Texas Tailblogger

2011 - Coming Out Of Mothballs

2011-04-19T08:34:00.000-05:00

Stormchasing season is cranking up, and so will this blog. Look for some brief chase reports, photos, video, and later in June my chasecation journal as I pursue and point a lens at some of the most violent weather on earth across Tornado Alley! :-)

June 25, 2010 Video - Landspout Tornadoes

2010-06-30T08:51:00.002-05:00

Exit Stage Left

2010-06-27T07:34:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was a big disappointment in NE Nebraska. Storms fired, but were lethagic given the instability parameters and soon fizzled. I think aot of that is because the surface convergence was very weak in relation to a emoderate capping inversion. It did't help wither that the boundary layer flow was roughly parallel to the id level flow creating a unidirectional profile. Plus, I don't believe the mid level inpulse advertised by the short fuse models materialized. Even the hatched tornado threat in southern South Dakota fizzled compared to expectations.

So, now it is time to officially close out the season for me...exit stage left. 2010 has been the best chase season for me personally followed closely by 2005. I'm not into tornado counting, but I've seen close to 20 this year. I've seen some incredible structure as well along with an excellent CG lighning barrage a week ago. 2010 is also the first time since about 2005 that I've felt great physically which makes it alot more fun too.

I'm looking forward to getting back home and focusing on my efforts to get some income rolling in and eagerly preparing to pursue my meteorology degree starting this fall. I should know within a month if I am going to be able to stay in Amarillo/Lubbock or not. One of the advantages of my stormchasing excursion was to check out different areas to live in. To be honest, I wouldn't mind Denver, Colorado Springs, North Platte, Omaha, Grand Island, Kansas City, Wichita, and even Oklahoma City metro area. Fort Worth is stil on my list too for the sole reason of remaining in Texas. Dallas is certainly not even in consideration unless it's around Plano/Allen/McKinney with a stupendous job opportunity.

Now to get up and going this morning from Kearney, Nebraska. I've got a 9 hour drive ahead of me today...and if lucky, see a good storm or two down in Oklahoma and the Texas Panhandle along the way. It will be good to sleep in my own bed tonight and in general the comforts of home.

I've got some great images to do some HDR processing on as well as video to compile including some timelapse stuff which I'm eager to see how it turns out. That will help pass the dog days of summer. :-)

June 25, 2010 - Landspout Tornadoes!!!

2010-06-26T06:53:00.002-05:00

After a bust day in NE Colorado on the 24th and a down day the day before, I was really needing a good chase. Did I ever!

I caught three landspout tornadoes with some incredible funnels around Thedford, Nebraska. It was a tough forecast with the models really struggling. I finally decided on Thedford after analyzing surface data which were showing strong convergence and high instability around Thedford and ENE to the South Dakota border.

The convergence was strongest near Thedford where light northerly winds convereged with stronger S/SSW winds. The HRRR model FINALLY busted out an isolated cell there with it's early afternoon run. After seeing some towers beginning to go up in that area, the choice was clear. It was also a good setup for landspouts.

I got under the new updraft bases as they grew into storms and quickly produced the first funnel cloud NE of Thedford. It became tornado #1. Off to the west, the other cell produced one of the longest, thinnest funnels protruding out at least a mile from the updraft base. It was stunning as it was white in stark contrast against a blue sky and dark storm base. I had two funnels at the same time from two different cells!

Stayed with the westernmost storm as it produced a couple more landspout tornadoes. It came close to producing a mesocyclone tornado, but just couldn't do it. Not sure why it didn't.

Today, heading to southern South Dakota around Pierre/Murdo as my initial target....adjusting as the day wears on and the surface parameters become more clear.

Pictures!!!! (click on the arrow below to start the slideshow). If you have a problem, check out my gallery directly by CLICKING HERE.

Chasecation Update - 6/25

2010-06-25T12:38:00.000-05:00

SBusted in NE Colorado yesterday. Stayed the night in Sidney, Nebraska. After mulling data this morning, combined with driving distance, chose NE Nebraska today...target O'Neill. Hopefully, mother nature will play nice today!!! After 2 days of no storms, I'm jonesing for some scary looking clouds!! LOL!!

Looks one more chase day tomorrow at which point the tornado alley storm generation comes crashing to a close. Exit, stage left. That is my cue to head back home and get to work on finding work.

June 23 Pics - Down Day - Lake McConaughy

2010-06-24T00:31:00.002-05:00

A nice little side trip today driving from North Platte, Nebraska to Fort Morgan, Colorado where I'm staying the night. This is a very comfortable and "cozy" motel and a comfortable bed. It's big change from the previous two nights for about the same price. Looking forward to a great night's sleep! They also have a restaurant here too that is pretty darned good. Fort Morgan is a pretty nice town in of itself. I feel pretty secure here and able to really relax and unwind. This place is in the tops of my preferred places to stay.

Anyway, I checked out Lake McConaughy near Ogallalah Nebraska. This entire area is beautiful with lush, greenery and rolling hills. The weather is pretty nice too which helps. :-) I should also note that North Platte is a pretty nice place overall and would be a good place to live. A very clean town with all of the amenities nestled in some beautiful country. It doesn't hurt that it's well located for a stormchaser. I'm just sayin' ;-)

So, about to hit the sack. Looking forward to a potentially great chase day with good upslope conditions setting up in E and NE CO. Shear shoud be pretty good and this time, the mid level winds look to be more westerly. This on top of low level S to SE flow, the veering profiles should be excellent. The overall preciptable water values in the atmosphere should be low, so I'm hoping this will reduce the HP tendencies and create some impressive structure at the very least. We'll see.

Some pics!

June 22, 2010 Pics - Incredible Updraft!!

2010-06-23T12:42:00.002-05:00

Sitting here in North Platte, Nebraska getting the oil changed and the tires rotated. Today is a sightseeing day as I have no desire to make a marathon drive for a marginal setup in SE Kansas and the Texas Panhandle. Tomorrow is starting to look like a potential classic upslope event in E and NE Colorado.

In fact, I'm kind of excited about it. It's actually a better setup than the past few days as the post frontal return flow is pretty strong with good dewpoints all across the eastern part of Colorado...no more dry air to the south to worry about. Lots of parameters starting to point to a pretty significant event. So, I'll work my way westward today in a tourist sort of fashion. The weather is nice here, so a nice, casual drive with frequent photo stops along the way is the order of the day.

Yesterday, it was a bit frustrating as I got to the cell in NW KS that went tornado warned and even produced a brief tornado. It looked awesome on radar at first. However, I was a bit too far to the west and could never get in front of it. Chased a storm booking north into NE that looked like it had potential on radar. However, west of Norton, I saw a pretty good updraft and cumulonimbus north of Goodland. So, I turned around and intercepted it. I'm glad I did!!!

As it moved north into Nebraska, it started to appear as if it was weakening with a mushy looking updraft. All of the sudden, something happened and it went totally nuts and exploded like the mushroom cloud from a nuclear explosion!! In 15 minutes, it went from a new updraft to an impressive and spectacular LP supercell and showing a TVS in 15 minutes!!! Incredible!!

Although it was tornado warned and a spotter confirmed a funnel cloud, this was about the time I found myself in a river valley full of trees and sand hills blocking my view. A closed road and stalled train really hosed me from getting into prime position. However, the imagery I captured more than made up for that. It's among my best ever storm structure imo.

June 21, 2010 Pics

2010-06-22T10:30:00.005-05:00

A pretty wild chase yesterday with amazing structure. This was more of a mini hurricane than a supercell! The radar image and especially the velocity scans were nothing short of incredible. Large, intense rotation within the cell at it's center point. Tornadoes were there without a doubt, but could not be seen as it was deeply within the intense precip core. I think a couple of chases caught some glimpses and hopefully they got some images. I was too busy trying to flee as I felt like a giant blender was trying to eat me! LOL!!

