The WNY Stormchasers team

Mitch Bellinger is the Founder and Lead Storm Chaser for WNY StormChasers, founded in 2017.

He has lived in Western New York for most of his life, with a short time in Zephyrhills, Florida. He moved to the Jamestown, NY area in 2005 from Yorkshire, NY — the same day Hurricane Katrina made landfall in New Orleans.

Before starting WNY StormChasers in 2017, Mitch had been chasing since 2009, intercepting tornadoes and other severe weather across WNY and in other states. While living in Florida, he also went through landfall from Hurricane George and, ironically, Hurricane Mitch.

He holds a bachelor’s degree in Information Technology Systems and owns several companies, including Ultimate Solutions, UltraWave Internet, and WeHaul Logistics. Mitch has completed National Weather Service Skywarn Spotter training (Spring and Winter) and Advanced Spotter training for the NWS offices in Buffalo, State College, and Cleveland, and holds a certificate from each. He has also completed Spotter Network training and other courses.

He keeps training because the first mistake in storm chasing is thinking you know it all. In 2024 he brought on Andrew and Jackson, who were part of a news agency in Jamestown that also collaborated with the group. Since then the following has grown to tens of thousands, and the team stays focused on its followers and public safety.

Jackson is Chief Photographer and a chaser for WNY StormChasers. He joined in the summer of 2023.

He has years of experience in photography and videography, covering local news and sporting events across Chautauqua County for a local news station through 2023. That work led to a news photography job at WGRZ in Buffalo at the beginning of 2024, where he still showcases his photography. For WGRZ he covered the aftermath of a destructive EF4 tornado in Kentucky in the summer of 2025 and the aftermath of Hurricane Milton in 2024.

In his spare time he is out chasing storms across the area.

Chase Cone has been dreaming of becoming a storm chaser since he was 7 years old. Hooked on severe weather early, he spent the last 10 years working hard at storm spotting and learning everything he could about storms.

When he connected with WNY Stormchasers, he was baptized by fire during a storm outbreak — and achieved his dream of becoming a tornado chaser.

Logan Eschrich is an experienced storm chaser and severe weather correspondent specializing in real-time field coverage, storm documentation, photography, and video. His work has been featured by Good Morning America, FOX Weather, Ryan Hall, Y’all, Max Velocity, The Weather Channel, CNN, NBC Nightly News, ABC, and numerous other national news networks.

As a member of Team Ryan Hall, Y’all and a Live Storms Media chaser, Logan provides firsthand coverage of significant severe weather events from the field. His combination of field experience, technology, and media expertise delivers credible, compelling coverage to audiences nationwide.

SkyBot is WNY Stormchasers’ AI assistant and a full part of the roster. She’s always keeping eyes to the skies for the team — living our slogan while she drafts forecasts, graphics, and community updates so Mitch and the crew can focus on the chase and the science.

She works in a friendly Western New York voice with a little good humor. SkyBot helps package what the Stormchasers already do in the field into clear, on-brand content for viewers.

She doesn’t replace ground truth. Chasers still report live conditions and send observations to the National Weather Service. SkyBot assists with drafting, branding, and social delivery — with human oversight before anything goes out.