A bit sideways from the exact request of the thread, but sometimes I hear storm spotters tell me they don’t like storm chasers because they’re untrained and not professionals like the spotters. Every spotter class I’ve ever been to is a 30 minute slideshow of obvious information that every chaser learns before they see their first storm. Every spotter I’ve talked to maybe sees a couple storms a year and they have to sit in one place and not move, so they never get to experience full storm structure. Their primary job is to be a VFD or EMT or County Mountie, and looking at storms is just a side diversion to the highly technical jobs they already do.

Most dedicated storm chasers forecast and see upwards of a dozen rotating storms per year and regularly position themselves to see (and usually report) tornadoes. Most seasoned storm chasers see more tornadoes in a couple of months in one spring than almost any given spotter will see in decades. They also regularly recognize storm features that look like tornadoes but aren’t, something that is hard to do if you don’t see and sample multiple rotating storms a year. Some literally fly in from Europe and Australia to chase. They do all this on their own dime, so they are highly motivated to get good at it. A good portion of them report their positions in real time and report storm features as they see them. Some even livestream video. All of this is instantly accessible to the weather service, along with contact details for each chaser if the weather service wants to ring them up and ask what they are seeing.

Spotters are valuable and useful to the public, but having chasers on a storm means the warning meteorologist on duty at the weather service is going to get pretty good ground truth, far beyond what local spotters can provide.