Your Contribution

While chasing across America, I incur a variety of annual expenses: vehicle  purchases, vehicle maintenance expenses, hail shield expenses, amplifier and antenna expenses, and miscellaneous expenses derived from life on the road. I have a suggested donation amount for potential chase partners. Your daily donation allows me to continue to provide this storm chasing opportunity.

I suggest a donation of $50 per day, per chase partner. Even if you have little or no storm chasing experience and little or no working knowledge of meteorology or forecasting, but you want to learn, I can teach you. Naturally, it takes more time and effort on my end to teach meteorology and forecasting; however, I'm just as interested in teaching new chasers to forecast and chase successfully as I am in partnering with seasoned chasers.

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Your Expenses and Expected Travel Budget

This is a thorough breakdown of the expenses you'll probably incur if you come to the U.S. to storm chase. Note that these are general figures just to give you a guideline. Please be sure to read the disclaimer at the bottom.

The price of your trip to partner with me will depend on a couple of factors:

1. How many chasers are in my vehicle?
2. How long do you plan on staying?
3. How far are we traveling in order to chase?

I will attempt to give you a general rundown of how each of these will effect your cost. First, let's look at the expected costs per day.

1. Hotel - $100 per night (assuming we aren't on a local chase near my house) 
2. Food - $20 or more per day
3. Gas - At a price of $2 per gallon, my 4Runner has a 23 gallon tank. One tank of gas will take us about 350 miles which is about 15 miles per gallon.
4. Miscellaneous Expenses - $10 per day. This includes tolls, fun side trips like National Parks, splitting the cost of a 30GB data plan, etc.
5. Your Donation - 50$ per day

Second, your donation and any food you eat are the 2 daily costs that are covered solely by the individual chaser. Group expenses including hotel, gas, and most miscellaneous expenses are split among me and the other chasers. The more chasers we have riding together, the cheaper it will be. 

1. One chaser and Me: each person pays 1/2
2. Two chasers and Me: each person pays 1/3
3. Three chasers and Me: each person pays 1/4

Third, if you stay longer, it will cost more. Most people stay for two weeks, but some stay for almost a month. I do not mind how long people stay.

The safest bet is to assume that it will only be you and me chasing while you are here. If more people are here, then great! Everything will be cheaper. However, when budgeting for your trip, assume a higher daily cost for everything.

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Disclaimer

I want to make sure that all group purchases (hotel, gas, etc.) are split evenly among all members in the group including me. Therefore, I will be paying for all of the group purchases (hotel, gas, tolls, etc.) and splitting it evenly among all of us at the end of the trip. Therefore, you should be prepared to pay your share of the expenses with cash, Paypal (+ Paypal fee), or transferwise (the best choice for chasers from overseas) at the end of the trip.