"Chaser Convergence" Is A Rising Tornado Death Risk

Tornado beginning to develop near Blue Rapids, Kansas on
May 18.  Hundreds of storm chasers converged on this twister.
Photo via Facebook, Live Storm Chasers

 On May 18, a huge supercell thunderstorm sent a tornado stabbing into the ground east of Blue Rapids, Kansas, population about 900. 

Beneath those roiling clouds, a convoy whose members might well have matched the population of the town gathered in roughly 500 vehicles on narrow rural roads, hoping for a glimpse, a photo or a video of the tornado. 

The tornado turned out to be relatively brief and harmless. 

It's called "chaser convergence," and it's dangerous. Converging air masses help produce tornadic storms. The chasers, in turn, converge on the tornadoes.

 Storm chasing has boomed louder than the thunder that supercells produce. Many of the storm chasers are experience and responsible. They know how tornadoes behave and what the safe distance is. They follow the rules of the road. 

Others...not so much.

"As I'm sitting on the highway, it was a continuous line of cars going east for 30 minutes. I mean it was crazy," said Blue Rapids Police Chief Ryan Woodyard. 

 That's a recipe for disaster. 

"There is a chance that there cold be, you know, a line of cars stuck in a traffic jam and that a tornado side swipes them can easily take out dozens of chasers and kill multiple, multiple people at one time," Darin Brunin, a local storm chaser told television station KSNT.   

Per Yahoo News:

"Storm chasers not only have to worry about tornadoes, but also other drivers. Storm chasers report driving is one of the greatest hazards of the job, while law enforcement said managing traffic  a become even harder for small towns with limited resources."

Storm chasers do die when chasing tornadoes, or heading home from or heading to or from the chasers. Four storm chasers died in two separate accidents during the 2022 tornado season. 

Some chasers near Blue Rapids were not obeying traffic laws. If emergency vehicles were needed, chances are they wouldn't be able to get through. The day the tornado touched down east of Blue Rapids, other storms threatened different parts of Kansas on May 18. By one estimation, there were 7,000 tornado hunters roaming the flat plains of the state. 

Commissioners in Marshall County, which includes Blue Rapids. are calling for some type of action  regarding uncoordinated storm chasers. The commissioners agree that chasers can provide life saving information for the public and initiate search and rescue since they are often on the scene before first responders get there. 

Chaser convergence isn't only a problem in Marshall County, Kansas, of course. Anytime there is a well-forecasted tornado outbreak, throngs of chasers are on the scene. 

There doesn't seem to be any calls to ban or seriously regulate storm chasers. But that day might come if there are more tragedies involving the chasers. 

 

Storm Chasers Injured In Crash; Other Chases More Dangerous Than Tornadoes.

An overturned KFOR storm chase vehicle last week
in Oklahoma after being hit by another storm
chaser that blew through a stop sign

You'd think the biggest danger to all those storm chasers hunting tornadoes in the spring and early summer are the twisters themselves. 

It turns out the greater danger is other chasers.

We're getting into storm chasing season, where hordes of people take to the open roads of the Plains, Midwest and South to study, photograph and video tornadoes for fun and profit.

And sometimes science, but mostly for fun and profit. The peak of tornado and twister chasing season is April, May and June. 

The fatigue of driving long distances to find tornadoes, and the act of staring at the storm instead of the road makes chasing tornadoes scarier than the actually twister.

We've already had an example of this. Last week when two storm chasers for KFOR, now as the 4Warn Storm Team were injured when an amateur storm chaser reported blew through a stop sign and hit the KFOR vehicle. 

The KFOR chasers, Connor Tune and Blaze Edwards were treated at a local hospital and released later that night.  .

The driver of the car allegedly ran the stop sign was also injured and held at a hospital overnight for observations but had been expected to be released from a hospital the next dah. 

The two 4Warn Storm Team chasers are experienced, having chased storms since 2009.

Some storm chasers have died in traffic accidents. In 2022, four storm chasers died in vehicle crashes within two weeks.

"Nature isn't the only threat. Storm chasers spend long hours on the road traveling from state to state like long-haul truckers, inviting fatigue. When they catch up to the storms, they can often keep their eyes on the skies instead of the road, sometimes with deadly consequences," CBS reported at the time of the 2022 deaths.

In 2017 three people died in Texas when two vehicles containing storm chasers collided, Two died in one vehicle a third died in the other vehicle. The three had been chasing a tornado at the time. 

If anything, storm chasers are now more distracted as the drive toward storms. Unlike a decade or two ago, chasers now have computer screens in their vehicles they consult for up date weather information. If you get a tired guy looking at the sky and his computer screen, there's not much bandwidth left in his brain to pay attention to the road.

Most people advise two people in each storm chase vehicle. One to monitor the radar screen and the clouds outside, the other to concentrate on driving. 

Another thing I've long been worried about is storm chase traffic jams. Storm chasing has really taken off in popularity. The ability to forecast particularly impressive or photogenic tornadoes and storms has also increased. 