In hindsight, I wish I would have dropped further south. But when the western cell began to merge with the eastern cell, which I was on, there was intense rotation and one heckuva an impressive ground-dragging wall cloud seen in the pics below. Several funnels formed and there was good rotation. If a tornado would have dropped, the contrast would have been amazing along with the structure. So, I gambled and stuck with it.

I've seen such storm mergers before just like this where the eastern cell takes over. I was pretty convinced at one point looking at radar that this was happening. However, mother nature is pretty fickle and the storm merger reorganized further south of my location. As my cell became strongly outflow dominant, radar confirmed that I was indeed too far north. With crappy road networks and a storm rapidly overtaking me, I spent alot of time trying to get back out ahead of it AND back south. I finally did later, but was too late to get the best part of the show.

However, my position NE of the cell gave me a unique perspective on the storm and some very impressive and even scary structure. Enjoy!!

Pics June 20 - NW KS

2010-06-21T11:36:00.002-05:00

Got smacked around by Ma Nature today, but managed to save the day with some nice structure and lightning photos.

Chasecation Part Two

2010-06-20T10:21:00.001-05:00

Started a week long excursion yesterday in Kansas. Although I was disappointed with the higher based outflow dominant storms, mother nature made up for it with one of the most intense CG barrages I've ever been in!

Vortex 2 vs Chasers

2010-06-19T08:55:00.001-05:00

The V2 "scientists" (or Discovery Channel movie stars) are bitching about chaser convergence.

I do wonder what V2 still wants to accomplish. Detail of wind fields around a cyclic tornadic supercell? I contend that it will be next to impossible due to logistics and trying to coordinate all the probes and radar. That takes alot of time to deploy properly in a spatial context relative to the storm so as to get a proper dataset.

Mother nature ain't very patient and will not sit and wait 30-60 minutes for them to setup. Even if a cyclic tornadic supercell is stationary like the SD beast a few days ago, it is very difficult at best. Give storm motions 30mph, you'd have a better chance of winning the lottery. 50mph like the day they are bitching about? I'd say 1 chance in a billion at those speeds. So, in my opinion, they already failed that day before they even pulled out of the hotel parking lot. Plus, any chaser that has chased around central Oklahoma on big days know that not only every chaser will be out there, but every other local citizen, media, spotters, etc. as well. Central OK has been a headache since 2000 and gets worse every year. You'd think a "research scientist" would know that.

Why not use a smaller deployment instead of a massive army? At least a small dataset would be better than none, right? And your odds of success improve. This of course comes back to my question is what it is they hope to accomplish? Will it somehow lead to better warning lead times if they figure out the low level wind patterns in a cyclic tornadic supercell? How in the hell will operational radar EVER be able to sample to lowest 2000 feet of a supercell?

Therefore, I contend that all of that money they are pouring into V2 would be better spent on equipping and installing more phased array radar systems across tornado alley. Heck, spend more time studying the meso and microscale features that are so important to the development of the tornadic supercell to begin with? Go probe and scan warm fronts, outflow boundaries, drylines, and the associated intersections of such boundaries. Study an overnight MCS and the outflow boundaries they produce which often lead to the next day's tornadic supercell.

I think there is a greater need to better understand those mesoscale processes so that we can create better short range forecast models like the RUC and HRRR and WRF to better predict where the next day's danger area will be and if storms can form at all due to various factors.

If V2 still wants to go chase storms at taxpayer expense in the name of research, then do so in June and July when storms move slower and are easier to deploy all of their assets. I betcha their success rates would vastly improve. The recent SD beast that was practically stationary for an hour would have been prime. The incredible Baca County CO tornadoes on May 31 would have been great....except they blew that day off. LOL!!! I won't even get into how they seem to miss alot of good storms that us so-called "hobby chasers" seem to catch.

Why not reach out and try to incorporate us "citizen scientists" to aid in the endeavor? This was pointed out elsewhere on the Stormtrack Forum in a related thread. I think there is alot of potential there to work together to accomplish some goals. After all, it seems that "we" are always around the good storms. heck, throw a probe onto Roger hill's or Andy Gabrielson's vehicles. LOL!!!

I could go on, but I already have long enough. :-) Bottom line, I think the money and resources could be better spent elsewhere and get a much better return on investment.

Mississippi State Meteorology Degree

2010-06-17T18:56:00.000-05:00

I've submitted my application for admission to Mississippi State's Meteorology Program!! The cool thing is, it's entirely distance learning....online. I'm shooting for a Bachelors Degree in Operational Meteorology. After my last stint as an Information Technology worker drone and yet another in a series of major disappointments, I just do not see any future for me in IT. I really do enjoy programming, don't get me wrong. However, I cannot find a reasonably sane IT department with competent management.

I've ranted about this before, but being a programmer within a large corporate environment is akin to mixing oil and water. Too many managers get "promoted" to being an IT manager with little or no relevant experience or understanding of the craft and art of developing applications and software. A significant number of managers end up in IT as a sort of dumping ground because it's easier to do that than trying to fire them. After all, in the minds of the upper echelon of management, placing them in IT would do the least damage to the company. After all, why put idiots in charge of the income and revenue generating portion of the company?

Anyway, ranting aside, I simply do not have the stomach for it anymore. There is absolutely nothing in it for me as a future career path. It's really a dead-end path unless I want to try and aspire to a management level. But I would still end up trying to deal with higher ups and peers in management. Simply, continuing on is an exercise in utter futility.

At age 45 (call it mid life crisis...HA), I feel a strong "now or never" urge to do something about it and change course. It boils down to a career in something I'm most passionate about and enjoy more than anything else. I want a career and a job where it doesn't feel like working or daily hair-pulling frustration. After all, if you love what you do, then it really isn't working. I want that. I deserve that. With my health issues finally under control, I'm in great shape mentally and physically to do this.

I'm still going through the admission process which is alot of work. I'm applying for grants, scholarships and financial aid. I've determined that I want to stay employed full time or nearly full time. The online degree plan allows me to work on it evenings and weekends which isn't possible with an on-campus effort. So, I am taking my time to find a proper position as an IT guy where I can really fit in well and work happy. I have no intention of slacking off with whatever position I find. One of my major frustrations has been not feeling productive. But I digress.

This in all likelihood will involve moving from Amarillo, much to my chagrin. But, working on my degree and the future that holds will offset the sadness and regret of relocating from an area I call home. Change sometimes isn't easy, but is made worth it by the reward it will bring.

What will I focus on once I get my degree? I'd like to investigate forensic meteorology as one area. I'm not sure I would want to pursue a NWS career, but certainly won't count it out. I want to pursue something in the private sector.

So, I've got alot of things to work on to get this in order. The first order of business is finding gainful employment and relocating if necessary. I want to move someplace with a good community college so I can complete the core courses and save money. I think I can parallel those courses along with the meteorology courses. I'm waiting for MSU to receive all my transcripts so I can see what credit can be applied to the required core classes. I'm looking forward to seeing my degree plan and what lies ahead. Fortunately, with my acquired knowledge of meteorology of the decades, the freshman courses should be a piece of cake and even the sophomore stuff should be easy and fun.

For the remainder of June, I will be chasing all over the plains free as a bird. This is my last hurrah so to speak before I really hunker down and focus all of my energies into moving forward with everything. When I get accepted, I will be starting the fall semester. Perfect timing. :-)

Deer Trail, CO - Part 2 Video

2010-06-16T22:45:00.000-05:00

Baseball hail, two white tornadoes, one with a rainbow, chaser nirvana, classic stormgasm. What more could you want?

Tornado! June 10, 2010 - Deer Trail, CO

2010-06-16T11:59:00.000-05:00

As I work on the rest of my video from this day, here is a timelapse clip from my dashcam. Steve Miller OK makes a brief guest appearance. This makes my video worth even MORE money. HA! More video to come.

