When shooting cloned dinosaurs or taking the tag off a mattress in blatant defiance of the instructions no longer can provide any thrills for your jaded, empty existence I've got a new drug. It's called driving into severe weather and it's the most fun you can have with your pants on.
“It’s going to get crazy,” said Mr. Reid of Tempest Tours, which takes visitors on excursions into some of the wildest weather on the continent, amid reports of torrential rain, baseball-sized hail and possible tornadic activity.
Wow, cool it with the stigmatizing language. Next time say "It's going to get mentally ill." Also, I never really considered "rain" to be "extreme," but then again I'm not making sick bank with Tempest Tours. Oh brave new world, that has such people in't!
As the U.S.’s tornado season kicks into high gear, so does the booming-but-risky business of taking paying passengers on storm-chasing tours in the nation’s tornado alley.
We've finally found a use for Middle America other than remembering they exist every four years on election night.
The 1996 movie, “Twister,” and the 2007-2011 Discovery Channel reality TV series, “Storm Chasers” have helped to fuel the growing popularity of the tours—in a trend that worries some safety experts.
Forgotten garbage culture from several years ago is responsible for this thrilling, cutting-edge fad.
Although the storm tour companies offer no guarantees, spotting—and taking photos of—twisters is the Holy Grail for storm chasers and tourists alike.
This better not turn out to be another trick bag like my big Hollow Earth vacation.
But that hasn’t stopped Tempest Tours, among others, from selling out its storm-chase tours, which can last from a day to 11 days and run $300 to $3,850.
I mean, I can just drive you around for an hour or whatever for three Franklins, but to be honest I really hold back on those cheap ones and it isn't all that much fun. You want to spend four figures, minimum.
The company started in 2000 with 20 tourists now hosts about 200 passengers a season who come from around the country and world, said founder Martin Lisius.
He's like a successful and well-adjusted version of that scumbag from Blair Witch 2: The Book of Shadows.
“People kept asking if they could go storm chasing with us, so we decided to create this company so they could book a tour like a cruise,” said Mr. Lisius of Arlington, Texas, a veteran storm chaser.
People kept asking me to beat them in an erotic fashion with a flogger while I call them scum, so I decided to create a company based out of my basement "dungeon."
Over the past two decades, at least a dozen other companies have sprung up around Texas and the Midwest, including Silver Lining Tours, Extreme Tornado Tours and Extreme Chase Tours, which hauls about 80 passengers a season in its vans compared with just five when it started in 1999, said owner Lanny Dean.
What I give you is top value, unlike those con-artists from Silver Lining. Yeah, I cost more, but there's a reason for that.
Though storm-chasing companies say they don’t know of any tourists who have died or been seriously injured so far, the trips can be dangerous.
I like the "don't know." I mean, high winds picked him up and propelled him off into the hemorrhaging sky, but I'm sure he was fine. I never found a body or nothing, honest.
Three storm chasers died in 2017 when their vehicles collided while chasing a twister in Texas.
Oh. This kind of plays havoc with that whole "Ignorance as an excuse" line we just got.
We offer no guarantees you'll see anything resembling decent college football.
In 2013, three other chasers were killed when a tornado they had been following turned on them in El Reno, Okla. In both cases, the storm chasers weren’t leading tours.
The funnel seemed cool, then it just turned on me, man. Who could have predicted this?
Even some storm chasers think the tours are a bit much. “It puts more cars on the road,” said Greg Robbin, a 42-year-old storm chaser from Mountain View, Calif., as he patrolled for tornadoes on the Oklahoma prairie recently.
I don't like sharing the road with what I call "normals."
Mr. Alba was joining his first storm tour this month because “seeing a tornado is on my bucket list,” he said.
You might kick said "bucket" immediately after, so that's convenient.
Full Article.
Komment Korner
I saw tornadoes several times when I lived in Ohio.
So the main danger is getting hit by another car of storm-chasers?
Storm chaser, so what happens when they catch them?
A great alternative for terminally ill individuals in states where there isn’t a “right to die” law.
I do love the idiocy of at least one half of the American public.
Aaron Zehner is the author of "The Foolchild Invention" available in paperback and e-book format. Read free excerpts here and here.
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