Tornado Chasing and Bill Paxton RIP

It is sort of ironic that Bill Paxton, star of Twister died this weekend AND we had a tornado in Conway, Massachusetts.  It was the movie that prompted me and students in Recreation Geography to study storm chasing and deliver a paper at the Northeastern Recreation Research Symposium.

The paper abstract is "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."