Storm Chasers
Storm chasers pursue severe weather to observe, document, and study. Learn what storm chasing involves, the science, the ethics, and the real risks including the 2013 El Reno deaths.
At a glance
This guide is best for turning a weather term into a clearer decision about timing, exposure, and confidence.
- Reading time: about 10 minutes
- Primary focus: weather science, forecast context, safety implications, and practical interpretation
- Watch for: official updates, local terrain, time of day, overlapping hazards, observation trends, and confidence language
- Decision point: Decide what the information changes: shelter, travel, outdoor plans, water safety, health, power, or continued monitoring.
- Official check: National Weather Service safety portal
What Storm Chasers Actually Do
- Track weather forecasts to identify high-potential severe weather days
- Drive to expected impact areas - often hundreds of miles per day
- Position themselves to observe severe storms from safe distances
- Document tornadoes, supercells, wall clouds, hail, and other severe weather
- Report to the National Weather Service via Skywarn and other spotter networks
- Rescue and assist injured people they encounter after tornadoes
Types of Storm Chasers
Scientific Researchers
University meteorologists and NOAA researchers who chase to collect data. Groups like VORTEX (1994-1995), VORTEX2 (2009-2010), and PROTON deploy instruments in and near tornadoes to understand formation and structure. Highly trained, well-equipped, and well-funded.
Professional Photographers/Videographers
Chase for imagery, video, and news content. Sell to media outlets, weather services, and stock agencies. Household names include Reed Timmer, Aaron Rigsby, Dan Robinson, and others.
Amateur Enthusiasts
Hobbyists who chase for personal interest. Many are trained Skywarn spotters and often provide valuable ground-truth reports to the NWS.
Tour Guides
Storm-chasing tour companies (Silver Lining Tours, Tempest Tours, etc.) take paying guests out to observe severe weather. Guests learn from experienced guides and observe tornadoes at safe distances.
The Real Risks
El Reno 2013
On May 31, 2013, the El Reno, OK tornado killed three professional storm chasers:
- Tim Samaras - TWISTEX founder, veteran researcher
- Paul Samaras - Tim's son
- Carl Young - TWISTEX meteorologist
The event fundamentally changed storm chase safety practices. Recommendations that emerged:
- Maintain 2+ miles of stand-off distance from strong tornadoes
- Never chase alone - always with a communicator
- Have multiple escape routes planned
- Avoid chasing HP (high-precipitation) supercells at close range
Vehicle Accidents
Most storm chaser injuries and deaths involve vehicles - collisions on wet roads, running off pavement, dust-devil accidents. Storm chasers put enormous mileage on their vehicles and face increased road-safety risks.
Health Risks
Long hours, poor diet, sleep deprivation, and stress take their toll. Some chasers report cardiovascular issues, particularly after high-stress days.
How to Become a Storm Chaser
If you're serious about chasing:
- Take a Skywarn spotter training class (free, offered by NWS)
- Study meteorology basics - understand supercells, wind shear, instability, storm relative motion
- Learn radar interpretation - GRLevel3 or RadarScope are standard tools
- Purchase safety gear - insurance, well-maintained vehicle, first aid supplies
- Start with a tour group before chasing solo
- Never chase HP supercells or nighttime tornadoes alone
Chase Safety Rules
- Approach from the southeast (safer side of most Northern Hemisphere supercells)
- Maintain 2+ miles from any tornado you observe
- Never enter the rain core - reduced visibility, dangerous hail
- Have escape routes: paved roads in multiple directions
- Communicate constantly with a home base or partner
- Never block traffic or emergency response vehicles
- Assist survivors after the tornado has passed
Storm Chase Ethics
The professional community has established informal ethics:
- Rendering aid to injured people takes priority over chasing/filming
- Do not glorify or exploit tornado disaster imagery
- Report accurate information to NWS - never sensationalize
- Respect private property - do not trespass to get shots
- Do not encourage or reward reckless behavior
Storm Chase Tours
If you want to observe tornadoes safely, tour companies offer:
- 5-10 day trips based in Oklahoma City or Denver
- Cost: $3,000-$6,000
- Experienced guides with 10+ years of chase experience
- Small groups (typically under 10 guests)
- Educational component - learn meteorology while chasing
Well-known tour companies: Silver Lining Tours, Tempest Tours, Storm Chasing Adventure Tours, Cloud 9 Tours.
Famous Storm Chasers
- Reed Timmer - Extreme Chase Adventures, TV personality
- Ryan Hall - popular YouTube meteorologist
- Dan Robinson - photographer
- Tim Samaras (deceased) - TWISTEX founder
- Chuck Doswell - retired NOAA researcher and chase pioneer
Try the interactive simulator
Place an EF0–EF5 tornado anywhere in the world and see modeled fatalities, structural damage, and economic loss based on real census data.
Launch simulator →Try the interactive simulator
Place an EF0–EF5 tornado anywhere in the world and see modeled fatalities, structural damage, and economic loss based on real census data.
Launch simulator →Why this weather story matters
General weather articles need enough depth to connect the headline to the atmosphere behind it. A term may sound simple, but the useful meaning often depends on scale: what is happening in the cloud, what is happening across a region, and what it means for people on the ground.
For Storm Chasers, the practical value is context. A reader should leave with a clearer sense of what the term means, what evidence supports it, and what choices it should influence before, during, or after hazardous weather.
