Midwestchaser

A few thoughts

2011-09-03T01:01:00.003-05:00

It has been a loooong time since I wrote a blog. But out of boredom tonight I did some random searches on Google for various chasing stuff. One thing I happened to stumble upon was a Minnesota storm chaser names Alex Sahlberg. He was about 4 years older than me, but passed away from natural causes in April 2005 at the age of 18. I ended up on an old thread at Stormtrack that was in memory of Alex. He wasn't real well known in the chasing community since he was just starting out, but in the local community people really knew him, and those that knew him had nothing but good things to say about him. From what I can gather, Alex never saw "the big one", didn't have pictures of 1000 different tornadoes to show off to everyone, and didn't even have his license. Instead, he had the genuine passion for weather, didnt matter if it was just large waves crashing on to shore on Lake Superior, or lightning from late night storms, because it was weather, and he loved it. He didnt seek out the glory so many of us do today. And this has really got me thinking, and honestly a little embarrassed. As hard as it is to admit, I do like some of the glory that comes with getting great tornado video, or cool structure shots, and I think a lot (if not most of us) enjoy some of that glory. I'm not saying that is why I chase, watching mother nature's power is something I hope never bores me. But over the 6 years I have been chasing, it has become more about getting the cool shot that everyone will ooh and ahh about, instead of just enjoying what I saw, regardless of whether it was a tornado or not. Today's chasing world is so wrapped up in trying to outdo the next person that over time we forget why we're out there. It's not about the fame or glory from the pics or video we're gotten, or what channels have shown our footage, or who we know, or the drama that goes on, it's about our passion and desire to watch the storms, or at least it should be. I can tell that since I started up my chasing facebook profile my ego has gotten bigger, and I don't like it. This is also not the first time I've noticed it. On a couple separate occasions it has nearly pushed me to the point of closing the profile and just going offline and under the radar for a while, and knock myself down a peg or two. The thing is, no matter how much my ego makes me think I'm better than someone like Alex because I have more tornado video or the people I know, I know I'm lying to myself because I can tell he truly touched people and had that determination to get better and smarter. It's a shame his life ended so young. If he were still alive maybe he would be a role model for some of us to remember why we are out there and not get caught up in the hype and glory and that we don't need to be on Discovery to get recognized. I dunno, maybe going offline would still do me some good...we'll see. In the mean time, RIP Alex, even though you are no longer with us, maybe you can still be that role model for a few us.

It's been a while

2010-12-17T08:34:00.002-06:00

It's only been 7 months since my last update...Busy chase season and crazy busy semester at school haven't given me much time to have a life over the last 7 months. But with finals now done I figured I would resurrect the blog before I completely forget about it. Anyways, a recap for my storm season: 23 chases, 19,000 miles, 5 tornadoes, 7 states, and my fair share of busts. Lots of cool pics as well. I'll try to get some of them uploaded here over the next few weeks because I'm too lazy to upload them all right now. Also, we've had a ton of snow so far this winter. Only about 1/4 of the way through our winter but we already have 3/4 of our yearly average. Anyways, next semester won't be nearly as busy so be sure to check back as I will try to update this blog more often!

5/23/2010 FCST

2010-05-21T22:52:00.003-05:00

I will be starting my 5 day chase trip on Sunday. Not gonna go real in depth right now because I'm frickin tired and to be honest I dont have the best idea of what's going to happen on Sunday. However, there will be some sort of boundary slowly moving across Nebraska. While this same boundary may affect SD/MN/IA, the best shear looks to be farther to the southwest and a very juicy atmosphere with MLCAPE values nearing 4000 j/kg across south centra/southeast Nebraska as per the WRF. Another problem farther to the north/northeast is that surface winds will be running more parallel to the boundary. Not completely sure what kind of boundary we are talking about, looks like a slow moving warm front but who knows. Anyways, the only real problem is the cap. I think the new WRF might be a bad run in terms of CINH as it breaks it down rather weird IMO. Also, I personally think earlier models may also have been a little aggressive in breaking down the inhibition with a large swath of no CINH across NE in to KS. Another strike is the upper winds are not ideal, but with decent helicities and strong to extreme instability, I think it could be a fun day. Models are still going back and forth about where exactly the boundary will end up but that will be a chase day call anyway. Regardless, I will out Sunday across south central Nebraska or north central KS. Be sure to watch my stream at tornadovideos.net and wish me luck on my first "chasecation"! Will be out chasing Sunday thru Thursday.

4/29/2010 Chaselog: KS

2010-05-08T18:36:00.011-05:00

Finally have some time to write this up. Left Wednesday night to get a couple hour head start on Thursday's drive. Was thinking I would stay in Iowa for the chase but wanted to leave Kansas open and I did not want to make that drive in one day. Stopped off at a rest stop for the night Wednesday night about 40 miles north of Des Moines. Got back on the road at about 6 am Thursday morning. Surface winds were REALLY strong, made for a difficult drive. Grabbed some breakfast at Perkins in Des Moines, got back on the road towards Omaha. Got to Council Bluffs, IA (the east side of the river from Omaha) and looked over data. Sat around, trying to figure out what to do. Finally decided to get south to Nebraska City, NE. Grabbed some lunch, looked over more data, the more I thought about it the more I really didnt think Kansas was going to go. Had a Cu field starting to build over me, although they had hardly anything to them. Continued to sit in Nebraska City and watch the Cu. At about 3:00 I read on ST that towers were starting to go up west of Salina, KS (Salina was my prelim target 2-3 days before the event, but like I said I really didnt think KS would go) and get a text from Brad Nelson with a pic of the Cu they are watching. Turn my GR over to Topeka and I see echo tops starting to show up. They weren't impressive but it was obvious that the cap was eroding and storms would go soon. Now that I knew KS was gonna happen I bolted south. However, while I was sitting in Nebraska City I somehow switched off my power strip. So while I'm on my was to KS I notice that my computer battery is at 49%, and I think WTF!?!?! No, no no no no, I know I didnt pop a fuse, espcially since I had no extra ones. I go in to switch fuses (can't remember what fuse I took out to replace the cigarette lighter), and still nothing. On top of this, at the same time my computer decicided to freeze up and had to reboot everything. The switched fuse didn't do anything (keep in mind the fuses in my car are a PAIN IN THE ASS to change), I start thinking I should just head home, cut my losses. Must've been out of desperation I flip the switch on the power strip and whaddya know, it's working again. I still have no idea how I turned it off, but was just extremely happy I got everything figured out. So after this little debacle I continue south. The first storm looked good on radar for a while, even had a couplet on velocity for a couple scans. Plan was to intercept it near Marysville, KS. After I got to Marysville the storm didnt look good visually and didnt look good on radar. Even still, tracked it north for a few miles. Got a view of the base, a little wall cloud, sucked up scud but the scud didnt get pulled up very far. Chased it a couple more miles, ran in to fellow Minnesota chase Jacob Thumberger on a random back road yet again (same thing happened on April 5th in northwest Missouri). The storm puked out, saw another storm to the southwest, nothing else in the area, decided to go after it and try to intercept it near Washington, KS. That's exactly what ended up happening. A nice hill gave me a nice view of the base when I was approaching the storm, but too far away to tell exactly what was happening. Surprisingly the terrain in that area is kinda crappy. Kept going on highway 36 (I think it's 36) to a mile or two west of Washington. A nice feature was hanging on ground to the right, with another area to the left. The area to the right reminded me of a couple of Hollingshead's pics, except no tornado. Still not exactly sure what it was, it looked detached from the base, but I don't know for sure. Watched it for a while, got some video, watched it die out, started to focus my attention to the area to the left as it was came obvious this was the new inflow area. Didn't really have much to it when I was west of Washington, but not long after I started to head back east it REALLY ramped up. Once I got east of Washington, it really started spinning. A large wall cloud with probably the most incredible structure I've ever seen. No rain or hail wrapping around to cut off my view, just incredible. Quite a few trees just off the highway, so had to find an area where there were few trees and I could get a good view of the ground in the distance, which was surprisingly hard to do. Finally found a spot to pull over and got some more video and some pics. Watched it for about 6 or 7 minutes, then had to get back east. Chased it east and north a little bit, watched it puke out too. Apparently a little spinup was reported north of Washington, but I never saw it, then again I wasn't real close. Let that storm go and dove back southwest to try to catch another tornado warned. This third storm looked good on radar but didn't have a view of the base. Can't remember exactly what road it was, but the only road I had to get to the north-south highway I wanted was a northwest-southeast road. It ended up being ok because on my way to the north-south oriented road I was just east of the base of a storm that got tor-warned while I was heading to the storm to the south. This storm also had a nice base and what I think was a wall cloud but it could've been the start of the soon to be very impressive shelf cloud. Either way it was pretty cool. Eventually got to the north-south highway in time to watch the storms line out. I was definitely not dissapointed though, the shelf was simply increible. Didn't get in front of it long enough to setup the tripod, but did get to snap a pic or two of it. Ran in to the only hail of the day while trying to get south of the shelf cloud and even then it was only a little pea size hail. All in all a very good chase, and definitely glad I didnt turn around after my little equipment malfunction. I think the pics do a better job explaining the day than this writeup so I'll let them speak for me.

The first storm north of Marysville, KS:

Second storm near Washington, KS. The feature to the right is the one I was saying I don't know what it is, and sorta resembles a couple of Hollingshead's pics (not sure what day they were from):

Same storm, new action area. Still west of Washington:

Storm east of Washington:

Shelf about 10 miles northwest of Washington:

Possible tornado, although I can NOT confirm:

CLICK HERE FOR THE TIMELAPSE OF THE STORM NEAR WASHINGTON, KS

CLICK HERE FOR THE COMPILATION OF THE CHASE NEAR WASHINGTON, KS

About as close as you can get to producing without actually doing it. Informal chaselog 4/29/2010

2010-05-02T19:53:00.004-05:00

I still have pics and video to go through from the Washington, KS area from Thursday so I'm not going to make a big chaselog about this day yet but I will soon. I just wanted to show some pics I took that appear to show a funnel trying to extend to the ground. A very brief, weak tornado was reported in about the same area at about the same time but Topeka's write-up about it said a condensation never reached down when the TOR was reported. The pics that I have show SOMETHING just to the left (west) of a large wall cloud under the same parent meso. Everything was spinning like crazy but unfortunately I was a bit too far away to see the little dust spinup that was reported and a nice pair of trees block the view of my video camera just as the funnel was coming down. I didn't even notice this during the chase, and even when I got home and looked through the pics I didn't notice it right away. Eventually I did notice something hanging off a feature to the right of the main wall cloud. Still hard to say what it was, could be scud for all I know but my timelapse of the area showed this feature rapidly rotating with good rising motion. Anyways, here's the pic and link to the timelapse video. Let me know what you think!

CLICK HERE TO SEE THE TIMELAPSE

First try at star trails and, well, I dunno.............

2010-04-17T19:03:00.003-05:00

Headed out last night after work to get some pics of the cool crescent moon. Apparently moonset was much quicker than I was expecting so instead I headed up a couple miles north of Stacy, MN to do my first try at star trails. Pretty clear night, figured why not since I was ready to take pics and didnt want to go home empty handed. I did this forgetting that my E520 is an entry level DSLR, I forgot that I have to hold the shutter release button down when on bulb setting, unlike my Nikon N65 film SLR which I press once, come back and press it open to end the exposure, and dont have to sit there holding it the entire time. Anyway, I managed. I think my max exposure time even for bulb is 480 sec. (8 minutes). Not sure if that is the norm or not, but would've liked to get some 15 minute exposures. Not sure whether that would be good on the camera/lens or not though. A little chilly, nearly froze my hands off holding the shutter button down. Got one decent pic for my first try after a decent times post-processing.

On a different note, wanted to go back to a couple things in my last entry. Not gonna beat a dead horse...Just want to apologize to Rich and everyone at F5 for anything that has come up the last couple days. I still do not regret what I did, but yes there was a better way to do it. I just gotta remember you only get caught up in as much chaser drama as you let yourself get in to. I'd rather shut up and keep F5 around than do anything like that again and lose it.

The connotations that come with TVN

2010-04-15T14:19:00.002-05:00

Arrggg, I really don't want to write this with it being the beginning of storm season. I would rather focus my time and energy on that than sit here and get pissed off while writing this entry but I feel it is necessary to clear the air on somethings. So...
As I wrote here on my blog about a month ago I am now streaming for tornadovideos.net. Right off the bat, I want to make one thing clear: TVN contacted ME, I did not beg to stream or be associated with them (don't get me wrong, I'm very happy to be with TVN). Prior to them contacting me about streaming through them this year I had no desired to stream. I was not begging them to let me become a part of their organization, and I in NO WAY joined because of Reed's involvement with them. I joined them because after hearing what they offer it sounded like a good deicision. Now that I have joined TVN it seems that people think that anything I argue about is because I have magically gained this huge ego simply because I stream for TVN. If I dont stream for TVN, no ego, but now that I stream for TVN, I have an ego. No TVN, no ego; TVN, HUGE ego. I do not get that. While I dont have any specific examples and no one has explicitly said anything like that, I can't help but get the sense that is what people are thinking. Maybe they don't think that specifically about me, but I know there are at least a few people who think that about TVN streamers in general, and that now includes me. Most of this lately has been happening at F5, which is weird because the majority of the people there know me personally or have at least seen me post enough to know that I am not that kind of a person. Have I gotten a bigger ego since I started chasing? Sure. Who doesn't. It comes with being more confident about what you're doing, and needless to say I feel that I am certainly a much better chaser now than when I started. You want to consider that a huge ego and think the only reason I am with TVN or chase now is because of Reed and money, go for it. If that's what you think you're not the person I want to associate myself with anyway.
Also, there have been a couple other issues that have come up this week that I want to clear the air about. I bit my tounge at F5, I dont want to be the person to piss all over the forum. Instead, it came out on FB. I do not regret a single word I said. The reason I said what I said is simple. A chaser (out of respect for their privacy we will call them chaser A) felt the need to hold everyone's hand and try to get them to all be nice. While this is fine, what this person said is common knowledge, but continued to overstate the obvious. On Monay Chaser A posted tips on how to communicate better and how to report better in light of some things that happened earlier on Monday. This was a long post that 99% of the people on F5 know and is stuff that is taught in Skywarn classes or posted in the "Rules" section at F5. These kinds of posts continued until yesterday with Chaser A overstating the obvious, and I felt that it was keeping the experienced chasers from posting and bringing down the quality of the forum. On top of that it was pissing me off having a new chaser trying to teach me how to chase and acting like he was saving the day. We'll just say that kind of crap pisses me off to no end. So a different chaser posts a status update yesterday. I post a couple of comments on it semi mocking chaser A. Chaser A then posts a comment with, and I quote "... I felt the reporting piece was needed so we don't have a bitchfest everytime there's a questionable report whether it's from JDH or someone else." Maybe it's just me and I apologize if it is, but to me that sounds like "You're welcome I came in and saved the day." Nah ah, nope, that crap DOES NOT fly with me. If you actually did something to help out, I would be grateful. But nothing posted by Chaser A was of any real value and certainly nothing that no everyone at F5 doesn't already know. So I comment back with, and I quote "Yes (Chaser A) you saved the day. I applaud you for your heroism." I won't go in to what others said since it's not really relevant to this entry. Instead, I want to explain that I did not say this because I am now streaming for TVN and I want to reinforce the statement that I have no bigger ego now that I did before I agreed to stream with TVN. I would feel the same about Chaser A regardless of whether I decided to stream with TVN or not. Lets not forget a couple months ago when I was battling MIDSCAR. That was an arguement, and guess what?!? I WAS NOT WITH TVN THEN!! Nobody had any problem with what I was doing, in fact people were AGREEING with me. Now I get in to an arguement AFTER I SIGN UP WITH TVN and people have a problem with me arguing with someone? I do not get that. Like I said my opinion about Chaser A would be the same whether or not I was with TVN. I'm going to stop writing, I'm getting too pissed off thinking that people actually think my personality has all of a sudden changed now that I'm with TVN. Come on people, you know me better than that.

It's that season again! 4/5/10 Chase FCST

2010-04-04T21:08:00.004-05:00

Finally a real setup. Models have been all over the place with the system that is expected to come through the plains tomorrow. However, I'm taking the latest run more to heart. The GFS and WRF have finally come to somewhat of an agreement for tomorrow afternoon. While neither models completely erode CINH before 00z, both show a large of significantly weakened inhibition over southeast Nebraska, southwest Iowa, and northwest Missouri. Everything looks to be in place for a decent setup IF (and I stress IF) we can get precip/clouds to clear out of the target area soon enough allowing sufficient destablization during the day. Models show at least 1500 j/kg of MLCAPE across the area mentioned above with a great amount of shear along and north of a warm front that is expected to move north in to southern/central Iowa tomorrow afternoon. Gonna want to stay close to that front as I dont know what the triggering mechanism will be further south. Since Iowa/Nebraska are closer than Missouri I'm content with just playing the warm front action. The downside if the storms fire is they will be hauling ass. Storms today were moving at 45-50 mph and I expect those same speeds tomorrow. For now the current target is Clarinda, IA.

EDIT: Didnt feel it was worth writing up a new post. Target is still Clarinda, IA. Also wanted let everyone know I will be streaming later today. Be sure to check it out at tornadovideos.net/live

Some big news and a new pic

2010-03-15T08:00:00.003-06:00

It's official. I'm happy to say I will be streaming my chases live through tornadovideos.net and also have them market my video to news stations. It will be nice to get a little $$ back for my chasing. I'm not exactly sure how they have their website setup for getting to the streams, but I will figure it out and post it. Make sure to check it out as the more viewers I get on my stream and the longer they stay on it the more money I get. Really looking forward to 2010 and it can't come soon enough! Thanks to Heidi Farrar for helping me out with all the info and also to Andrew Butler for giving them my name and also the info!

