Ma Nature Ready To Rumble & Live Chase Page v3.0
First off, one of THE funniest things I've watched in quite awhile. Brilliant!!! Thanks to Gilbert Sebenste for sharing this gem via Stormtrack.
Nostalgia Guy Reviews "Twister"
As I alluded to yesterday, the ECMWF was certainly the model of choice...moreso than I gave it credit for yesterday with regard to the upcoming bowling ball system starting this weekend. This is the most significant change in the upper air pattern we've seen in a very long time and something quite typical for this time of year. Maybe this is the vanguard to a more normal and active pattern for the southern and central plains!
Simply, the system is now pretty well agreed upon with the various models. Last night's 00Z and today's 12Z run are in very good agreement. This evening's 00Z runs just starting to trickle in suggest that this is a solid model forecast and suggesting a typical bias of a progessively slower and deeper upper air system. This trend will be something to watch as it is certainly common this far out.
Overall, the quality of moisture will be pretty poor through Sunday, so the threat of any severe thunderstorms will be practically zero. By Saturday, enough elevated moisture and lift might be enough to eek out a marginally severe storm, but nothing to get excited about. Sunday, the moisture really cranks up and sets us up for some stronger storms worthy of a local chase. However, continued slowing of the upper system as hinted at this evening will keep the main upper dynamics too far west. This might actually be good if we can get a weak impulse and a dryline to setup resulting in a better chance for more isolated storms.
Monday is going to be the big day. Everything comes together for a classic severe weather episode all throughout the plains with all modes likely. With the system possibly slowing down and digging more, this starts putting the Panhandle, West and Southwest Texas in the bullsye. It's still quite a ways out, so stay tuned for updates!!
As a result, I'm getting everything ready for the big kickoff event to the chase season. Today, I finished up modifications to my LIVE CHASE PAGE. I've slimmed it down but kept the functionality intact. Here are some key highlights:
1) Using ChaserTV this season, the video stream will automatically start when I initiate it in the field. It will also automatically restart if there is a feed problem. If there is a loss in the feed, the stream will freeze using the last key frame of the video and maintain a connection to the server waiting for the feed to start again. The result is you will not lose connection while waiting for me to get into a better data area. When I do, it will start again, automagically! :-) MO MORE HAVING TO REFRESH THE BROWSER!
2) Last year if there were any lost frames in the feed because of various issues with degraded connection speeds in the field, the video would crash and freeze up. Now, the frames are simply dropped as needed to maintain a continuous stream until the connection quality improves. Again, no crashing, freezing or having to refresh the browser.
3) My live GoogleMap tracker with radar overlay. Mine is different because the radar overlay uses individual NWS radar images instead of the national composite. This results in a much better and cleaner resolution of a particular storm instead of an image that is excessively smoothed and suffering from blending anomolies when combining the image from two or more radar sites. I developed the code to determine the radar site in closest proximity to my GPS position and automatically load it. Lastly, I developed a server side script that grabs severe thunderstorm and tornado warnings, parses them into a geocode format to display on the GoogleMap in a polygon format. They refresh every 30 seconds and expiring warnings are purged. So, alot of information on there along with my GPS position updated every 30 seconds. This makes easy for a viewer to see what storm I'm on and shooting video of.
4) Live status updates from the field. While I'm on the road, a click of the mouse will update my current situation. This will update dynamically on the page as you are watching it. I use a rough version of the homeland security color coded threat levels. :-) They are GRAY - no chase planned, GREEN - chase planned for the day, YELLOW - On the road to the target area, ORANGE - approaching a storm to intercept and live video streaming, RED - on the storm in the heat of battle with video streaming, WHITE - the fun is over and headed home. I'm currently developing a way to monitor the video feed as well and display a message. Not sure if this is entirely practical or feasible, so it's strictly in beta right now.
I'll be doing some vigorous stress testing the next couple of days, so don't get excitied if you see a RED status level or tornado warnings popping up. ;-) I'll be running a GPS simulator too, so don't think I'm doing 200mph down the road...you Stormchaser Police. LOL!! I just want to make sure all of the bugs are worked out prior to this weekend. It's just too much of a pain in the butt to create a test version of it, so I'm being lazy and doing it in production. Plus, certain things can't be tested locally on my machine.
And for any code thieves out there planning on stealing my code that I've worked my butt off to create and perfect, please make sure you have a nice hefty sum of money in the bank to pay me off when I sue you. I won't tolerate it in the least. As an IT professional for 11 years now, I know a thing or two about intellectual property laws and associated copyrights.
I thought about adding a way to do video blogs from the field, but for me, it just isn't practical due to the time and effort to do so. I have some ideas to really make it a faster and simpler process, but will tinker around with it as I have time.
Overall, I am pretty excited to have everything ready to roll BEFORE the main season kicks in. So, let's get the party started!
