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.