The science in plain English
Most weather changes begin with uneven heating, pressure differences, moisture, and air motion. Fronts, clouds, storms, fog, drought, and wind all reflect the atmosphere trying to balance temperature and pressure while water changes phase between vapor, liquid, and ice. Local terrain and land use can sharpen or soften those patterns.
Weather is rarely controlled by one ingredient. The same headline can play out differently depending on storm timing, terrain, building quality, warning access, and how many people are exposed. That is why official meteorology sources usually describe risk as a combination of probability, severity, and confidence rather than as a single yes-or-no answer.
How to use this information
Use this article by connecting the concept to decisions. Is the issue visibility, wind, heat, water, lightning, air quality, or travel timing? Once the hazard is clear, official forecasts and local alerts become easier to interpret. The goal is not to memorize every term; it is to know which signal should change your plan.
If you are comparing this page with another guide, look for the scale of the question. Some pages explain what happens inside a storm, some explain what forecasters can detect, and others explain what a household, school, business, or community should do. Mixing those scales is how weather myths spread.
What to watch for
Watch for forecast confidence, timing, terrain effects, time of day, and whether several hazards overlap. A modest storm with bad timing can create more disruption than a stronger storm that misses populated areas. Small changes in temperature, moisture, or storm track can shift the impact zone.
Pay attention to update timing. Forecasts and warnings are snapshots of the best available information, and high-impact weather can evolve between updates. When official guidance changes, treat the change as new information rather than as a contradiction.
Common mistakes
A common mistake is treating weather terms as fixed labels instead of clues. Another is comparing events only by one number, such as temperature, wind speed, or rainfall total. Impacts usually come from the combination of intensity, duration, exposure, and vulnerability.
Another general mistake is using old experience as the only guide. People often prepare for the last event they remember, but the next event may arrive at a different time of day, affect a different road, or stress a different part of the home or community.
Reader checklist
Before moving on from Storm Chasers, use this quick checklist to separate useful weather information from noise:
- Can you name the main hazard: wind, water, lightning, heat, cold, visibility, or air quality?
- Do you know whether the page is explaining formation, detection, forecasting, safety, history, or recovery?
- Have you checked whether the official source is describing probability, observed damage, or immediate action?
- Can you identify the decision point: shelter, delay travel, evacuate, protect property, or keep monitoring?
- Do you have a second alert path if power, cell service, sirens, or internet access fail?
That checklist is intentionally conservative. Weather education is most valuable when it helps a reader make a calmer decision under pressure, not when it simply adds more dramatic storm vocabulary.
Tornado Hub articles are educational explainers and are not a live warning service. For immediate decisions, use official alerts from your local National Weather Service office, emergency management agency, or equivalent national weather authority.
How to read this guide
Storm Chasers is most useful when it is read as a decision guide, not just a definition. The goal is to connect the weather setup, the warning language, and the practical action a reader may need before conditions become dangerous.
What decision does this weather concept change?
Read this article as a concept-to-action guide. Weather terms matter most when they help a person understand timing, exposure, confidence, and what to do next.
What to compare with official guidance
Compare the article with official forecasts, observations, local terrain, time of day, and whether the hazard affects travel, buildings, health, water, power, or outdoor plans.
General weather confidence improves when a concept is tied to evidence: observations, physical ingredients, official warnings, and consistent trends across multiple tools.
Decision checklist
- Identify the main hazard first: wind, water, lightning, heat, cold, visibility, air quality, or travel disruption.
- Check whether the article is explaining a forecast ingredient, an observed hazard, a safety action, or a historical lesson.
- Compare the page with the latest official warning, local emergency instruction, or agency update before acting.
- Decide what would change your plan: sheltering sooner, delaying travel, avoiding water, preparing for outage, or checking on someone vulnerable.
- Keep a backup alert path in case power, cell service, internet, sirens, or social media updates fail.
Change the plan if the hazard overlaps with another one, timing shifts into a vulnerable period, official guidance changes, or local conditions are worse than the broad forecast suggests.
This added section is part of Tornado Hub's broader article-quality pass. It is educational context, not a live warning. During active weather, use official alerts and local instructions first.
Field notes and source map
Storm Chasers benefits from one more layer of context: what evidence a reader should compare, what the official sources actually cover, and what practical decision the article should support. This added section is intentionally written like a newsroom sidebar: quick to scan, but deep enough to make the page more useful than a short definition.
General weather articles become more useful when they connect a concept to a decision. The reader should know what the setup is, what signal to watch, what impact matters, and what action changes.
A weather term is only valuable if it changes understanding. Ask whether the page helps with timing, location, confidence, exposure, safety, or long-term context.
What to check next
After reading this page, compare the article with the latest official information, the local terrain or building exposure, and the time window in which the hazard matters. A weather concept becomes useful when it changes one of those things: where you go, when you travel, how you shelter, what you monitor, or whether you wait for a safer window.
For readers coming from search, the key is to avoid treating one term as the whole answer. A headline may name the storm type, but the useful details are usually smaller: the warning wording, the observation trend, the affected road or coast, the people who need extra time, and the source that will update first.
Source trail
NOAA, NWS, Climate.gov, and Weather-Ready Nation links are useful anchors because they connect public weather education to official warning and preparedness language.
- NOAA/NSSL Severe Weather 101
- National Weather Service safety portal
- NOAA Climate.gov
- NOAA Weather-Ready Nation
These links are provided so readers can move from Tornado Hub's plain-English explanation to official meteorological, warning, safety, or archive sources.