Day 6 Chasecation

2010-06-14T13:17:00.000-05:00

Another HP crapfest yesterday. I guess my 3 day tornadofest is negated now. LOL!! Saw a couple of rotating wall clouds and interesting structure, but that was early on. Got cutoff at one point with a flooded roadway. After the cold outflow started overwhelming everything and becoming apparent storms would not form on the dryline/front intersection as I expected, I headed towards home and stopped to chat with Jason Boggs and take some pics of a beautiful updraft structure. Will post pics later.

Also got a chance to review my video of the incredible tornado near Deer Trail, CO. Great footage including timelapse potential. Looking forward to getting that together and posted soon too.

Wasn't planning on chasing today, however, things are looking tempting in NE NM and SE CO. Headed out the door shortly on a longshot, but potentially rewarding chase. I need something other than HP hosers today.

Chasecation Day 5

2010-06-13T12:45:00.000-05:00

Another unexpected HP event yesterday, but a decent chase nonetheless. Saw one brief spinup and possible tornado south of Four Way, TX and some cool structure and a nice CG barrage at the end. It was a bit of a disappointment compared to what we were expecting. But, was able to sleep in my own bed last night. :-) Steve went ahead and headed back to Oklahoma, but was trying to make it out for today's event too. We had a pretty good time and a nice adventure! We didn't try to kill each other, so it worked out. HA!

For today, I am really liking the NE Texas Panhandle and looking at Spotter Network, apparently so does everybody else. Very good parameters are all coming together quite nicely for tornadic supercells. I think the supercell mode will be a little less HPish than yesterday as the mid and upper winds will be a bit stronger. The 0-6km shear looks a little healthier.

My target? Pampa, TX. Headed out the door shortly after a shower as storms are already starting to popup along the frontal boundary.

Day 3 Chase Pics & Day 4 Pre-Chase

2010-06-12T12:14:00.000-05:00

Chased a pretty intense HP supercell from northeast of Colorado Springs to Flagler, CO. Although not what we were expecting as far as storm mode, it was a pretty fun and sometimes intense chase. Once this cell oriented to a subtle convergence boundary (ENE winds converging with ESE winds), it made a hard right turn along the boundary and really got to cranking. However, everytime it would get a nice hook on it, it would wrap up completely and totally obscure anything of interest.

At one point early on, we were right in the notch near Calhan and watched some VERY intense motions and rotation which was incredible. The video should be pretty cool. Not sure if there was a tornado in all of that, but it is certainly possible. We saw another report of one and think it was the same one we were watching. Got a little nervous there. LOL!

Played leap frog with the storm as it did it's occluding cycle over and over until we got to near Arriba. There, we watched a broad area of tight, intense rotation with LCLs dragging the ground. We just expected to see something drop, but it didn't quite make it. However, there was a brief spinup in the middle of rotation which was reported as a brief tornado. Definitely a wild encounter and the video should also be cool to watch.

After that, it really became outflow dominant and "boring". South of Flagler as we we preparing to call it quits, a nice cell merger occurred in front of us which caught our attention. It wrapped up pretty quickly and became tornado warned. We got back in pursuit and watched a couple of funnels try to get organized and drop, but again didn't quite make it. Did see a nicely formed funnel at one point. But, the storm died off and we made our way to Lamar, CO.

From here, we are heading south to the Oklahoma Panhandle for our target today. Parameters look pretty good and definitely expecting to see a tornado or two!!

Some pics from yesterday:

Project Twistex and crew headed westbound on I-70.

Steve Miller of Oklahoma in action.

Still image of the crazy rotating wall cloud. There might have been a tornado embedded in there at one point.

Again, crazy rotation with serious attempts at a tornado. Not sure if this was rotating or not, but certainly could have been a weak tornado and the one reported.

Near Arriba, CO as the storm became outflow dominant.

Lat gasp of an updraft...watch how it evolves in the next pic.

It detatches from the boundary layer as the cold pool undercuts it. Pretty cool.

Day 2 Tornado Pics & Pre Chase Post

2010-06-11T11:59:00.000-05:00

After an incredible day yesterday around Deer Trail and Last Chance, Colorado, we are perusing data and choose wither an I-70 target, or one further south between Pueblo/Lamar/Springfield, CO. Decided to head to Burlington, CO to eat lunch and continue crunching data.

I'm personally leaning towards the I-70 corridor solution in favor of a little better shear, LCLs and storm-relative helicities not to mention a little better road network. The trick there is to get the surface and 850mb flow to back more as advertised by the RUC and HRRR model solutions. It seems as if the NAM is the outlier at this point with it's more NErly boundary layer flow solution.

One thing really intriguing me are the forecast SE 700mb winds of up to 30 knots in the I-70 corridor vs 10-15 further south.

Chasecation Day 2 Post Chase Report - TORNADOES!!!

2010-06-11T00:51:00.000-05:00

We caught 2 tornadoes today, including one of the wildest and most cool rope-out stages I've ever personally seen. Both tornadoes were nice, white tornadoes with the second one being very good contrast. Pics to come tomorrow. Right now, must sleep. :-)

Pics Fom 6/9

2010-06-10T11:56:00.001-05:00

The other Steve Miller in action.

A cool little mesa.

Same one with a different angle and cacti in foreground.

A peculiar formation of tree and rock.

Looking out across "9 Mile Valley".

Mesa twin peaks.

Flowering cacti.

Discovered this interesting archeological remnant.

What the hell? LOL!!

Day 2 Pre Chase - Chasecation Log

2010-06-10T08:47:00.000-05:00

After a good night's sleep in Goodland, we are pretty excited about today's setup! Definitely a tornado day if we play our cards right. Current thinking is around Burlington/Limon Colorado.

Current surface obs show a front and outflow boundary well into N and NE Colorado and approaching the NE/KS line. Models are handling this abit differently, but by far will be a major factor to watch today and how it evolves. Also, RUC forecasts show a nice dry air bulge at the surface working into NE CO with a sharp demarcation....a dryline. This will also serve to be the focus for any tornadic supercell to latch onto and go nuts.

With some pretty stout instability and strong veering profiles with decent shear and upslope flow, all the ingredients are there for some pretty impressive supercells.

First, some breakfast, coffee and a trip to Wally World!

Day 1 Chasecation Log

2010-06-10T00:01:00.001-05:00

Me and the other Steve Miller from Oklahoma are staying overnight in Goodland, Kansas. Models are different on locaions for tomorrow's chase, so will do some day 1 data crunching in the morning over coffee. The good news is that either model solution right now is close to us. Friday and Saturday are looking pretty good right now with each day being a good tornado potential...especially Saturday back in the TX PH. The upper air pattern being advertised reminds me of an April pattern. What a drastic change from years past when July upper air patterns were setting up in May. I'll take it!

Today had us taking the road north out of Kim, CO where we were pleasantly surprised to discover "9 Mile Canyon" with some cool geographic formations. We got some good landscape photos out of the trip. We also went down a dit road advertised to lead to some canyons. Come to find out, it is the Picketwire Canyons and over a 15 mile trek to get to it. We didn't have the time. But, definitely a future destination to check out.

Ended up have a pretty decent steak dinner in Burlington, Colorado before hunkering down in Goodland for the night. Another quick update in the morning.

CHASECATION!!!

2010-06-09T11:33:00.002-05:00

Headed out into the plains in search of mother nature's worst tantrums with Steve Miller OK. Follow along here and my live chase page!!!!

TORNADO-O-RAMA!!!!

2010-06-05T13:02:00.001-05:00

Sorry again for the delayed blog post again. But, I've been pretty darned busy shifting gears again career wise. Yep, on the job hunt again. LOL!! Another story of what was promised by an employer wasn't delivered upon. I got screwed again. Oh well....in the meantime.....

