GREENSBURG, Kan.—Storm chaser Rob McBay and his wife, Valarie, came face to face with one of several EF-3 tornadoes that broke out across the plains of Kansas on May 18 just after 10 p.m. local time.
Erratic lightning streaks across the supercell ceiling and a fiery takedown of power lines along the highway lit up the tornado’s silhouette and direction in the gloom of the moonless night. The seasoned storm chaser from Alabama watched as his quarry evolved from a thin rope out in a field to what appeared to be one of three that merged into the thick wedge that crossed his path.
Across the state line in Oklahoma, lawmakers continue their drive to create a storm chasing license that would increase certain chasers’ abilities to move across their state. A licensed “professional severe weather tracker” would be authorized to use yellow and green flashing lights to run red lights and access closed roads and highways in order to stay with a tornado.
Storm chasers, for the most part, have emerged from their obsession and lack of regulation to become known as an independent yet controversial community of Americans who are part weatherman, part scientist, part first responder, part content creator, and part vagabond.
They descend on budding storm cells like fishing boats gathering on a reef. Crews read visual signs and radar panels in order to best position themselves for a catch. Veteran captains sound off on newer players acting unsafe. Both veterans and newbies occasionally run into trouble with law enforcement.
But for all the controversy, storm chasers are uniquely positioned to save lives while pursuing their passion. They can deliver real-time updates and coordinate with first responders.
Some chasers are certified first responders themselves, eager to help, but there is nothing that allows them to be treated differently from those racing down the same roads simply trying to get a picture. Nor is there any way for members of law enforcement or meteorologists to immediately pick out the professionals from the pack.
While the Oklahoma bill ultimately failed to pass, it made the Sooner State the first to formally ask the question that many associated with storm chasing told The Epoch Times will inevitably have to be answered: Should professional severe weather tracker licenses or some other form of regulation be adopted?
Many involved with storm chasing see licensing or some other means of legitimization as an unavoidable necessity to end the clash between specialized citizens and local authorities. What remains uncertain, however, is what that legitimization will—and should—look like.

Chasing a Kansas Tornado
McBay began his pursuit of the Kansas tornado before the first warning was called in on May 18. He later told The Epoch Times that as he constantly shifted his gaze between the road, sky, and radar display on his phone, he knew it was going to be a big one.The last light of day outlined the curdling clouds of a supercell, whose constant rotating updraft created circulation—well-defined by radar—becoming what is called a mesocyclone: a wind-whipping, hail-filled lair from and around which National Severe Storms Laboratory meteorologists suspect tornadoes form.
Spider lightning danced above as McBay ventured north toward Greensburg, passing through the town of Coldwater along the way. Then a siren erupted from his phone: “National Weather Service: TORNADO WARNING in this area.”
The sky continued to darken, with only the white lights of fleeing cars and red lights of onlookers pulling over, daring to go no further. But McBay pressed on, as did several other chasers, joined for the moment via walkie-talkie app Zello as part of an overwatch team commanded by Sharon “Skippy” Taylor.
More than 10 other groups of storm chasers and emergency personnel descended upon the scene, according to Taylor, who worked with a remote team to dispatch law enforcement, relay the chasers’ footage directly to the National Weather Service, and feed those chasers radar updates.
Then, there was a flash of lightning off to the northwest; McBay—and everyone else—saw it.
“Everyone had seen the funnel at the same time,” Taylor told The Epoch Times. ”Everyone was reporting it was going down at the same time.”
Some chasers, such as McBay, stayed with the tornado as long as possible, while others sped ahead of its projected path to alert townsfolk. Others raced behind it, positioned to begin search-and-rescue operations.
McBay found sheriff’s deputies already positioned along his route and made a point to stop and update them on the situation.
Taylor relayed chaser footage directly to a chat with National Weather Service meteorologists, who used the information to update their warnings.


“We can look at radar and we know what should be going on, but the live verification of what they are seeing does really make us feel confident, and it enhances our view on what’s going to happen in the next hour or two,” meteorologist Ray Burgert, of the NWS weather station in Dodge City, Kansas, told The Epoch Times.
“Do not assume what you see on your local radar app is a current ‘picture' of what you are observing,” it warns. “The weather radar image only tells you WHAT HAS happened and NOT WHAT IS happening.”
McBay told another deputy to close off the road behind them and began swerving across both lanes to stop any other vehicles from getting past him.
Just behind him, storm chasers Paige Berdomas and Bryce Shelton rolled their livestream that was broadcast by YouTuber Max Velocity, capturing the behemoth’s destructive crossing.
“You could not go further north because of the power lines over the road,” Shelton told The Epoch Times. “So I was thinking about the next step: how to stay with this storm. Because it was not just going to dissipate within five minutes.”
McBay, meanwhile, began racing toward the nearest town with the local deputies ready to help. A voice from Zello told him that his tornado would miss Greensburg, so he headed for the next towns over: Brenham and Haviland.
Working With NWS, Local Authorities
Taylor said that coordination between different chasers and between the private and public sectors was a glimpse at a life-saving operational formula she wants to see become the standard in tornado response.But for that coordination to work, storm chasers needed to communicate with NWS meteorologists and local law enforcement.
Burgert said meteorologists have great relationships with several storm chasers, particularly those who remain local to his weather station’s half of the state.
Berdomas, Shelton, Taylor, and McBay confirmed that relationships between some NWS stations and chasers are in good condition, especially once trust with NWS meteorologists is established. But they said it could still use improvement, as some weather stations appear to listen and respond to storm chaser data faster than others.
Taylor shared that it took her six to 12 months to qualify for the private chat with NWS meteorologists and emergency management that she used during the May 18 tornadoes.