Now for the pic. I went down to downtown Minneapolis after work on Friday night hoping to get some cool shots with all the fog around. The fog right at the surface wasn't cooperating but just above the surface it got very dense. Anyways, here's the one pic I was proud of:

First WTF?!? day of the season

2010-03-08T21:02:00.004-06:00

So as most weather nerds know already there was a long track tornado in western Oklahoma today. Andy Gabrielson of Luverne, MN who I have chased with a few times caught some great footage of the tornado near Hammon, OK in the later afternoon. Bart Comstock also got some great video and both have some of their footage playing on TWC so congrats to both on bagging the tornado and getting the footage on several news outlets. This was a day that noone really expected, and the chasers that did go for it were pretty skeptical. Temps barely breaking 60, dewpoints barely breaking 50, and models showing far less than par helicities over the area that had the tornado. For some chasers and wx nerds here in Minnesota and Wisconsin this might sound somewhat familiar. August 19th, 2009 had SOMEWHAT of a same setup. Relatively cool temps and low instability. While there were many differences between 8/19/09 and today, cool core nature and low instability dynamics are obviously major factors. MLCAPE values were ~500-750 j/kg (8/19 here in MN MLCAPE were around 200-300). The forecast models were showing the helicity today being pretty low, definitely not what you would expect for a long track tornado. The forecasted helicities for 8/19 in MN were pretty big. While I can't be 100% sure about this since I am no expert but I'm guessing that for today the models were neglecting to pick up on on the localized shear just to the east/northeast of the center of the low which is where the tornado touched down. I don't know how strong this low was since I wasn't really paying attention, but regardless the shear will be maximized in the area mentioned above. Couple strong shear (eventhough no one knew it was there) with just enough instability and you get what we had today. There was someone at ST who said they drove though 1.5" hail in the core of the storm so it's possible a brief tornado would've touched down with even less instability, but nothing like what actually happened. Another amazing thing is how good the visibility was today given that it was a cold core event. Days like today are the reason we chasers go out on days that don't look good because every once in a while it will really pay off. Also just goes to prove that there doesn't need to be a tornado watch or even warning (severe t-storm warning for that matter) before you get a tornado. It is also very important to note that this storm did not look good at all on any level or any scan. There was no way to know what it was about to do because it was so far away from any radar site and at that distance you can't see the lower levels of the storm. It had no couplet on velocity, no hook, no organization all on radar, and tops only ~30k ft. Nothing about this setup looked good except the storm itself, which is ultimately the most important thing. I think it was great listening to TWC and listening to them talk about how big of a role Spotter Network played in getting the warning out. I'll definitely have to keep these kinds of days in mind for the future. Congrats again to Andy, Bart, and everyone else who got the tor today!

I need a longer lens

2010-02-28T23:23:00.005-06:00

Ha, I knew I'd get more than one entry here in February, albeit it 25 days apart but whatever. Headed down to Red Wing last Monday around 1:00 to see if the eagles were out. They were, but my kit 80-300mm just doesn't cut it. There was an incredible photo op as a lone eagle did two laps around the boats in the bay at Colvill park. Thing is is that it happened right after I pulled in and my camera settings were still set from low lights shots and didn't have to time adjust them and get setup before the big boy was gone. FUCK! Spent the rest of the day trying to take pics of eagles and hawks that are way too far away for my crappy kit lens. Still pretty fun though, pics dont break a trip that's main goal was just to get away for the afternoon. Good pics would've just been a bonus. After I got home and realized my pics turned out like shit I went on BH to look at new lenses and teleconverters. Unfortunately Olympus isn't like Nikon or Canon and doesn't offer a huge variety of lenses, but I think I found a decent lens for a decent price, a hell of a lot better than the one I have now. Won't be getting it until next offseason but I definitely want to get in to bird photography. The lens is an Olympus 70-300mm (equiv. 140-600mm due to the 4/3 system).
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/504906-REG/Olympus_261057_70_300mm_f_4_5_6_Zuiko_ED.html#reviews
Combine that with a 2x teleconverter and we're talking some serious zoom. Probably have to pick up a monopod for it, but that will likely be my big purchase next offseason, unless another telephoto lens comes out for a decent price.
Anyways, here's the proof that I desperately need a better lens:

Moon pics. SDS is getting real bad

2010-02-03T22:47:00.007-06:00

Jeez I've gotten some SDS real bad and didnt even realize it. It wasn't until Scott W. called me out at ST to make me realize how big of a douche I was being and how far I was taking it. Pointless bitching that ended up going nowhere. Not that I still dont feel the issue was worth discussing, but admittedly it was a bit much. Anyways, thanks to Scott for getting me to realize it. I need to find something else to fill my time during the winter. I guess the working out, hockey, school, work, and photography still somehow don't fill it up. I've become the exact thing I was mocking at the beginning of the winter. Epic fail.

Sooo... couple days ago I tried out some moon photography. Never done it before so it took me a little bit to figure it out. Some high cloud didn't help the situation, but eventually I was able to get some decent exposures. Wish I had a longer lens or I had gone out while the moon was a little closer but even still it was cool to try it out. One weird thing did happen to me. Thanks to F5 and ST (yes, ST) I think it's safe to assume what I saw was a pair of contrails move between me and the moon, effectively blocking out part of the moon while it moved from roughly SW to NE. Never seen anything like it before and probably wont see it again for a while. Either way it was cool/weird to see. Anyways, here's a few pics. Nothing great, but not bad.

The following pics are onces of the contrail just after it moved across the face of the moon (relative to my position). Unfortunately as it moved right in front I was waiting for a 25 second exposure to process on my camera. But was still able to manage these:

1/23/09-1/25/09 Slush storm and a pic

2010-01-23T00:02:00.002-06:00

I don't have much to say about the storm coming through this weekend except that it is going to make a huge mess. And we really wont even get much in return (i.e. snow). Freezing rain tonight, a couple tenths of a inch at most but that may make for some good pics in the morning, although with gray skies and winds gusting to 25+ mph we'll see. Either way I'm going to wake up earlier to see if I can find anything. Rain tomorrow...turning everything to crap. Hopefully the cities continue to flood the outdoor hockey rinks after this storm, it would REALLY suck to have that season over already. Rain changing to snow Sunday..."Little or no accumulation." To be honest, I didn't know about this storm or the one in Iowa a couple days ago until I saw it on the news. Warm temps=rain or ice=boring. But with the warmer temps lately the Mississippi has opened up. Hoping to get down to Red Wing next week (probably Wednesday) before it freezes over again with the next surge of arctic air. Not sure if the eagles will be out, but it's worth a shot. If not, Red Wing is a pretty photogenic city and I know the area pretty well.

Here's a pic I took a couple days ago. The bottom of the icicle is a bit out of focus. The manual focus on my camera can be a real pain in the ass to deal with some times and as much as I hate to do it, I use auto focus quite a bit for that reason. Anyways, edited the tone curve. Lots of different things you can do with that, I think this turned out pretty good.

A little fun...

2010-01-01T21:42:00.002-06:00

LOL, only one post in December...that's pretty pathetic I'll admit. But just never felt real motivated to keep posting updates on the Christmas storm since it was pretty well covered by the media. Anyways, came across a Facebook group that pretty much makes fun of all the stupid crap that gets posted on Stormtrack. Looking at some of the pics uploaded to the group I decided to make one of my own. Hey, every once in a while I have a creative spark. ;) That's pretty much all I have to say right now...Enjoy!

12/08/09-12/09/09 Winter Storm

2009-12-07T22:45:00.002-06:00

Winter storm will bring snow to most of the Midwest between now and Thursday, affecting Minnesota, Iowa, and Wisconsin mostly Tuesday and Wednesday. Snow has already developed over northern Missouri and will continue to expand in coverage. My winter forecasting skills are nearly non-existant so for the most part I will just repeat what the NWS is thinking. Winter Storm Warnings for southern MN, most of Iowa, and a large part (if not all) of Wisconsin. Snowfall amounts will vary depending on where you are, so I will just give a broad prediction. The Twin Cities should see between 4-8", southern Minnesota between 6-12", southern Wisconsin, depending on where you are, up to a foot and a half. Southwestern Wisconsin should take the brunt of the storm. Totals start to fall off as you move in to Illinois and northwest of the Twin Cities, which tells you how big the storm is with such a wide path of snow. Snow should start Tuesday afternoon and linger in to Wednesday afternoon. Winds will increase as we get in to Wednesday and with the NWS thinking the snow will be pretty grainy, blowing snow is a major concern. Blizzard warnings in efffect for parts of southern MN and northern IA. Even farther to the north here in the Twin Cities we could see occasional wideout conditions as winds are expected to be between 20-30 mph with occasional gusts to about 35 mph. Models are showing PWAT values around .4" which would amount to about 4 inches of snow, but many people including the NWS are thinking totals will be higher, and 10" is not out of the question for the cities, but not necessarily likely. I know that stuff has something to do with the liquid ratios so I quess we'll just have to wait and see. I'll post my measurements throughout the storm and may even try to shoot a little video. Hopefully I can get some accurate measurements even with the wind.

New thoughts on MIDSCAR

2009-11-24T22:36:00.004-06:00

The last couple of days have been filled with a lot of arguing back and forth between me, Michael Stanga, Dan Fruechte, a supposed met student from SCSU, and a member of MIDSCAR. Lots of arguing and bashing back and forth, but eventually someone got through to the kid from MIDSCAR. Sounds like Mike Scantlin was the one to get the kid to realize the way he was coming off to people and is now taking steps to get his reputation back. That won't happen overnight, but he took a huge step in the right direction when he joined Stormtrack to confront everyone and apologize for the way he acted. He has a lot of passion for weather and chasing, and with the big amount of knowledge he will get from ST, no doubt he will have a good season in 2010. Good luck Chris!
So, the MIDSCAR issue has blown over, but the other person I was going after on Youtube still hasn't come around and I highly doubt he ever will. Apparently he is a second year met. student at St Cloud State but you wouldn't know that by watching his videos. The MIDSCAR team asked him to come on board as a severe wx forecaster, but after Chris (the guy from MIDSCAR I was talking about above) came around he realized that this other kid wasn't someone they wanted on their team. All I'll say is that the met. kid really doesn't know anything about weather or chasing but still tries to tell real chasers that they are dumber than him at chasing eventhough he has never chased a day a in his life.

Anyways, glad that this has all gotten worked out for the most part. Before anyone comes on here saying I'm playing the chaser police card, realize that I was just trying to get Chris to realize how he was coming off and that there is a better to approach chasing. As for the other kid, well I just enjoy pissing him off.

Anyways, I've done some work to my website getting a couple of chaselogs including getting part of May 20th, July 13th, and all of July 14th done. I still have to finish the rest of the chaselogs but hoping to get a lot more done this weekend. If you want to check it out and even give some feedback check it:
MIDWESTCHASER.COM

If you want to give any feedback feel free to leave a comment!

Another TIV project (MIDSCAR and the TIV4)

2009-11-18T18:45:00.004-06:00

So I told myself I was going to be done with or atleast cut down on the posts where I bitch about pointless stuff. But I think this is worth bringing up. Over the last couple of years as we all know a couple of research groups have come together. This elite (yes elite, whether we like to admit it or not these groups would blow the rest of us chasers out of the water)group includes TWISTEX, VORTEX (1 and 2), and even Reed Timmer and his dominator. In my opinion there isn't much room left for more research groups. However, a group from southern Illinois is gonna try to join. This post was inspired by a thread over at ST and other info I've gathered from Youtube and Facebook.
Alright, so first off over at good 'ole StormTrack, in one of the threads someone posted a link to a couple of Youtube videos from this group wanting to build their own TIV(I think this would make TIV4) and they have their own group called "Midwest Storm Chasers and Researchers" a.k.a. MIDSCAR. Now this sounds like a good idea however the following videos show us the people who are in this group. Aside from the extremely annoying and ignorant narrator, they don't seem to know a ton about chasing. We've all been there and that's not the reason I'm posting this on here. The reason I'm posting is the fact that none of us tried to build our own tornado intercept and research group and TIV while knowing this little about chasing. Note the lightbar ;) :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k724Jlsh8Zw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MI7oA_mGZpQ&feature=related

So after seeing how these people acted I looked at their profile on Youtube to see what this group was about. Looking through their Youtube and Facebook profiles it sounds like their ultimate goal which they are expecting to accomplish within the not so distant future is to intercept a tornado with their own TIV. Aside from their lack of knowledge about chasing, the big question I have is how is a 17 year old going to know how to or have the resources to analyze the data that would come from a tornado interecept? Show me a teen who can do that and I'll shut up. Or maybe they aren't trying to collect data at all, but then why even try to interecept a tornado? What's the point? Risking your life for....well I cant think of anything that would be worth risking my life intercepting a tornado unless it was for research. And even still I would give that responsibility to the professional research groups who are out there doing it, and this is not one of those pro groups. I'm not knocking this group for chasing, we all started out naive but then again, like I said earlier, none of us tried to start our own tornado research group when we were just starting out either. There's a lot more to the research of tornadoes than driving a half-assed version of Mr. Casey's design in to a tornado. And I doubt these guys have any idea what it would take to accomplish their goal. Anyways, I dont care that they're chasing tornadoes with little to no experience. As Mr. Doms puts it, "Darwin, table for one please." For some reason it just really pisses me off that these people are trying to act like such know-it-alls when they really don't know shit. .

Mother Nature Rage & Grace II Trailer and a couple video grabs

2009-11-10T11:04:00.005-06:00

Finally finished my Mother Nature Rage & Grace II trailer. It's amazing how much work goes in to a 4 minute video. Anyways, it's done and work on the full movie will start pretty soon here. Again, still getting used to my new video editing program but I'm getting more comfortable with it. Hoping to have the video done in early December and it will be available by trade only (but you could probably talk me in to sending you a video without trade if you want, just send me an email at midwestchaser@yahoo.com). Hoping the video will be between 45-60 minutes, which shouldn't be real hard. Anyways, here's the link to the video:
CLICK HERE FOR THE VIDEO!

Also I figured out how to get video grabs so here's a few I got:
This is the large wall cloud that passed over my town of New Brighton, MN on 8/8/09. Kinda crappy quality but had to adjust a bunch of stuff to get the wall cloud to show up since the lightning wasnt really cooperating.

Here's another one from 8/2/09 on a tornado warned storm in southwest Minnesota. Had there been some daylight this would've been a VERY photogenic storm.

And one last one of a distant wall cloud that was close to the ground on 7/13/09 It looked good from my vantage point but Mike Hollingshead was a lot closer than I was and it definitely didn't look like it was going to produce a tornado from where he was, which was right under the base. Still a cool storm.

Definitely Inconclusive

2009-11-04T21:02:00.002-06:00

Finally getting some time to go through some night time video of a couple of tor warned storms this past year. The first one I looked at was the August 8th sup. that passed just north of where I live (the large wall cloud would've been clearly visible from our house). Going through the video frame by frame proved nothing but the fact that there was a large wall cloud. If there was a tornado in there it would not have been photogenic although the wall cloud would've been a beauty. Possible maybe longshot funnel but it is next to impossible to confirm with the shaky video and uncooperative lightning. But even still it was cool to have such a strong storm pass so close to my house. I've been thinking about it since Aug. 8th and I'm wondering if I would've been able to see the west metro tornado had I stayed home instead of been out in the Lake Minnetonka area. There is a nice hill just west of the house that has a nice view to the west/southwest. Considering that the tornado was about 10 miles to the southwest of the hill, I really wonder if I would've been able to see the tornado from there. I know for sure I would've had an incredible view of the wall cloud. The reason I looked so hard at this video is one it was so close to home but also there were some damage reports from the area the meso passed over. NWS was unable to confirm it was a tornado as the damage was so sparse but if it was from a tornado, I'd probably be able to see atleast a funnel in my video. As far as I can tell, there was no funnel. Weird thing about this storm was the RFD winds were really localized. Nothing like 9/21/05 where the RFD damaged a path like 15 miles wide (from about Andover south to New Brighton)and did more damage than a couple of tornadoes it produced. That was a fun storm.

The second video I'm looking at is the video I got on August 2nd out near Marshall, MN. There was a TON of lightning with that storm, but in order to pick up the lightning on my video camera I had to slow the shutter speed down so I dont have as many frames to help my cause. Even still, with the amount of lightning there was I still get some **decent** views of the base. I haven't gotten through all the video but after the point in the video I'm at right now I think the storm starts to crap out so if there was a tornado I would've already seen it. Plus, the storm started to speed up as the chase went on and we got further and further behind the storm hence a worse and worse view of the base. Either way, this would've been an ABSOLUTELY BEAUTIFUL storm with a little daylight. As far as I know there was no wind damage from this storm so my guess is that there wasnt one. Or if there was, again it would've been brief, weak, and not photogenic (sounds familiar, right? cough2009cankissmyasscough). Anyways, a cool storm and fun chase regardless of no tornado.

Also, I talked to Todd K. a couple days ago. Talked for a little bit about 8/8/09 and the tornado north of Burkhardt, WI. Official NWS damage survey said that the tornado was 1/4 mile wide which is a good sized tornado. While talking to Todd he said that it may have been closer to 1/2 mile wide, and was widest right as or right after it touched down. Weird....Usually its the other way around with it getting bigger the longer its on the ground. Surprisingly the RFD damage was fairly localized in this area as well. Another thing to note is that no powerlines or poles were broken in the tornado damage area even though the tornado caused significant roof and garage damage and was rated an EF1. On August 19th when I came across the tornado damage in North Branch, MN there were some powerlines and poles down, but it was only rated an EF0. Are the powerlines and poles engineered differently or something in different states? Anyways, just a couple things to chew on.

Lastly, I'm starting production on my 2009 chase DVD. Actually came up with a name for this year so it will be "Mother Nature Rage and Grace II: Two Thousand and None". Will have a trailer up sometime this week hopefully. Right now hoping to get it done by early December but it may take a little longer to finish as I am still getting used to my new video editing software. Also, I'll try to get some video grabs of the 8/8/09 wall cloud and 8/2/09 storm. Any suggestions on how to get video grabs? Do you do it in the video software?

Some more pics

2009-10-21T19:01:00.006-05:00

Blah, a real lack of ANYTHING to talk about lately hence the lack of blog posts. But figured I'd update with some more pics I never got posted during the chase season. Here's a few, will post more throughout the winter in an attempt to keep myself sane until next season. Not the greatest of pics but enjoy!

June 17th in southern Minnesota:

These are from July 27th in southwest Wisconsin (yes, southwest Wisconsin, the epitimy of horrible chase terrain in the central US)
It was a frustrating chase as I started out behind the storms and didn't get out in front of them until they had merged together and started to line out. But there is something interesting in this first pic, this was taken shortly after the tornado was reported near Mount Sterling. The base is obviously very unorganized and to be honest I'm not even sure this is the same storm. There was a bunch of little crap going up all around the main storm I was trying to get on so this may have been one of those. Anyways, a little knub with some scud in what appeared to be the right area for the updraft. Feel free to leave a comment as to what you think it is.

Lastly, gotta love chasing in Wisconsin. And to think this was about the best view I had of anything all day. As things are lining out:

July 14th out in southwest Minnesota just outside of Pipestone. Shelf cloud on a line while tornadic storms are raging about 90 minutes west of my house. Bill Doms is getting a nice, close up view of the shelf...and rain/wind (according to his report).

Marking my calendar and an unexpected rant about ST

2009-10-08T22:31:00.003-05:00

With the lack of any weather to talk about lately and no exciting weather to talk about in the foreseeable future thought I would update with some other things.
Number one is for the first time in probably 3-4 years I will be going to a Minnesota Wild game! Marking my calendar for Feb. 10. We already got the tickets so we dont have to wait and hope some tickets open up. Section 215 against the Coyotes! And as a bonus it's the end of the rink the Wild shoot at twice. Section 215 is the upper corner but there is not a bad seat anywhere at the Xcel so I don't really care where we sit. Going with a couple of friends for my birthday as well as my friend's girlfriend who coincidently has the exact same bday as I do. So really looking forward to that!

