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- [00:01]
Emily Gracey
The highway stretches like a ribbon toward the blackening horizon. Behind the wheel, a storm chaser peers through the window to study the clouds above. His truck rattles as he guns the engine, racing the storm's outflow. A modern day cowboy chasing monsters across the Great Plains. A quick turn down a dirt road and he's suddenly dodging other chasers parked left and right along the narrow path. The massive wall cloud comes into view. Rotating, dropping, beginning to take form. This isn't just another day at the office. It's the moment every storm chaser lives for. The adrenaline rush when you're close enough to feel nature's raw power in your bones. The dance of pursuit and retreat that requires split second decisions, nerves of steel and excellent driving skills. But these modern day frontiers, men and women aren't just thrill seekers hunting the next viral video. They're the boots on the ground in America's tornado alley. Mobile weather stations capturing crucial data that the radar can't see. The images they broadcast give forecasters real time confirmation of developing threats. Their reports create precious minutes of extra warning time for communities in harm's way. Their documentation helps scientists better understand these deadly twisters. But what if storm chasing was restricted only to broadcast media? A proposed bill in Oklahoma has suggested just that. Today we're going off the radar with a veteran storm chaser to learn what this bill could mean for the future of severe weather prediction. I'm meteorologist Emily Gracey and you're listening to off the Radar, a production of the National Weather Desk. On the show, we dig deep into topics about weather, climate, the ocean, space, and much more. Our goal is to help you better understand the weather and to love it as much as we do.
- [01:51]
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- [02:48]
Warren FAI
Foreign.
- [02:51]
Emily Gracey
Storm chasing is a dangerous business. Chasers have died, members of the media have died and have been severely injured in their vehicles during a chase. But any storm chaser will tell you the most dangerous part of storm chasing is sharing the road with others.
- [03:06]
Warren FAI
Most chasers who have been killed, it's been transportation related on the roads Today.
- [03:12]
Emily Gracey
We'Re diving into a brewing storm of controversy by the name of House Bill 2426. This bill would create an optional Severe Weather Tracker license for those professionally employed by a media outlet or an affiliated research program at a specified university. This would have allowed licensed storm trackers during severe weather events to be authorized to use green and yellow flashing lights on their vehicles so they could proceed through red traffic lights and travel on closed roads and highways. It sounds reasonable enough to an outsider, except most storm chasers are not employed by a media outlet or university. They're independent contractors paving their own way, each in a very unique way. So this bill would have severely restricted independent storm chasers while giving local television stations preferential treatment and access during severe weather events. Now, recently this bill has been tabled until they can gather more information on the topic, but today's guest on the podcast has no doubt that it will return in some form, and likely not just in Oklahoma. So to help us understand what's at stake here, I'm joined by someone who has spent decades racing towards the storms others flee from. Warren FAI is veteran storm chaser, photojournalist and a severe weather expert whose work has no doubt saved lives through early reporting and documentation. Warren has been around a while. In fact, you know the movie poster from the original Twister, the one back in 1996? Warren took that photograph of the tornado on the poster, the poster that was on the walls of many future meteorologists, including my own. Warren will share his perspective on why this legislation could have dangerous consequences, how it misunderstands the vital role independent storm chasers play in our severe weather warning ecosystem, and how broadcasters and storm chasers might find a better way to collaborate with a common goal of saving lives. Warren, thanks so much for joining me today to talk about this issue, which has kind of been tabled for the minute, but maybe for a minute. So we want to keep talking about it so that folks know what's going on in the storm chasing world. Can you give me a little background on you too, and how long you've been storm chasing?
- [05:17]
Warren FAI
Well, I've been storm chasing since 19, well, about 85. I started when I was working for A newspaper here in Tucson. And then branched out, the tornadoes and hurricanes, kind of around 19, I'd say the late 1980s. And so quite a few years. And I've been chasing everything. So not just hurricanes, tornadoes, lightning, natural disasters, earthquakes, you name it. As a journalist, I pretty much chase everything on the extreme spectrum of weather and natural disasters.
