By my reckoning, some 60 hopeful stormchasers have signed up between the three this year, about four times last years' number. Not figures that would interest Disney World, but it's a start. Of course, there's a small problem with these tours, as anyone following the first two weeks of my dispatches will readily grasp. Call it the Blue Sky Syndrome. You can spend days on the Plains and not see anything more interesting than a red-winged blackbird.
People have a misconception.
For his first chase he lurked around the Oklahoma University meteorology department parking lot. When some students came streaking out and jumped into a car, he ran over and begged them to take him along. Soon afterwards, three aspiring chasers contacted him and offered to pay all his expenses if he guided them to the big ones. In 1993 Feely launched Whirlwind Tours. They saw two tornadoes.