As Storm Chasing Season Ramps Up, So Does The Crazy Driving Debate

The alleged or real recklessness, depending on your 
perspective, of a tornado chaser's pursuit of this March
5 tornado in Iowa has set off the annual argument over
what to do with unsafe or careless chasers. 

Sometimes you just have to ask: What's more dangerous, the tornadoes or the storm chasers racing down rural highways to film the twisters?  

We're heading into the heart another tornado season.  Severe storms and tornadoes are expected in the South almost every day for the next week.  April and May usually bring the U.S. many more tornadoes, especially in the South and Midwest.  

There will be hundreds of storm chasers trying to document each tornado, mostly for income from viewers on YouTube and other social media. The pressure is on to obtain the most dramatic footage available. 

That pressure annually brings out the warring factions in the chaser community.  Add the emotional power of participating in a chase, the monetary stakes in making a good tornado video and simple ego, you end up with rash decisions and recriminations afterwards. 

When does chasing a tornado bring added and real dangers to the poor souls in communities already dealing with the damn tornado?

As CBS News reported, at least one incident proved deadly for the people chasing a Texas tornado.  The tornado didn't hit them. Alleged reckless driving did it to them.

A storm chaser ran a stop sign while chasing a tornado near Spur, Texas in 2017 and collided with a Jeep driven by another storm chaser. The two chasers in the vehicle that ran the stop sign, and the man in the Jeep all died. 

The mother of the man in the Jeep sued The Weather Channel for $125 million because the pair in the SUV that ran the stop sign were working for the network and allegedly had a reputation for unsafe driving during chases.  The lawsuit was later settled out of court. 

For every tragedy like the Texas collision, there's dozens of near misses either by chasers getting too close to tornadoes, or worse, driving recklessly to get close to the storm. 

The arguing and worry about harebrained storm chasing got off to an early start this year. It all highlights a potentially toxic mix of ego, ambition among some storm chasers, and pleas from other chasers to just tone it down already before somebody else gets killed. 

 Blame or credit for the boiling controversy already underway this year fall largely on a storm chaser named Stas. He was one of many storm chasers in Iowa on March 5 chasing a tornado outbreak there. The videos the chasers took added to the zillions of dramatic tornado videos already on YouTube and other social media. 

Sometimes, some of the chaser go to dubious lengths to deliver on the most wild twister videos. A few of the chasers get too close or even inside tornadoes. A few - not many, but a few - get in the way of emergency responders or drive super recklessly to obtain their precious tornado footage. 

Which leads us to Stas, or @StasIsChasing on Twitter.

STAS IN IOWA  

Stas claims to have gotten the best video of the big tornado that roared through southern Iowa. Maybe he's right. It might be the best footage of that twister, I don't know.  What raised hackles is the way Stas drove to obtain his footage.

In his video, the forward speed of this tornado is super fast and our chaser is racing down the roads to keep up.  He races at top speed through a small town. Luckily, there was nobody on the road as residents were presumably huddled in storm shelters. Then, just as he's leaving the village, Stas  encounters two pickup trucks completely blocking the road, with the tornado visible ahead.  .

The two trucks were apparently blocking the road so no motorists would get too close to the twister. Stas blares his horn, and veers around the trucks, appearing to drive over a lawn. 

He then stomps on the accelerator and continues down the road at a high speed. The vehicle then reached a T intersection. Stas either couldn't or didn't stop in time, blew through a stop sign similar to that fatal one in Texas. His car bounces into some grass and weeds and almost goes over an embankment. . Luckily, nobody was coming through through the intersection so there was no crash.  and went into a field on the other side of the intersection, almost going over an embankment.

After viewing the tornado for a short while, the vehicle backs out, sounding like it was spinning out in the process, then tears down the road toward the tornado again.

Comments on social media about Sta's resulting video were blistering.

"Awesome footage of you speeding through  small town and blasting through a stop sign. Guess we've learned nothing," tweeted veteran storm chaser Mike Olbinski 

"If toxic masculinity in chasing needs definition, lol,"  Ian Livingston commented. 

The comments went back and forth between what a jerk they thought Stas was for driving like that, and others who said the wild driving was worth it to obtain such great tornado footage. 

"You have my full on consent to blow through my small town. Everyone here is just pressed they didn't get the footage. People are just looking for drama to cry about. Everyone wants to play saint, but forgets about their daily life choices," wrote @TheJadenHart.

For what it's worth, the video Stas put up on YouTube had a respectable but not huge 150,000 or so views within 10 days after it was posted. 

For his part, Stas doubled down in a brief subsequent video in which he says he "doesn't give a shit" about the criticism because he got "the best tornado video by far. and if it didn't measure up to your safety standards, then tough shit."

CHASER VS CHASER

The chaser community is full of egos, personality clashes, disputes, turf wars, machismo and all the other sorts of drama you have in every industry or enterprise. 

The problem is this drama doesn't stay in a particular workplace or coffee break room.  When a large tornado menaces a particular town, there will be dozens of chasers in that town trying to document it. 

A tornado is a traumatic event for any community to go through, even if the twister manages to miss most or all of the area's homes and businesses.  On one hand, I see how the excitement of the chase can lead to taking dumb chances or letting the adrenaline get the best of you. 

On the other hand, you don't want to make a bad situation in a storm-threaten town worse by causing death and mayhem on local roads. 

Personally - and this is just my taste - I like the more thoughtful, storytelling tornado chase videos than the ones that involve a lot of screaming, high speed road rage and unsteady camera handling you see from chasers who are more daring than others. 

Weather geeks like me often can't resist the type of video StaIsChasing makes. But I also want to steer you to artistry from some of the calmer chasers, 

I'm talking about chasers like Mike Olbinski, mentioned above, or Pecos Hank. I won't condemn StasIsChasing here, but if you're worried about hazardous storm chasers, one thing we can do is throw more support toward the safer, more conscientious ones.

It's one way we can reward the less reckless chasers while enjoying both the power of nature and the videography skills of the people like Olbinski and Hank.