Tornado's in de VS #25 A new day

Tornado Intercept (Inside a Weak Tornado) Lena, La (04/02/2017)

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Storm chasers drove into a tornado on purpose. Then their peers berated them.

Storm chasers who intentionally drove into the teeth of a tornado Sunday are now facing scathing blowback from their peers. The chasers got too close to the twister, the critics say, setting a dangerous example.

Storm chasers converged in northern Louisiana on Sunday as the National Weather Service declared it a high-risk zone for violent thunderstorms.

Later, the Weather Service posted a “particularly dangerous situation” tornado watch — reserved for the rare circumstances in which conditions are favorable for the large, long-track tornadoes that some chasers salivate over.

Such monsters never formed Sunday, but several smaller tornadoes spun up in northern Louisiana, including one that killed a mother and daughter in their mobile home. When a small tornado surfaced near the town of Lena, about 25 miles northwest of Alexandria, storm chaser Bart Comstock and his crew showed no restraint.

After spotting the tornado, video from Comstock and his crew (below) shows the chase vehicle take off at a high speed straight for the twister — as its engine roars (caution: video contains expletive).

A second camera view from the same vehicle (watch from 1:45 onward) shows the driver with one hand on the steering wheel, the other with a camera photographing the storm.

“We’re in it, we’re inside the tornado right now,” one of the crew says while another chaser is heard laughing in the background.

The car is nearly blown off the road, when the chasers shout excitedly: “Whoa! Oh!”

After the encounter, one of the crews boasts, tweeting: “OMG Just took a DIRECT HIT from a #tornado in Lena, LA. Got great footage, mult cameras.”

But the act of intentionally driving into a tornado, rather than watching it from a safe distance, did not sit well with some of their fellow storm chasers.

Victor Gensini, a professor of meteorology at the College of DuPage — who leads student chasing tours, excoriated Comstock in a Twitter conversation.

“You’re doing it wrong,” Gensini tweeted. “Takes direct hit and then brags about having video, Argh!”

Comstock defended himself. “Calculated risk on a very weak tornado,” he tweeted. “Wait to see the video before you judge. To each their own.”

Gensini replied: “I don’t need to see video to understand that you made a bad decision.”

Comstock refused to back down, responding: “I absolutely made the decision and it was mine to make. If you’re not a fan of my chase style you’re always welcome to unfollow me.”

Other storm chasers piled on in criticizing Comstock.

“This is not a badge of honor, nor is it a good example. Bragging about it is tone deaf,” tweeted Barbara Mayes Boustead, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, who storm chases in her spare time.

“Irresponsible,” tweeted Jeff Frame, a professor of meteorology at the University of Illinois and storm chaser.

“I try not to be judgmental,” added Matt Lanza, a meteorologist in Houston. “But storm chasers driving INTO a tornado essentially laughing all the way. That’s … not a good look.”

The dispute has taken on additional heft as the chaser community comes to grips with the loss of three chasers who died in a traffic collision in Texas last week. One of the chasers ran through a stop sign before the accident occurred

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Op woensdag 5 april 2017 18:38 schreef Houtenbeen het volgende:
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twitter:

Weerplaza twitterde op donderdag 06-04-2017 om 07:14:55 In Nederland nu rustig, maar zwaar weer in het zuidoosten van de VS. Afgelopen 24 uur bijna 200 meldingen van grote… https://t.co/Ix92bdM2ac reageer retweet