King of All Weather-Whackers

I had made a post about this guy on the forums, this guy is a total whack job

Let me start by giving a little background information, I am a SKYWARN trained spotter, here we work closely with the county EMA, with a full amateur radio suite in the EOC, with Stormlabs software, and the Mobile Threat Net system, where you can get raw radar from NWS right to your computer via XM sat so no internet connection needed.Anyway one night after shutting down the SKYWARN net and the weather had cleared, I went out for a coffee at the truck stop here in town.

I was sitting here looking at the radar on my laptop and this whackjob in a bright yellow turban (no he is not arabic or east indian) comes up and introduces himself as a storm chaser.

He proceeds to tell me the “science” of storm chasing, he said his turban is the latest in storm chaser protection, saying that if you are too close to the tornado that the suction would pull the turban off your head and spin you like a top and spin you out of the path. And here I thought it was so he could clean the crap out of his pants after it was over.

Then he drags me out to his car so I could see all of his “highly specialized storm chasing equipment”. this whackjob has a flipping direct tv dish mounted to the roof of his reliant station wagon, says it is for his “doppler radar”. He has 8 antenas on this car not counting the direct tv dish. He says two of the antennas are for lightning protection so his “specialized equipment” won’t be damaged.

So do you want to know what his “specialized equipment” consists of? An 8 inch b/w tv, a scanner, and an old analog cell phone that is only capable of calling 911. (oh and after my original post on the forums, I see from the picture he has 2 CB radios).

I was told by a friend that this whackjob lives in Defiance Ohio, and before he got hiscar, he had a tricked out storm chasing bicycle, complete with all the antennas and the sat dish mounted to a rack over the rear tire. Too bad I couldn’t have gotten a picture of THAT setup. With the slight possibility of some storms this afternoon I have a feeling I’ll run into him this evening. I have talked to a lot of whackjobs in my career in emergency services/emergency management, but this guy out shines them all.