That has resulted in sometimes hundreds of chasers convening on one narrow road. That's fine if the tornado continues going on its projected path. But what if it suddenly switches gears and heads toward all those people on the road.

If it were just a couple of cars, the chasers could just scoot back into their vehicle and race away. But dozens of vehicles create a traffic jam that would slow things down so much that the tornado would hit the collection of scrambling storm chasers. The results could be very deadly. 

 

 

 

 

Videos Show Severity, Destructive Power And Incredible Snows From Recent Winter Storm

The wild images kept coming out of the South today.
This is Interstate 55 in Mississippi about 40 miles
south of Memphis this morning. Freezing fog,
and the highway turned horribly rutted along with
frozen over tied up people trying to drive and
return to a sense of normalcy Trees are still sagging'
under the ice, too. Photo by Mark Shadlow/Facebook

Everybody has a camera in their pocket nowadays, and there's also a ton of professional videographers out now.  Technology has made the process easier and faster.  

In the past decade or so, we've really seen incredible amount of wild images and video of weather disasters. The widespread winter storm this week brought us a lot of impressive scenes.

One big problem that has cropped up in the past couple years is AI. Many videos are fake, generated by AI.  A lot of it is garbage and you can tell right away it's manufactured slop. But some of it fools even the most skeptical eye. 

That said, I've collected some of the more impressive videos of the ice and snow that have no AI in them. 

So enjoy the real videos below. 

Here's Live Storms Media patrolling Alcom County, Mississippi. Click on this link to view, or if you see the image below, click on the arrow with the red background. 

Live Storms Media found even more destruction around Burnsville, Mississippi, with collapsed buildings, trees ahah utilities. As a repeat, click on this link to view, or if you see the image below click on that. 

Another look at Oxford Mississippi. This stretch of road proved too much for some people who tried to venture out despite the fact their community was entirely encased in ice. Hat tip to Storm Chaser Aaron Rigby. The broken record strikes again. Click on this link to view, or if you see the image below click on that. 

Further north, it was of course a ridiculous amount of snow. StormChasingVideo brought us the scenes from in and around Dayton, Ohio. As always, click on this link to view, or if you see the image below, click on the arrow.

It looked even rougher in New York City.  The following video by Scott McPartland shows strong winds funneling between the buildings during the height of the storm. Slippery underfoot, too, judging by how many people fell. You can also hear in the video sleet mixing with the snow. My critique: Many people in the video had dodgy footwear for such a storm, and how are umbrellas going to help in that weather?

In any event, click on this link to watch McPartland's wild Manhattan video, or if you see the image below click on the arrow. 

New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani's administration got generally high marks for snow removal in the city, but they had to put the snow somewhere. The snowbanks have really walled in cars and snowbanks. CBS New York has the scoop if you click on this link, or if you see the image below, click on the arrow

Don't want to brave the cold to clear the snow? Well, a brave new world is coming in the world of driveway snow removal. Check out this guy's robot who did all the work for him. Note that the robot owner says it does take an incredible amount of patience to set up the snow blowing robot. Once again click on this link to view, or if you see the image below, click on the arrow

 

When Tornadoes Get Romantic

The bad pun people among us are calling
this a whirlwind romance. Storm chaser
Bryce Shelton proposes to Paige
Perdomas recently as a large
tornado loomed in the background
near Clark Lake, South Dakota.
She said yes 

 Nobody could resist calling this a whirlwind romance. 

On June 28, Bryce Shelton got down on one knee to propose marriage to Paige Berdomas. She said yes.

The reason why everybody knows about this is because of where the proposal took place. It was on a rural road near Clear Lake, South Dakota, which is no big deal. Except for the fact a large tornado was swirling nearby at the time.  

The now viral photo shows the proposal.

Both Shelton and Berdomas are storm chasers, two of the now-seemingly zillions of people who roam the Plains, South and Midwest in the spring and early summer, hunting down tornadoes and severe storms. 

The two first found each other online in the chaser community then finally met up one day in Iowa. They've been partners in storm chasing since. 

On the day of the tornado/proposal, the couple had been hanging out around Fargo, North Dakota, waiting for forecasted storms to develop. 

Finally, a promising storm popped up near Watertown, South Dakota about halfway between Fargo and Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and the chase was on. The storm eventually spun off the Clear Lake tornado, and by extension the proposal. 

The proposal had to be near a tornado. That was the rule.  

"She has always told me that if I was gonna ask her to marry me, she wants it be in front of a tornado," Shelton told USA Today. 

The whole thing at first glance looks kind of AI-generated, but in this case the proposal - and the tornado behind them, was very real. The tornado was more photogenic than most. In fact, it was among the most photographed twisters of 2025 so far. 

Which made the proposal photo perfect. 

To be fair, the real proposal was captured on a live stream with a tornado in the background. Storm chaser Brian Copic re-created the moment a short time later after a second tornado touched down. That's the photo you see in this post. 

