Hays ? Storm chasers can be a nuisance and even an emergency hazard, some law enforcement officials in northwest Kansas say.

Amateur chasers in particular block traffic and make it hard for emergency vehicles that are on the roads trying to track storms themselves, say officers in Trego and Graham counties.

The latest clash between emergency workers trying to reach weather-hit areas and storm chasers photographing the storm came Tuesday night into early Wednesday.

“We had about 200 storm chasers,” said Trego County Sheriff Rich Schneider. “We had to get rough on them to get them to move.”

He said the chasers were pulling off U.S. Highway 283, north of WaKeeney, to get photos of storms brewing in north Trego County and south Graham County.

They were getting into the way of emergency crews, the sheriff said.

“They seem to think they’ve got special rights,” Schneider said. “I told my deputy if they interfered, to write them up.”

After hearing that they might be ticketed, the storm chasers scattered, he said.

Graham County’s emergency management director, Ralph Eschbaumer, said the chasers are “a hindrance to emergency services wherever they are.”

He has no complaints about seasoned weather spotters like the ones from the University of Oklahoma or the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado.

It’s the chasers he calls “freelancers” who interfere the most with emergency efforts. They’re the ones looking for photographs with hopes of selling them to the highest bidder, Eschbaumer said.

“They do get to be a safety concern,” he said. “They just had our highways just plumb plugged up.”

Sharon Watson, spokeswoman for the Kansas Adjutant General’s Office, said she had not heard about any problems involving storm chasers.