When Severe Weather Becomes a Tourist Attraction: Understanding the Relationship with Nature in Storm-Chasing Tourism

Since the mid-1990s, tourists can purchase storm-chasing tours to observe dangerous, potentially deadly natural phenomena—that companies cannot guarantee will occur. This context calls for a better understanding of the core aspect of the relationship between storm-chasing tourism and severe weather. What interest in severe weather spurs people to embark on storm-chasing tourism? How do they deal with severe weather becoming a tourist attraction through storm-chasing tourism? The present exploratory study investigates these questions using a qualitative methodology. It first examines the ways severe weather is depicted in participants’ discourse and on storm-chasing companies’ websites, illustrating they are multiple and intersecting. It then describes the various rationales used by tourists, guides, and owners when they discuss storm-chasing tourism turning severe weather into a tourist attraction, showing how the activity contributes to nature’s commodification process. Seeking to provide an initial anthropological interpretation of the findings, this study suggests that storm-chasing tourism brings together acceptance and exploitation of nature. Indeed, severe weather appears to be sought for its power over humans while also being marketed as an ordinary commodity. Albeit preliminary, this study sheds light on a fundamental feature of storm-chasing tourism that researchers have not yet fully addressed and enhances the comprehension of a piece of humankind’s relationship with nature in current Western societies.