01 June 2013

Tornado Chasing .... for fun?

The Midwest has been getting hammered with severe weather over the past few weeks, and even the weather stars from the Weather Channel may be over their heads.

We wrote a paper on recreational storm chasing a while back that might be of interest.  http://www.treesearch.fs.fed.us/pubs/19699

Tours devoted to tornado storm chasing have become popular in recent years, especially with the emergence of many profit and non-profit storm chasing organizations. While most literature in risk recreation has been directed toward rock climbing or other high-risk outdoor recreation activities, tours devoted to storm chasing are quite unlike these traditional activities. The purpose of this paper is to provide a review of these organizations from information collected in a mailed survey. Areas to be discussed are specific tour details for each company, basic demographics of tour attendees, and other areas of tour requirements.

My hope that the tourists don't get in the way of public safety!