--Greetings everyone. I wanted to bring something up here for everyone to be aware of. There were some activities that occurred during Hurricane Ike that need to be covered publicly. The TSSI team, as do many others, uses a "private network" on the Spotter Network program to track our chaser positions overlaid on the GR radar map. When we began using this program almost 2 years ago, we were all under the impression that with a private network, we would be invisible to everyone but each other, as it uses a specific URL to enter into the radar program for us to show up. This was actually one of the main reasons we wanted to use it. We have had instances of others trying to follow us into severe weather, and wanted to put a stop to that by only being visible to who we chose to or who we agreed needed to, ie: news stations, NWS office, etc. During the hurricane, 3 of us were horsing around and manually placed our markers down on the coast. We were all aware we were really not there, and again, assumed no one could see it but us. Well apparently, others could indeed see us, and it allegedly caused some issues. One party, who I will leave nameless, who was chasing down on the coast, claimed they were concerned when they saw my marker where it was. Although no attempts were made to contact me or anyone that could contact me, and nothing was done for 2 days, they claim they were "ready to have rescue sent to my area to look for me, but got distracted and didn't". Luckily, I was not there. However, this party has chosen to publicly try to slam me and the team for this activity in mass emails, portraying it as though we did it on purpose and could care less. I have also not been given the opportunity to respond to the same list of people they emailed.

I can only say that,
- I have been engaged in reporting weather to the NWS and other interests approximately 5 times longer than the parties involved and certainly know better than to be in the location they saw my marker.
- I know better than to publicly admonish fellow enthusiasts of any hobby in any seriousness. It just looks bad.
- I feel that anyone that was actually down there in the hot zone was far more of a risk and liability to themselves and rescuers than what we did.
- Weather enthusiasts have no business messing with a hurricane; we all know what occurs, and they are only adding to the risk incurred by themselves and any rescuers that might be needed to help them.

I am not going to criticize them specifically by name, as that would be unprofessional. Anyway, I just wanted our side of the story to be known. We were unaware that anyone could see our markers other than ourselves. Had we known this, we certainly would not have been messing around with them. We all take this service very seriously, and it is not a place for mischief.

I sincerely appreciate the concern expressed by anyone in this event, and apologize to anyone that it may have caused any concern to. Again, I can only state that I have been doing this for a long time, and am an innocent party to this event, due to the changes or misunderstanding of the software. We are working to resolve it with the party that owns the software, and he was very understanding and not upset. Thank you, and stay safe.