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Hurricane Chaser ranking uses the following criteria:
A. Length of time chasing hurricanes steadily for a year after year basis; conducting both professional missions and personal non-professional missions.
B. The % of attempted hurricane intercepts when the chaser successfully intercepted the central core of the storm.
C. Successes in intercepting the central core, by total number. When a chaser is actually simply following another chaser, or being guided into a storm by an experienced chaser who makes all the meteorological and tactical decisions, that following chaser does not accumulate credits for these rankings.
D. Professional activities directly related to their chasing: Production of Documentary Videos and DVDs for public consumption; number of units distributed. Direct feed to News sources in a timely news cycle release. Guiding professional production companies into the core of a hurricane.
E. Contracted work performed for research entitities. (Like the US Army Corp of Engineers)
F. Distribution of DVDs and hurricane footage to various venues that benefit the public welfare; emergency management professionals, schools using DVDs in classroom, corporate educational uses, library uses, TV documentaries.
G. Specific spectacular hurricane occurrences captured on video.
H. Number of DVDs sold, and total profit from those sales.
I. Footage sold to production companies for incorporation into their documentaries.
J. The variety of hurricane shots capturing the many unique phases of hurricane dangers and meteorological phenomena.
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This first evaluation is preliminary and will be revised through more detailed reasearch and analysis.
#1 Tie: Richard Horodner, Jim Leonard.
Using the above criteria Jim has captured a couple more extremely severe hurricane core video sequences than Rich. Rich has intercepted several more hurricanes than Jim, and has a wider variety of footage detailing all fthe phases of hurricanes coming ashore.
Richard Horodner: 75 tropical cyclones intercepted during 50 years of chasing, began in 1966, 55,000 DVDs sold to the public. 1100 DVDs placed in schools, contracted by the Army Corps of Entineers to film tidal surge for 4 years in the late 1980s. The Weather Channel's original in-house featured hurricane photographer, 1982. Intercepted 4 eyes in one season, 1985; a world record. One of only three chasers to ever intercept category #5 winds in a category #5 hurricane (Dressler, Brown also did this during Andrew in 1992 in S. Dade, FL). In the eye of one storm for a record 7 1/2 hours. (Hur. Frances, 2004; with Brad Riley).
Jim Leonard: intercepted 70 tropical cyclones, began in 1972; 5 of those major typhoons while living on Guam for 2 years. Known to have captured several of the most spectacular core scenes ever; including Hugo, Georges, and Typhoon Omar at their peaks. Featured, with Horodner, as TWCs original hurricane intercepting team in 1982; Rich being a full time employee, Jim being the other half of the TWC's first intercept team. Jim's "Hallway to Hell" sequence shot in Luquillo, Puerto Rico during Hugo, considered worldwide to be the best hurricane sound ever recorded.
#3 Terry Nixon: began chasing in 1965, intercepting Betsy in Mississippi / Louisiana. Chased every major hurricane from that date until Andrew in 1992. Conducted teacher workshops in lesser Antilles, educating teachers on methods for teaching hurricane awareness and preparedness to all the students of the islands of the Lesser Antilles. First Chaser to construct a fortified chase truck with mounted anemometer. Measured the highest winds recorded and lowest barometric pressures observed of several hurricanes to make landfall during his tenure.
The following is an incomplete list, being worked on and to be completed with more detail in the near future. To the best of the Board's knowledge all of these chasers continue active today; and are listed by the date they began to actively chase hurricanes.
Michael Laca - 1984
Chris Collura - 1987
Tim Marshall - 1988
Warren Faidley - 1988
Brad Riley - 1996
Jeffrey Gammons - 1996
Mark Suddeth - 1998
Jesse Bass - 1998
Mike Theiss -1999
Jim Reed - 1999
Jim Edds - 1999
George Kourounis - 2001
Jason Foster - 2001
Scott McPartland - 2003
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Additions to this list and corrections would be appreciated and should be e-mailed to: horodner@aol.com.
This is a list of VETERAN hurricane chasers: and for this "veteran" criteria the chaser must have began hurricane interception before the year 2004. It will be noted that there are others who claim to be veterans that began to chase after 2003.
