
Photos courtesy and © Oscar van der Velde
Select a date from the left.
General chasing comments:
- OKC Channel 4 "chasers" speeding into the
median and kicking gravel into my windsheild in Panhandle, TX May 29th, 2001 (1.1Mb mpeg)
- Vehicle mounted weather stations - how many of these people are taking data and performing research in their
basements? How many people put these things on their cars to make
themselves look cool?
- Too many cars with too much gear.
- What is even worse is when people put "STORM CHASER" stickers on their vehicle. What logical purpose
does this serve other than a badge? As Gene Moore put it "It
seems that for many chasers these days, it's not about the clouds, it's about themselves".
- Also there are few people who have mobile-Mesonet type weather station in the back of their
trucks! Too bad your pressure and wind measurements will be completely wrong due to the wind field
disturbance caused by the vehicle. Pressure ports should be about 2 meters off the ground, out of the
vehicle slipstream.
- Concern that those who are new to chasing will look at the gear heads and amber lights and think that's the way to
go. Not a good example.
- Yellow-Box Chasing: when the SPC starts drawing those little yellow polygons people seem to flock.
- Chuck Doswell has some good observations in his
"Ups & Downs" section. (Down at the bottom).
All photographs © Michael James 1999-2002