I have been enjoying quite a chase season this year! I don't know if it's the new vehicle (2010 Hyundai Santa Fe SE AWD...affectionally named "Tailchaser III") or what. But, I've seen more tornadoes the past few weeks than I've seen total in the past 3 years...including 3 days in a row.

If that weren't enough, I'm planning a little stormchasing excursion with my twin namesake from Oklahoma next week starting Wednesday. The models are in strong agreement for an awesome upper air pattern setting up about then for E CO, W KS and the TX PH. No doubt more tornado images and video are forthcoming. After some difficult seasons since 2007, I'm taking full advantage of an active chase season. I know all too well seasons past.

With that in mind, here are videos I've put together of my best chases in May. Other images and video from other events will be forthcoming, but these are the best ones so far this season.

MAY 23 - NEAR TEXLINE/CLAYTON
Incredible tornado event along the TX/NM border shared with Jay McCoy. I wish I would have taken a different intercept route to get closer, but still, incredible video!!!

This is part 1 from my dashcam. Ignore the first few seconds as I screwed up on my editing and washed out the initial footage. DOH! The good stuff starts about 4:20

Part 2 is better quality video from my VX2100 camcorder. Watch the large, violent tornado and nice satellite tornadoes!!

MAY 24 - SPEARMAN, TX
After trying in vain to catch a tornado on a big storm near Pampa, I along with Marcus Diaz make a valiant effort to get to Spearman, TX where new storms were rapidly developing along the dryline. We were treated to 3, maybe 4 beautiful tornadoes!

This is part 1 from my dash cam.

Part 2 is the better quality from my VX2100.

I saw a brief tornado near Dimmit, TX the next day on May 25, but nothing like the big day I had on May 31 near Campo, CO just north of Boise City, OK....

MAY 31 - CAMPO, CO
Incredible long lived white tornado!! Slight timelapse with some cool music.

This is the second tornado I captured (although there were three tornadoes). It is timelapse and set nicely to Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 14 in C Sharp Minor, Op. 27 No. 2, "Moonlight". Yep, ol' Cooter appreciates classical music too. :-)

Finally, my dash cam captures great timelaps footage of all three tornadoes. It is set to music that I composed and performed. Yep, ol' Cooter knows the difference between a bass clef and treble clef. :-)

More video and still images to come!!! Stay tuned!!! I will also try and establish a blog when I'm on the road next week. Watch for that announcement before Wednesday.

Panhandle Magic

2010-05-26T11:28:00.000-05:00

Caught tornadoes each of the past 3 days in the Texas Panhandle including one yesterday near Dimmit and 4 near Spearman the day before and of course the incredible tornadoes Sunday near Texline. Pics and video coming soon when I have time to catch up. That looks like starting tomorrow as the upper air profiles go to crap.

Today, eying a potential surprise event in the northern panhandle where a robust outflow boundary is making SW progress from ongoing convection around Liberal, KS to Buffalo, OK. With daytime heating, this boundary should slow and stall oriented in a very favorable fashion with weak mid level flow. Even at 20-25 knots, the WNW to NW flow there on top of the SE low level flow should provide adequate shear and excellent directional veering. With the boundary and moderate instability, it is a scenario I love to play.

Will be headed up to either Spearman or Stratford very soon.

Incredible NW TX PH Chase

2010-05-24T07:46:00.000-05:00

Along with Jay McCoy, had an incredible chase around Texline. Several tornadoes and funnels from thin ropes to large, violent trunks with satellite tornadoes. This storm was nuts! Got some great structure shots too. Very tired and needing to head to work, so will post video and images sometime this week.

Blog Fixed & Attitude Adjustment

2010-05-20T23:15:00.000-05:00

First, thanks to all who have offered their kind words regarding my recently diagnosed type 2 diabetes. I have made excellent progress regarding my overall health in the past few months since I learned of my disease. In fact, it was a blessing in disguise to be honest. :-)

Once I figured out what the hell was wrong with me, I knew how to fight it. The first part is losing weight. Back around the first of the year, I weighed 247 pounds. I am now around 215! That is 32 pounds I've shed...mostly since early March. I went from a tight-fitting size 38 to a lose 36. I need to go buy some size 34 clothes soon. My goal is to get below 200 which is in easy reach now.

Eating right and exercising regularly is all I have done. I have had to take NO medication to control it. I've been focusing 100% of my energy and effort into making a significant lifestyle change regarding my diet and correcting bad habits and eating urges. Lots of veggies, chicken/turkey/fish, and fruits with plenty of water. A serious curtailment of starchy and rich carbohydrate foods and of course eliminating about 98% of sugars. This has allowed me to keep my blood sugar levels in check and in the normal range. This in turn has given me LOTS more energy and ambition as well as being sharper mentally. It is literally like I've come out of a dense, dreary fog into clear, warm blue skies. :-)

So, bottom line is I'm feeling better than I've felt in many years. I have NO desire to regress and gain the weight back and the resultant poor health levels. No sir, no way. Besides, I'll have type 2 diabetes the rest of my life. The price for not taking care of it seriously will result in some serious medical complications which are downright scary. That too along with my vastly improved quality of life is plenty of motivation.

I dropped out of communication with most of my friends which I apologize for. I had to make some tough decisions to socially withdraw for a short time to get focused on my health. Nothing is more important than that. Between that and work and a couple of other efforts, I've not had much more free time outside of that. However, things are settling now in my new routine and I'm emerging from my social "spiderhole". ;-)

The other major effort taking up my time has been getting a new vehicle. I'm the proud owner of a new 2010 Hyundai Sante Fe SE AWD affectionately known as "Tailchaser III". Between de-rigging the old Honda Element and cleaning it up..AND getting the new vehicle rigged up, I've not had much time for anything else the past few weeks. This includes a couple of weeks researching and test driving and of course my favorite sport of car-salesman-arm-wrestling. I'll post pics of the new ride soon.

This brings me to my current state of stormchasing philosophy. I've decided to take it down a couple of notches. This includes reduced travel distance, reduced overall effort, abandoning storms earlier, etc. A large part of this decision revolves around fighting the hoards of chasers which as we've seen recently is getting outrageous on big chase days. I'm not surprised at all and have been expecting it for years now. It will only continue to get worse.

For me, waiting for a 5-mile continuous convoy of vehicles before you can get on the road takes all the fun out of it. Plus, when in the middle of the circus, watching for the ever increasing number of idiot morons standing in the road or dashing out in front of you. More and more vehicles are not pulling far enough of the road and even partially block it. I can't watch and enjoy the storm because of constantly worrying and scanning for the idiots ahead. Then there's the challenge of finding a place to safely pull over to observe the storm. Lastly, in a big convoy, some dumbass up ahead will slow down to half of the posted speed limit and clog the other 500 vehicles behind them. Oh, and I'd be remiss if I did not refer to my twin namesake's blog post.

So, my efforts are now focused on finding ways to enjoy my favorite hobby again. This will entail alternative target areas at the risk of busting or missing "the storm of the day". I may also stand off at a further distance from a storm where the chaser convergence is a concern. I can be perfectly happy getting some awesome structure shots and let the 500 chasers near the tornado post all of the similar images and video online. In fact, I am to the point now that I will seriously consider abandoning a storm altogether and head home if the hordes are bad enough.

One other thing I'm doing is abandoning live streaming. It's just too much effort and "stress" when in the heat of battle. Plus, it's yet another distraction within the near-storm environment around the chaser circus. Plus, EVERYBODY is doing it now. I wouldn't be adding any value with my measley stream...particularly if I'm backing off more at a distance. There just isn't a "return on investment" in it anymore for me.

It all boils down to wanting to take a simple drive to see an incredible storm and not worry about much of anything else. Think of it as being a "minimalist chaser". If this hasn't been coined before by somebody else, I'm claiming dibs on it now. :-)

In keeping with the less stress / more fun theme, I'm just not that all interested any more in any stormchasing related drama. This includes the Stormtrack flame wars and dead-horse subjects as well as the business-related side of it. I just don't really care anymore about all of it. I want to put on my chaser hat to go see a storm and enjoy it (which includes the photography aspect of it) and when it is over with, take my chaser hat off and become a mild-mannered civilian....and remain that way until I put my hat back on.

