There is a moment when storm chasing still feels like it was supposed to, somewhere along a level Kansas highway with a greenish sky overhead and a wall cloud tightening to the southwest. Silent. intentional. A bit scary. However, it has become more difficult to locate that moment. The road was congested on a recent chase weekend close to the Kansas border. While a tornado developed somewhere in the distance that no one could get to in time, hundreds of cars, some with cameras mounted on their roofs and others just pickup trucks with inquisitive drivers, sat bumper to bumper.
According to some estimates, there were about 7,000 chasers in Kansas during a single active storm weekend. It’s worth pausing to consider that figure. In an attempt to reach the same storm, seven thousand people gathered on the same section of Tornado Alley, watching the same radar loop. Younger chasers refer to it as “traffic,” while seasoned chasers call it “convergence.” In any case, it’s becoming more difficult to ignore the issue.
Mount Everest is the comparison that frequently comes up, at least among serious chasers. Practically, but not dramatically. The same dynamic is occurring: an extreme setting draws an increasing number of individuals with wildly disparate levels of experience, all of whom are directed along the same paths toward the same goal. Unexpected weather on Everest can leave climbers stranded with no way out. A massive tornado with an EF-3 rating or higher doesn’t need to surprise anyone to be disastrous on a two-lane highway in Kansas. All it has to do is locate the traffic.
Storm chasers have already been involved in fatal accidents, and it wasn’t always due to bad luck. Distracted driving is widespread; examples include people using their phones to watch radar, stopping in traffic lanes, and opening car doors on 70 mph roads in order to get a better view. It’s the kind of behavior that doesn’t make sense until you watch the footage, and there is now a ton of it. People’s decision-making in the field seems to have changed as a result of the social media aspect of chasing. It’s not always necessary to wait for the safe pull-off when taking an Instagram photo.
Thinning the crowd can be achieved by pursuing days with lower probability. So does traveling in mid-June or July, following the busiest period from April to mid-June, when local weekend chasers aren’t off from work and every storm within four hundred miles attracts a convoy. For years, seasoned chasers have subtly changed their behavior in this manner. They use backroads to pre-plan grid routes, keep the tank full before intercepting, and give night chases a hard pass; all of these issues are exacerbated by poor visibility. This is not complicated at all. For the most part, you just need to slow down and think before the sky does.
The chaser accounts from more sedate times have something noteworthy. On a low-key April weekday, an experienced chaser working a marginal supercell near Greensburg, Kansas, described taking pictures of crepuscular rays shooting upward above a sunset-lit storm—the kind of scene that vanishes in twenty minutes. He understood. Not because he was the best, but rather because he could move and the roads were generally clear. When 7,000 people attend the same event, that is what is lost. The risk increases and the experience itself deteriorates.
Mother Nature cannot be controlled, and controlling who pursues has proven to be almost as challenging. The results of Oklahoma’s attempts at storm-chasing legislation have been, at best, mediocre. It’s easier to understand what seasoned guides generally agree upon: pick a tour company with a solid safety record, plan your escape routes before the storm fires, and acknowledge that hail the size of a softball doesn’t care how well you position yourself.
Chasers will continue to be drawn to the Kansas border. On the right day, the spectacle is unlike anything else, and the storms and science are real. Whether the community will self-correct before something really terrible occurs on a busy highway is still up in the air. Like a storm before it decides what it wants to be, that possibility lingers in the air for a while.
