Increasing Awareness and Understanding of Severe Weather through Storm Chasing Education

As storm clouds gather, you feel a familiar tingle—a rush of excitement and awe mixed with a longing to learn everything you can about this powerful natural phenomenon. Does this sound like you? 

Turns out, you're not alone. There's a lot of interest in better understanding what it takes to see storms in person and how meteorological processes can play out to create severe weather environments. In response to this interest, Girls Who Chase (GWC) created a platform for storm chasers and weather enthusiasts of all levels and backgrounds to learn together. This is the story of how they’ve teamed up with COMET and the American Meteorological Society (AMS) to create a space for everyone.

Creating Conditions for Change 

In 2022, Jennifer Walton approached Wendy Gram, the deputy director of the COMET program at the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), with an idea she had to provide accessible and supportive training for storm chasers and weather enthusiasts of any background and skill level. 

“We learned that education was a very real barrier to entry for many in chasing," said Jen Walton, "and so our mission now is to bust those barriers. Spring Training is one way we are providing an operational storm chasing education to all storm chasers and weather enthusiasts."

Building Expertise Together: COMET + GWC

As a world leader in meteorological and other geosciences education and training, COMET was ready to help develop and support this training. 

“COMET’s vision is to build educated, competent, and resilient communities with the expertise and capacity to understand, predict, and adapt to weather events,” said Wendy Gram. “Girls Who Chase offers a remarkable platform to reach even more people working in or interested in the geosciences, so this partnership presents an exciting opportunity for us.” 

With more than 1,000 free weather, water, and other geosciences educational resources available, COMET’s flagship MetEd online learning catalog is a great place for beginner, intermediate, and veteran storm chasers to learn how to identify, forecast, and track weather events. 

After months of designing the training, coordinating with speakers and panelists, and securing multimedia support from UCAR’s Enterprise Multimedia Services team, the first annual Girls Who Chase Spring Training Event launched in March 2023. This event brought together veteran storm chasers, meteorologists and weather researchers, educational designers, representatives from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and more to provide storm chasers and weather enthusiasts with a full day of virtual presentations, discussions, and panels. (Check out the event’s website or this blog post to learn more.)  

“When you decide you want to be a storm chaser, it’s not like driver’s ed,” said Jen. “There’s no ‘storm chasing 101’ where you go through a course and get your license. You just—start chasing, and that transition can be nerve-wracking for folks just starting out. Resources are scattered and/or hard to find, you might not know anyone (I sure didn’t) to ask questions; it’s just not an easy road to educate yourself in all of these technical areas like forecasting, etc. So I thought, ‘what if we took all of these scattered resources and fantastic weather educators, and put them all in one place to create a truly foundational, accessible storm chasing 101’? It was a total ‘throw spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks’ moment, and boy did it stick! My hope was that we’d have maybe 100 people interested, which was enough of a sign this was of interest to the community, and instead, we had 320 register! Clearly, there was a desire for this type of education.”

“What if we took all of these scattered resources and fantastic weather educators, and put them all in one place to create a truly foundational, accessible storm chasing 101?”

–Jen Walton

As it turns out, things were just getting started. 

A Whirlwind of Growth

The next GWC Spring Training event in March 2024 nearly doubled that of 2023, with 570 people registering. Then came the release of the Twisters movie—a sequel to the 1996 film about storm chasing—in summer 2024. Like its predecessor, a female storm chaser was featured as the main protagonist and, like its predecessor, the hit movie has likely inspired a new generation of storm chasers.

At the same time, the GWC Spring Training Event was gaining a reputation for being a supportive and educationally robust workshop. Veteran storm chasers, complete newbies—and everyone in between—found tremendous value in the presentations from storm chasers, scientists, and folks from NOAA and the National Weather Service. Even more important, they also found a sense of community and belonging from being part of the event. 

Year two saw many return participants, and judging from the signups for the upcoming March 1, 2025 session, not only will attendance likely surpass the first two years, there will also be plenty of familiar faces. Here are a couple of quotes from past participants. 

“I'm already looking forward to the 2025 Spring Training. The presenters clearly put a ton of work into their presentations; each was tight, focused, and accessible. The online chat, panel discussions, and other resources are unlike those available elsewhere. I gain a lot of new information from each session and this training builds my confidence in getting out there and trying my hand at chasing for the first time at age 50! Thank you so very much!!!” 

"It was amazing to hear so many inspiring stories about storm chasing! I learned so much and I will carry that with me throughout my career as an uprising storm chaser. I will definitely attend next year's Spring Training!"

With the rapid growth of Girls Who Chase’s reputation and community, another key player in the story took notice: The American Meteorological Society. 

Storms, Support, and Sisterhood

Just prior to Spring Training 2023, Jen received an email from AMS (the professional society for people working in weather and climate, including severe weather researchers and weather forecasters). They wanted to discuss a potential partnership and were interested in engaging more people in atmospheric science. They liked GWC’s educational, safety-minded approach to storm chasing, and were curious about future plans.

A year and a half later, the formalized collaboration has grown significantly, and includes AMS becoming the title sponsor for Spring Training; collaborations on breaking news and topical webinars; content collaborations (such as this widely read Weather With a Twist post), and more. 

It has also begun to shift how AMS approaches storm chasing, historically a somewhat verboten topic for the respected weather society. Recently, GWC was invited to develop and lead what we believe is AMS’s first-ever storm chasing training, to be held at the student conference just prior to the 2025 AMS Annual Meeting—and of course, pulled in their now trusted education partner, COMET—to help design and produce the training. 

The COMET–GWC education partnership is filling a gap, it seems, in ways we couldn’t have anticipated, with far-reaching positive outcomes for both the weather community and folks seeking to be a part. 

Ready to Pursue Your Passion for Severe Weather?

Welcome! You can get started by registering for the GWC 2025 Spring Training Event here. The event is fully virtual and the cost is low ($40) to make it as accessible to everyone as possible. Opportunities to save $5 will also be offered across the Girls Who Chase and COMET social media channels.

If you missed the previous year’s training, you can purchase the videos here. These are valuable resources, but not a prerequisite to the 2025 workshop.