I've got other interests and hobbies I want to pursue now. Stormchasing will always be part of my hobbies, but will now take it's place next to the other ones. The new chase vehicle has a towing package, and a bass boat is now on the horizon. :-)

For now through the end of June however, stormchasing will be at the top of the list. :-)

The Big "D"

2010-03-13T09:37:00.003-06:00

After several years of slowly deteriorating health issues, I finally was diagnosed as a type 2 diabetic a few days ago. I've suspected it for quite awhile, especially the past couple of years. The past 6 months have been the worst though.

Extreme fatigue and lethargy were the big issues. I just didn't have any energy most of the time, feeling drowsy alot, reduced mental function such as concentration, focus, and alertness. Sometimes after eating a big meal of the wrong foods, I'd have to take a nap. It was almost like being comatose sometimes, but still awake. I had other classic symptoms too such as slurred/incoherent speech (no, not my Texas accent lol), being thirsty alot, irritability, and mood swings. It also explained that whenever I got any kind of cut or scrape, it would get infected and take forever to heal. I was also frequently dizzy and feeling lightheaded. I knew something was terribly wrong, but nobody would listen.

Since I also suffer from sleep apnea and allergies, plus being abit overweight and out of shape, the diagnosis was almost instantly as something to do with those conditions. Two previous doctors would do simple blood test after I fasted for 12 or more hours. They either didn't carefully look at the results, or else had their nurse do it, or the glucose part of the test didn't register high enough because of the fasting or done at a point in the day where the levels were "normal". So, the final diagnosis from each doctor was to exercise, lose weight, and go back for another sleep study because of my apnea. They even suggested I might be suffering from depression. I was told that they didn't think anything was really physically wrong....translated as "I think you are a hypochondriac".

Part of my problem was seeing family doctors or general practitioners. Somebody finally pointed this out to me and urged me to seek out an internist. I searched around Amarillo and sought advice and recommendations from as many people and various healthcare professionals as I could. One name came up often and with enthusiastic endorsements. Dr. Nam Do.

The first appointment with him, I was impressed and relieved. He spent more than the typical 5-10 minutes other doctors would spend with me. It was apparent that he was not in anyway on a "timer" or in a hurry to move on to the next patient or his tee time. :-) Lost of questions and an in-depth "interview" in which he carefully listened to me. he seemed to have a more aggressive attitude in trying to undercover exactly what the hell was wrong with me. The final result was being thoroughly and carefully tested and screened. By the way, my doctor's office posts all of my test results online through a private web portal. I can see the test result details, normal ranges for each to compare with, and the doctor's notes. Pretty cool.

Part of that test is an HbA1c test (often called just "A1C") which can determine your average glucose levels up to the previous 3 months. You can even buy over-the-counter kits to test for this now, but I'd suggest having a doctor do it. In any event, I showed up positive for diabetes and got the official word Wednesday. I was actually relieved and quite thankful to FINALLY find out. I felt better just knowing. :-)

Now what I'm trying to figure out is just how long it's been bad enough to do damage. I suspect that my rapid vision deterioration in the past two years has something to do with it. My right eye lost focus pretty quickly which, thankfully, corrective lenses has taken care of. I also can't help but wonder if my heart arrhythmia (premature ventricular contractions) diagnosed last year which I've had developing for about 4-5 years might be related as well. It's hard to tell for sure, but I need to watch for other possible effects too in the near future. At least now I have a doctor to help guide me through it all.

The toughest part now is adapting to an entirely new lifestyle. Needless to say that I certainly have the motivation now more than ever. I've thrown out or given away a bunch of stuff in the fridge and cabinets. The education of what I can and cannot have, and carefully measuring meal portions and the associated carbs, sugars, sodium, fats, etc. and then adapting to a schedule of meals is a daunting task. But, I have good resources and help both at work and a dietitian I'll be working with. I'm also discovering vitamin and dietary supplements especially for diabetics. Also, for anybody reading this far, stay away from the artificial sweeteners...even if you aren't diabetic. Splenda is now off my list after doing more research on it. Instead, I'm using "stevia" now as my supplement. Do some googling yourself to find out more about the poisonous artificial sweeteners.

Plus, monitoring my blood glucose frequently through the day is helping me understand how everything I do, eat, and time of day affects those levels. It's been quite interesting so far in that respect...being an IT and data analysis geek I am. :-) In fact, my meter has a download port on it and software so I can analyze to my heart's content...as will my doctor as part of my ongoing treatment.

The good news is that I have plenty of weight to lose...at least 40 pounds and preferably 60. Since my glucose levels don't appear to be off the chart, it looks like my body is producing insulin, just not enough or that my body isn't using it efficiently. Either way, type 2 diabetes patients often control it without medication simply by getting their weight under control and exercising. That is my goal without a doubt.

The reason I couldn't do it before was I didn't know I had diabetes and was always feeling like crap....a perpetual state of illness. Trying to exercise would result in extreme dizziness and very lightheaded as well as no muscle energy. In effect, it was practically impossible. Not so anymore.

Eating the right stuff and monitoring my glucose allows me to keep it down so that I am already feeling more energy and the ability to exercise. In fact, this morning was the first morning I can remember in a very long time that I woke up not feeling like total crap and wanting to sleep in. I am eager to experience more of this as my overall physical condition continues to improve. I'm sure it will be like an awakening and a second life. That in itself is pretty exciting and exhilarating right up there with standing in the eye of a hurricane or watching a beautiful high-contrast tornado plow through open prairie here in the Texas Panhandle. :-)

I am ready to start enjoying life again and all of my hobbies and activities that I have lost all interest and desire in the recent past. I hope that sharing this with somebody suffering from similar medical misdiagnosis to find the right doctor and get the right testing and treatment. I wish now I had been more aggressive in doing so. But, at least I finally did.

I'll be very busy adjusting to and fine-tuning my new lifestyle over the next few weeks. So, my blog will be quiet for a little while longer. But, make no mistake about it, I will be ready for the 2010 chase season soon before it really starts cranking up. In some ways, this will be my best chase season ever. :-)

Severe Weather Next Week?

2010-02-24T23:09:00.002-06:00

Latest GFS runs are indicating that a more zonal storm system track will develop next week for the southern plains...including the Panhandles and West Texas. The southern branch of the jet looks to really become active while the arctic air kept at bay. This will be something to watch as the region makes a rapid transition from winter to spring next week. Details certainly to sharpen up as we start the new week and herald in March. Stay tuned!

Final Snowfall Totals - Panhandles

2010-01-29T21:58:00.003-06:00


PUBLIC INFORMATION STATEMENT
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE AMARILLO TX
839 PM CST FRI JAN 29 2010

...SNOW TOTALS...

