To become a Storm Chaser?

Question

do I need a bunch of antennas on my truck? and love storms

I love storms by the way

Answer 1

You would have a lot more to worry about than antennas on your truck. I would suggest doing it as a scientist, get a degree in the weather field of some kind. Otherwise, you just get into your truck and start chasing them. There is a strip of area known as "Tornado Alley", it runs from Chicago, thru St. Louis, and then to Oklahoma City. This area has the highest rate of stormy weather.
Most occupations with the National Weather Service are either for people trained in meteorology, atmospheric sciences, climatology, hydrology or related fields. Jobs available with the NWS are updated periodically on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration home page at: http://www.rdc.noaa.gov/~hrmo/. You could get in touch with NOAA to get more information.
The military can be a good place to get experience. I was a Storm Chaser in the Air Force. We would get forecasts and drive to where they probably would occur. We had a convoy of a flat bed trailer with a radar unit on it, an 18 wheeler we used as a portable laboratory, and a few chaser trucks. We would drive to an area and set up a weather balloon launch area. We would send up a balloon and try to get it as close to the storm as possible to obtain pressure and temperatures. We attached a transmitter to the balloon and tracked it with the radar system on the truck. These were pretty good sized balloons. When we launched them they were about 15 feet in diameter. When they climbed to maximum heights, which was just a few millibars short of outer space, the lower pressures would cause the balloon to expand. By the time it reached max height, it would be about a mile across before it burst.
We also sent up balloons in different parts of the country to measure radiation cause by other countries atomic bomb testing. I don't think they do that any more since there is a ban on atmospheric atomic bomb testing.
Another thing we did is air pollution research. We could trace pollution coming off of major cities and plot out where the particulates were falling back to earth. I was on an experimental weather team for a while, testing new techniques for atmospheric testing. Once we were testing a Kitoon - half kite and half balloon. It had 500 pounds of lift in a 10 mph wind. We had to hook it to an engine with steel cable in order to fly it. A few of the guys accidentally released it while another airman was trying to hook it up to the cable. He had his arm thru the cables when they released it. It dragged him about a mile, across the runway and airbase, before we caught up to him.

Answer 2

If I were you, the first thing I would do would be to get an amateur radio operator's ("ham") license. All those antennas are for radios, of course, and without a license, there aren't many that you're allowed to operate, especially when working in an official capacity with SAR, ARES, RACES, etc.

Once you have a license, it's time to be a storm spotter (NOT a chaser yet). You have to know what you're looking for before you chase it, after all. If you're getting ready to go to school (or to go BACK to school), you may want to study meteorolgy, so as to put your observations to work in the best possible way. You can start out small, though, by taking storm spotter classes from the National Weather Service office nearest you. Even if you grew up in a tornado-prone area as I did, there is still a LOT to learn.

When you have the knowlege and the skills, THEN become a storm chaser, if some other aspect of the process hasn't captured your interest more fully already :-)

Answer 3

Curiosity killed the cat. To be a true storm chaser you'd have to have at least some knowledge of how to work a radar, collect data about past storms/tornados in order to calculate the strength of the next, know how to recognize wind patterns and predict the movement of the storm you're chasing. If all that is too much work, all you need is a car and weather channel at home, maybe a camera to shoot some videos, seeing as how those guys (who actually work as storm chasers) don't get paid a lot of money, I'm not sure they get paid at all.

Answer 4

You have to be in the same crowd that joins the volunteer fire dept or junior deputy programs you know with lights on your car.

Answer 5

No. you don't need to love storms.

Answer 6

step 1. find a storm
step 2. chase it
step 3. don't die.

=)

Answer 7

oh, can i go with...tornados right?

Answer 8

i would guess so