Also looking forward to the F5 get together in Big Lake on Oct. 17th. Should be a great time with some great people. Still have to make my 5 minute movie for it but that shouldn't be a problem since even colleges give us MEA break so I will have time to do it next week.

I'm also writing an english paper on chasing. It's a division/classification paper and is a bit of a satire so I will post that when I get it done and my grade back on it.

And lastly, people over at ST still really have their panties in a bunch for some reason. It's been over a week of bitching about content posted their. Admittadely there was a pretty retarded thread started there a day or two ago that I couldnt believe someone actually posted, but all this bitching started way before that thread was posted. So, TO ALL PEOPLE WHO HAVE THEIR PANTIES IN A GIGANTIC WAD AT ST: STFU!
The motto "If you dont like it then dont read it" works great for me, I dont see how so many other people have such an incredibly hard time with it. And even if it's that tough for you then just forget about it! Are we REALLY gonna bitch and moan for every thread that we dont like? C'mon people, we're bigger than that. I thought last winter was bad, this winter is gonna be even worse hands down at this rate. I just do not get people sometimes.

Anyways, didn't mean to get in to a rant, just wanted to share the news about the Wild game and look at what ST ended up doing to me. Whatever, Feb.10, I know where I'm gonna be!

Entertainment at Stormtrack

2009-09-29T22:45:00.002-05:00

Wow what a fun couple of days it's been over at Stormtrack. It seems SDS has already taken over a majority of the members with an effect of a series of flame wars. It started last night in a topic about Reed Timmer and people who were on both sides of liking him. Unfortunately, I didn't see it until the mods had gone through and gotten rid of the worst posts but there still some amusing ones in there. A lot of history and bad blood in that thread which I have no clue about so I'll stop here about that thread.

This morning Bob Hartig posted a thread about civility since the flame war on Monday night got so out of hand, and it was FAR from the first one, but also FAR from the last. It didn't take long for this thread to go down the exact same road as the thread on Monday night. This time, IMO, it's even more heated than last night's war. I lost some respect for some people but then again maybe that proves how little I knew them. Even still, you'd hope people would be bigger than some of them were in these threads. But for the rest of us it's fun to kick back and watch everything unfold. Hopefully the mods don't lock it soon since it'll be entertaining.

One thing I do have to say is that Tim and the mods at ST don't deserve to have to put up with this shit, but then again what did they expect when they took on that responsibility? Funny how the mods let these threads go sometimes too. It's gonna be a long and interesting winter.

North Shore Pics

2009-09-19T10:36:00.002-05:00

Here's 4 pics I got from the North Shore on Wednesday. I didnt have as much time as I would've liked thanks to a traffic backup in which I went 3 miles in 50 minutes. Anyways I made it to Gooseberry and Tetagouche. Had to stop in Duluth to pick up a new memory card so didnt want to drive back south to Jay Cooke just to head back north. So I've taken too long getting these pics up so here they are:

Gooseberry:

Tetagouche:

I have more pics to go through and will post them when I get time, probably on Wednesday. But maybe not, its supposed to be nice again this Wednesday so I may head out somewhere again. We'll see.

North Shore Day Trip Wednesday

2009-09-15T12:27:00.002-05:00

Planning on heading up to the North Shore tomorrow after class to get some of the early fall colors. I know that the colors are only getting going but with the forecast looking so good I can't say no to a trip. Gonna hit Gooseberry for sure, try and get Tetagouche too or maybe head up to Lutsen or Grand Marais. I dont get out of class till 10:50 so I wont get up there till after 12:00 but should still have plenty of time to mess around up there. I also want to head out next Wednesday if the forecast is good, not sure if it will be to the North Shore again or somewhere else. Anyone have suggestions for other nice state/national parks around Minnesota? Preferably ones with rivers/streams/waterfalls or overlooks?

Update...I guess

2009-09-02T23:04:00.005-05:00

Haven't posted much lately, but then again there hasnt been much to talk about. No storms, haven't done much photography. One thing to note is I have started work on Mother Nature Rage and Grace Vol. II now that 2009 is pretty much officially over. Not a bad season, I think I made the best of what was given. 11 chases, over 8000 miles, lots of tornado warnings, only a couple brief tornadoes, but that seems like what everyone else is saying about this season. Not a ton else to say, gonna try to make a trip to the arrowhead/north shore of Lake Superior here in a couple weeks to get some pics of the fall colors. Hopefully the weather cooperates and I can get up there. Otherwise will have to stick around here, which has worked out the last couple years. Still a lot of work to do on my website midwestchaser.com but that'll come together this winter. So, to have something that is actually of interest to anyone reading this here is a couple of pictures from chase season 2009 that I never posted. Enjoy!

Shelf cloud trying to overtake me on July 14th just outside of Pipestone, MN.

Incredible mammatus show on the way home on July 14th down near Worthington, MN. Just another example of why I need a superwide angle lens.

August 19th recap/August 24th FCST

2009-08-23T00:05:00.002-05:00

So I chased on Wednesday (August 19th) and it was definately the weirdest effing chase I've ever been on. Watched a couplet on the TDWR TMSP move north from Richfield right over downtown Minneapolis. Shaked it off as a fluke eventhough the couplet was rather nice and there was even a morphed hook on BR1 for a while. A tornado warning was issued north of this couplet including right over my house in New Brighton, MN. As soon as I saw this warning I knew I had little time to get out. Despite the rain and low visibility I knew that there was a small chance for me to get in the right position to see a tornado. Long story short, chased storms to just north east of North Branch, MN. Decided to head home going through North Branch to get back to I35 south. As soon as I got in to the town I saw numerous trees down and even a telephone pole snapped off near the top. Ended up pulling off and walking around a bit. Biggest thing was near the middle school where two metal bleachers were flipped over and one was dragged along the ground about 30 yards. This ended up being confirmed a tornado by NWS-MPX as an EF0 with winds of 70-80 mph. Not much else to say, was within a couple miles of a a tornado but had to be in the exact right spot at the exact right time to see them due to rain and piss poor visibility. As far as poor warning time, this definately wasn't an easy setup to see coming, although there were definately signs that something COULD happen. Not many pics, mostly just of the damage in North Branch but nothing real impressive.

Forecast for August 24th, I'll be back in school so we'll see if I actually end up chasing this, but there is some potential for a supercell or two up near Fargo, ND. MLCAPE between 1500-2000 j/kg, helicities not real impressive but I've chased worse, lots of linear forcing but it could be interesting right as the storms get going. WRF breaks down the CINH and H85/H7 temps before 00z so this should go before dark. MLCAPE staying around 1000 j/kg after dark so we could have a marginal MCS move through northern MN later in the night. Like I said, should turn linear pretty quick but it could be interesting early. Target right now would be Fargo to Wahpeton, ND to Fergus Falls, MN right now. I'm out of school at 1:50 on Monday and figure 3 1/2 hour drive I should be in position by 5:30 and that should be about the time initiation occurs. If nothing else get some shelf footage which is something I have amazingly not gotten much of this year, plus I need my NoDak chase this year. May post once afternoon runs come in, but I think it could be interesting, especially early.

Slacking Lately- August 8th chaselog & Wisconsin tornado damage pics

2009-08-10T20:34:00.011-05:00

Got off work at 3:00, headed out pretty much right after that. Target was somewhere southwest of the metro with no specific city in mind. Saw Tim Purington sitting down in Jordan, MN which was in my path south on highway 169. Met up with him, we head south for a bit, decided to head back north as the warm front continued to head north. Sat in Saint Louis Park right off 169 until about 8:00 pm watching tower after tower try to go up but hit the cap and fall back down. There was one storm out near Orono that tried for quite a while to get going but watching the VIL and echo tops stay constant at relatively low numbers considering the amount of energy in the atmosphere we didn't think much of it. But after about 30 minutes of it trying to go the VIL started to finally increase again and we knew that this time it had broken the cap. Raced west on highway 7 only to find out that the storm was in the Lake Minnetonka area, which for anyone not familiar with the terrain in this area is basically lakes and trees with a few homes plopped down between trees and obviously not good terrain for chasing, in fact I'd take chasing southwest Wisconsin over this area because atleast in SW WI there are hills which when you're on the top of you can see quite a way, not the case in the southwest Minneapolis metro. Anyways, the storm went tornadic shortly after we headed towards it. We chased it back to the north metro never seeing the tornado and only seeing a funnel for maybe 4 seconds tops. Chased it through the city I live in (New Brighton) with the couplet passing just to the north of my house. Continued to western Wisconsin well after dark. Stopped about 3-4 miles east of Burkhardt with the couplet to our west and tightening. The meso passed right over us, and then went home. No pictures and no video worth posting.

Went back to the Burkhardt area to take a look at the damage on Sunday. Lots of tree damage along with about 6 homes damaged. MPX officially rated the tornado an EF1 which lifted just to the west of our position on Saturday, had the tornado kept going another mile or two we would've gotten hit. I have no problem coming out and admitting we were in a bad spot and I'll even go so far to admit I knew we were in a bad spot while it was happening. Shit happens and you learn from it. Anyways, most of the damage was in the new development of St Joseph township north of county road E and county road I with the damage occuring along Walsh Road and Oakwood Lane. About 5 homes damaged, like I said TONS of tree damage but surprisingly no power lines down. Headed east to another North-South oriented road named Bass Lake Road. Just up the road nearly due east of St Joseph township is another house with major garage damage and lots more tree damage. East of this damage appeared to taper off. A couple of other things of note is just east of Bass Lake Road was a John Deer trailer that looked like it was blown over. I dont know how strong winds have to be to blow one of those over but I'm guessing it has to be pretty strong. Also, St Joseph township is tucked about 1/3 mile in west of county road I however I did see some debris (i.e. a couple of recliner chairs and other household debris) piled up along county I just east of the township. Not a ton, but it was definately a pile. Damage survey concluded that the tornado was 1/4 mile wide and 5 mile long path. It would've been quite a beauty had it not been at night and rain wrapped. Pics below

These were all taken in St Joseph township:

So I know I've been slacking really bad lately in updating the blog. Since I last post my July 13th chaselog (which is mistakenly titled July 14th chaselog) I have chased 4 times and have posted nothing for any of them. But in my defense I haven't gotten a ton of good footage from any of them. But I figured I'd post something about the supercell that went through the Twin Cities on August 8th. So the chaselog:

Tree snapped half way up:

There were a ton of trees that looked like this, unfortunately the memory card was full by that time.

Notice how the garage wall was blown out but not over.

This picture was taken along Bass Lake Road just east of St Joseph township:

I'll try to get the chaselog from July 14th, July 27th, and August 2nd up soon.

Chaselog July 13th South Dakota

2009-07-16T16:53:00.014-05:00

Headed out by myself for what is by far the farthest chase I've ever done alone, and it was a GREAT learning experience for me to figure out my still of chasing while chasing alone. I got going a little late but got on the to be Valentine storm around 4:30. I didnt get real close since I had a pretty good view of it from about 15 miles away. Got off I90 near Stamford, SD and watched it for a while. It had a good base and there were lowerings hanging right on the ground, but I'm pretty sure they were not tornadoes. Tried following the storm south but the dirt roads in the area were horrible with lots of hills and curves. Decided to bail on it to go for the storm to the north since I didnt want to chance getting stuck plus I couldnt go more than 30 mph on the dirt roads. Sat the the I90/highway 63 junction south of Midland to watch the storm and get some video for a timelapse. After about 25 minutes I headed north as the base of the storm was just northwest of highway 63 and I knew I would have a good view of it. At the time time the storm wasnt much going on under the updraft, but followed it back to the interstate and by the time I got there the storm REALLY got going. Lots of motion, some rotation, and a wet RFD. Again, didnt follow the storm south of I90 due to the dirt roads. Headed west towards Rapid City to wait for the stuff coming out of WY/MT, stopped in Kakoda. Waited a while, realized there wasnt a ton of TOR potential with the way the storms were looking on radar. Headed east to get in to position for Tuesday in Minnesota. Again, a very good learning experience for me. I didnt have much experience chasing alone before, but now I realize how rewarding it is to bag something nice and know you did it by yourself. Pics and video below:View of the storm that would go on to produce the tornadoes in s.c. South Dakota and n.c. Nebraska, view is looking east from Stamford, SD.Anyways, headed out by myself for what is by far the farthest chase I've ever done alone, and it was a GREAT learning experience for me to figure out my still of chasing while chasing alone. I got going a little late but got on the to be Valentine storm around 4:30. I didnt get real close since I had a pretty good view of it from about 15 miles away. Got off I90 near Stamford, SD and watched it for a while. It had a good base and there were lowerings hanging right on the ground, but I'm pretty sure they were not tornadoes. Tried following the storm south but the dirt roads in the area were horrible with lots of hills and curves. Decided to bail on it to go for the storm to the north since I didnt want to chance getting stuck plus I couldnt go more than 30 mph on the dirt roads. Sat the the I90/highway 63 junction south of Midland to watch the storm and get some video for a timelapse. After about 25 minutes I headed north as the base of the storm was just northwest of highway 63 and I knew I would have a good view of it. At the time time the storm wasnt much going on under the updraft, but followed it back to the interstate and by the time I got there the storm REALLY got going. Lots of motion, some rotation, and a wet RFD. Again, didnt follow the storm south of I90 due to the dirt roads. Headed west towards Rapid City to wait for the stuff coming out of WY/MT, stopped in Kakoda. Waited a while, realized there wasnt a ton of TOR potential with the way the storms were looking on radar. Headed east to get in to position for Tuesday in Minnesota. Again, a very good learning experience for me. I didnt have much experience chasing alone before, but now I realize how rewarding it is to bag something nice and know you did it by yourself. Pics and video below:View of the storm that would go on to produce the tornadoes in s.c. South Dakota and n.c. Nebraska, view is looking east from Stamford, SD.

View I had of the storm from about 15 miles away just before it crossed I90 near Kakoda(I think I finally got that right), SD. This storm would go on to become the Valentine, NE hybrid monster. Many people captured the INCREDIBLE structure near Valentine. Unfortunately I didnt have a good route to get south to keep up with the storm, so I bailed on it after it got south of I90.View is looking west-southwest

The second storm I got on which was near Midland, SD. The view I had was about 3 miles south of Midland looking northwest. I'm nearly 100% sure I was the only chaser on this storm, or atleast I havent heard anyone else mention this storm in their reports and I was the only one on Spotter Network on this storm. Badlands+no other chasers=incredible photo ops.

Pic of the lowering which I am hesitant to call a wall cloud since it was displaced a bit from the updraft. However there was a lot of motion, rotation, and a wet RFD.

CLICK HERE FOR A TIMELAPSE OF THE THUNDERSTORM UPDRAFT IN HASKON COUNTY, SD

CLICK HERE FOR A REAL TIME VIDEO OF THE UPDRAFT BASE OF THE HASKON/JACKSON COUNTY, SD STORM

Semi-post chase update

2009-07-13T20:07:00.003-05:00

I didnt post a forecast or anything for today but I ended up heading out solo to central South Dakota. Definately a gamble with such a long drive but I really think it paid off. I'll keep this brief since I have many other things to be watching right now, but I intercepted to awesome storms west of Rapid City. The first one had a beautiful meso and structure with a ragged wall cloud. Due to the piss poor roads in the area I bailed on the storm rather early, but just before the tor warning was dropped (which was later re-issued). I didnt want to chance getting stuck in the hilly mud roads in the middle of nowhere. After bailed I headed west on I90 to the highway 63 exit to get gas. I watched the storm to my north on radar for a while, finally drove up 63 a bit and had a good view of the base At the time it wasnt doing much, but I followed it back to 90 and by the time I get there the base was getting much more organized. I have a lot of video from this storm and some from the first along with plenty of pics. Right now sitting just south of Kadoka, SD trying to figure out my next move. The storms moving in to SD look like they are lining out plus I dont really want to go anyfurther west since that means it will take longer to get back. Outflow from the storms my east is pretty good, east winds gusting to 30 mph. Not kicking up anything new right now, probably just gonna hang around Kadoka and see if anything happens by 9:00. If not I will head west to get closer to position for tomorrow along the SD/MN border. Definately wasnt expecting a two day solo chase trip, but i'm definately not complaining! I'll try to have pics/vid up in the next couple days, probably not tomorrow since I will be chasing.

First day of July?

2009-07-01T10:56:00.002-05:00

Ha, feels more like the first day of October. Currently sitting at a temp of 57 with overcast skies and patchy drizzle. This pattern sucks, and we've been in it for the last few days with temps barely scraping 70 and the last couple days it's been cloudy and WINDY. Definately doesnt feel like summer any more. We had one week of warm temps, but other than that it's been a cool summer with not many chances for storms, and that trend will continue with this pattern. But, it does look like the pattern may change next week with the possibility of some storms. The problem? I'll be out of town with family next week which is starting to remind me of last summer when the same thing happened that prevented me from getting out on July 10th and 11th. Dont get me wrong, I love being with family, but my luck is the storms come when I cant be out. But maybe I shouldnt complain, I've had some decent storms and there will be more oppurtunites this season, I mean, Minnesota only has 102 storm reports so far this season, and our average the entire season is 600-700, so we have some catching up to do. Lets just hope that actually happens.

June 17th, 2009 Chaselog

2009-06-22T15:57:00.009-05:00

Its day like Wednesday that make us storm chasers go out. In the morning and throughout the day the threat for supercells and tornadoes didnt look all that great, but with a 5% tornado risk close to home of course we headed out. Got on the road around 10:00 heading out towards west central Minnesota with no specific target city. Throughout the day we slowly ventured south based on the RUC ending up somewhere east of Windom. Between 4:30 and 5:00 we start to notice some towers going up, so we get on the east side of them to see if they would do anything. They would go up, start to get a base and lowering, and then fall apart. They did this for about 45 minutes. Finally we notice towers going up to our east-southeast. After not really paying attention to them Rich finally broke out the binoculars and could actually see the towers getting bigger in real time. After watching the towers to our west go up and collapse one last time, we decided to race off east towards the towers that were much farther away than we thought (we were near Windom and the towers to our east would go on to be the storm that hit Austin, MN). Quickly realizing we weren't going to get to the Austin storm in time we targeted more towers going up to the north of the Austin storm. On our way east the Austin storm produced a very nice, thick anvil with a classic overshooting top. The storm that we were chasing had some of the most incredible structure I've ever seen, very nice, crisp towers. After about an hour catch up game to the storm we finally intercepted it just east of Waseca. As we were just getting to the east side of the city, we heard reports over the ham radio of a waterspout over Clear Lake which is on the north side of Waseca. After getting through the last few trees in the city we got a brief view of the waterspout. We stopped about 1/2 a mile east of the city watching the base of the storm. We saw one or two brief spinups on the ground, but unfortunately there was no condensation funnel so figuring out where it was going to touch down was difficult and made it hard to get good video or pics. We also saw a couple more brief touchdowns just to our east. All in all we got 1 waterspout and 3-4 brief spin ups under the meso. After this we step-laddered it southeast until we decided to bail and head home south of Dodge Center. The entire time we tried but could never quite completely break through the hook. Not much else to say, we didnt really see much after we started driving east from Waseca. Anyways, here's some pictures.