LOCATION                      SNOWFALL    COMMENTS
                               IN/S/

GRUVER                         14.0        900 AM   1/29
DUMAS 1 S                      13.5       1208 AM   1/29
HARTLEY 4 ESE                  13.5        700 AM   1/29
STRATFORD                      13.0        857 AM   1/29
GRIGGS 2 W                     13.0       1211 PM   1/29
GUYMON                         13.0        200 PM   1/29
VEGA                           13.0        706 PM   1/28
ROMERO 8 SSW                   12.3        900 PM   1/28
DALHART                        12.0        714 PM   1/28
BORGER                         12.0        545 PM   1/28
HARTLEY                        11.5        938 PM   1/28
DUMAS                          11.0        910 AM   1/29
TEXHOMA                        11.0        902 AM   1/29
SUNRAY                         11.0        900 AM   1/29
SIMMS 9 ENE                    11.0        942 PM   1/28
BEAVER                         10.0        904 AM   1/29
AMARILLO 7 SW                  10.0        700 AM   1/29
AMARILLO 6 W                   10.0        900 PM   1/28
BOISE CITY 2 E                 10.0        900 AM   1/29
AMARILLO 6 WNW                 10.0        538 PM   1/28
TEXLINE                         9.0        900 AM   1/29
AMARILLO 5 SSW                  9.0        100 AM   1/29
AMARILLO 4 WSW                  9.0        553 PM   1/28
CANYON                          9.0        708 PM   1/28
SPEARMAN                        8.5        640 PM   1/28
MIAMI                           8.0        911 AM   1/29
BOYS RANCH                      8.0        500 PM   1/28
FOLLETT                         8.0        130 AM   1/29
CANADIAN                        8.0        912 AM   1/29
PAMPA                           8.0       1000 PM   1/28
KEYES                           8.0        901 AM   1/29
PERRYTON                        8.0        908 AM   1/29
AMARILLO 4 SSW                  7.5        705 AM   1/29
AMARILLO 6 ENE                  7.1       1130 AM   1/29
HEREFORD                        7.0        900 PM   1/28
GATE                            7.0        905 AM   1/29
AMARILLO 5 SW                   7.0        705 PM   1/28
SANFORD                         7.0        900 AM   1/29
LIPSCOMB                        6.5        118 AM   1/29
AMARILLO 10 E                   6.0        847 AM   1/29
DAWN                            6.0        745 AM   1/29

Roads Open Again In The Panhandle

2010-01-29T14:09:00.000-06:00


NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE AMARILLO TX
113 PM CST FRI JAN 29 2010

...THIS PUBLIC INFORMATION STATEMENT IS ISSUED AT THE REQUEST OF
THE AMARILLO TEXAS DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION REGARDING ROAD
CONDITIONS...

INTERSTATE 40 IS NOW OPEN WEST TO TUCUMCARI NEW MEXICO AND EAST TO
OKLAHOMA.

U. S. 87 NORTH FROM AMARILLO TO DALHART IS NOW OPEN.

U. S. 287 NORTH FROM AMARILLO TO THE OKLAHOMA STATE LINE IS NOW OPEN.

1/29/2010 Winter Storm Update - 9 AM (15Z)

2010-01-29T08:03:00.003-06:00

The winter storm for OK and TX is almost over with, but not quite yet. It is snowing lightly here at my house where I've received around 6" of snow. Currently 15F. A nice band of light to moderate snow has developed fairly rapidly from the OK PH down to near Clovis, NM. It appears that this is due to a weak deformation zone which was advertised by the models.

Such dynamics need to be watched carefully as they sometimes catch forecasters off guard with a narrow band of heavy snow. At this point, I expect 1-2" across the PH today and perhaps even 3" in some spots where the narrow band of heavy stuff develops. . It will be interesting to watch this evolve over the next 2 hours.

Across the Panhandle, the total accumulations so far are up to 13" in some spots, in particular just west and north of Amarillo. Totals are listed below. Most importantly, and something not being well advertised so far, is a serious, devastating ice storm that impacted a ~50-75 mile wide swath from east of Plainview, TX to Childress into W and SW and S Oklahoma according to what I am reading this morning. Many towns are suffering massive power failures with some spots like Altus having up to 1.5 inches of glazed ice coating everything!!!!! This of course is bringing down everything including trees, radio towers, and even store awnings!

Here is a sampling of the ice storm reports from Oklahoma:


ALTUS, OK
            WIDESPREAD TREE AND POWER LINE DAMAGE ACROSS JACKSON
            COUNTY AND EXTENDING WEST INTO HARMON COUNTY. DEPUTIES
            ESTIMATED 1 TO 1.5 INCHES OF ICE GLAZE ON ALL ELEVATED
            SURFACES. AT LEAST 200 POWER POLES DOWN IN JACKSON COUNTY
            ALONE. MANY SECTIONS OF THE MAIN POWER FEEDER LINE FROM
            HOLLIS TO ALTUS ARE DOWNED. A MAJORITY OF TREES SUSTAINED
            AT LEAST SOME DAMAGE.

HOBART, OK
            AT LEAST 1 INCH OF ICE GLAZE ON ELEVATED SURFACES...THE
            GLAZE SEEMED TO BE THICKER TOWARDS HOBART. TREES AND
            POWER POLES SNAPPED OFF. 4 DOUBLE H-SHAPED POWER POLES
            SNAPPED OFF ALONG HIGHWAY 183 BETWEEN SNYDER AND HOBART.
            NO POWER IN THE COUNTY FROM HOBART SOUTH.

MANGUM, OK
            ABOUT AN INCH OF GLAZE ON EVERYTHING. MILES OF POWER
            LINES DOWN. ALMOST EVERY TREE HAS SUSTAINED SOME KIND OF
            DAMAGE AND SOME HAVE BEEN SNAPPED OR DOWNED. AWNINGS HAVE
            BEEN SNAPPED OFF STORE FRONTS.


LAWTON, OK
            TREES AND POWER LINES DOWN COUNTY WIDE. GLAZE AROUND 1
            INCH THICK IN NORTHERN PARTS OF THE COUNTY. POWER OUTAGES
            CONTINUE...ESPECIALLY IN NORTHERN AND WESTERN COMANCHE
            COUNTY. DOUBLE THICK POWER LINES SNAPPED AND CAUSED
            ADDITIONAL DAMAGE. A SECTION OF INTERSTATE 44 CLOSED DUE
            TO POWER LINE DAMAGE. A 2 MILE STRETCH OF HIGHWAY 7 ALSO
            CLOSED AS THE ROAD WAS COVERED WITH NUMEROUS POWER POLES
            AND LINES. LAWTON WEATHER RADIO TRANSMITTER WAS BROUGHT
            DOWN BY ICE ACCUMULATION.

The last I heard about the Texas impacts were Childress was pretty much without power. Shelters were being setup and some National Guard units were assisting. I beg and plead with officials in both states to activate ALL available resources to assist the communities hit the hardest. There's also the fact that many motorists are stranded too out on roads and highways. They need rescue too.

Overall, this is going to become a HUGE news story over the next few days. To get more information, Google tv stations and newspapers in Oklahoma and Texas. There are some incredible photos on there as well as information.

For an excellent site for report details and even live webcams in Oklahoma, CLICK HERE. Check out Altus' cam. Wow!

Well, as I write this, the National Weather Service websites are not responding. So, I can't post any snowfall report totals. I'll post those later.

And yes, I got to eat a little crow about my forecast of 10-16" across the PH with some spots to 20". I watched the satellite water vapor loop late last night and this morning. That strong dry slot in the mid levels was a major sucker punch for me. In fact, it raced all the way into Missouri and I believe Indiana. This cut just south of the Panhandle mid day Thursday.

This in effect interrupted and curtailed moisture flow into the area. As soon as it punched in, the entire radar echoes of heavy to very heavy snow started dwindling and weakening. No doubt that this was a major factor in keeping snowfall totals tame compared to what was expected. Had this not been a factor, I have no doubt my forecast would have verified. Oh well...the joys of forecasting winter storms!! :-) Kudos to the weather mets on Channels 4 and 7 who called it accurately...as well as the NWS guys.

So, time to round up another hearty breakfast, grab some coffee, and watch this last gasp of snowfall move across the area. Looking at the models as we get well into February, they aren't looking favorable for any additional winter storms for the southern plains. In fact, it looks like we will get some good precipitation events and stay well above freezing.

Another update later this afternoon!

1/28/2010 Winter Storm Update - 4 PM (22Z)

2010-01-28T15:42:00.006-06:00

Snow continues with 3-4" accumulation here. 20F air temperature.

