Getting Up Close?

Recently, Jason Samenow of the Capital Weather Gang published this piece in The Washington Post on storm chasing ethics, which caught my attention for a couple of reasons.

First, I would have never thought about putting the terms storm chasing and ethics together, though I would have readily considered many of the issues raised in the article.

Second, it caught my attention because five years ago this month, back in May 2011, I went on a storm chasing trip as part of my meteorology coursework at ValpU.

Storm chasing definitely is in the neighborhood of extreme and risky activities, though there's a continuum of how people approach it.

Scientific researchers chase storms every spring to get a better understanding of how severe storms form, especially those that produce tornadoes  As much as knowledge of the atmosphere has advanced in the past few decades, there's so much meteorologists still don't fully understand--for example, they still don't know why some storms form tornadoes and others don't.  Their studies will hopefully one day lead to more accurate forecasts for tornadoes--a very worthy aim.

Then there are the thrill seekers who want to the adrenaline rush of getting up close to a tornado, and certainly those who created the Tornado-Intercept Vehicle (TIV) intended it to be a fortification against the fury of nature while capturing footage of a tornado up close, while bolted down in its path.

Extreme weather events make clear that we humans are no match against Mother Nature's fury.  And there will always be people seeking thrills and trying to get as close to a violent storm as possible, even without any kind of scientific purpose for observing the storm.  The media, always looking to hype things up, no doubt plays a role in pushing the extremes of the envelope.  I'm not certain that footage of people getting up close to violent storms is going to encourage increasing numbers of people to let their guard down and get close, or even closer, because the urge to seek a thrill is embedded in personality to an extent.

In my own experience of storm chasing, we were headed out for educational purposes of learning how the atmosphere works in forming storms.  With this in mind, our professor emphasized safety above all.  There were many instances when we were out, and our professor would have us move into a different position to get out of the most intense areas of the storm--and certainly radar technology was crucial in making those determinations.  However, we still had to sign paperwork before our departure not holding him liable if something happened, because despite the best efforts to stay out of harm's way, extreme weather can make sudden changes that leave us unable to escape, whether a person had intentions of getting in a storm's most violent areas or not.

Regardless of individual inclinations to approach storms at close range, we ultimately must learn to respect the extremes of weather that we encounter on Earth.  As for how close to get, it's probably better to err on the side of caution and maintain a healthy sense of distance, as a way of showing respect for the mighty power of storms.