- [05:47]
Emily Gracey
All right, and what was storm chasing in the storm chasing community like back in the 80s and 90s versus what it is now?
- [05:54]
Warren FAI
Oh, wow. When, when I first started chasing storms, if you ran into someone, there were so few people out. It was like a big event. It was like, oh my goodness, I can't believe I ran into another chaser. And it was a big deal. And you would talk and it was a good thing. Nowadays, of course, when you have thousands of people out on the road, it's a lot different. You, you, you still run into people, you know, and it's a good thing. But there's just so many people. It's. It's hard for the average person, unless they've been out there or they've seen it on, on television, to, to comprehend how absolute and insane it can be on, especially on big days.
- [06:31]
Emily Gracey
Okay. Yeah. I think most people, our knowledge of storm chasing comes from the movies, namely Twister and Twisters. So I'm curious too, because in those movies they're doing a lot of scientific research. So early on in like the 80s and 90s, their research and data collection going on, or is that a more recent thing?
- [06:49]
Warren FAI
There was research going on when I first started back in the late 1980s, there were people from the scientists from the National Severe Storms Lab that were out. There were some universities out. Not like it is now, but that was kind of in the infancy of when they had all the research vehicles and they started going out to collect data to especially to correlate what they were seeing on radar. A lot of that early research was done to kind of get the algorithm set for what we would eventually know as Doppler radar. And that was very important. Even as chasers, I would often go out. I worked a lot with Amarillo when they first got their Doppler radar. And I would be able to say, yeah, you've got an LP type storm here, you've got an hp. And they were able to look at the radar and see what that looked like for the first time for them. So it was a lot of fun back then because you weren't just chasing. I wasn't just chasing and taking pictures. But there was also some contribution back to science Which I really, really love doing when I can.
- [07:50]
Emily Gracey
Something else I think that's different from the movies is I see a lot of storm chasers that don't have a degree in meteorology and their knowledge is just as good, you know, if not better in some cases than people with this four year degree. So tell me about your background and how you got trained in this situation.
- [08:06]
Warren FAI
Well, I went to the University of Arizona and graduated as in journalism photojournalism and had no background in science and meteorology. So back then we didn't have laptops and all the, the wonderful things that people can learn from today. So I had to go through the atmospheric physics lab at the University of Arizona and look over raw data. And most people don't know what raw data looks like. It's just numbers and you have to decipher it if you want to look at for example, an upper air sounding or something. It's all just sets of numbers. So I had to learn that way. And I had a lot of friends who worked for the National Weather Service and back then I could literally go there and hang out. I could just spend the whole day there if I wanted. So it was a great way to learn about severe weather. It was a great education. Long before we had computers and onboard radar which we, we have now. The chasers don't have any idea how, how good they have it nowadays compared to back then when it was, it was basically chasing by the seat of your pants and it was almost all visual. There was, so there was, you had to go into a weather service ops if you wanted data. That was the only way to get data. There was no other way to get it. I mean it was, it was, it was, in some ways it was fun and in some ways you, you compare it nowadays and it's just a big difference and how easy it is to chase nowadays with absolutely no knowledge of meteorology.
- [09:31]
Emily Gracey
Surely you have a leg up though on the competition with that sort of history.
- [09:34]
Warren FAI
You know, there is something about visuals that most new chasers don't have nowadays because there's a lot, when a storm's first developing how it acts is very important to what happens later because you don't have instant upper air data when you're chasing, for example, so the storm behavior, how it's tilting, how it's going up through the atmosphere. A lot of new chasers don't know that. So I'm still able to pick out some of the storms by visuals nowadays and I'm not always right, but that is, I do Believe that's an advantage to have that, that experience.
- [10:06]
Emily Gracey
Okay, let's talk about safety in this industry as well because you know there's got to be some on the job hazards here. Considering what you're doing. Can you tell me about your history with safety and if you've ever been in, in situations that were really terrifying or life threatening and then kind of the community as a whole and what you've seen people put themselves at risk for?