Despite the brief respite courtesy of a rather prominent dry slot, a new area of moderate to heavy snows blossomed between Lubbock and Hobbs, NM. In addition the drys lot area is starting ti fill in again with increasing precip as well. This trend should continue into tonight as the main upper system approaches. It will be fun to watch how heavy it gets and if we can bust the 10" mark in Amarillo.

Also, check out the live TXDOT cameras...especially out west near Vega:

http://amaits.dot.state.tx.us/AMA-ITS/default.htm

As of 2pm CST (20z), here are the official totals around the area so far (with reported times):


NWS AMARILLO    3.0   130 PM

VEGA            7.0  1109 AM
DALHART         7.0  1134 AM
STRATFORD       6.5   118 PM
DUMAS           6.0  1244 PM
CANYON          5.0  1129 AM
SPEARMAN        5.0   132 PM
HEREFORD        5.0  1253 PM
FRITCH          4.0  1250 PM
BORGER          4.0  1251 PM

1/28/2010 Winter Storm Update - 12noon (18Z)

2010-01-28T11:57:00.002-06:00

Since 10am, precip has switched between sleet and snow, but finally a total changeover by around 11am. It is now HEAVY snow with LARGE flakes. It is convective in nature as evidenced by a couple rumbles of thunder I've heard in the past 30 minutes. THUNDERSNOW!! :-)

Strangely, radar is now showing a LARGE dry air slot in the precip shield south of Plainview working northward. Could this bust my forecast of 12-16" across the area? I'm starting to think it just might. The radar trends also show a general weakening and dissipation of what was a massive precip shield. Will this dry slot work into Amarillo? Tough to say at this point, but current trends suggest it will.

HOWEVER, water vapor analysis still show the center of the upper low spinning around the far SW corner of New Mexico and SE Arizona. As it continues to approach, the precip should redevelop along with a trowel/deformation zone later this evening. The question is if the moisture will be enough with this big dry slot working in. What a forecasting headache. LOL!

Nonetheless, a pretty strong winter storm....but maybe not the more prolific amounts as previously thought. Stay tuned for further developments! Pic below I just took.

1/28/2010 Winter Storm Update - 10am (16Z)

2010-01-28T09:50:00.002-06:00

Precipitation continues to expand in coverage and intensity all across the region. Looks like the heaviest so far on radar has been just along and west of I-27/287 and generally along and south of I-40. Estimated precip amounts in that area are up to 5 inches....due in part to the heavy sleet cores skewing the algorithms. Still, very heavy sleet totals likely there.

Here at my house, the transition to snow started at about 9:30am and as of now probably about 75% snow with the rest sleet. So, my prediction wasn't too far off. :-) The 12z upper air sounding indicated abit more of a warm layer between 850 and 700mb....right around 6-8K feet. At least for my house and Amarillo, it will be snow here on out.

Air temperature is now down to 22F. Radar continues to show things intensifying and growing in areal coverage. Just got through with a shower and a very hearty breakfast. Will work on getting some pics up in a bit. Next update in a couple of hours.

1/28/2010 Winter Storm Update - 7am (13Z)

2010-01-28T07:13:00.003-06:00

Moderate to heavy sleet ongoing. 27F outside. Streets covered in a nice layer the icy pellets right now. Also, saw distant lightning flash. Concern with the warm layer aloft and how soon it cools to change everything over to snow. I saw a few snow flakes mixing in just now, so perhaps that will happen in the next couple of hours. Awaiting the 12z upper air sounding from Amarillo to get a more accurate picture of the vertical temperature profile.

Major Snowstorm & BLOG RESUSCITATION!!!!!

2010-01-26T23:31:00.000-06:00

After a very long hiatus, this blog is now active once again. Danged Facebook. :-)

I'll be blogging about the upcoming massive snow storm forecast to slam the Texas Panhandle on Thursday. Some model forcasts are showing 18" possible for the area. STAY TUNED!!!!!

May in Autumn?

2009-09-25T07:04:00.000-05:00

Latest model guidance is showing a strong consensus for a significant severe weather outbreak next week across the plains including the Panhandles. A powerful upper trough digs and moves across with a strong mid and upper jet streak rounding the base across the southern and central plains. With a good surge of moisture expected, this will help sharpen the dryline as well as provide the necessary fuel. This is a pattern we completely missed this past spring. We had August in May and now April in October. LOL!!!

Normally in fall, the upper air pattern favors a strong east coast trough. It is starting to look as if this October might be different and could be very active. Time will tell of course, but we are starting off pretty good. :-)

Stay tuned!

Space Shuttle Discovery!!!

2009-09-20T19:58:00.002-05:00

Amarillo had a special guest today. The shuttle Discovery, riding piggyback on a 747, stopped at Rick Husband International airport in Amarillo today. They refueled en route to it's home in Florida. I was fortunate to have special access via my flight school's hanger to sit right up front and get great pics and video. It was VERY cool indeed. :-)

I couldn't help it. :-)

Jason Boggs is trying to hitch a ride on the shuttle. :-)

This plane ferries the support staff as well as flying ahead to test for weather.

I thought this was kinda funny. :-)

Long Overdue Update

2009-09-13T00:26:00.004-05:00

As I've gotten more immersed into the online social networking world called "Facebook", I've really ended up neglecting this blog. To be honest, I've found myself in a state of transition moving further away from stormchasing as a passionate hobby. For anybody who keeps up with my posts here may recall one of the reasons I wanted to move to Amarillo. That is to be able to spend my vacation and free time pursuing other interests aside from stormchasing. After all, one has to satisfy their mid-life crisis, right? :-)

I've pursued my CHL (Concealed Handgun License) which should arrive in the next 4-6 weeks. Recent posts talked about this and the Glock G23 which will be my conceal carry. It's also a fun gun to shoot on the range. And speaking of fun, I've also obtained a new target rifle to do some entry level competition eventually and in general to have fun punching paper. It's a Savage 17HMR target rifle (93R17 BTVSS) with Leupold VX-I 3-9x40 scope. There will be more toys in the future though as I get more into the shooting sports.

As if that weren't expensive enough, I've taken the plunge into aviation by starting flying lessons. I originally wanted to get started with a Sport Pilot certification as it requires only 20 hours training and half the cost of a Private Pilot. However, to do so, I'd have to fly 5 hours solo in a sport rated plane (max 1,350 lbs gross weight and speed limit). There are none to rent around Amarillo. Yikes! I just assumed there would be. I could go elsewhere like Dallas or OKC, but I would still not be able to rent one here after I get the license (business opportunity anybody?).

So, I've decided to go for the full Private Pilot license instead...which I would have gotten eventually. I'm starting my ground school training in a week or so when I receive the DVD kit. Yep, you can do that all at home. Passing the FAA written test is all that is required for that. Then the fun (and expense) begins with flight training. Being that will likely cost around 6 grand over a period of 4-6 months, I'll likely wait to start that until after the first of the year....perhaps starting next summer when the weather is more stable. We'll see how that goes (hopefully not having to wait so long). I'll have plenty to keep me busy until then. I've got MS Flight Simulator X coming in next week with yoke, throttle and rudder controls, so I expect that to keep me busy and get some self training in the meantime....as much as that will allow. :-) I did take my introductory flight with a trainer last Friday though.

You know, it's amazing how much time and money one has when not blowing it all on stormchasing. LOL!! I'm not giving it up completely. What I will be severely curtailing are the long marathon trips and chasing too many marginal setups. After all, this is the Texas Panhandle. With an average or above-average year for storm activity, I expect to have enough opportunities to witness the full fury of mother nature in all her glory.....2008 and 2009 not counting of course. :-)

The bottom line is I should have plenty to satisfy my appetite for pursuing and admiring supercell thunderstorms. That sort of passion and appreciation never dies. But the tens of thousands of miles driving, dealing with thousands of chaser hordes, and all of the bullshit drama that goes with that...is something I won't miss one bit at all. In fact, those sorts of problems will only continue to grow and get worse. Stormtrack, which I don't participate in anymore, is an excellent "barometer" in that respect. Another reason to start looking for other more rewarding and satisfying hobbies.