Nostalgia Guy Reviews "Twister"
As I alluded to yesterday, the ECMWF was certainly the model of choice...moreso than I gave it credit for yesterday with regard to the upcoming bowling ball system starting this weekend. This is the most significant change in the upper air pattern we've seen in a very long time and something quite typical for this time of year. Maybe this is the vanguard to a more normal and active pattern for the southern and central plains!
Simply, the system is now pretty well agreed upon with the various models. Last night's 00Z and today's 12Z run are in very good agreement. This evening's 00Z runs just starting to trickle in suggest that this is a solid model forecast and suggesting a typical bias of a progessively slower and deeper upper air system. This trend will be something to watch as it is certainly common this far out.
Overall, the quality of moisture will be pretty poor through Sunday, so the threat of any severe thunderstorms will be practically zero. By Saturday, enough elevated moisture and lift might be enough to eek out a marginally severe storm, but nothing to get excited about. Sunday, the moisture really cranks up and sets us up for some stronger storms worthy of a local chase. However, continued slowing of the upper system as hinted at this evening will keep the main upper dynamics too far west. This might actually be good if we can get a weak impulse and a dryline to setup resulting in a better chance for more isolated storms.
Monday is going to be the big day. Everything comes together for a classic severe weather episode all throughout the plains with all modes likely. With the system possibly slowing down and digging more, this starts putting the Panhandle, West and Southwest Texas in the bullsye. It's still quite a ways out, so stay tuned for updates!!
As a result, I'm getting everything ready for the big kickoff event to the chase season. Today, I finished up modifications to my LIVE CHASE PAGE. I've slimmed it down but kept the functionality intact. Here are some key highlights:
1) Using ChaserTV this season, the video stream will automatically start when I initiate it in the field. It will also automatically restart if there is a feed problem. If there is a loss in the feed, the stream will freeze using the last key frame of the video and maintain a connection to the server waiting for the feed to start again. The result is you will not lose connection while waiting for me to get into a better data area. When I do, it will start again, automagically! :-) MO MORE HAVING TO REFRESH THE BROWSER!
2) Last year if there were any lost frames in the feed because of various issues with degraded connection speeds in the field, the video would crash and freeze up. Now, the frames are simply dropped as needed to maintain a continuous stream until the connection quality improves. Again, no crashing, freezing or having to refresh the browser.
3) My live GoogleMap tracker with radar overlay. Mine is different because the radar overlay uses individual NWS radar images instead of the national composite. This results in a much better and cleaner resolution of a particular storm instead of an image that is excessively smoothed and suffering from blending anomolies when combining the image from two or more radar sites. I developed the code to determine the radar site in closest proximity to my GPS position and automatically load it. Lastly, I developed a server side script that grabs severe thunderstorm and tornado warnings, parses them into a geocode format to display on the GoogleMap in a polygon format. They refresh every 30 seconds and expiring warnings are purged. So, alot of information on there along with my GPS position updated every 30 seconds. This makes easy for a viewer to see what storm I'm on and shooting video of.
4) Live status updates from the field. While I'm on the road, a click of the mouse will update my current situation. This will update dynamically on the page as you are watching it. I use a rough version of the homeland security color coded threat levels. :-) They are GRAY - no chase planned, GREEN - chase planned for the day, YELLOW - On the road to the target area, ORANGE - approaching a storm to intercept and live video streaming, RED - on the storm in the heat of battle with video streaming, WHITE - the fun is over and headed home. I'm currently developing a way to monitor the video feed as well and display a message. Not sure if this is entirely practical or feasible, so it's strictly in beta right now.
I'll be doing some vigorous stress testing the next couple of days, so don't get excitied if you see a RED status level or tornado warnings popping up. ;-) I'll be running a GPS simulator too, so don't think I'm doing 200mph down the road...you Stormchaser Police. LOL!! I just want to make sure all of the bugs are worked out prior to this weekend. It's just too much of a pain in the butt to create a test version of it, so I'm being lazy and doing it in production. Plus, certain things can't be tested locally on my machine.
And for any code thieves out there planning on stealing my code that I've worked my butt off to create and perfect, please make sure you have a nice hefty sum of money in the bank to pay me off when I sue you. I won't tolerate it in the least. As an IT professional for 11 years now, I know a thing or two about intellectual property laws and associated copyrights.
I thought about adding a way to do video blogs from the field, but for me, it just isn't practical due to the time and effort to do so. I have some ideas to really make it a faster and simpler process, but will tinker around with it as I have time.
Overall, I am pretty excited to have everything ready to roll BEFORE the main season kicks in. So, let's get the party started!
posted by Steve Miller TX at 3/18/2009 10:23:00 PM
1 Comments:
I've been watching this one, too, and am excited for the opportunity to chase something worthwhile on Monday. Maybe I'll see you in passing! Good luck.
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