What do tornado chasers do in their job?

Tornado chasers, also known as storm chasers, track and study tornadoes so that they can understand how they form, how strong they are, and how dangerous they might be. Imagine you’re in a car, watching the RadarScope app on your phone to see if any severe storms are nearby. You glance outside your car window and notice a dark or greenish sky rotating into a wall cloud lowering from the base of the storm, slowly reaching toward the ground. You react quickly, predicting the tornado’s path so you can safely set up a camera and record it, then drive away from the tornado before it gets too close. (Some specially designed vehicles can get very close to tornadoes only).

According to neurje, storm chasers have been around since 1956, collecting data from tornadoes to help scientists and the public understand how different tornadoes behave. Not all tornadoes look or act the same—some may pass through open fields, while others can destroy houses or entire towns. That’s why chasers must always be prepared and able to recognize what kind of tornado they’re seeing.

This job is extremely dangerous. Chasers can be killed if a tornado suddenly changes direction or becomes stronger than expected, but for many storm chasers, the risk is worth it—not just for the money, but for the chance to better understand one of nature’s most powerful forces.

According to ZipRecruiter, storm chasers can earn around $49,000–$90,000 per year, but it mostly depends on what kind of work they do and the storms they document. You don’t always have to document about the tornadoes all the time.

Storm chasing/tornado chasing is mostly about science, studying each tornado you overcome and looking at the wind’s pattern on the tornado to study how fast the wind goes to understand the tornado’s formation, improve forecast accuracy, and to enhance the safety of the person by analyzing low-level winds near the surface

According to OnlineDegree.com some storm chasers work at places like the Severe Storms Laboratory, National Weather Center, Storm Prediction Center, The Weather Channel, and AccuWeather.

Chasers will keep on exploring more and more about the weather and what nature holds, both to satisfy their, and our, curiosity and to get a lot of data so we all can be prepared for when tornadoes come.