The incredible structure of the storm:

Structure shot with a view of the base, lots of rotation.

Not exactly sure what to call this, it had a lot of rotation so my gut tells me its a funnel, but the shape of it is so weirf that I have not idea. REALLY wish we had been able to get video or better pic of it!

Really crappy picture of the same feature but much closer and the thing is hanging right on the ground. Also lots of rotation. The last thing we really saw on the storm, spent the rest of the chase trying to get ourselves through the hook.

CLICK HERE FOR SHORT VIDEO OF A BRIEF TORNADO JUST NORTH OF WASECA, MN!

Brief recap for June 17th and June 18th FCST

2009-06-18T09:51:00.002-05:00

Ok, gotta do this quick as we have another very busy day today. But first a quick recap from yesterday.

Headed out with Rich Gudmunsen towards southwest Minnesota. Around 5:30 towards started going up over southcentral MN but we could still see them very well from where we were. After a long drive to catch up to them we finally got on a TOR warned storm near Waseca, MN. After we got through town we witnessed a water spout over I think it is Clear Lake just north of Waseca. LOTS of motion and rotation under the meso, probably the most I've ever seen. We saw a couple of circulations on the ground. Hard to say whether it was a true tornado or a landspout, but it was in the action area under the meso so who knows... Continued to follow the storm as it tracked ESE, we ended up behind the hook and for the most part we were never quite able to get through it. Didnt get much video or pics after Waseca but plenty of structure shots before we got to the town. I wanted to have pics up by now but thats just not going to happen.

Forecast for today: SPC issued a moderate risk for southern Minnesota and northern Iowa including a 15% hatched tornado risk. Its a tought forecast with the storms moving through the area right now but that will likely lay down a plethora of outflow boundaries for later today. Extreme instability expected to be in place across the risk area as strong heating and quick destabilization occur throughout the afternoon. Looks like the western edge of the MOD risk is starting to clear out so we might already have some heating occurring down there. Gonna head out today, not sure where but it seems like anywhere in the moderate risk could be a good play.

Another PDS blue box and thoughts about the end of June

2009-06-12T12:59:00.002-05:00

The Storm Prediction Center has issued another PDS severe thunderstorm watch for eastern Oklahoma and a good part of Arkansas. Here is a link to it:
http://www.spc.noaa.gov/products/watch/ww0388.html
Cant remember the last time the SPC called for 105 mph winds in their text:

EXTREMELY DAMAGING THUNDERSTORM WIND GUSTS TO 105 MPH...LARGE HAIL TO 3 INCHES IN DIAMETER...AND DANGEROUS LIGHTNING ARE POSSIBLE IN THESE AREAS

This thing has already had atleast one tornado warning on the bookend vortex. Been watching it off and on this morning and it's been looking quite healthy. What is different about this MCS (and by the end of the day quite possibly derecho) is that in addition to the extreme straightline winds, it's also been producing very large hail (for any non chasers or weather weenies out there that is hail in excess of 2 inches in diameter) which is pretty strange for an MCS, although definately not unheard of. Should be interesting to see how it all turns out by tonight. I bet it would make for a fun chase as long as you didnt get smacked by 3" hail driven by 100 mph winds.

GFS is showing the end of June starting to be more active for us up here in the north. Although it is still a long ways out, it looks like we may have a couple of storm days with actual, real moisture to work with. Not a whole lot to say at this point since it is still so far out but I will say that our storm season may FINALLY start up here.

One more thing; I have some video from my chase on Sunday and I have no idea what it is. My guess is probably just the updraft, but it is hanging pretty close to the ground. I posted the link to the video below, so if anyone has an idea what it might be please feel free to leave a comment. The video was taken ~8:15 or 8:30 just west of Maysville, Missouri along highway 6. It's obviously rotating but not sure what to call it, you can tell the feature is moving south (camera is looking east) while other motion looks like it is moving east. It's a timelapse and at 6x normal speed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_ZpzkSuLYQ

Chaselog June 7th, 2009

2009-06-09T09:36:00.009-05:00

Chased with Chris White. Our target was Holton, KS and with the long drive ahead of us we headed out a little after 8:00 am. On the way down we decided to just stay a little farther north and changed our target to Hiawatha, KS which was about a half our shorter drive. Ended up being a good decision as two storms fired just to our west. We went after the northern storm first as it looked best on radar and went TOR warned about 20 minutes later. We setup to watch the storm about 4 miles northwest of Dawson, NE along highway 4. Watched the storm for about 20-30 minutes. We didnt have the best view of the storm since we were watching it from the northeast, but we were still able to see the wall cloud. After about 30 minutes the TOR warning was dropped and the storm started to look like crap on radar so we decided to jump southeast to try to intercept the storm heading in to Missouri. By this time there was a constant stream of chase vehicles going the exact same direction we were headed. Imagine the movie Twister but times about 100. It was a fucking circus out there. But anyways, we continue east, and lose data. Not sure what happened but my phone didnt want to recognize that my computer was trying to tether it. Stupid technology. So we try to intercept the storm without data and with visual aids only. We pass Tony Perkins and his partners in Oregon, MO. They were there looking at the very large hail that had fallen. We stop to say hi and measure some of our own stones. Biggest we measured was between 2.75"-3.00" but there were reports up to 4.25" and someone at ST even said that they measured 5.25". All I can say is I'm glad we didnt get stuck in that core. The rest of the day was spent playing catchup trying to get in front of the storm but unfortunately we were never able to. We ended up just west of Maysville, MO watching the backside of the storm. I got some video of what I'm thinking is an updraft but I honestly have no idea what it is, but whatever it is, it is rotating. Just down the road from us at this point was the DOW, and numerous Vortex 2 trucks. After this we head east as I35 is just a couple miles from us, we stop to get some sunset pics and then head on home. It made me feel a little better after not getting a whole lot since nobody else really got much. Still some powerful storms but it didnt seem like anyone was able to see the storms very well. But it wasn't a complete waste, got to see the TIV in Oregon, MO, the DOW in Marysville, MO, numerous V2 vehicles, and numerous V2 probes near Oregon, MO plus chasing for the first time in Missouri, something I figured wouldnt happen unless there was a 30% hatched tornado risk. Pics below.

Wall cloud to our southwest on the northern storm:

Storm to our southeast:

Updraft on the dying storm we were just on:

Looking east at the TOR warned storm. We are just west of Maysville, MO at this point, time is somewhere around 8:15 pm. I'm not sure what this is, I have a timelapse video that shows it obviously rotating.

Sunset before we head home:

6/07/09 Chase FCST/update from the road

2009-06-07T09:13:00.002-05:00

Heading out with Chris White today going down to northeast Kansas for what looks to have the potential to be a pretty good day. Current target is Holton, KS with the WRF showing good instability and helicities. Taking a look at the RUC I think it is overdoing the instability but even still we should have plenty of energy to play with. Visible satellite shows clouds clearing across the northeast part of the state but more clouds to the west. Will pay attention to what that area of clouds does the rest of the day, but our target area should stay clear most of the day. Expecting initiation around 5:00 and we should be down there around 4:00. We better damn well get something for this one day road trip to Kansas, I'm sick of driving over 1000 miles for a chase. Will post more later.

FCST: June 7th/8th

2009-06-05T18:46:00.002-05:00

An active severe weather weekend is already underway across Wyoming and Nebraska with lots of photogenic storms and even tornadoes. The threat should continue for the rest of the evening as the storms are cycling nicely. Tomorrow could also be decent in Nebraska although the big issue will be the cap. However, due to work on Friday and Saturday I couldnt be out. But I got someone to cover my shift on Sunday so I will definately be out. Right now, I'd say north central Kansas or south central-southeast Nebraska. We'll see, models have been pretty inconsistent but I still think it has potential, certainly better than anything I've chased so far this year. And it looks like it could be a two day chase trip with another possible chase on Monday in Iowa. Right now I'm not overly confident as it looks like precip will be ongoing throughout the day for most of Iowa, but for now southeast Iowa has my eye. We'll see though, it'd be nice to chase two days in a row, but Monday has to look pretty good. Now the problem will be finding a chaser to head out with who hasnt already headed south since most chasers around here either already headed out or are heading out tomorrow so it doesn't sound like there will be many to meet up with on Sunday. But I'm sure I can find someone. Should be a circus down there, maybe I'll get to meet a few people while down there.

June 1st chaselog and bitching about the weather pattern

2009-06-03T12:55:00.002-05:00

Chaselog: Outflow dominant CRAP!! I saw it coming though, the way the models broke down the CIN and the upper levels winds far away from the instability we knew better than to head out. But one of these days we will get a surprise. I took a couple pics, hardly anything worth posting. Lots of people out there though, mostly to our east in Missouri, we ended up in southeast Nebraska and even dipped down in to Kansas for a few minutes. We core punched most of the storms since there wasnt much danger in it given the setup. Got some hail, quarter size at best. The most interesting part of the day was on the way back home watching the supercells in western KS/NE. One of them was a west moving, left turning tornadic sup. The radar loop from Goodland for this event was unreal, it will definately without a doubt make a phenominal case study. Another sup to the north in NE fired, died, then reformed farther south and went on to become TOR warned (and tornadic I believe too) but unlike the storm to its southeast, this storm was moving south/southwest. Eventually something triggered more storms in the area which for a while also looked supercellular on radar. All the while a squall line was moving north towards these supercells. Eventually all the storms met and the sups got ingested in to the MCS and from the loop from GLD you could still see the motion of the sups in the MCS after they got ingested. It was friggin sweet to watch. I wonder what it would've looked like if there had been a time lapse of it all. One of the coolest things I've seen....

Anyways, the pattern the models are showing for us up here looks like complete shit, and not much rain. At this point I dont even care if we get storms, we just need some rain. Even with the active winter Minnesota had, east central MN got dryslotted with most of the winter storms which drastically cut down the amount of snow we received and with May being so dry, things are not good up here. The GFS does show some rain coming through early next week, but even still it doesnt look like much. I guess one positive is that the highs are only going to be 65-70 most days next week which should help keep the fire conditions from getting wildly out of control. Maybe its time to start chasing wild fires instead of storms for us since Minnesota is obviously not going to give us a storm season this year, and I'm sick of driving nearly all day for chases that yield low potential. Put a knife in it, storm season 2009 is a BUST!!

I may post some pics/vid from the chase on Monday, but that's a lot of work for some pics of a crappy storm.

6/1/09 Forecast/Update from the road

2009-06-01T10:42:00.003-05:00

Heading down I35 here with Jacob T from F5 heading down towards Des Moines for now. Gonna stop off, grab some food, and look at data before making our next move. Right now anywhere south of I80 and west of I35 looks decent. Models are showing good instability but with the clouds over that area right now I think temps will stay a bit cooler, but that shouldnt be a big issue since I dont think the cap is going to be an issue today. Not gonna do a big forecast, but somewhere in southwest Iowa is our target, we'll narrow it down later. Hopefully I will have something more interesting to say or show next time I post.

Chaselog 5/20/09 North Central, Nebraska

2009-05-22T23:29:00.014-05:00

So, where to begin? Headed out with Andy Gabrielson of Severestudios.com and Findthetornado.com. First off, MAAAD props to Andy for how well he handled the backass hillbilly slick narrow mud "dirt roads" that the Nebraska DOT for whatever reason feels the need to call "roads." I know for a fact if I had been driving we would've ended up in a ditch atleast a couple dozen times. So, thanks Andy for handling those roads like champ (and doing the majority of the driving)!! Alright, left my house at 9:00 am to get down to Andy's place in southwest Minnesota. Got down there around 1:00 pm, jumped in his car, headed west on I90 towards Plankinton, SD. We dinked around for a while driving through some corn fields Twister style. Headed south towards O'Neil, NE where we saw some turkey neck towers starting to go up (again, props to Andy for seeing them through the haze). Nearly hit the only car in the south central part of SD on a dirt road on the indian reservation. The towers tried about 5 times before they actually broke the cap and got above 20,000 ft. We got on the storm closest to us around Atchison, Nebraska and got a rotating updraft that was on the northeast side of the storm. Thanks to Brad Nelson at F5chaser.com it makes a little more sense about why the updraft was where it was. We watched the updraft for about 6 minutes, then headed east to try to reposition as the storm started to move. There must've been some boundary or stronger cap just to the east of us that killed every storm that hit it the entire night. Bailed on the first storm and headed south towards the O'Neil area as more storms were firing and we could see inflow nortches on the reflectivity. To make a very long and frustrating story short, thanks to the horrible road networks in north central Nebraska, we barely got any views of these storms. Twisting, winding, dead end dirt roads+hills=no view. We did get one quick view of a wall cloud that was near North Platte, NE that had some danglies under it but being so far away and hills in between there was no way we could tell what was happening. We continued to head towards the storm but it was getting dark and the storms were falling apart. Started heading home between 9:30 and 10:00. Headed towards Grand Island, NE in hope of finding some food but nothing worth eating was open, so we continued east on I80 towards Omaha hoping to find something good to eat. Nope, we kept going towards Sioux City, IA on I29 and finally gave in and got some McDonald's. Got back to Andy's around 5:00 am just as the sun started rising. I kept going on I90 to make it home, got home just before 10:00 am, then slept for 21 straight hours. All in all I'd say it was worth it. If we could've gotten just a little more moisture I'm sure we would've seen a tornado (or noodle as Andy would say). But we got some nice structure. Keep in mind this is the short version after we left the first storm. If you want to hear our adventures on the dirt roads in Nebraska, leave a comment. But I figure I better not get in to it since we have enough to write a fricken book. Stats: 1374 miles, 27 straight hours up, 25 of that in the car, saw the sunrise 2 days in a row, got ZERO sleep in between, no watch ever issued, but still some cool storms. Pics:

Turkey neck towers start going up:

Towers looking better:

Towers looking more crisp:

Rotating updraft:

Storm starts dying as they hit some sort of boundary and so does the updraft, all in less than 10 minutes:

Cropped picture of the wall cloud near North Platte, NE. View is from about 12 miles away and you can see the annoying hills we had to deal with.

Click here for a time lapse of the rotating updraft!!

Chase forecast/update from the road

2009-05-20T13:57:00.002-05:00

Left my house at 9:15 to head down towards Luverne, MN to meet up with Andy Gabrielson. Current plan is to head towards the Butte, NE area hoping for some elevated sups. The hope is starting to fade though with the new model runs, the arrowhead is starting to look better than Nebraska. But we're going to hold out hope, heading west on I90 towards the Lake Andes,SD/Butte, NE area, may try to head a bit further west but we will see. Nothing like a 1000 mile drive to a 2% TOR risk. If we get a severe storm I'll be happy, if not I wont be. Winds were a fricken pain in the ass getting down to Luverne, blowing my car all over the place. May update later once we stop otherwise I will post a recap tomorrow. May end up sleeping in the car tonight, either that or get home at 4 or 5am.

WTF is going on at Stormtrack?

2009-05-14T19:00:00.002-05:00

Anyone else noticed the increased tension over at Stormtrack this week? For whatever reason people are being extremely anal about everything, and it only got worse with the many close tornado encounters yesterday in Missouri and Oklahoma. And to think this is happening in the heart of chase season, can you imagine what it's going to be like during the offseason?!?! We better hope for a December tornado outbreak, otherwise we going to have the Chaser Massacre of '09. I mean holy shit, I cant believe people are so uptight about some of these things. I understand people being pissed off about the infamous "Camaro Chaser" (the moron who videotaped himself driving 115 mph, and I hope you see this you SOB, you deserve the ridicule you are getting you fucking dipshit!) but even still we cant change what happened, Darwinism will take care of it, we dont need a 20 page thread going back and forth. Debate is good, but at some point (roughly after 4-5 pages) you're just beating a dead horse. The sad thing is is that we went through the exact same thing last year, and I am making a prediction right now, we will be having the EXACT SAME ISSUE AT THIS TIME NEXT YEAR. Mark my words, except the threads will be 40 pages long because John Q. Public saw another "chaser" do the same thing but this time we was killed while trying to get within a few yards of an EF5. But we'll cross that bridge when we get to it. I guess I dont really know what the point of this post was, except people need to lighten up. There is so much more going on this part of the year for us chasers than getting in to a 200 post bitch fest about Vortex 2, a couple of dumbasses who got too close to a tornado, or just dumb random arguments that are going on at ST right now. Come on people, just chase and dont care what other people are doing. Karma's a bitch, but its necessary. This was a really disorganized post but its just incredibly annoying seeing this crap go on.

Is it winter yet?

2009-05-10T21:44:00.002-05:00

I mean damn, see as how Minnesota isn't going to have a storm season, it mine as well be winter so I can snowboard and play some pond hockey, it'd be a hell of a lot more fun that sitting here watching the GFS and waiting for something to finally show up. Hell, if we were lucky we might even get a snowstorm which again would be more entertaining than our current "storm" season. But maybe it's for the better for me that it's not active yet, it makes me focus a little more on the end of the year for school (kind of). But it'd still be nice to see SOMETHING that didn't completely vanish on the next run. So... given that we have had no storms its given me a lot of time to think about random stuff...The thing I've thought about the most is the Lutsen trip I went on with some friends back in January and thinking about how much I'm looking forward to next year. Ugghh, I want to be back up there. And with no storms, it mine as well be winter so that I have something to keep me busy. I do have a little hope, the 228 hour on the GFS shows some 80's creeping in to Minnesota (however without a cold front crashing through). Hoping to make it down to Kansas with Rich this season, looks like sometime around the 20th things might finally get a little more active as right now I dont see much anywhere between now and about the 20th. Lets hope something actually pans out, I'm so tired of driving a hundred or two miles to see rain and a little lightning just to patch my SDS a tiny bit. Anyways, suppose I should go study for my business final I have at 8:00 in the morning and try to get some sleep. I think Tuesday will be the first day in over week I haven't had to wake up to do something. Its gonna feel GOOOOD...Pointless post on my blog...DEAL WITH IT

You don't see this too often

2009-05-08T06:59:00.005-05:00

The only thing more rare than a PDS TOR watch is a PDS Severe Thunderstorm Watch, especially two at the same time for the same squall line. The weirdest part is that these were issued for a slight risk, not even a moderate risk. Intense squall line ongoing in Kansas and Oklahoma. Its not a huge line, but it will be crazy where it does hit. Bet there is a nice shelf on it! The watch text and a couple radar grabs below:

PDS Severe Thundestorm Watch 266:

THE NWS STORM PREDICTION CENTER HAS ISSUED A SEVERE THUNDERSTORM WATCH FOR PORTIONS OF NORTHERN ARKANSAS SOUTHEAST KANSAS SOUTHERN MISSOURI NORTHEAST OKLAHOMA EFFECTIVE THIS FRIDAY MORNING FROM 455 AM UNTIL NOON CDT.

...THIS IS A PARTICULARLY DANGEROUS SITUATION...

