Recently a few new services have been made available for live streaming video, and some of them are offering special deals for tour operators.

These types of services are fantastic for storm chasers that chase for television news stations, but I question their usage for tour operators.

Here is why: I own and operate StormTours.com and a large amount of my revenue is created from people who hire me to take them to tornadic supercell thunderstorms. This income also keeps at least 4 other storm chasers and their families feed and warm during the winter months and a few others make a bit of money to help them out as well.

I also make a small supplemental income from selling tornado video to news networks for archival stock footage purposes (my “live reports” go directly to the National Weather Service, not a news station, free of charge of course!). This income is small, even if John Lennon came back from the dead only to be hit by an EF-5 tornado that I captured on tape, I wouldn’t expect more than a few hundred dollars from the resulting sale of that tape – probably not even enough to cover the cost of fuel for the day!

If I as a tour operator started streaming my video over the Internet then why would people pay me to take them to severe weather? After all they could just stay home or watch the event as it happens from their offices over the Internet.

I would also hope that during a severe weather event – if you’re in an area that is going to be affected that you are not combing through the Internet looking for “storm chaser video” – instead you need to be thinking about safety and getting the most information that you can about the event around you. You should be paying attention to two different sources:

1. Your favorite local television news station when they are running live severe weather coverage.

2. NOAA All Hazards Weather Radio (the best source for immediate tornado and severe storm warnings).

You may have also noticed that when you’re watching your local television station and they are running continuous severe weather coverage that they are NOT making money! The key word here is “continuous” – meaning they are not breaking for commercial air time to run paid advertisements. Truth be said, television stations actually loose money when they run continuous live weather coverage and yes, I have seen some of the books and know this for fact.

Your local television station will be able to bring you a lot more information, a lot quicker than you’ll be able to scout out on the Internet (i.e.: finding out who’s chasing, which of those chasers have something worth pointing a camera at in front of them, and where they are at, etc..).

A well organized weather team at a news station will have their chase teams covering the events. Each storm chaser or storm spotter (whatever television people preferred to be called) will be checking in with the live on-air meteorologist. Most of them are now broadcasting live video back to their television stations and when the operator in the control room sees that a chaser has something that is worth showing to the television viewer – they’ll flip a switch and put that camera on your television along with dialog from either the chaser or meteorologist who can explain to you what is happening and allow you to make a decision as to whether or not you need to seek shelter.

That, in my opinion is the value of these live streaming services. They are a great public safety tool for television and local emergency management. It’s just too bad that since these chasers and especially local emergency management storm spotters are non-paid volunteers – that these streaming services are not free to their usage for public safety.

That being said, if you want to see tornadoes from the perspective my camera – that’s fine. I’ll create a well produced DVD at the end of the year that you watch in the comfort of your living room. But, wouldn’t you rather be standing next to my camera and witnessing the event for yourself! I sure as hell would!

The link is here for our storm chasing tours.

-Brian Barnes

Tags: storm chasing