County officials critical of storm chasers on roads

[proud2BlibKansan]

Chancy Smith likes footage and photos of tornadoes and other weather disasters, but the pursuit of them Saturday night left him frazzled.

A high probably for tornadoes in north central Kansas brought a convoy of storm chasers to the area.

During some perilous moments, Smith, director of Dickinson County Emergency Management, said the chasers got in the way of protecting the public.

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2012/04/16/3557568/county-officials-critical-of-storm.html#storylink=cpy

[yesphan]

1. It's just a matter of time

before some gets creamed by a storm chasing vehicle.
I was watching a local weather cast Saturday evening as there were many tornadoes in OK on Friday and Saturday.
My town was hit Friday so I had an interest in what was happening Saturday. Anyway, while watching a live feed from one
of the storm chasers, I counted the dashed lines on the roadway and timed them for ten seconds. As the dashes are 45 feet from the beginning of one dash to the beginning of the next, applying some simple arithmetic one can determine with some accuracy the speed of the vehicle. I determined that this chaser was doing well in excess of 90 MPH.
Someday, some one is going to creamed and it will be interesting to see how the storm chasing industry is affected.

[longship]

2. When I lived in Wichita in the 80's and 90's

The storm chasers were immensely important to residents. One radio station covered every tornado outbreak live from these brave individuals chasing storms across the countryside and reporting live.

Residents knew where the tornados were and had time to seek shelter. These people became experts; they saved lives.

Another group chasing storms are the professionals, the scientists studying storm dynamics and attempting to find better ways of predicting tornados. The extent to which these people succeed is the extent to which many lives could be saved.

But now this seems to have become a tourist attraction, filled with amateurs who are apparently more interested in getting a photo than protecting lives. They are greedy and selfish. Their behavior reported in the article is reprehensible.

People need to leave the storm chasing to the pros. They should impose stiff penalties on these tornado tourists.

[proud2BlibKansan]

3. Way too many amateurs wanting to reenact Twister

It's downright nutty.

[datasuspect]

5. in the future

everyone will get their own reality show. we will all be stars.

[jwirr]

4. A tornado can switch directions in a hurry thus catching the chaser in his own game.