EXTREMELY DAMAGING THUNDERSTORM WIND GUSTS TO 80 MPH...LARGE HAIL TO 2 INCHES IN DIAMETER...AND DANGEROUS LIGHTNING ARE POSSIBLE IN THESE AREAS

DISCUSSION...A LARGE CLUSTER OF INTENSE CONVECTION OVER SOUTHEAST KS WILL LIKELY ORGANIZE INTO A BOW ECHO THIS MORNING AND RACE EAST-SOUTHEASTWARD ACROSS SOUTHWEST MO/NORTHEAST OK/NORTHWEST AR. HIGH INSTABILITY AND RATHER STRONG WESTERLY FLOW ALOFT SUGGEST THAT A CORRIDOR OF SIGNIFICANT DAMAGING WINDS IS POSSIBLE THROUGH THE MID MORNING. LARGE HAIL WILL ALSO REMAIN POSSIBLE IN THE STRONGEST STORMS.

PDS Severe Thunderstorm Watch 264:

THE NWS STORM PREDICTION CENTER HAS ISSUED A SEVERE THUNDERSTORM WATCH FOR PORTIONS OF

A LARGE PART OF KANSAS NORTHERN OKLAHOMA EFFECTIVE THIS FRIDAY MORNING FROM 1205 AM UNTIL 800 AM CDT.

...THIS IS A PARTICULARLY DANGEROUS SITUATION...

EXTREMELY DAMAGING THUNDERSTORM WIND GUSTS TO 80 MPH...LARGE HAIL TO 3 INCHES IN DIAMETER...AND DANGEROUS LIGHTNING ARE POSSIBLE IN THESE AREAS.

DISCUSSION...TSTMS/SUPERCELLS EXPECTED TO FORM IN THE NEXT 1-2 HOURS IN WAA AREA ALONG SRN FRINGE OF UPR DISTURBANCE AMPLIFYING ESE ACROSS THE CNTRL HI PLNS. COMBINATION OF INCREASINGLY RICH MOIST INFLOW...DEEP EML...AND SEASONABLY STRONG/LARGELY UNIDIRECTIONAL WLY MID/UPR LVL FLOW SHOULD SUPPORT RAPID STORM INTENSIFICATION ONCE CELLS FORM. ALTHOUGH A RISK FOR ISOLD TORNADOES WILL EXIST DURING EARLY STAGES OF STORM DEVELOPMENT...SFC-BASED CIN AND LIKELIHOOD FOR NUMEROUS STORM INTERACTIONS ONCE ACTIVITY DEVELOPS SUGGEST THAT MAIN SVR THREAT EARLY-ON WILL BE VERY LARGE HAIL. SIZABLE DCAPE SHOULD FOSTER SUBSEQUENT EVOLUTION INTO A FORWARD-PROPGATING MCS...WITH FAIRLY WIDESPREAD DMGG WIND/HAIL

Base Velocity from Tulsa:

Radar from Tulsa:

LMFAO

2009-05-03T19:20:00.002-05:00

So, I was sitting on the internet just a little while ago bored, thinking of what to look up. For some reason the past couple of days I've been thinking about the old days when I used to go a million different weather forums (I only go to 3 or 4 now) and remembered when I used to go to Storm2K.com. I get on to the site and try to start looking around only to find out that guests only have privilage to view a couple areaso of the forum. I really wanted to see some of my old posts since that was about the time I first started chasing and using weather forums, and I hadn't been on there for about 2 years. So, sitting there trying to remember my user name and password. What do you know? I get them both right on the first try. Surprisingly I had over 350 posts before I deserted the site. I read some of my posts, particularily my chaselogs from 2006. LOL, good stuff. All I can say is I think I have learned A LOT about communicating via weather forums since then. Some of my posts were pretty ridiculous. It was weird for me to be back on there since I hadn't logged in since May 2007. Long story short, there were some fucking morons there who had control/power issues, but that's for another time. Anyways, just thought it was interesting to be back on there for the first time in such a long time and see some of my really old posts.

4/26 Fail

2009-04-27T14:56:00.002-05:00

Well, I knew there wouldn't be much going on yesterday with the way things were trending. I got off work around 2:00 and came home trying to convince myself to head out. I talked to Rich Gudmunsen for about an hour talking about what was going on. Around 3:00 we ended our conversation and I realized it was pretty much a bust from Minnesota through Texas (except for a few small areas and select chasers). No cap over pretty much the entire risk area=bad day. But, still, I couldn't resist the temptation to head south for the extremely outside chance something happens in southern Minnesota. I head south around 5:00 pm (I know, most people were already on their way home by then), figuring its only a 90 minute drive to Albert Lea, plus there were a couple other local chasers in the area, if nothing else I'll have dinner and complain about the setup with them. I get a message from Brian Howell saying that if I head out, he wouldn't mind teaming up since he was right on my way south. We make it as far south as Owatonna when we see rain starting to blob up along the Iowa/Minnesota border, any hope gone now. But we meet up with John Wetter in the Cabela's parking lot and shoot the shit for a while waiting for Andy Revering and his wife to get to Owatonna and get some food. Head over to Famous Dave's, Joel Lampe, Tony Perkins, and Scott (not sure what his last name is) meet us there. Have dinner, get a call from Rich talking about the MD for quote "Brief tornadoes and damaging wind gusts". WTF?!? Seriously? But 10 mintues the entire MD area is blobbed out with rain too. Make it home by 10:00, nothing to really report except I got my tethering plan activated and it worked fine, ran GPS on Spotter Network which worked fine, one thing I realized is that I need to get a USB port before my next chase, it'd be nice to be able to use my mouse. Other than that, some fine tuning my laptop and dash cam mounts. Also need to pick up an external antenna for better cell signal.

4/26 Surprise day in MN/IA?

2009-04-25T21:31:00.002-05:00

Thanks to the guys over at F5chaser.com for catching my attention about tomorrow, I hadn't even noticed it. So, the helicities look awesome, nice jet streaks, dews look good assuming that nothing happens to the return, but we are supposed to be under clouds/rain pretty much all day. However, GFS shows a little area of clearing across SW/SC Minnesota later in the afternoon (hopefully its not post-frontal) so if that happens and we get a little heating, we may have just enough instability to spark off a storm. If that happens, watch out! But, if we dont get any heating, all these nice dynamics are just a waste. But, I'll stay semi optomistic, both GFS and WRF show LI's getting down to -2 by afternoon and GFS shows MLCAPE around 1000 joules for southern MN, which, when combined with mostly uncapped air, should be more than adeqaute to get something going. But, I have seen the ill effects of uncapped air, and all you get is a giant blob which is the fear of many about tomorrow. Will be keeping a close eye on satellite, and if it looks good, it will be my first official chase of '09 (yes, I did attempt to chase the sub-severe line in east central Minnesota yesterday...and failed, but that's a different story). Eyes to the skies tomorrow, work till 2:00 but after that, anything goes.

Possible severe wx this week?

2009-04-21T00:04:00.002-05:00

Right now it seems there is the possibility of some severe weather later in the week for us here in the upper Midwest after a LOOONG winter. However, the GFS (Good For Shit) and WRF (What The Fuck?) models have been very consistent at being inconsistent. Neither have any handle on what this pattern is going to do. Needless to say we will see a warm up throughout the week, but at this point that's about all we really know. Both models show temps close to 80 on Thursday and Friday with dewpoints climbing to the mid to upper 50's by Friday. But, with the gulf not open yet, and the transport of that moisture being relatively slow, I really doubt the return of the moisture by Friday, atleast to the extent the models show. However, if we can get that kind of return, it could yield CAPE to over 1000 j/kg which is sufficient for this time of year. The thing is, shear doesn't look to be the greatest if this setup actually happens. Probably just some hailers at best. Will it be enough to get me to call in for the day off from work? We'll see. We need the models to actually agree on something before we make any plans.

Extremely Dry

2009-04-15T21:30:00.002-05:00

The last couple of days have been extremely dry here in Minnesota with relative humidities dipping down to the single digits while temps are in the 60's. Taken with a grain of salt, the AWOS in Blaine reported a dewpoint of 3 degrees with a temp in the 60's and an RH of 9% yesterday. So, with this dry weather, and the dead grass that is just waking up from the winter, fire concerns are on the rise. Today a large (large for Minnesota standards) grass fire burned 100 acres in the southwest Twin Cities metro this afteroon. It only took about 3 hours to get the fire under control but fires dont happen too often in Minnesota. Current reports say that the fire was started by a resident burning leaves in his yard when it got out of control and quickly spread, threatening neighborhoods in Shakopee, although I dont think any damage was actually done. The same threat should develop tomorrow, Red Flag Watch in effect for areas west of the metro, and Red Flag Warnings in effect for southwest Minnesota. But the conditions should improve by the weekend with some possible much needed rain.

Long range forecast: GFS has continued to show a system toward the 9-10 day time period with some noticeable dynamics. Its waaay too far out to go in to detail, and for all we know the models may change it to a snowstorm, but right now it definately catches the eye.

10 day GFS

2009-04-13T14:50:00.003-05:00

I know I said recently that the GFS was showing a nice warming trend and that the GFS had been pretty good with verifying these trends. But, the last warming trend I mentioned was gone with the next model run. However, I think I can redeem myself this time. Once again the GFS shows a warming trend, and with that trend still being shown now within the 180 hour window, I think there is a little better chance it will actually happen. Although it doesnt look like we will get any severe weather in Minnesota between now and the end of the 10 day period it does look like we could be enjoying above normal temps, especially towards the second half of April if this forecast verifies. But other than possible warmer temps there isnt a whole lot to talk about. I dunno, maybe mother nature is saving a big show for us in June. Who knows, maybe not, but gotta stay optomistic somehow. Atleast I'll be done with school by the second week of May this year.

I guess there is one other thing I have to mention. After debating all winter long how to mount my laptop in my car, I finally decided to say to hell with spending well over $100 for someone else to build me one, I'm going to figure it out myself. So, with next to no knowledge of what I was doing, I began building. 5 days later, it's still not done. But, the only thing I have left to do is figure out how to get some extra support to keep it from shaking to much. I really dont think Ford Focus' were meant to have laptop mounts built in them, but I will try. Anyone have any suggestions for some more support? Let me know and I will post some pics and my design to give you an idea of what I'm working with. Other than that, I have it all built, even an arm to swivel from passenger to driver side.

Sister's new dog and ShamWOW guy has a run in with the five-o

2009-04-06T19:10:00.009-05:00

My sister and her husband got a new dog a couple of weeks ago from a breeder in Windom, MN. Its a young pug, and as is with all pugs, its so ugly its cute. Its about 10 weeks old, 3.5 lbs, and the size about of about half my fore-arm. When she's awake she's running all over the place, but give her about 15 minutes and she'll be asleep. After some drama with the breeder making a major bonehead mistake, my sister and her husband are the rightful owners of the dog. So, here's a couple pics:

Me and peanut

Peanut sleeping in my mom's arms:

I couldn't resist this. We've all seen the "ShamWOW" infomecials the last couple of years, so this story was just hilarious. Vince Offer (not his real name I guess) was arrested in the South Beach, FL area for apparently beating a hooker. Its not so much the story that is funny (well, ok, the fact that its the Shamwow guy is pretty funny) but the best part is by far his mug shots.
Before:

After the incident and apparently meth as well:

Sorry, I couldnt help it ;)

Weather: Zonal flow= boring weather, but then again I guess that means no snow for a few days. Im starting to have haunting memories of last year's spring.

Old man winter can kiss my @$$!

2009-04-03T18:41:00.002-06:00

So, winter doesnt want to go away. Good thing is that it looks like the heaviest snow will stay south of the cities down towards the MN/IA border, but we could still pick up 2-5 inches of snow here. Blizzard warnings in effect for portions of Nebraska and South Dakota, winter storm watches in effect for parts of southern Minnesota and northern Iowa which will likely be upgraded to warnings soon. Snow should start as rain/snow tomorrow morning/afternoon in Minnesota and last through the afternoon on Sunday becoming all snow by evening Saturday. I dont want to get too detailed right now because I really dont want to talk about snow, but areas near the IA/MN border could pick up more than a foot of heavy, wet snow.

The bright side is that looking at the 10 day GFS forecast, it looks like we will warm up towards the end of the period. Its waaay to far away to talk about how warm, but the GFS has been pretty good so far in verifying the warming trends. If it does verfiy the way it looks right now, we may have some chasing weather by mid April.

A quick update on the Red River flooding. The river crested last week at ~40.5 ft and has since receded to ~35 ft but with the recent snow expected to melt a second crest is expected which could surpass the crest that occurred last week. I will update once I find out more info about the possible second crest.

Lastly, I have some pics I took in downtown Minneapolis a couple weeks ago, I just haven't gotten around to really go through them yet. So...Check back to check out the pics when I get them posted which I hope will be pretty soon.

ND/SD/MN flooding and 3/23/09 Severe weather

2009-03-23T12:14:00.003-06:00

First thing is the massive flooding expected in ND/SD/MN over the next couple of weeks. Many areas of these states saw high amounts of snow during the winter and with the warm temps and heavy rainfall currently ongoing the flooding threat is only going to get worse. It looks like the hardest hit area may be Fargo, ND. The NWS-Grand Forks is calling for major flooding in the Fargo-Moorehead area. But another area that is going to be affected by major flooding is the Wahpeton, ND area. Current river stage is just under 20 ft with flood stage being 10.0 ft. This is part of the flood warning from NWS-Aderdeen for Richland county, ND:

THE FLOOD WARNING CONTINUES FOR THE WILD RICE RIVER (ND) AT ABERCROMBIE.* UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE...OR UNTIL THE WARNING IS CANCELLED.* AT 11:15 AM MONDAY THE STAGE WAS 19.8 FEET.* MAJOR FLOODING IS OCCURRING AND NEAR RECORD FLOODING IS FORECAST.* FLOOD STAGE IS 10.0 FEET.* FORECAST...THE RIVER WILL CONTINUE RISING TO NEAR 27 TO 29 FEET BY THURSDAY MORNING THEN BEGIN FALLING.

The river is expected to crest at nearly 3 times its flood stage level!! This is historic flooding that is ALREADY happening and going to get even worse. I highly doubt I will ever see a warning explicitly say they are expecting record flooding. There are so many more areas in the Dakotas and Minnesota that are expected to see moderate to major flooding that it would take me hours to list them and their forecasts. I will say this, this is a MAJOR (AND PROBABLY HISTORIC) FLOOD EVENT. Many people expect this event to be much worse than the flood of '97. I have a sister who lives in Fargo but luckily lives in an apartment which is not her liability should something happen to the complex. The only thing I have left to say about this event is that everyone affected is in my prayers and let God be with them.

So, on to the second item. Severe weather looks likely from South Dakota to Oklahoma. Funny thing right now is that some counties in SD and NE that are under a blizzard warning for later tonight are also currently under a tornado watch for this afternoon. Gotta love these dynamic spring storms! Anyways, as of 1:30 pm a tornado watch is in effect for southcentral SD and a good part of the eastern half of Nebraska. 10% tornado risk all the way to the NE/SD/IA border. Looks like a cold core event if anything with a thick cloud deck present over pretty much the entire northern risk area. But even still a few storms have popped already, although the warnings that were issued have been allowed to expire. The main action should hold off until later this afternoon and my thinking is that it will be mostly northeast Nerbaska and maybe southeast South Dakota. Call me crazy but I think the front will push through central Nebraska before the atmosphere destabilizes enough. But anything that does go up should rotate without a problem, only real concern in this area right now is the moisture, with the highest dewpoints around 55. But with temps holding in the low to mid 60's I think supercells will be likely by 3:00 or 4:00. The southern target is where the SPC has the highest threat, but it also looks to have a better chance of busting, atleast IMO. Temps have warmed to the low 70's but dewpoints have lagged and are only in the mid 50's for the most part. Soundings out Dodge City, KS look real good, but the ones out of OKC dont. I have a feeling Oklahoma is going to bust. Strong cap is evident in the sounding out of Oklahoma City, and not a whole lot of instability, atleast per the 20z sounding. We've still got an entire afternoon to go so we will see what happens. But right now I would rather be in Nebraska than in Kansas or Oklahoma. My target would be O'Neil, NE if I were chasing.

New Skywarn Material

2009-03-15T17:46:00.003-06:00

I got my first chance to see the new Minnesota Skywarn material yesterday (March 14th) at the Skywarn class in Blaine. I was happy with the new material, although surprised that they got rid of the test. I didnt get to a class last year and my mind is a little fuzzy from the old material so its a little hard to compare the new material vs. the old but either way it was still pretty good. A nice variety of pictures and video, and the cool thing was I know most of the people that had their pics/vid in the presentation (with a couple of my photos also making it in). Hats off to Todd K. and John W. for putting it together. Talking to Todd one day he was telling me about the editing part of it and it sounded like hell. I dont know what it was, I think it was just the speakers in the room we were using, but the audio from the video kept cutting in and out which was kinda annoying and it would've been nice to hear what some of the people were saying. Also thanks to Theresa C. for a great job on doing the presentation. It was cool seeing some familiar faces from F5 at the class and putting a couple new faces to the names as well. I had a good time at Acupulco (spelling?) for dinner after the class with most of the gang from F5 that was at the class. Too bad I cant make it to the workshop, who knows when the next will be that I see some of these people. Anyways, it certainly feels like spring with the above average temps this weekend and early this week, getting close to 60 on Monday. Broke out the shorts yesterday and today, it just feels so damn good to be wearing them again. Ahh, chase season is JUST around the corner, I can almost smell it.

update FCST on Major Winter Storm/Blizzard March 10/11

2009-03-09T11:55:00.002-06:00

Models are still showing a strong low pressure system moving northeast across the region on Tuesday. A major winter storm and blizzard now look iminent for central and northern Minnesota. I could try to forecast this event for the entire upper midwest, but that would take a lot more time than I have so I will focus on just Minnesota. GFS and WRF pull the center of the low from southern Iowa in to southern Wisconsin and northeast from there. Both models have been in consistent in showing .5-.75 inches of precipitable water. Areas west of and north of the Twin Cities should see mostly snow, but the Twin Cities and areas east and south will start out as a mix of rain and snow before changing over to all snow from west to east throughout the afternoon. For us here in the Twin Cities it looks like temps will fall below freezing later in the afternoon, but the heaviest precip isnt forecasted to start until just about the time this heavy precip moves in. MPX just issued a winter storm warning for the western half of the metro, the eastern half of the metro is under a winter weather advisory. Depending on when the transition to snow happens, we may end up with more or less snow.