- [10:26]
Warren FAI
Well, I was fortunate that I came from a journalism background. So before I started chasing I dealt with a lot of dangerous situations, crime, just all kinds of crazy things you run into just as a journalist. So had that kind of self preservation mode set which I, some people I don't think in chasing have that and I think that was a big advantage for me. There were so many close calls when I was a young journalist. I just. Some of it was luck, some of it was intuition. There's just so many times when, when I mean survival or serious injury was just moments away and I was able to, to make the right decisions and that translated well into, into storm chasing because it is dangerous out there. The, the roads are the most dangerous part as we know that, that chasers have lost their lives. Most chasers who have been killed, it's been transportation related on the roads or they couldn't get away from a tornado which, which is somewhat transportation related. So it is very dangerous out there. I would say the tornado itself is. It's actually lower on, on the scale of danger compared to, to the, the hazards on the road. Then you've got lightning, things like that. Hell's not too much of a danger. But unless it hit, knocks in the head, which is probably what happened to me years ago. But that is, that is a danger. There's all kinds of weird things out there that are, that are danger. I remember one time I was shooting a tornado and this was like something out of the movie Deliverance. These two farmers in overalls came running to my car and told me to get the H out of their ditch. And I guess they thought they owned the ditch that was off the side of the road, which county property. And they actually had rakes and shovels and things and they were coming towards me. They were serious, get the heck out of my ditch. And I'm thinking this is absolutely insane. So of course I, I bolted out of there. But yeah, that and I've. I pulled over once and a pack of wild dogs came out of a farm and they would have chewed me up. I had to jump Literally on top of the chase truck. And they were just going completely crazy down below me until they finally ran off. So you just never know. I mean, that's. And the danger. I've always said you can't separate the danger from the adventure because once you do that, it's very boring. So I think most chasers, in the back of their mind, they know it's very dangerous, but that's kind of one of those things that draws people to chasing.
- [12:59]
Emily Gracey
Okay, so enter in Oklahoma trying to come up with a solution to these road hazards, which I, you know, I guess I didn't think about this as driving as being such a hazard. So can you tell me what this bill in Oklahoma was attempting to do?
- [13:13]
Warren FAI
The well known House Bill 2426 was designed by a representative who thought he was doing a good thing. I think originally, I think the original intent of this was to do good, was to limit the number of, of chasers on the road in a way that I think they believed would be constructive and safe. The problem is, is when you have that many cars on the road, there's this delicate balance. As weird as it sounds, with all these hundreds, sometimes even thousands of chasers, there is a certain kind of etiquette out there that the traffic most of the time does flow and it flows safely. But anytime you throw in a monkey wrench, which is an emergency vehicle, or even a minor fender bender, or somebody parks in the road, once that that etiquette's disrupted, the traffic goes completely nuts. So what the Oklahoma legislators wanted to do was to give very select media, matter of fact, only TV crews and some researchers in the state, the ability. At first it was the ability to run code three just like a police car or a fire truck in storm situations. And we were talking about maybe 50, 60 vehicles. Now you can only imagine in a storm situation adding 50 or 60 emergency vehicles to the mix, where chasers are going to have to pull over, where these vehicles can exceed the speed limit. They have all the rights of emergency vehicles. It would be insane. It would be not only insane for chasers, but can you imagine the mom or the dad who has to go pick their kid up at school and take them to a shelter getting caught in this traffic mess and having to yield to all these emergency vehicles that are suddenly created with a lot of people who are already aggressive, who have a history of aggression, and a lot of them are not going to necessarily behave out there. We know that they're going to be driving fast, they're going to be. They're allowed to run red light. So when you throw all this together, it would have been absolutely insanity. It would, it would have been absolutely crazy.
- [15:32]
Emily Gracey
Tell me about the TV storm chasing community. Is it as, is it different than the rest of the storm chasing community? Are they more experienced, less experienced?
