Great post! It’s funny that you bring up storm chasing, I’ve chased tornadoes since 1987 and completely agree with you regarding the commercialism of TWC and the storm chaser shows. I am very familiar with the chaser couple that were married in front of a tornado!
Did your engineering classes study the damage produced by tornadoes to determine the F-scale of tornadoes?
I don't remember doing quantification or lab work in that area although my Statics and Dynamics professor liked using storm forces as load examples.
In 1971 the department of meteorology was part of the school of engineering at OU. The NWS office was at Will Rogers airport. We worked with them as volunteer spotters to track storms and to take pictures of the various stages of storm development. A good set would earn about $10 enough for gas and food for the day.
We did most of our tracking between Norman and SW Oklahoma. There was no shortage of storms during my two years doing that and it coincided nicely with spring break.
My interest in all this started from my dad's stories about flying in P-61s through thunderstorms during the Thunderstorm Project near Dayton Ohio. He was a flying weather observer.