Now, for the rest of Minnesota. At this time, blizzard warnings are in effect for counties in western Minnesota, blizzard watches are in still in effect for northwest Minnesota although I expect the NWS-Grand Forks to upgrade them to blizzard warnings soon. Winter storm watches are still in effect for all of Duluth's CWA, which will likely be upgraded in to Winter Storm Warnings shortly. Most areas of western and northern Minnesota should pick up between 7-12 inches, with locally higher amounts possibly reaching 20 inches. Winds will be sustained 30-35, with gusts to 40 or even 50 mph during the afternoon. Blizzard conditions for conuties in the blizzard warning, periodic whiteout conditions which may last in to the day Wednesday due to blowing snow. Arctic air will pour in behind the front with the potential for below zero temps overnight Tuesday. This combined with strong winds will create dangerous windchills over central and northern Minnesota in to Wednesday morning. Blowing and drifting snow will continue in to Wednesday. Arctic high pressure will build in to the region on Wednesday which will keep temperatures very far below average. Highs on Wednesday may not get above 0 degrees F along the Canadian border with highs in the sinlge digits across the majority of the rest of Minnesota. Temps will bottom out Wednesday night but as the arctic high moves out of the region warmer air will begin to advect north with highs in the 20's across most of the state.

Another update is possible tomorrow as the event unfolds...

Possible winter storm March 10th/11th

2009-03-08T11:24:00.002-06:00

Looks like a major winter storm may affect the upper Midwest mainly this Tuesday. Winter storm watch from Grand Forks saying that locally 20" may be possible over northern Minnesota. Winter storm watches are in effect for the northern half of Minnesota with all of them saying 8-12" possible. The GFS and WRF have both had a hard time handling this system, both have been all over the place with the track of the storm and the precip area. Regardless, looks like the storm will start as rain but quickly change to snow as a sharp arctic front pushes through the region. MPX is calling for 4" here in the metro, DLH is calling for "heavy accumulation" for the arrowhead. Blizzard watches for eastern NoDak and northwest Minnesota. The HPC has also been back and forth with their forecasts, right now their winter weather outlooks highlights central and northern MN for heaviest snow, but looking at their QPF it shows over an inch of precipitable water over the next 5 days, and with no other significant storms in that period I'm assuming that most of that water is coming from the 10th/11th system. Haven't checked the updated model runs yet. May update later but if not I will definately update tomorrow.

Frickin Busy

2009-03-03T22:42:00.002-06:00

Midterm portfolio is due for my photo class. 8 pictures due, 3 are for our second assignment, 5 due for the portfolio plus 2 proof sheets. I spent a good 6-7 hours taking/developing/enlarging pictures on Monday and another 4 hours today (Tuesday) and will spend atleast another 4 hours tomorrow. Good thing its due tomorrow, it means I'll actually have to finish it and turn it in and get it over with. Frickin intense though, I gurantee I'm not the only one in there either. I dont know what it is but I am always starving after I'm done in the darkroom, must be the fix or something. Anyway, I hear the North Shore calling my name again, I'm feelin Tetagouche and Grand Marais this time.

Duluth and North Shore trip pics and snowstorm report

2009-02-26T23:25:00.026-06:00

Mondays are the one day a week I dont have school or work and after last week's hectic week I needed to get away and have some time to myself so I decided to take a day trip to Duluth and part of the North Shore. Headed out a little before 9:00 am and got to the Twin Ports area around 11:00. Stopped off at the Thompson Hill rest/travel info area to get some advice on getting down to Canal Park for some pics of the lift bridge. Spent about 45 minutes at Canal Park taking pics of the bridge and the lake. After the drive up and the time down along the shore I needed some lunch. I couldn't resist the urge for Grandma's, and since it was right there I figured what the heck. It was really good as expected, and the service was really good too. After lunch I started heading up 61 towards Two Harbors. I stopped at the breakwater to see if it was walkable. To the normal person it probably wasn't, but to me, with some careful walking, it was do-able. It definately took me a while to get to the end, but I did actually make it to the light house. I was suprised how far north the lake had froze, I thought it usually only froze around the Duluth bay area, and it was cool to see all the broken ice up against the breakwater. I got a couple pics and then kept goin north. I didnt have to go too far, there is this wayside stop just north of Two Harbors with a path up the lake side of a tunnel. The best pics I got from this little stop wasn't the lake or the rocky side of a cliff, it was of a bald eagle that was sitting in a tree about 100-150 yards away sitting on the top branch of a tree. Unfortunately my telephoto lens still wasn't long enough to get a full pic of him, but I was able to crop the pics and get a pretty good view of the monster. I'm not sure how big bald eagles usually are since I've never really been this close to one, but this one seemed especially big. I spent a good 30-45 minutes watching him hoping he would leave the tree and I could get a pic of his big wingspan, but that didnt happen. So, I decided I might as well try to hike down the hill and walk through the woods to get a closer look. That was a fun hike down a rocky, steep, snow-covered hill. There were plenty of deer tracks meandering through the woods. So, I finally made it down to the bottom (I'm sure anyone else would've had an awesome time watching me try not to slip, and get out of a snow drift that was up to my knee with one hand free as the other hand held my camera from rocking back and forth), I got somewhat close to the tree with the bird on it, but I dont know if it was me or if he just finally got bored but he ended up flying farth up shore, and of course caught me off guard and alas no pics of the nice wingspan on him. Finally, last stop of the day was to Goosberry Falls State Park near Castle Danger, MN. The paths to the lower parts of the waterfall were extremely icy but some how I managed not to fall (atleast all the way down). The pics from Goosberry below are from two different spots along the waterfall, the first pics are from the first waterfall that runs directly under highway 61, the other pictures are from an area that is lower than the first waterfall. So, anyways, pics are below:

This is the Duluth lift bridge taken from Canal Park:

This is the light house at the end of the breakwater in Two Harbors, MN:

The next three pics are cropped images of a bald eagle just north of Two Harbors righ along highway 61:

A quick picture of a squirrel havin a good time underneath a bird feeder at Goosberry:

Some giant icycles hanging off to the side of the waterfall. Just to give you some perspective on how big these things are, there are two people in the lower right hand corner:

Just half of the frozen waterfall:

Open ice with water quickly moving:

The next three are my first attempts at long exposure with running water: I think they were all taken with ISO of 100, and an aperture of f/22, but I think the shutter speed may have been a little different on them, but somewhere around 1/15.

Lots of cool looking ice on the lowest part of the falls:

The frozen lower falls:

One of the rare oppurtunites, a look behind the lower falls at Goosberry, albeit it was frozen but still very cool nonetheless. This picture doesnt do it just at all:

A cropped pic of a deer downstream:

And one last look at the lower falls from the other side of the river:

I took well over 300 pictures on Monday and these are only 20 of the ones I thought were the best, so I may post more later but I really wanted to get atleast some of them up. ~360 miles and 11 hours well worth it on my day off. Only way it could've been better would if it were spent watching a sup. If you have not been to the North Shore during the winter, I HIGHLY recommend it, its some of the best photo ops I've ever had. Between the landscape and wildlife, it was an awesome day, being able to walk on top of Goosberry falls and even walk behind it and look out downstream was something I will wont ever forget, and something I'm sure I will do again sometime in the coming years.

And now for the snowstorm report:
We got dry slotted up until 12:30 pm which really cut down the totals here in the north metro (we were the last ones to get filled in with snow). The snow isn't really "wet" heavy, but its more like the snow is stick to each really well and was really compacted together even before the blowing/drifting started. I've gotta say it's the worst driving I've ever had in just 4" of snow, I've done better in 8" than I did today. As of ~8:00 pm here in New Brighton we had roughly 4" of snow but we may be closer to 5 now as the snow didn't stop till about 9:30 pm so I will go out and measure it and post an update before I go to bed. Most of the MPX cwa looks to have gotten about what was expected, with the exception being the north metro which got about half of what was expected.

Quick note about the Duluth trip

2009-02-23T20:52:00.003-06:00

Just a quick note about my trip to Duluth today. I did actually make it up there and took over 300 pictures from areas from Duluth to Goosberry Falls State Park. With that many pictures its going to take some time to get them up but I will trip to upload them on here as soon as possible. 360 miles and 11 hour trip, I couldn't have thought of a better way to spend my one day off a week today (maybe chasing a storm could beat it but it would be pretty close). Anyways, I will post a full write up with plenty of pictures later including my first eagle shot.

Snow report from 2/20/09 and other random thoughts

2009-02-21T22:20:00.003-06:00

So the system that brought us snow yesterday produced more snow here in the cities than expected. At home here in New Brighton we picked up just over 4 inches (4.2"). The snow started around 4:00 yesterday afternoon and started to dry up around 8:00 as expected, at which point we had about an inch, but for some reason the snow filled back in in central Minnesota bringing heavy snow at times between 9:00 pm and 1:00 am dumping another 3 inches. Some areas around the metro picked up over 6", and the weird thing is no advisory or warning was ever in place. Looks like more snow for the end of the week...

Second thing is the F5chaser get together was fun. I had a great time talking to fellow Minnesota (and mostly metro) storm chasers, shootin the shit for a couple hours while havin some wings. These get togethers are something we gotta do more often, its always to great meet the people you talk to on the internet in person. Looking forward to the March 14th SKYWARN class in Blaine, usually a pretty good turn out of actual chasers.

Third thing is I'm thinkin about makin a run down to Red Wing tomorrow morning to get some shots of the bluffs with the fresh snowpack. Hopefully the sun didnt melt too much of it away but there are a couple of spots I want to check out that may have a pretty cool vantage point. Forecast is for mostly clear skies so it should be a pretty good day for outdoor photography. Only thing is I have to be back home by 4:00 for work, which means I have to leave home around 10:00, get down there around 11:30, and leave at the latest by 2:30 in order to be back on time. We'll see if I actually end up goin or not.

Fourth thing, I am also thinking about heading up to Duluth on Monday for some Lake Superior pics and maybe even some snowmelt pics? Forecast for DLH on Monday is mostly clear skies but a high of only 23. Again, not a sure thing yet, but sometime this spring I am going to get up there to Goosberry for the snowmelt, it should be a pretty good one, if I'm correct they've had quite a bit of snow this year (maybe even above normal? Tim??).

Update on the website and snow forecast for tomorrow

2009-02-19T20:54:00.003-06:00

So, real quick, a short forecast for a small snow event here in Minnesota. Doesnt even really look like anything worth me posting about it but its the most active weather we've had here in Minnesota for over a month. FCST: Alberta clipper will move southeast across the region on Friday. Looks like the "heaviest" (using that word lightly) will stay southeast of the Twin Cities. Maybe up to 2 inches across central and south central Minnesota. For us here in the Twin Cities, GFS and WRF show light snow lingering through most of the day, eventually possibly accumulating to an inch, maybe an inch and a half if we get lucky.

WEBSITE UPDATE: I have the equipment and bio pages done. 2006-2008 chase pages are funtional, but the only dates I actually have complete are May 31st (only partially done) and June 5th. May 25th is functional but I dont have hardly any content in it. Dont pay attention to some of the pictures on the tabs for the chase dates, they are just default pictures from the hosting company and I haven't had time to change them yet. Its amazing how much time and work I have put in so far and how much I have left to do. I know there is a long way to go but take a look around and let me know what you think. More updates later.
midwestchaser.com

Epic Fail

2009-02-18T01:20:00.005-06:00

So I figured tonight would be a good night to test out my new camera at night. Wet snow + trees= good pics, right? Dead wrong, atleast tonight. The overcast skies and fog really screwed up the lighting and I could not for the life of me figure out how to compensate for it. The sky almost had a red/orange tint to it (which may have just been from the streetlights) and I didn't know how to adjust to it. Almost every single pic I took looks like shit. I picked about the worst night to try to get the kinds of photos I was trying for. The one saving grace is that I got a nice pic from the place I work at, otherwise everything else turned out like crap. Here is the one I got from the place I work at. I'm not too religious but I do think this picture is pretty striking and has a pretty strong message, whatever that may be:

Here is one I took on Old Highway 8 which is pretty much the "old main street" of New Brighton and has some old fashioned streets lights which I have wanted to photograph for a while, but I just happened to pick a horrible time to do it. This is just one of the many that didn't turn out:

Some time soon I will get back there and get some pics of the stret lights since they are pretty cool and look pretty cool at night.

The best part of the night didnt happen until after I decided to cut my losses and head home. I was heading back to my car when a truck drives by. I recognized the truck since the building across the street had people doing snow removal and this was the only truck in that parking lot the entire time I was there. As it drives away I faintly hear "NERD!". WTF? This person is so scared that they have to say something while they drive away? If they're gonna make fun of me, DO IT TO MY FACE! Don't shout something and then run away. I dont give a rat's ass about people who don't have the balls to come out and say something to my face, and I could honestly care less what they said, I found it more funny that they ran off after saying something than I was pissed that they said something.

Chase videos getting mailed out and my new website

2009-02-17T16:45:00.002-06:00

So, first off, I want to let everyone who asked for a chase vid, they WILL be mailed tomorrow. I intended to do it today but I had to get my car fixed after I got out of class at 3:30 and didnt have time to get to the post office before work at 5:00 but tomorrow my classes are optional so I dont have to be at school at any specific time (or at all for that matter) so I will head over to the post office to get the postage I need for the packages. I'm really sorry it's taken me so fricken long to get them out, procrastination is something I really need to work on...

Also, I have finally gotten a real website (no free hosting) and a real domain. Although it's not much yet, here it is: midwestchaser.com
I have crap load of work to do on it but I was messing around with it today in between classes at school and I think I have a pretty good feel for how to do what I want to do. I'm hoping to have it up and fully running by the start of the '09 season (the midwest season). However, until I get my new site close to done I will still consider midweststormchaser.tripod.com my current site. But after I finish midwestchaser.com I will shut down the old site. I'll be posting updates as I get more of the site finished, and I can almost gurantee the site will look different the next time you look at it, I'm still trying to figure out how I want it to look.

New Camera and a couple pics

2009-02-15T15:08:00.006-06:00

So I finally got a DSLR camera. I got it yesterday from my parents for a birthday and late graduation gift. It an Olympus E-520 with an Olympus Digital 14-40 mm lens and a 40-150 mm lens. I finally got to try it out today after having to wait for it to charge, and I can see it's definately going to take some getting used to but that's why I have been taking random/garbage pictures today trying to get myself used to how it works. Its really going to be a good camera once I figure everything out, but I'm nowhere near there yet. I did get a couple decent pics from just around the house. Just 4 pics, first is a bird leaving our bird feeder, the second is a red squirell, the third is another squirrel, and the last one is of my new Monfrotto tripod that I also got for my birthday and my new video camera I bought back in November.:

Update on the Oklahoma tornadoes and website news

2009-02-12T19:09:00.004-06:00

Just a quick update on the tornadoes that hit central Oklahoma on Tuesday (Feb 10, 2009). I have seen unofficial reports that the Lone Grove, OK tornado was rated an EF4 and the Ardmore, OK tornado was an EF2. Again these are unofficial reports that I cant seem to find the source to, but I do remember seeing those stats (I could've swore I saw it at ST). The NWS-Norman hasn't posted anything on their website about finishing the damage assessments, let alone having official ratings ready for the public. I haven't seen many pics from the damage, but the few I have seen look fairly consistent with atleast an EF3 (based on pictures I have seen of other damage from EF3+ tornadoes but then again it all depends on how the buildings were built). So I dont know if those numbers are just someone guessstimating the rating or if they heard leaked info from somewhere. Anyways, my prediction is an EF3 although I could see it being an EF4. I still haven't heard an official death toll from this storm, I've heard anywhere from 8-15 deaths so I'm not exactly sure what to say about that. No matter the number, even one death would be tragic. Prayers and thoughts with the people affected, certainly caught a lot of people off guard this early in the season.

Ok, so something on the brighter side. I have plans to update and basically rebuild my website . I'm running out of space on my free account from tripod.com and I also want to upgrade to a .com domain. So, current plan is to go through Dryline Hosting with the EF1 package for now, may upgrade later but this package includes (I think) 200 megs of memory which should hold me over for a while. I had checked in to switching to Dryline before but they didnt have a sitebuilder and I have no idea how to write html. But now they include a sitebuilder for free so I should be good to go. I checked out a domain for my site and as long as noone takes between now and when I actually get the domain it will be Midwestchaser.com. The domain for my current site is where too long (Midweststormchaser). So, I am hoping to get this up and running for the most part by the time the '09 season starts. I am really looking forward to making this new site, more of an "professional" site and I think I will be able to do more with it than my current site. I will be updating my progress and will appreciate any comments/criticism!!

Lastly, I do have my chase vid done and a couple copies burned. All I have to do is get some packaging and postage and then put them in the mail. Let me know if you want a copy: midwestchaser@yahoo.com

Souther Plains severe weather discussion from 2/10/09

2009-02-11T01:38:00.010-06:00

So just a quick recap of Tuesdays storms since my mindset is now officially in chase mode. Anyways, the SPC issued a moderate risk for severe weather for the eastern half of Oklahoma, northeast Texas, and western Arkansas (extreme southeastern KS may have also been in there, I'm not sure but it doesnt matter since nothing much happened there anyway) including a 15% hatched TOR risk. Unfortunately I was at lecture during the beginning of the event so I cant really say when things started firing or how good it looked early on. All I know is that the SPC issued an MD mentioning the potential for a categorical upgrade to a HIGH risk for the area mentioned above, but that never happened, most likely not enough confidence things would go. I got home around 3:40 and watched the event until I had to go to work at 5:00. I turn on GR and pick out the best cell to watch on radar, which turned out to be the storm that went through Payne county, OK. The first thing I notice is a huge honkin hook echo. I wait for another radar scan to see if this hook is for real, it definately was. I start polling GR in order to bring up the last few updates and this thing had a hook on it for quite a while. Below are some radar grabs from GRlevel3 from 3:26 pm CST to 3:47 pm CST:

Upper Right: Base velocity 1 Lower left: base velocity 2 bottom right: Vertically Integrated Liquid (VIL)

I watched this storm up until I went to work. After I was at work a storm slammed Lone Grove, OK (roughly 1 1/2 hours south of OKC). Unfortunately 4 fatalities have been reported along with dozens of injuries. I havent seen any pics of the damage from Lone Grove but I'm guessing that the tornado was a rather violent one (although the tornado reportedly hit a trailer park which as we all know does not need a strong tornado to devastate it). Even with only 4 tornadoes reported and 121 reports including wind and hail, I still dont consider this a bust, atleast for Oklahoma, I do consider it a bust for everywhere else in the MOD risk, the MCS is nowhere near what was expected. But for Oklahoma I think the MOD risk and the 15% TOR risk verified, but we will have to wait for damage assessments before we make a final call. Anyways, this sounds more like an armchair chase report (SDS is getting real bad...) but I thought this event was worth mentioning and I wanted to share those radar grabs. Feel free to leave a comment with your opinion.