The couple are hoping for calmer weather on their actual wedding day. "No tornadoes for the wedding. I want to wear a pretty dress," she said. 

Another romantic tornado. This time at a wedding 
ceremony in eastern New Mexico back in late May.

 I do have mixed emotions about this. The tornado also destroyed somebody's house, damaged others and injured a man. I guess people can find both joy and tragedy in the same event. 

This isn't the first marriage-related tornado incident I've seen. 

Tornadoes have been been known to be wedding crashers every once in a great while. 

On May 25, during an outdoor wedding in eastern New Mexico, a tornado touched down some distance behind the venue. 

Wedding photographer Chesnea Clemens spotted the tornado, then realized it wasn't headed in their direction, so they didn't have to take cover now if not sooner.

Instead, she hustled the couple to spot with a view of the tornado. The happy couple kissed under dark skies while the tornado twirled behind them. "Nothing says for better or worse like saying I do with Mother Nature throwing down in the background," Clemmons posted on social media.

As cool as these incidents are, if there are wedding bells in your future, I hope  your big day has clear, calm weather. 

 

 

"Twisters" Sequel To 1996 Weather Geek Classic, In Theaters July 19

"Twisters" a sequel of sorts to the 
1996 classic "Twister" is set to
hit theaters on July 19

Anyone who dreams of being in a roomful of rabid and happy weather geeks and storm chasers need to head to their local movie theater starting July 19.  

That's when "Twisters" the long-awaited sequel to the storm chasing classic 1996 movie "Twister" is set to land in movie theaters.

The trailer for "Twisters" dropped during Sunday's Super Bowl, and as of Thursday afternoon had already grabbed about 12 million views. So the interest is certainly there. 

The new movie stars Glen Powell whose character describes himself as a 'tornado wrangler' and Daisy Edgar Jones, who plays a scientist. 

Weather and storm geeks are giddy about the prospects of this movie, as one might expect. 

Reed Timmer, arguably the most prominent storm chaser in the nation -  and who bears more than a passing resemblance to Powell - has already given the film two thumbs up. 

Timmer, quoted in the Washington Post said:

"It looks like a realistic depiction of up-close tornado chasing and extreme field science. The tornadoes look realist and I love the focus on legendary tornadoes."  

That might be a reference to a scene in the movie of twin tornadoes that are reminiscent of what many storm chasers regard as the ultimate  storm video: Two intense, side by side tornadoes that struck the area in and around Pilger, Nebraska in 2014.

 Judging from the trailer for "Twisters" the movie's depiction of violent tornadoes does seem much more realistic than in the 1996 film, as Timmer says.   It appears those involved with  "Twisters" have watched many of the zillions of tornado videos on YouTube when creating the film.  The trailer is still CGI-ish but not bad.

Sadly, Tom Paxton, who starred in the 1996 Twister has passed away. I'm surprised original "Twister" star Helen Hunt is not in the new movie. 

There's one scene in the trailer that I hope I'm just misunderstanding because I'm lacking context. It appears to show people hiding beneath a highway overpass as a large tornado bears down on them.

No, no, no, no and NO!! 

Meteorologist Katie Nicolaou, on X, formerly Twitter, said it best: "Yay Twisters! But.... I'd enjoy the trailer a whole lot more if they DIDN'T SEEK SHELTER UNDER AN OVERPASS IN THE FIRST 25 SECONDS 😖😅 #Don'tDoThat"

My reaction that overpass scene is 20 years of public education to not do that is now down the drain.

Another danger pointed out by the Washington Post: Something called chaser convergence. Says WaPo:

"Some on social media wondered if "Twisters" would encourage even more people  to flock to the increasingly popular sport of storm chasing, which in recent years has caused chaser traffic jams and contributed to accidents and casualties."

Many of those wannabe chasers have no idea what they're doing, and risk getting too close to a tornado for that dramatic shot.

And what if a couple hundred cars gather on some narrow dirt lane in the Middle Of Nowhere, Oklahoma to watch a strong tornado? Suddenly the tornado shifts course and heads right toward all these people and cars. Will they get out of the way fast enough amid their self-created traffic jam?

I'm also dreading some obnoxiousness from real-life storm chasers. A clip in the movie has a gaggle of storm chasers, with I guess a leader who says "If you feel it....." and the storm geeks all yell CHASE IT!!!!"

Is that going to be every part of a loud YouTube tornado chasing video now?

Sigh. 

Oddly, tornadoes are my favorite kind of weather, but I have huge mixed feelings about that preference. 

Obviously, I HATE  it when lives are lost, and homes and businesses literally fall to pieces under a tornado's onslaught. That happens way too often, of course. 

I love how every one of them is different, and how they change shapes, size and colors as they move across the landscape. They're the most fascinating weather phenomenon out there.

We just need to always hope these storms either remain over open country, or appear on the silver screen at a theater near you. 

For what it's worth, here's the "Twisters" trailer: Click on this link to view, or if you see the image below, click on that. 

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.