After disruption to emergency services, Kansas county aiming for regulations on storm chasers

MARSHALL COUNTY, Kan. (KWCH) - One Kansas county is advocating for state lawmakers to create regulations on storm chasers.

This comes after emergency crews in Blue Rapids said storm chasers blocked roads, disrupting those services.

“This last weekend or a couple weekends ago when we had that big storm, (chasers) in a county of thousands of people, doesn’t work when you put that much congestion out there,” Dickinson County emergency management director Chancy Smith said.

Tornado season is in full swing across Kansas, which means we’re seeing a prevalence of storm chasers.

Some counties say that influx is creating issues at time for emergency services.

In northern Kansas, Marshall County is advocating for lawmakers to put regulations on storm chasers.

And in Dickinson County, Smith is deal with the strain this extra traffic puts on first responders.

“A deputy has to use his lights and sirens to drive around a herd of people to get back up to get his job done,” Smith said. It really hinders the response, and had something bad happened, it (would be) multiplied by 10."

Even so, Smith is against creating regulations, saying it would be difficult to enforce the,

Smith points to Oklahoma as an example. In 2025, a bill failed that would have created licenses for storm chasers who work for news stations and universities.

Those licenses would have given those chasers the same power as emergency responders, allowing them to use flashing emergency lights to go through red lights on closed roads to spot storms.

Now Smith is checking in with other counties to see how they’re managing to deal with this issue.

“We just need to come together,” Smith said. “Because like I said, the enforcement part is just not going to be possible because we can’t enforce our own laws now when that many people come through.”

Marshall County explained in a letter that it plans to create a task force to start a conversation between the county, storm chasers and emergency departments.