Severe Weather DISC. 2/09/09

2009-02-09T00:41:00.002-06:00

Looks like there is a a pretty decent shot at some severe weather in southwestern IA and eastern NE. The SPC has a 5% TOR risk with a 15% hail/wind in their 1z outlook. I didnt read the text but I took a look at models earlier and the area highlighted by the SPC is the same area that shows an area of 500 j/kg of MLCAPE. Definately not photogenic storms with highs only getting in the upper 50's to near 60 but helicity values look insane for a pretty good part of the area so it will be interesting to see how this event plays out. The SPC has also issued a 5% hail/wind risk in to central MN and western WI. Although its not much, Im sure its pretty unheard of. Eventhough its unlikely, there is a small chance of a February chase in Minnesota! I will be keeping an eye out for any storms in a close area to the cities. Instability looks really weak for anywhere north of the SLGT risk area but helicity looks to be better farther north. Anyways, not much hope but still will be keeping an eye out since I have no work or school tomorrow.

Also, let me know if you want a copy of my chase vid. I will be making the DVD's tomorrow and mailing them this week.

Chase video is DONE

2009-02-06T22:30:00.002-06:00

My chase video "Mother Nature Rage & Grace Vol. I" is pretty much done, just a few small finishing touches to make and then it will be officially done. The run time is only 26 minutes and includes mostly pictures (with some video) from my chases from 2006-2008 as well as offseason pics from 2006-2008. If you want a copy of it let me know via email, I prefer a trade but will send you a copy, trade or not, if you let me know. No fancy cover, no chapters, no main menu, just 26 minutes of nature's rage and grace. So, if you want a copy, my email is listed below, I will be shipping by Monday so let me know soon!!! Email:
midwestchaser@yahoo.com

Tim V's "Storm Chasing Handbook Second Edition"

2009-02-05T15:51:00.002-06:00

I got my copy of Tim Vasquez's new edition of the "Storm Chasing Handbook" and just thumbing through it it looks great. I'm really looking forward to sitting down and reading some of it this weekend. I was able to get a free copy of it. Back in the fall of '08 Tim posted a thread over at ST asking for some quotes from chasers about vaious things, so I figured what the heck, I'll send him an email with a couple of things, if he uses them awesome, if not, oh well. He ended up using both of them, one was just an opinion on my favorite weather graphics source (College of Dupage) and the other was just a short paragraph about me getting caught with my pants down on May 31, 2008 and getting ingulfed with hail and saying to always know what direction the storm is moving. So, Tim sent out a copy to everyone who helped out with some quotes. I also have the first edition of the book and that was a pretty cool read, and this one looks even better. I think everyone should have a copy, whether you're John Q. Public or an experienced chaser, its all good info. Anyways, just thought I would mention that as this is something I have been looking forward to getting since November.

And an update on my chase vid. I know I said it would be done last week, and it almost was, but my computer caught a virus that is making it slow and a pain in the ass to work on the video. BUT, I am going to strap my arse down tonight and finish it. Its pathetic how little work I have to do to finish and how long its taken me to do that little bit. However, I have come up with a couple new ideas for a few things in the video that I'm hoping will be pretty cool. So, I will finish it tonight or tomorrow and then try to get them mailed out this weekend or on Monday. I do have a deal (and motivation to get this done this weekend): If I dont finish it this weekend I'll let everyone who wanted a video get a free shot on me out on the plains this season. Sound fair? ;) Seriously tho, I will try my best to finish it tonight.

Extreme Lake Effect Snow

2009-02-02T15:07:00.002-06:00

Lots of areas along the shores of Lake Superior are going to see snow, including the north and south shores. Winter Storm Warnings along the north shore, Lake Effect warnings for the south shore. I was reading one of the lake effect warnings in the UP of Michigan and the text is calling for the potential of extreme snowfall rates of 5 inches per hour. I dunno for sure, but that seems pretty unheard of. I've experienced some extreme rates up in that area of 3-5 inches per hour with thundersnow but it didnt last long. I cant imagine being in that kind of snow for an extended amount of time. Just think, 10 inches of snow in two hours. It would be impossible to keep roads/sidewalks clear. Anyways, I usually dont post about lake effect snow this far away but I thought that kind of snow was worth mentioning. Places in the UP of Michigan can expect up to 18 inches of snow by tomorrow, with areas along the north shore seeing up to 10 inches.

Record high?

2009-01-31T16:44:00.004-06:00

According to the weather station at the Blaine Airport our highest hourly temp was 46F. Looking at the almanac on MyCast that I have on my phone 46 is the record high for today which was set in 1995 so we might have a tie today if the 46 that was reported is actually counted. Noone really expected it to get this warm today, the NWS saying that highs would be around 35 with clouds and patchy light freezing drizzle in the morning. I was up at 9:00 to get ready for work and it was clear out by that time so I'm guessing the clouds/drizzle that was expected cleared out much faster than expected which allowed the sun to be out longer and thus warm temps more than anticipated. It felt awesome out there today, on my way to get some lunch I drove with my window down. After the cold January we had I think we deserved a day like today. Unforunately it wont last as tomorrow it supposed to be cloudy and breezy with highs around 30 and colder on Mon/Tues with highs only around 15. Still no storms in the near future so it should stay pretty quiet thru atleast the first week of February.

I was looking at the surface obs in areas under a Red Flag Warning down in Kansas and the air down there is unbelievably dry. I think I was at the surface obs for Goodland, KS and they had an air temp of 70 with a dewpoint of -6 creating a relative humidity of 4%. :o

What is that?

2009-01-28T22:07:00.002-06:00

Oh, its snow, something we havent seen in a long time here in Minnesota. I'm not sure on exact measurements, but January has been very dry this year in my memory. We picked up a quick half inch here, enough to allow me to play with the hand brake in the empty part of the Cub Foods parking lot after picking up a couple boxed dinners (the same dinner I nearly upchucked myself after seeing the weird Yankton TOR video Bill posted from 5/5/07). Streets aren't bad, I'm sure the highways aren't bad, snow has ended, just a quick dusting to remind us that Minnesota Januaries arent always about extreme cold. But, other than this I dont see much more snow for a while, certainly nothing big (or even any clipper systems) through the beginning of February. A nice brief thaw this weekend with highs maybe getting to 32, otherwise still very boring. Not much else to say except that I took some pics for my photo class and we are developing the film this week. I will probably just bring the film in to Proex or something and have them make prints of the negatives, it will take way to long to get the pics on here if I wait until after I enlarge them myself. But I should have a couple cool ones (I hope) but we will see.

Small warm up?

2009-01-28T00:11:00.004-06:00

Still very boring weather and I dont have much to say. I just thought I would mention that temps here in central Minnesota should rebound back in to the 20's to near 30 over the weekend which will be very welcome after the recent cold snap. Although temps weren't nearly as bad for this recent arctic air plunge, it was still colder than most people wanted. But now it looks like temps should stay around average for a while. No big storms in the near future, hardly any snow at all actually. The most exciting thing right now is that January is almost over which is historically the coldest month here in Minnesota, so I am definately glad it is ending. Also, I am actually starting to notice a change in daylight a small bit, only a few months till chase season will be really starting here in the upper midwest. Like I said, not much to say, most of this post really isnt anything important but I havent updated in a few days.
On a more interesting note, my chase vid is almost done. I realize I have been saying this for a while but I should be done with it by Saturday at the latest. Email me for a copy:
midwestchaser@yahoo.com

Boring Weather

2009-01-25T11:06:00.002-06:00

The weather has been extremely boring here in Minnesota for the last week or so. About the only interesting thing about the weather right now is the arctic air that is again sitting over us. But atleast it looks like a minor warm up back to the mid 20's by midweek. Taking a quick look at the GFS I dont see much of anything happening storm wise in to the first couple days of February, atleast certainly not for the rest of January. I'm getting sick of winter already, the small warm up we had last week really changed my mindset from winter mode to thinking about spring.

Anyway, I'm glad to see that Metro Skywarn has posted the dates for their spotter classes. I will most likely be attending the March 14th one in Blaine, as that one is usually one a lot of the chasers from the area go to. Anyone else planning on going to that one? One bad thing I just realized yesterday is that I might not be able to make it to the 2009 Minnesota Skywarn Workshop. We are going to have a wedding at work that Saturday and it would be a pretty tough day for me to try to get out of. We will see, I definately want to make it but I'm not 100% right now

Lastly, I made some major progress on Mother Nature: Rage & Grace. At this point, its mostly just offseason pics I need to put in, and I have already started getting them in there so it should be done some time this week.

Basketball team forfeits a win?!?

2009-01-23T10:35:00.008-06:00

Sorry for staying off-topic but I had to post this. I was monkeying around on Yahoo when I saw this article. Here is a little preview for an idea of what I'm talking about:

DALLAS -- A Texas high school girls basketball team on the winning end of a 100-0 game has a case of blowout remorse.
Now officials from The Covenant School say they are trying to do the right thing by seeking a forfeit and apologizing for the margin of victory.

Now, I admit 100-0 is bit over the top, but come on, thats the way sports are! I cant believe people are making such a big deal out of this. Ok, the losing team only had 20 girls, but that's why you dont play against one of the best teams in the state! They haven't won a game in four seasons, isnt that maybe a sign that they should join a different conference, one that they can actually compete in?!? Instead of making the players from the winning team feel like crap, why dont they make the A.D. of the losing team feel like crap for letting it happen if this is such a big deal to the parents? Players should not regret a win, EVER, no matter what the score is. A win is a win, and they should never feel like they they played too well. This is just another example of how so many parents now want everyone to be equal and let everybody win. This isnt the way sports are, sometimes you're gonna get creamed, thats the way it is. I can remember plenty of times I was on a team and got killed. Heck, I was on a church basketball team and we lost 114-14 to another church, and NOONE complained, and we were much younger than the players in the article. We didnt cry, we didnt sulk around, our parents weren't compaining. It just amazes me how soft some people are. Did the winning team run up the score? Yea, probably (but for all we know they had their subs in and still got to 100), and I dont like running up the score, but is it enough of a reason to make them forfeit the game? In my opinion, not at all. The losing team obviously should not have even been playing this game, and that is the fault of whoever runs the basketball league for the state of Texas, dont take a win away from the players because some idiot scheduled a huge mismatch.

And oh yea, more arctic air saturday thru monday.........

Update on my chase vid.

2009-01-22T18:46:00.004-06:00

Not that my vid. is a huge production but I thought I would let everyone know I have gotten some major work done. The dates that I have the most pics for are pretty much done and the little bit of video I have is getting worked on as we speak. After this its pretty much just finishing up the last few chases of 2008 and then the off season pics (which should take a while but if I actually work on it it shouldnt be too bad). I'm shooting for it to be done by January 30th. Sorry its taken so long, my time management for this project hasnt been great. Again, if you havent told me yet and you want a copy, leave a comment or drop me a line.
midwestchaser@yahoo.com

Reunited and it feels so good

2009-01-20T23:28:00.001-06:00

Ok, so the title is extremely cliche and I feel sort of queer for saying it but its true. I was finally reunited tonight with my film SLR camera. I let my friend borrow it for a photo class last year and didnt get it back til after work today. I need it for a photo class at ARCC. It should be mostly stuff I already know but when you only need 3 more credits to be full time and nothing else works in your schedule you will take what you can get. The camera body is a Nikon N65 with a 28-80 mm Nik(k?)or lense. Its old school and I desperately need to upgrade to a DSLR but there are other things I need for chasing first. There are some things I have been wanting to try out but the Canon Powershot I usually use doesnt have the aperature settings I need. I'll be posting some of the pics I take and I should be able to get some good ones, although all the ones for class will be black and white. Time to start lining the fridge with film. I wonder how long its been since most of you have had to do that?!?

On a different note: I know I'll get a few rotten fruit thrown at me for saying this but I skipped my meteorology class today to watch the inauguration. I never thought I would be so intrigued by this kind of event but this was so much different than any other inauguration so far. His speech was simply awesome...

The real definition of F.O.R.D.

2009-01-19T19:00:00.000-06:00

Im sure many have heard this before but the name of the car company Ford is really an acronym for Fixed Or Repaired Daily. I have a 2000 Ford Focus that I got in 2006 thru a police auction in Brooklyn Center. Since then we have put in upwards of $1000 of repairs in to it and there is still a couple hundred that still need to go in to it before the '09 season. The last problem that we had to get fixed was an oil leak that got oil in ot all the gears in the engine. This cost about $400 including labor. While the car was in the shop for the engine problems, the mechanics realized that my suspension was f*cked up (and that's not an exaggeration). However, there was a recall on the suspension for the model car I had. The problem? The recall expired 2 months we brought it in. This was another $400 for a new suspension. In the summer of 2007 we had to replace the windshield (and not from hail mind you). For some unknown reason that I will probably never figure out, there was a spider web crack all around my rear view mirror and the rear view mirror actually popped off. It was like a baseball or something hit it on the outside right where the mirror is. This was another $100-$200. Then of course the piece of rubber that is on the outside of the windshield at the bottom that prevents water from leaking in to the car comes loose on the passenger side, so whenever it rains hard I get a nice big nasty puddle of water in the passenger side floor. This is one of those things I still have to fix but I did get an estimate last fall which was about $130. Now this may not seem like a big deal, but keep in mind my car is a 2 door. To get to the back seats on the passenger side you pull a lever to get the backrest of the seat to spring forward. Of course the lever got stripped and doesnt work any more, so now I have to use a vise grip to get it to work. The piece that moves the vents from side to side on the passenger side broke so now air just blows straight out. Im pretty sure I have another leak in my engine (and I just got the other leak fixed in October). And just last night, I was backing out of the driveway and I cranked the wheel to the right just to have a little fun. What happens? Somehow the damn fan shift to the right and hits something whenever I turn it on. So, in just over 2 years the car has already need about $2000 in repairs. Right now, it is nowhere close to being ready for chase season, I have absolutely no faith in it handling trips at this point. Even if we were to sell the car and get something new/more reliable we still have a couple hunder bucks before we could sell it. Fixed Or Repaired Daily, seems about right.

I found this interesting...

2009-01-17T02:03:00.001-06:00

I was thinking about a winter storm that went through norhtern Minnesota a week or two ago and I remembered seeing a product from the Marquette NWS that was called a "Heavy Freezing Spray Warning" for counties along Lake Superior in the UP of Michigan. Unforutnately my computer was acting up and I couldnt read the warning text. Anyways, I thought this was pretty interesting since I have never thought about anything like this but I suppose it can be problematic. Im guessing they are talking about the spray of the waves crashing on shore, I dont know what else they could be talking about. I've never seen or heard about this, but then again we dont have to deal with it here in central Minnesota. So I was wondering, what is the criteria for a "Heavy Freezing Spray Warning"? I wonder if its some sort of weather phenomona that requires a specifc set of weather conditions? Or is it something that happens rather regularly along the shores of the Great Lakes? I was also wondering what problems these conditions would create? I mean, I would assume that these conditions and consequent problems are pretty much confined to right along the shore but maybe winds could carry the mist/spray farther inland? If anyone knows I think it would be pretty interesting to learn about, especially because like I said before it not something we ever really think about for those of us who dont live along the shores of the GL.

Lutsen Trip

2009-01-14T20:26:00.000-06:00

Ok, now that I finally got the video problems worked out I'll post a recap of our trip. We were in Lutsen from January 6th-January 9th to go snowboarding at the Lutsen mountains. All in all there were 7 of us that went up for the 3 day, 4 night trip. 4 of them went up during the day on Tuesday, a friend and I had to work till 10:00 Tuesday night. We got on I35 a little after 11:00 pm for the 4 hour drive. We made good time till we got on Highway 61 on the other side of Duluth. Just after getting on 61 we saw deer hanging around on the side of the road so we decided to play it safe and drive well under the 55 mph speed limit and we never went over 45 mph the rest of the way. We got to the Solbakken resort where we were staying. We didnt get up there till 4:00 am, and didnt get to bed till 5:00 am. Woke up at about 9:00 am Wednesday morning. I headed in to town with a friend to pick up the lift tickets and get some breakfast while the other guys got ready. We got back to the cabin at about 9:45 to pick up the other guys. We left to head back to Lutsen to snowboard. So, the way this resort has their roads back to the highway setup is there is one road that goes pretty much straight to the highway but is a bit steep in the snow. The other path goes around the rest of the cabins but is not nearly as steep. So, we decide to take the shorter way since we were in an SUV. We make it up the incline just fine but once we were are about to get to the highway there is a propane truck filling a truck that is right in our way and there is no way to get around him. We think, son of a b!tch, but whatever, we'll just put it in reverse and take the other way around. Well, for those of you who have never been to Solbakken the roads are EXTREMELY narrow. We almost get back to the other road when all of a sudden we start sliding down the little embankment on the side of the road. Not that the embankment was steep, but when its covered in snow it is very slick. We try putting it in drive to try to get out, but we only slide further in the embankment. So, we get out, we try pushing it out, we try digging it out. Finally our buddy goes to get his SUV to try to pull the other car out. Well, the SUV that orginally got stuck is still far enough in the narrow road that there is hardly any room for the other SUV to get by. Of course, our buddy who was trying to pull the first SUV out also got stuck. Luckily it didnt take long to get him out. But first car took forever. To make a long and frustrating story short, we broke our only shovel digging out the undercarrage of the car. In the end, we dug out enough of a hole and filled it with some pieces of wood from the wood pile from our cabin while 2 people pushed the car sideways and 2 people pushed from the front. All this took about an hour and I honestly thought we were never going to get it out. But after this we get to Lutsen. The good thing about the day is that we got to enjoy lake effect snow the entire day and we had some nice fresh powder. We boarded until about 3:30 then headed back to the cabin. Went to bed around midnight and woke up around 9:00 Thursday morning. We left for the mountains around 9:45 and thankfully this time we didnt get stuck. I did bring my video camera to do some filming of my friends doin some jumps and I will post atleast one of the videos. Thursday was nice and sunny so we got both types of great weather for skiing/snowboarding, nice fresh snow and nice warm sun. We went back to the cabin around 3:30 again and went out to eat at the Cascade restaurant just to our north on 61. I didnt get to bed until about 4:00 and had to wake up at 8:00 am Friday to get ready to head back home since I had to work at 3:00. Luckily, the winter storm that was supposed hit central Minnesota went south, otherwise I wouldn't have gotten back until well after 3:00, since we didnt get back til 2:30 even in the good weather. So that's a brief recap, I'll post one of the videos and a couple pics:

Pics from a chalet and from out cabin. God I want to be back there

Having Some Trouble

2009-01-14T19:56:00.001-06:00

I'm having some trouble changing the file type of my video from a trip to Lutsen. The default file type that comes from my video camera is .MOD and I cant for the life of me figure out how to switch it to .mpeg or something similar. Websites like Facebook and programs like Windows Media Player, Adobe, and others dont support .MOD and like I said I cant figure out how to switch it. Any advice is greatly appreciated!!

EDIT: Scratch the original post, I figured out alteast one way to do it, although there may be a faster way to do it. What I ended up doing is putting the RAW file in to Windows Movie Maker and publishing the video which then puts it in to .wmv format.