- [15:42]
Warren FAI
I, I know a lot of TV news chasers and they're great people. There's a few bad seeds in there and I think, I wouldn't even call them bad seeds. They're just really aggressive. Coming from a news background, it is really common to be aggressive. You want your station to get the scoop, you want your station to be there first. So that's just natural business instincts to get the first one to get to the tornado. The problem is when you look at the statistics, news, TV news crews report less than 5% of severe weather information to the weather, to the National Weather Service. When there's a ground truth, we, we say when you're going to try to confirm there's an actual tornado on the ground. So less than 5% is not a big number. The, the majority of reports come from other storm chasers, law enforcement, fire departments, the public. By far. That's where the weather service gets their numbers or gets their information for issuing warnings. So their argument they're, they're doing this for the viewers is a little weak because they're not contributing as much as I think they think. I think it's a competitive thing and there are so many chasers now who do live Internet reporting. I think part of the problem was they wanted to eliminate those people they wanted in the competition. They wanted to get rid of some of the people who do the live reporting, the chasers who do live broadcasts on YouTube or some of the other social media. I think it became the bill after a while. Some of the TV stations thought, oh, this is a great way to get rid of some of the competition because we're going to eliminate them and we're going to be the ones with the scoop. And unfortunately, I don't think the bill was originally intended to do that, but I think once the news station saw it, they thought, oh boy, here we go. Here's a great opportunity to, to get rid of the competition.
- [17:37]
Emily Gracey
Yeah. And it's interesting, I, I see this competition between tv, local TV and storm chasers already. I'm sure this didn't help with that situation. Yeah. But I'm also hoping you can tell me about the role that storm chasers can play. What are they bringing to this field and to public safety?
- [17:54]
Warren FAI
Well, one of the main Sponsors of the bill was a gentleman named Fediger represented Fediger, and I spoke to him and he was a nice guy. And again, I think his original intentions were quite honorable to, to get people out there for tv. And I do believe TV stations play a very important part. I watch when I'm here in Tucson and there's an event going on, say in Oklahoma City, and I'm not there. I enjoy watching the, the local media's coverage. They do a great job. The guy, the people in Oklahoma who, who do the life coverage are the, some of the top in the world. Absolutely nothing against that, but you've got to remember there are only a few people out there looking at these storms. So you've got to also consider the chasers who are out there who are doing the live broadcast. But the thing is, they do not want to coordinate with them. If they were to coordinate somehow, if there was a central clearing station where all the live TV chasers and all the local media could get together and somehow agree to share all this information, it would be great for the public. The public would get 100% of the information out there instantly, which is the way to go. But again, TV stations are worried because they might have to pay some of these chasers some money. And then there's copyright, there's all these other issues that come up. But somebody needs to get all of these groups together and say, hey, people's lives are in danger when there's a big tornado threatening Oklahoma City, for example. We need all the information we can get. We need, we need both the local media, the TV crews, and we also need the chasers who, who are broadcasting live on social media to be able to get this information to both the public and the National Weather Service.
- [19:27]
Emily Gracey
Yeah, that's what I'm kind of hoping to get from you is like, what is the answer? Because TV stations, TV is a dying industry. I know this. I've worked in TV for 20 years. There's no money to pay storm chasers for their video. They just don't have that money. So instead they're going to take somebody who's maybe making $32,000 a year with zero experience storm chasing and send them out to get this information. So what's the answer in getting? Because the ultimate goal is to save lives, right? How do we do that with these limited resources?
- [19:56]
Warren FAI
I don't, I don't think the Internet chasers lose anything by giving the rights to their broadcast to local TV stations. As a matter of fact, most of the people who are doing the live broadcast to Chasers survive on viewership numbers with YouTube for example. So when the local stations broadcasting their footage, they're going to gain all kinds of subscribers. So when you look at it from that angle, it's really a smart move for them to say, hey, K4 in Oklahoma City, feel free to use my footage, feel free to use my information and everybody wins in that. I can't imagine there'd be any problem with that. The only trouble you get into is a lot of the live chasers use other people's footage and you get into these copyright issues. But I really think for public safety, I've always done that. Back when I was selling photographs for thousands of dollars, back in the heyday of the stock photography industry, I always gave the weather service, the Red Cross, charity groups, the rights to use these images for free because I wanted to give something back. So I can't imagine that, that Internet chasers would not want to make some kind of agreement with local stations. The other thing it might do is it might prevent this kind of legislation from popping up again. If, if everybody's getting along and the information's getting out there, everybody's happy, we won't see either Oklahoma or possibly other states. There's been talk about other states bringing up this kind of anti chasing legislation. So I think if everybody can work together, share information, everybody be happy, everybody will be safe and we may avoid future problems.