But she said that sometimes they are so busy that her messages get ignored, so she opted to forward storm chaser Brad Arnold’s livestream so they could see real-time updates, if not the footage provided by McBay and others on the scene.
The prevalence of severe weather footage across social media over the past several years has also increased, according to Burgert. He praised livestreaming and said the footage that the meteorologists receive comes in very handy when compiling their storm reports.
One person at his weather station was specifically tasked with catching everything that was posted across streams and social media and verifying it.
Not every storm chaser can be relied on for their content, however.
“There are some chasers that just go out for their personal status,” Burgert said. “There are sort of chasers that go out, and we don’t see any information from them until the following day or two or three days later.”
Meanwhile, chasers said that while interactions can vary from state to state and even city to city, and cooperation similar to what McBay encountered in Kansas can happen, chasers’ overall relationship with local police and sheriff’s deputies is not good at all.
“I found it very difficult to work with any law enforcement during storm periods,” Shelton said.
McBay recounted getting pulled over multiple times and given speeding tickets while actively pursuing a tornado on the ground. He also recalled a time in Limestone County, Alabama, when he was threatened with jail time for operating amber warning lights on his vehicle as a safety measure.
But even supportive officers can appear to lack critical knowledge needed in the moment. McBay, for example, had to get out of his car to help Comanche County Sheriff’s deputies identify the tornado on May 18.
“I think local authorities need more weather education,” Berdomas told The Epoch Times. “At least, an annual storm spotting class so they understand storm behavior and know what they can and can’t drive through.”
The Epoch Times reached out to the Comanche County Sheriff’s Department for comment.

But it is not just law enforcement that that some storm chasers have had issues with.
Berdomas is a nurse practitioner, and Shelton is an EMT. Trained first responders, they continue to find themselves cut off from disaster scenes, including by other first responders. They cited one instance in South Carolina in which they had trouble with the fire department when trying to provide help to an area hit by tornadoes.
They lamented that their chasing has taken them to small towns with very limited emergency response capabilities, sometimes more than an hour away from outside assistance.
“You would think that if somebody’s there to help a town that just got, you know, leveled, and they say they have qualifications to help, why wouldn’t they welcome them with open arms?” Shelton said.
There are other chasers who are called out for deciding not to stop or stopping in dangerous positions along the road. Chasers are also known to clump together toward or around a tornado, causing a traffic phenomenon called “chaser convergence.”
Hours before McBay faced his Kansas tornado, he ended up in that convergence running between the towns of Arnett and Woodward in Oklahoma.
White passenger vans operated by tornado tour companies were seen parked on the shoulder, surrounded by their camera-carrying clientele.
Vehicles branded as part of the local news stations’ weather teams were also seen stuck in the convergence, which Mann said was part of the “impetus” for writing the bill, blaming the rise in storm-related traffic for delaying media coverage and first responders.
Storm Chasing Standards
Independent chasers, however, affirm that the work is not exclusive to corporate media and higher educational research.But distinguishing the best-performing and best-behaving chasers as clearly as a media or university logo remains a challenge.
Standards are set by individual groups such as Taylor’s Zello network, and nonprofits such as the United Cajun Navy, a disaster relief and response organization.

“There definitely needs to be uniformity, but the uniformity needs to come from everybody working with people such as us,” Todd Terrell, founder of the United Cajun Navy, told The Epoch Times.
Primarily made up of skilled, unpaid volunteers, the group often provides its volunteers with the tools and resources that they need to do a job, and Terrell sees that ability to empower as an incentive to achieve some industry standards while increasing his growing nonprofit’s work in all stages of a disaster event.

Taylor’s network requires credentials such as NWS’s Skywarn Spotter training, certain FEMA certifications for access to disaster areas, and an understanding that preservation of people’s lives and property comes first. She also fosters education and mentorship programs for less-experienced chasers.
Taylor and other chasers actively petitioned against the bill. They disapprove of state licenses, arguing that a federal license—if any—would be better because chasing often requires crossing state lines.
While open to the idea of a way to free storm chasers from traffic violations while pursuing a tornado, they say the bill triggered concerns that it would violate free speech and free movement across public roadways.
They also remain unconvinced that local law enforcement would honor any credentials.
Berdomas argued that it would be better to train local law enforcement to properly spot and track tornadoes themselves.
“Knowledge is power,” she said. “You know, they can actually figure it out themselves if they don’t want to listen to someone.”
Meanwhile, legislators are holding fast to licensing and have begun an interim study to discover a better approach.
“Our meteorologists and storm chasers help to keep us all safe,” Fetgatter said in a statement. “It’s important we give them the appropriate tools to do their jobs safely and well.”
Supporters said the bill would not affect how unlicensed storm chasing is currently conducted.
The Epoch Times reached out to both Mann and Fetgatter for further comment.