1/12/09 Alberta Clipper

2009-01-12T13:39:00.000-06:00

An Alberta Clipper is moving through the Upper Midwest today bringing a large swath of 2-5 inches of snow accumlation in ND/SD/IA/MN/WI along with very strong winds sustained 25-35 mph and gusting to 50 mph in some places. Although the snow accumulation isnt huge, there is plenty of loose snow from previous snowfalls to create whiteout conditions thus Blizzard Warnings have been issued for large potions of ND and SD along with northwest IA and along the SD/MN border. Winds should subside late this evening in ND and SD but continue over MN/IA/WI. Along with the snow this system is bringing extremely cold temps to ND and northern MN with low temps potentially getting down to -30 degrees F and combined with the winds associated with the clipper will bring wind chills from -40 to -55 degrees F. Wind chill warnings have been posted for northeastern Minnesota and look for many schools in that area to be closed or atleast delayed start due to the extreme wind chills. Another system will impact the same general area Tuesday night with a few more inches of snow possible.

Side notes:
I am still working on getting the Lutsen pics/video from my video camera. Im having a helluva a time converting the file type on the videos. The current file type is .MOD and I want to change it to .wmv but I havent figured out how yet. Any advice? Once I get this figured out I will have a recap of the trip which was an awesome time!

Also, my chase video "Mother Nature Rage & Grace" is still in the works. My computer decided to crap out on me right before I left for Lutsen so I couldnt get any work done before I left. Procrastination and the trip itself are also reasons I havent finished it yet. But I promise it will be done soon. Again, if you like a copy, either by trade or just a copy of it, let me know via email: midwestchaser@yahoo.com

So frickin tired

2009-01-09T22:37:00.000-06:00

I headed up to Lutsen, MN for a few days with 6 friends for a snowboarding trip which is why i havent updated lately. Of course my laptop decided to fail me the day we were leaving so I wasnt able to get my daily fix of weather info. We left Tuesday, came back today, snowboarded Wednesday and Thursday. HELLUVA time! Nothing beats kicking it with friends out on the slopes and then going back to the cabin and having some fun. We stayed at the Solbakken cabins which were suprisingly cheap for how big it was. I would type a longer post but my brain is fried right now, lack of sleep plus a 4 1/2 hour ride home and then right away going to work for 7 hours. Ugh, I'll post more with some pics later, we have a few stories from this trip.

The inconvenience that is Wal-Mart

2008-12-30T12:14:00.000-06:00

Ok, so I was hanging out with some friends a couple days before Christmas. They were going over to WalMart to get a couple gifts so i figured i would go along since i needed to get something for my brother anyway. I bought the new Batman movie "The Dark Knight" and when i went to pay for it, for some reason they gave me a $5 gift card. I didn't want it in the first place since i hate going to WalMart and only do so if my friends have to go, and i usually dont buy anything anyways so this gift card is just a waste. But i figure ok, cool, there will probably be some random time i will use this. So, i get home, throw the gift card where ever, and wrap the movie. Well, i turned out my brother had just bought The Dark Knight. Sooooo, I go back over to WalMart yesterday to return the movie. Now, i was already pissed that i had to spend more time in WalMart, but when i try to return the movie the girl asks "Do you have the gift card?". I'm thinking, WTF? Then i remember the stupid $5 gift card that I DIDNT EVEN WANT. Apparently you need to have it to return the movie. I go back home to try to find it, and of course i dont know where i put it because i didnt think it was going to be that big of a deal. Now my options are, either keep the movie (im not a big fan of Batman movies), tear apart the house to find the damn gift card, or try to give them a five dollar bill in place of the gift card. Looks like im going to be tearing thru the house, i WILL NOT pay WalMart an extra $5 for something i didnt want in the first place. Oh, and this isnt the end. I go back to WalMart after a quick search for the card at my house. I was going to see my brother last night anyways so i wanted to give him his belated present then instead of having to drive out to St Louis Park. So, i find another movie "Burn After Reading" and i go to the self check out to pay for it. I only the movie to pay for so i figured it would be quick. Nope, wrong. I scan the movie and some message pops up saying something about an employee having to log in. So, a girl comes over to put in the code or whatever. After she does that its supposed to go back to shopper mode so that i can pay. you think this happens? NOPE! the damn machine goes retarded and it takes a good 5 minutes for the girl to get it back to shopper mode. Have I found the gift card yet? NOPE. am i still out $20? YUP. THANKS WALMART!

Merry Christmas!

2008-12-24T13:31:00.000-06:00

I want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas. Hope everyone is having a good day with the family or whatever. My aunt, uncle, and cousins are going to be here from Los Angeles so it should be interesting to watch them deal with the snow and cold (well, for us its warm compared to the last few days). I am really looking forward to see them since they dont get the chance to come out here much.

I just got my Christmas shopping done and all i can say is is that it's a frickin mad house out there, people driving like tards, people parking in 3 spots, I'm just glad I'm done now and can relax the rest of the day.

Looks like maybe a little snow tomorrow night but nothing big, a strong low pressure area may affect us Friday and Saturday with some snow and freezing rain, bringing severe weather to the central US.

Again, MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

Hmmm...

2008-12-23T10:22:00.000-06:00

It seems like every season a different product of all the models goes on crack. Whether it is moisture, isntability, shear, whatever, at one point or another all the models are going to blow a product WAAAY out of proportion. This winter season, it looks like it is the precip product. We have had many snow events (i wouldnt call them storms) this year already and the models have overhyped the totals on pretty much every event. Yesterday was a perfect example. Models showed 4-5 inches for much of central and southern Minnesota, but looking at the reports for last night's snowfall most of the area saw 2-3 inches with a few isolated 3-3.5 inch reports but nothing over 4". This isnt the only time this season this has happened. Last weekend the models were showing up to 8" possible here in eastern Minnesota. How much did we actually get? ~4", just enough to have warranted a winter weather advisory, not the winter storm warning that was issued for the entire area. Further west they received even less but were still in the winter storm warning. Now this is not a knock on the NWS, there is no way to know if the models are going to pan out this time and be on crack the next. This is just my theory (and rant) about how the models like to lie. So, for the rest of the season, until i see something different, i am going to take whatever the models show for precip and cut it in half, that will roughly be what we will actually end up getting.

Downright cold

2008-12-21T12:40:00.000-06:00

You know its cold when Minnesotans start b!tching about the cold. It wouldnt be THAT bad if we didnt have the wind, but subzero temps coupled with winds of 10-20 mph the windchills dip waaay below zero.

I measured 4" of new snow last night here in New Brighton, although we may have actually gotten more but it was hard to get a precise measurement due to the blowing and drifting. It was definately a pain in the ass to plow the sidewalks at work last night after that front passed, temps dropped 10+ degrees and winds really picked up.
More snow on store for us by Tuesday, although im not sure how much because the COD is having problems with their website after doing some work to it and the models are nonfunctional right now.

Last thing, I gave my chase video a name, until i think of something more clever it will be Mother Nature Rage & Grace. It is still very much a work in progress but i have gotten a lot done since i last mentioned it. If you want a copy or trade let me know. I'll let you know right now the quality wont be great but it should atleast be decent.

FINALLY!

2008-12-17T11:17:00.000-06:00

The city has finally flooded a couple hockey rinks AND gotten the nets out which means i will actually be able to do something besides sit in front of the computer all day! This should also really help take away some of the SDS (although it hasnt been as bad lately with the snow we get every other day). Man, i've been waiting for this since the beginning of the month, and its been cold enough for them to have the rinks flooded since late November, so all i can say is, again, FFFFIIIIINNNNAAALLLLYYYYYYYY!!!!!

Like i mentioned before I am now in between semesters at Anoka Ramsey Community College so I have no classes from now til January 12th which kicks a$$! Had 3 finals on Monday which i had to do on 4 hours of sleep plus i worked for 6 1/2 hours the night before. As if the finals werent enough stress, the roads SUCKED Monday morning and the normally 20 minute drive turned in to a 45 minute drive and cut it pretty damn close to being late which would not have been good.

Lastly, winter storm to pound the midwest, yada yada yada. Significant ice expected in Des Moines and Chicago with 12+ inches for Milwaukee. Will post more on it later, but i need a brake, i'm afraid im going to get carpel tunnel syndrome because of all the typing i've been doing for the winter storms that we have gotten already ;)

MAJOR BLIZZARD CONTINUES TO POUND MIDWEST

2008-12-14T12:53:00.000-06:00

A major blizzard is continuing to wreck havoc across all of North Dakota, most of South Dakota, and western Minnesota. Most roads across North Dakota are closed due to near zero visibility. This includes I94 between Jamestown, ND and Fergus Falls, MN and all of I29 in North Dakota. Many state highways are also being closed in this region with many more closures expected as the storm progresses. There are too many areas affected to be able to go in to much detail so i will just say a blizzard continues for ALL of North Dakota, all of South Dakota except for southeast South Dakota, and western Minnesota. This storm has effectively shut down the entire state of North Dakota. The windchill at Grand Forks at 11:00 was -44F. Winds will continue to gust to as high as 50 mph, with the possibility of locally higher winds. Northern Minnesota is looking at anywhere from 10-18 inches of snow with some places already receiving almost 9" and more heavy snow to come. There is a decent chance for some places to pick up 2 feet of snow, especially in the arrowhead of Minnesota. Although blizzard warnings are not in effect for these areas (the Twin Ports area is under a bilzzard warning) there are times when these places could see near whiteout conditions. Central Minnesota could see up to a foot of snow including the cities of St Cloud, Willmar, Sauk Centre, and Hinckley. Anywhere south of this line will see lighter amounts with the Twin Cities picking up 3" at the most on the north side, 1-2" on the south side, a dusting to an inch south of the cities.

MAJOR WINTER STORM SATURDAY NIGHT THRU MONDAY

2008-12-13T17:02:00.000-06:00

A major winter storm will affect a large area of the upper midwest this weekend. Winter Weather Advisories, Winter Storm Warnings, and even Blizzard Warnings have all been posted for large portions of the Dakotas, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. Areas of South Dakota, eastern North Dakota, and the northern half of Minnesota could see up to a foot or more of snow by the time the system pulls away with northeast SD, eastern ND, and western MN having the potential to see sustained winds of 35 mph resulting in blizzard conditions. The area that looks like it is going to take the hardest hit from this storm is the Arrowhead of Minnesota where there is the possibility to see a foot and a half of snow by Monday Morning along with possible blizzard conditions. For us here in the Twin Cities it looks like we could see anywhere from 1 inch in the south metro to 4 inches in the north, with snow totals increasing the farther north and west you go. In the Twin Cities we will start out with a cold rain in the morning with a transition to snow by noon as a powerful cold front plunges through the area dropping temps from above freezing in the morning to near or below zero by morning on Monday. Winds will be a problem throughout the region and as the temps dip closer to subzero, windchills will become an increasingly bigger problem. Will update as the system unfolds...

Update on Upper Midwest snowstorm

2008-12-08T13:40:00.001-06:00

A potent winter storm is still anticipated from tonight thru Wednesday covering areas from South Dakota and Iowa east through Michigan and Ohio. A large area could see storm total snowfall in excess of 6 inches extending from Minnesota and Iowa east in to Michigan. Winter Weather Advisories have been posted for much of the mentioned area and Winter Storm Warnings have been issued for southeast Minnesota, northeast Iowa, and much of southern Wisconsin. Along with the snow, some areas in Iowa and Illinois could see freezing rain with accumulations possibly exceeding 1/4". Although it is hard to see exactly where the freezing line will be, it looks like the southern half of Iowa and southern 2/3 of Illinois will see mostly rain with some snow mixing in late. The snow should be over for the western half of the area by Tuesday afternoon, and the rest of the area between Tuesday night and Wednesday. Will update more as the storm develops.

Possible significant snow Monday and Tuesday

2008-12-07T22:55:00.000-06:00

Thanks to Beau G. for pointing this out. WRF and GFS have been showing a large winter storm slamming Iowa, southeast Minnesota, southern half of Wisconsin, northern Illinois, and Michigan with a half foot or more of snow possible. Latest runs by the WRF are pushing this area of precip farther north in to the southern half of Minnesota, most of Wisconsin, northern Iowa, and Michigan. Looks like from the Twin Cities north could pick up to 5" inches (although the NWS is only calling for 1") and areas south of the Twin Cities could see over 6" if the models pan out. The one thing i am kind of skeptical about is that the area of precip the WRF shows just explodes between 12z and 18z which i dont think is really going to happen, i think it is more of a glitch in this run. waiting for the GFS to update and will post more later...

Update on weekend Alberta Clippers

2008-12-04T18:30:00.000-06:00

Still looks like east central Minnesota and western Wisconsin is going to get hit by an Alberta Clipper Friday night. The NWS is saying 2-4 inches are likely but the latest GFS and WRF are pulling the system farther west and bringing down the precip that the storm produces. Someitmes the afternoon runs tend to do this for whatever reason so we will check the morning runs for both the GFS and WRF and also check out the RUC. However, right now im going to go with what i said yesterday with storm total snowfall of 2" at most (although i will be hoping for more). Even if we dont get much snow tomorrow night, we will have another shot at some snow with another clipper sweeping through Sunday night and Monday morning. Again, the models have played down this system in the afternoon runs, earlier runs had this system pumping out up to 5" of snow by noon Monday. We'll just have to wait till tomorrow morning and see. I will post another update tomorrow morning.

Snow in the forecast, then cold

2008-12-03T18:09:00.001-06:00

Looks like we will have a chance for some light snow Friday night and Saturday although i dont see it being anything big. My thinking is that it is going to be 1/2 to maybe 1" of snow with a quick clipper system coming from NoDak and moving down in to Illinois. Doesnt look like it will be anything big, i would see at the very most
2" but i think it will be around an inch. Im suprised to see the NWS having a 60% chance of snow for this system since it isnt a big one and it is still a few days out. Then, the GFS is showing another bigger clipper heading in the same general direction moving thru Sunday night and Monday. Although this is still 5 days out, if things dont change too much we may see 3-5 inches of snow here in the Twin Cities. After this system moves out we will briefly warm up in to the 30's but the GFS shows a big polar push southward by the end of the 10 day period. We all know that when the GFS goes beyond 180 hours it goes crazy, but the trend for 6/7 day period also shows overnight temps getting gradually colder each night and this area of colder temps. moves farther south each night. so, IF the GFS holds up we could very well see subzero highs by the end of next week (starting around Dec 12th and going till who knows when) and this cold push could extend well in to the central plains and east in to the Ohio River area. Now, like i have said before, this is a long time out and things will change but the models are already trending towards a major cool down. Check back for updates...

First snowfall of season

2008-12-01T11:35:00.001-06:00

We got our first snowfall that has actually stuck around for more than a day here in the Twin Cities. About 1/2 inch to maybe an inch fell Saturday night and Sunday morning. We got a really brief clip of the storm that dumped up to 12 inches southern Wisconsin, northern Illinoius, and the LP of Michigan. Doesnt look like much is going to happen any time soon, GFS showing a pretty quiet pattern for the first 10 days of December but that can always change. Maybe another inch or two Wednesday night if we are lucky, otherwise no big storms are brewing anywhere that i have seen.

New video camera

2008-11-28T16:07:00.000-06:00

Battling the Black Friday crowds paid off for me for a year. Headed out to look at the sales Ultimate Electronics, Circuit City, and Best Buy had on video cameras. I found a nice camera over at Best Buy and i didnt like the selection at the other stores so i went ahead and bought it. Its a JVC 30 GB HDD 35x optical zoom laser touch camera that i bought for $320 including tax. It is a huge upgrade from my old tape non-digital video camera i have been borrowing from my aunt (i dont think i've used that camera since 2006 since it is pretty much obsolete). My new camera has up to 7 hours of space from video which should be enough since i dont plan on recording an entire chase from start to finish. I need to pick up an extra battery for it (maybe a christmas gift) but other than that i should be set for video for '09. I also need to find a dash cam mount (along with the current project of finding/building a laptop mount). If anyone has any suggestions for dash cam mounts i would love to hear them!

HAPPY TURKEY DAY!

2008-11-27T10:51:00.000-06:00

I hope everyone is having a safe and happy Thanksgiving. I am down at my sister's home with my brother and my other sister getting the food ready for tonight when the rest of the family comes down. Again I hope everyone is having a good Thanksgiving!

Damn it

2008-11-25T03:44:00.001-06:00

Im trying to put together a compilation chase video from my chases from 2006-2008 but i realized i didnt take much video in that time which i am really now regretting. Im going to try to put this video together but it will be mostly still pics so we'll see how it turns out. i guess this is just one more thing to keep in mind for next season.

Bah

2008-11-21T23:41:00.000-06:00

Uggghhh, Christmas movies are already starting on some of the channels and they look about as bad as some ot the SciFi channel "original" movies. Anyways, i think i may have lost the memory card from the 2006 and part of the 2007 season which really sucks since i really wanted to watch a video i took from August 5th, 2006. The memory card's gotta be around here somewhere but im going to have a helluva time finding it. Also, im looking for some ideas for a laptop and video camera mount. if you have any ideas PLEASE let me know! i was looking at some music stands at work and was trying to think about how i could duplicate that. Gonna head over to Menards or Ax Man soon and see if i can figure something out but if you have any opinions or ideas feel free to leave a comment!

Question and an old video

2008-11-21T00:01:00.000-06:00

I was driving around the neighborhood last week and saw a car with plates WX0SVR and had ham radio antennas on the roof. if i recall right it was a white Crown Vic. and i was just wondering if anyone knows who this was and would like to know the other weather weenies around here. I dont think i have ever seen another car equipped like that in New Brighton (although i shouldnt be suprised).

On a different note i was going thru some old stuff from May 31, 2008 and came across a short video i took driving on I94 towards Minneapolis. I really wish i had started recording earlier but i was concentrating more on driving. Anyways, its nothing special but it brings me back good memories of that day and helps me get thru atleast one more day of winter. Just before i started recording i had been in the hail core for a good 15-20 minutes. Its suprising how loud the hail was for only being about quarter size.

Wishlist for chase season '09

2008-11-20T10:44:00.001-06:00

SDS has hit pretty hard already so i've been giving a lot of thought to what i want to buy this offseason for chasing next season. I highly doubt i will actually end up buying all these (although that would be awesome if i did) but these are what i want:
1. Ham radio (after nearly 3 years of procrastinating its probably time to get this)
2. Truckers antenna (for whatever reason i seemed to always be out of Verizon's territory last here, hopefully this will help)
3. Laptop mount (what a pain in the ass it was to have to look all the way over to the passenger seat to look at my computer instead of having it right in front of me)
4. New cell phone (my phone's battery really took a beating from tethering this past season plus the 1000 times i dropped the phone isnt good for it either)
5. New video camera (mine as well join the 21st century and finally go digital, i was at Ultimate Electronics looking at some JVC cameras, they were all very nice and easy to function, the one i was looking at the most had a zoom of 25x!)
6. New camera (i need a DSLR, not so much for chasing but for other photography, i need something with a much larger f/stop than the Cannon Powershot i use now)
7. Verizon aircard (with the Verizon/Alltell merger the coverage for Verizon should be much better plus i had trouble with tethering, hoping this would be better, only down fall is you are looking at atleast $200)