- [21:36]
Emily Gracey
How do you get the ball rolling on that? Because I do see this disconnect still with TV and chasers. You know, there's like chaser summit and I don't, I don't know that I see too many TV people there. And then I also have been involved in the broadcast conference and there's never Chasers at that. So how do we bring these two groups together?
- [21:51]
Warren FAI
I, I think it's a great idea. It's something, when I have time after the chase season, I may approach people like Ryan Hall, Reed Timmer, the big names, those are two of the biggest names. There's other people and, and maybe get with them and say, hey, let's work on finding a way to get this information to the TV stations. You'll gain viewers, you'll help people out. I don't think there'd be any, any problem, resistance to that. And again, what we may do most importantly is prevent states from having to, to act, to be able to, to give news stations priority access. But I think a lot of this is not so much about priority access, it's more about just limiting chasing. There's just so many chasers on the road nowadays. It's hard for anybody. It's hard for emergency vehicles, it's hard for, for fire departments, ambulances. It's just hard for people to get around. I don't think there's any solution to that. I think it's just, it's something people are going to have to live with and just face it on, on those certain big swarm days, you're just going to have a lot of people out there. So I'm not sure how you're going to coordinate all this, but there is a way to do it. One of the things I suggested to Oklahoma when they were proposing this bill, I said, why don't you try this? Why don't you do like California? Because I cover a lot of the fires in California. Why don't you make work with a deal with say the National Guard in Oklahoma and on the big moderate, high risk days, have them loan or use some National Guard helicopters just like we have Coast Guard, National Guard, military aircraft helping during the wildfires and send them up as spotters during these events. And that would really help. And I thought that's a great idea if they could coordinate that somehow because, because helicopters are the best way if you want ground truth, you want to avoid traffic jams, they're the best way to get that information. So that was one of my suggestions, was to use more helicopters, even if you have to pull them from the Guard and use those on the big days.
- [23:51]
Emily Gracey
As you're saying, that's a great idea. Awesome. I love all of your thoughts. Any advice to future storm chasers, people you maybe already are seeing on the road but don't know what they're doing. Any advice on how to get trained, how to do this safely?
- [24:05]
Warren FAI
Well, you got to remember I just helped defeat a bill that was going to limit the number of chasers. So I'm sure someone's going to come out at some point and say, you know, you should have never done that. But with Twister out last year and they're working on a Twister 3, I hear, and just the publicity, the growing publicity on social media of storm chasing, the genie's out of the bottle. You're not going to stop people from chasing. But what I always tell young people is to first of all, remember what you're chasing has a very negative effect on people. It kills people. It can be very tragic. You don't want to celebrate that. You always want to remember that. And the second thing is you really have to behave on the road because there are a lot of other people around you and there's been unfortunately a lot of tragic events from from traffic related accidents during chasing. You really have to you really have to keep your head about you and and obey the law is sometimes it's very hard to do that when you're trying to get to a storm, but those are the two most important things for new chasers. Just just try to stay out of trouble on the road and just remember what you're chasing. Also has a very Dark side.
- [25:11]
Emily Gracey
Off the Radar is a production of the National Weather Desk. Make sure you're following the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcast. New episodes publish every Tuesday morning thanks to today's guest, Warren fai. If you want to follow along with his chasing this season, find him on Facebook or X. I want to give a shout out to my friend Jen Walton, the founder of Girls who Chase. Talking to her has given me insight into the experience of storm chasing so that I could write today's episode. If you are interested in getting started in storm chasing, I highly recommend checking out the online training training offered by Girls who Chase. Thanks to the National Weather Desk and Sinclair Broadcast Group for their ongoing support of the podcast, as well as my associate producer Brian Petras for his help on today's episode. I'm meteorologist Emily Gracie. Make it a great day.