This is a really great topic to discuss, Warren.
Several points come to mind.
The first point has to do with the "generation" of chaser one belongs to. As an old, Boomer-generation storm chaser, what I remember most about first getting involved with tornadoes was a genuine desire to learn and understand as much as I could about tornadoes. That, in turn, led me to OU in Norman, OK, where the early-research studies of tornadoes were just getting underway at NSSL. As my fortune would have it, I landed at just the right place at the right time in the history of organized severe-storm research! Back then, what was driving this research was a desire to understand how tornadoes formed, how the thunderstorms that produced them were different than "ordinary" thunderstorms, and how to forecast where and when they were likely to develop. This was a relatively "new" area of scientific research and there was a genuine curiosity and thirst for scientific understanding. This period, at the nascence of tornado research, was also before Doppler radar and easy-to-use portable mobile communication, so researching tornadoes and severe-storms in the field was really hard work, and often depended on human eyes, ears, and brains to obtain success on chases. For most chasers of this era, having one-on-one encounters with a tornado was a deeply individual experience, resulting in a myriad of emotions from the exhilaration to awe to fear. It was mostly a "game" played by scientists and academia, but a few early legendary solo chasers were around, too, like David Hoadley, Arjen and Jerrine Verkaik, Roger Jensen, and Jim Leonard, to name a few.
As time went on, both radar and communication technologies improved at a rapid pace, and with some early scientific chasing successes, the legacy/journalistic media took notice and stories and articles were cropping up on television documentaries and in mainstream newspaper and magazine articles (Warren Faidley was a very successful part of this photojournalistic trend!). This notoriety also brought out--and onto the roads--a hoard of "hobbiest" storm chasers and curiosity-seekers. Some of these even tried to "cash in" by attempting to make a living as "professional" storm chasers, most failing, but a few surviving successfully to this day as storm-chase tour operators. And, not to be outdone, Hollywood movie producers also began cashing in on this trend by the mid-1990s. Could it be that at some point, tornado chasing may have crossed over from being a purely scientific pursuit to one of entertainment and money-making?
As more-and-more younger, successive generations of people took to the roads in search of tornadoes, they adapted to and utilized whatever "state-of-art" generation of high-technology and gadgetry were available to help lead them to the bears'cage, including on-board, real-time Doppler radar, dash-mounted, continuously-streaming video cameras and continuous mobile communication, whose prices were also coming down significantly so as to make these convenient tools affordable to even hobbiest chasers. As a result, with each successive "generation," storm chasing has become almost too easy, like catching fish in a barrel! A formal knowledge of mesoscale meteorology is not really even a requirement anymore for successful chasing, but real-life chasing experience, based upon actual field observation over time, is. The one thing that all good storm-chasers also have in common is a thorough knowledge of thermodynamic (Skew T-log p) and windshear parameters, and how these interrelate on potential storm-chase days. All ST readers who regularly post here possess such knowledge, making this forum a very valuable platform from which to learn how to chase successfully. Brain knowledge will never go out-of-style in any generation of storm chasing, despite new gadgets, computer technology, or even AI.
For each step of the way as storm-chasing has evolved, from the early-day individual "scientific-minded" chaser to big-buck-backed Hollywood-movie producers and deep-pocketed social-media storm-chase gurus of nowadays, the pursuit of chasing tornadoes has not become more passe, but has become something different over time as society changes (i.e., as society becomes more desensitized to observing violent phenomena, even if natural-caused). One could make the argument that the farther away one gets from the 1970s "heyday" chaser era, the less interesting and novel tornado chasing has become. If the clogged roads and chaser-convergence often experienced today are any guage of interest in tornado chasing, I'd say that tornado chasing is alive-and-well and will continue to attract followers far into the future...
