Inside the ride: A professional chaser's tornado-chasing vehicle

What the pros take on the road with them

A look inside the chase vehicle of a professional tornado chaser. (copyright Robert Fritsche)

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It's like catching fish. All you really need is a hook, some fishing line, a pole and some bait. But you know if you want to increase your odds of catching fish, you're going to invest in better gear - like specialized lures, rods and reels, and perhaps a boat with a sonar system to track fish below the surface.

The same goes for storm chasing. All you need to chase tornadoes is a reliable vehicle. But the expert storm chasers often spend thousands of dollars in specialized gear to help them find tornadoes more easily and more successfully, and to document what they find.

Robert Fritchie is as prepared for anything that could happen during a chase. Here is the special equipment Robert keeps in his Pontiac Aztec at all times, even when he's not chasing:

4 to 8 Blankets
Two Handheld Spotlights (1 cordless, 1 coreded)
2 to 10 Gallons of Drinking Water
Basic Life Support Medical Kit
6 Cervical Spine Collars (Sizes Range from Pediatric to Adult)
Fire Extinguisher
Front and Rear Mounted LED Strobes for Accident Scenes or Extreme Low Visibility Situations
2-meter Radio
SG2000 Super Gain HAM Antenna
Wilson Cellular Antenna
Window-Mount Scanner Antenna
Dashboard Camera Mount (Bogen Pistol-Grip)
Center-Console Mounted 14" LCD Screen
Toolbox
Ratchet Set
Brush Gloves
350 Watt DC-to-AC Inverter
GPS Antenna Mounted on Roof
XM Satellite Antenna Mounted on Roof
Slow-Response Thermistor and Relative Humidity Sensor Mounted on Roof Inside an Aspirated Water-Resistant Enclosure
Full-Sized Spare Tire

Plus, when Robert's actually chasing storms, he adds all this other gear to his vehicle:

Laptop Computer
Additional USB GPS Antenna
Canon 5D Digital SLR Camera
Panasonic PV-DV600 Camcorder
Several Tripods (Gittos and Bogen)
300 Channel Scanner
Backup Paper County Maps of Chase Area
XM Weather Data Receiver and Software
GPS Tracking Software
Hail Documentation Kit (with rulers, hacksaw, backdrops, baseball, golfball, softball, etc.)
Rain-X!!!