chasing listing?

In order to have a listing in the Who's Who directory, you need to have some actual "real world" storm chasing experience, and you need to have been regularly active in the hobby either now or at some point in the past. A "storm chaser" is defined for the purposes of this directory as someone who pursues storms and their features on a regular basis (at least once every year) by fulfilling the following two basic qualifications: a.) forecasting where storms will occur and then b.) driving at least 20 miles away from home each time to observe the storms. Photographing storms from home, encountering a storm/tornado by chance or having a general interest in storms and weather does not meet the definition of "storm chaser" for the purposes of this directory. The aim is not to be elitist or exclusionary, but to maintain a high-quality directory of storm chasers.

What are the required information items?

The following are the minimum information requirements: Name, geographic location, bio, year of your first chase and answers to at least five Q&A questions. All other items are optional.

Do I need to answer all of the Q&A questions?

A minimum of five Q&A questions should be answered, but we encourage answering as many as possible. The goal is to make the Who's Who both a quality resource and an interesting read for viewers.

Will I be able to update my own entry?

This is a planned feature that will be added at some time in the future.

How do I get a listing or edit my existing one?

Contact me or Danny Neal, or simply post in this thread :)
 
It would be cool if there was a way to intergrate that as a template into the new ST site that each registered member automatically sees within their profile; that way members could edit it as they saw fit/stats change. I've tried a couple times to copy/paste all of that into a PM and it's exhaustive. IMO would be much cooler as a part of the member profile page that members could edit themselves. Plus, for long-time chasers, we've answered those questions so many times, it's hard to sit down and physically respond to them again after all this time.
 
It would be cool if there was a way to intergrate that as a template into the new ST site that each registered member automatically sees within their profile; that way members could edit it as they saw fit/stats change. I've tried a couple times to copy/paste all of that into a PM and it's exhaustive. IMO would be much cooler as a part of the member profile page that members could edit themselves. Plus, for long-time chasers, we've answered those questions so many times, it's hard to sit down and physically respond to them again after all this time.

This is in the works :) The end goal is to have the Who's Who fully integrated into the forum software so that there is not a separate login needed for individual members to edit their profiles. It's going to require some fairly substantial development, though, so for now it's being built in static pages.
 
This will make some great reading—thanks for all the effort around this. ...and thanks for the link to the old Who's Who, Dan.

I wrote my bio in first person. Writing about myself in third person is awkward. Let me know if I need to fix that.
 
Just an update: We now have 50 profiles on the new Who's Who in Storm Chasing! The response has been fantastic, thank you to everyone who has sent in their info! It's never too late to send in your questionnaire, as this will be a permanent fixture of the new site that will be updated as needed.

Although we're pretty much at the cutoff to get new profiles added before our launch day, if you send a profile in in the next day or so, I'll make sure it is added over the weekend.
 
Chris, the Who's Who is open any time you'd like to join up. Just send your info to either me or Danny and we'll get you listed.
 
This will be fun to read! Technically, I don't qualify because I'm first & foremost just a lightning photographer. So I rarely have to go more than 20 miles to get to one of my fav spots. Plus being with SkyWarn, I stick close to home.
 
Ah I hadn't realized it was there either.

Thanks for bringing that feature back to life, I think it's an awesome resource to gain some insight on the other people out there.

Many thanks to you guys for the hard work you've put into that, Dan and Danny especially. Just awesome :D
 
Fixed :) We ran these all through a bulk formatter since we had so many come in at once last week. I went through them 3 times over the weekend to catch the glitches, but missed a few.
 
Hello all, I realized today that we haven't been asking for headshots from everyone. Those would be great to include in the Who's Who, but we'll keep it optional. If you have a picture of yourself you want added to your profile, send it to me either here on the forum or via email at [email protected].
 
Back
Top