How much does a tornado chaser or a meteorologist get paid?

Question

(full time tornado chaser or full time meteorologist)

Answer 1

This is all guessing but I'll bet meteorologist can easily make upwards of $60,000 a year, if not more - depending what you are working on. On the average, I would guess starting at $20,000. I'd say TOP meteorologist are pulling in $150,000 to $200,000. Some of these famous TV weathermen have to be at $500,000 to a million. Tornado chasers are a small bunch - mostly working in labs.

I was a weatherman in the Air Force, I did all kinds of weather stuff. I worked with Rawinsonde balloons to do upper air forcasting, worked on an experimental weather team for a while testing crazy stuff - loads of fun. We did some air pollution in big cities. We did radioactivity tracking in the atmosphere. I was on a tornado chasing team in Oklahoma City for some time, but not like the stuff you see on TV. We'd track storms, and try and send huge weather balloons with weather instrumentation to try and get as close as we could - but we wanted upper air info. We'd launch from quite a distance away. Then I worked in a weather station on an Army base for a while. Doing forcasting and weather observations for helicopters. This was back during the Viet Nam War - 1969 to 1973. Back then there were no computers to draw weather maps - guess who was up at 4:00 am drawing them???? I can't imagine how different it is now.

We used to say we were 90% right - 10% of the time (Brass didn't find it too amusing) I worked with Army Air Traffic controllers and GCA (Ground Controlled Approach) when it was bad weather. They put a sign with a motto on it outside the radar that said, "You Can Depend On Us To Bring You Down" - the Generals didn't find it too amusing either and blew their stacks.

Answer 2

How Much Meteorologist Get Paid

Answer 3

Tornado chaser dont' get paid, they do this on a volunteer basis, since they love doing this. As for a meteorologist, there was a similar question bout this.