I also see diminishing business opportunities as competition for supply increases at an exponential rate for a nearly constant demand. I've seen and experienced far too many cutthroat practices already. It just ain't worth it. I can spend the same amount of time doing something else with far fewer headaches and bullshit and yet make substantially more money. That comes with being 44 years old too I guess....and a couple of "shots across the bow" concerning one's health (nothing too serious). Life is too short. ;-)

So, as far as weather is concerned, Amarillo officially set an all-time rainfall record for the month of August. It was around 9.4 inches I believe. It just missed the all-time rainfall record for ANY month by about an inch. Everything is lush and green all across the Panhandle. Hopefully we won't experience another drought over the winter thus setting up another extreme wildfire season early in 2010. With a moderate to strong El Nino setting up for this winter, this should make things interesting around here as far as winter weather goes. It could be a real doozy. Maybe that will translate into an active chase season around here in 2010. Something to watch!

So, that about wraps it up for me. I'll try to update here a little more often. However, feel free to add me as a friend over on Facebook where I am much more active.

http://www.facebook.com/SteveMillerTX

Awesome Lightning Video

2009-08-09T21:52:00.000-05:00

Watching Discovery Channel this evening, they had a special on lightning with some incredible video. Check it out!!

CHL Class Completed

2009-08-08T18:48:00.004-05:00

I spent the entire day today completing and passing the Texas Concealed Handgun class which permits me to apply for a Concealed Handgun License (CHL). I'll send off the application next week after getting fingerprints done. I got 100% on the written test and 242 (out of 250 possible) on the handgun proficiency (shooting test). I could have scored much higher had one shot not just missed the silhouette part...kinda embarrassed about that one. ;-)

So, after sending it in, I should receive the license in 60-90 days...maybe a little longer if the DPS is still backed up as bad as they were the first half of 2009...thanks to the #1 firearm salesman of the year....Obama. :-)

The instructor was extremely knowledgeable and by far an expert. Heck, he is even directly involved in shaping the CHL laws here in Texas. He is definitely one of the top experts on firearms.

(rant: on)

However, his tact leaves alot to be desired. It really sucked. He's a cross between a drill sergeant and a cranky old grandfather. He's the type that no matter what you or anybody else says or does, it's wrong or inferior and falling well short of his standards or way of doing things. There was alot of preaching with a wooden ruler smacked over your head every time you opened your mouth (figuratively of course). Everybody in the class was intimidated to the point everybody was hesitant to answer or ask a question. I didn't take the $120 class to get beat over the head like some Catholic school child on the letter of the law. I expected to get some good, solid clarity (as in crystal clear) as to my rights, responsibilities, and liabilities as a CHL holder. Call me crazy, but I thought that was the intent of the class?

That in my book is NOT "instruction". Again, his wealth of knowledge and expertise isn't the problem, but he failed miserably in bestowing that upon us...his "students". It's a HUGE responsibility in so many areas both to the individual and the entire CHL community as a whole to be an effective instructor. Knowledge and expertise doesn't mean shit to anybody if you are an ass about it.

I myself will take the lessons learned today and seek additional resources and information to make sure I clearly (as in crystal) understand the different scenarios I may encounter in which I need to draw my handgun and use it. I'm taking that responsibility on myself and not letting this be an excuse for not fully knowing AND understanding the law by applying it to different case scenarios. Don't misunderstand, I did learn enough to understand the more obvious scenarios. But as in life, everything isn't always clear cut. I'm the type that needs that type of discussion to gain a higher level of confidence to REMOVE any doubt or hesitation in defending myself. Any hesitation or doubt could get me or somebody I am protecting killed.

Did you know that it takes LESS than ONE SECOND for somebody to clear 21 feet with a knife and stab you? Yep. So, I feel it necessary to be able to react quickly and decisively at an instinctive level in order to survive. After all, that is what they "instruct" at police and law enforcement training? Again, call me crazy. I will definitely be getting more training myself to get to that level.

Yes, I did perhaps learn some things today that other instructors "might" not have known or covered. But, other instructors "likely"would have been far more effective. Getting active participation from those you are teaching by creating a comfortable and respectful environment seems the way to go...I dunno...I'm just crazy like that. I think it's important enough to do it right AND to the best of your ability.

He kept answering such questions with "well, we covered that today in looking at the law...go back and read". Well, Sparky, I've been around long enough to know that the law can be interpreted in different ways and in various shades of gray. Discussing real life scenarios and how to legally react reinforces the laws, instills confidence, keeps CHL carriers out of legal hot water, and quite possibly somebody getting killed.

Anyway, it wasn't made much better by taking the class in a small "shop" behind a used car dealership with NO friggin' air conditioning in the 100F heat today. It was absolute misery in there even with fans. That is totally uncalled for and absolutely rude and inconsiderate in my opinion. After all, a man of his stature and level of expertise, recognition and authority should insist on at least reasonable classroom conditions in which to run and all-day class about something he claims to be passionate about. Again, call me crazy.

Overall, in hindsight, I wish I would have taken the course with another instructor. I will seek out some others for an advanced defensive class which I've intended to take...money of which this particular instructor and associated gunshop will never see one penny of from me....ever. I'm also wanting to buy some more guns for target and competition purposes of which I will probably fork out even MORE money on for coaching/instruction....not to mention the ammo and other supplies. The folks I dealt with today certainly won't ever see any of it. And I'll make damned sure others will steer away as well. I will not reward bad, rude and unprofessional behavior resulting in piss-poor customer service. I can be an ass too! LOL!!

I'm not naming names of course because I've got enough shit to deal with. However, email me privately and we'll chat. :-) Most fortunately, I believe my case is very isolated as I've not known anything but good reviews and comments about many other instructors. There has to be a bad apple in every bunch I guess.

(rant: off)

The bottom line is that I DID learn enough to pass the test and score well on the shooting portion. I learned some nifty tidbits as well like using a hollow point could be construed as intent to kill (rather than stop) the attacker thus having implications in possible civil action against you (depending of course on the "Castle Law" in Texas). I will submit my application to the State Of Texas next week. Mission accomplished. I guess that is really what it's all about. So, I'm a happy camper...just had to vent abit. :-)

I might head to the range tomorrow to practice some shooting fundamentals and techniques I have learned. With that, I'll also be using my Crimson Trace Lasergrips I just put on my Glock G23. It will be fun messing around with it and getting it sighted in properly. Plus, it will actual help in me refining my shooting fundamentals and technique to refine my accuracy that much better. It's also a nice extra "exclamation point" to any would-be attacker of your intentions. Sure, there is alot of debate on using laser sights, but I think they can be useful.

Alright, enough about guns and CHL. There isn't alot to talk about weather wise. After all, it's summer. There aren't any tropical systems affecting the region either. Pretty much boring right now. However, we are getting through August, so some significant changes will be coming down the road as we get into September. I might get some of my Hurricane Ike video loaded up soon in time reflect on that disaster's one year anniversary in September. I've got some HDR projects in the works too that I've put on the back burner temporarily. So, time to start messing around with that again on some of my best photos.

Ya'll stay cool out there!

Glock G23

2009-07-30T22:29:00.000-05:00

Well, since my last post, things have calmed a little bit, but still alot in the air. It's simply ending up with a horrible new boss recently. The one I really liked who originally hired me got promoted. But, that's the way my career path has been the past few years, so I'm getting used to it. LOL!! I'll try to tough it out, but I am pursuing a "plan B" at this point which includes leaving Amarillo to find greener pastures. Stay tuned.....

Anyway, I've finally taken the plunge and purchased a Glock G23 pistol. Thanks to some very knowledgable buddies of mine at work (you know who you are), I narrowed it down to this one. The main purpose is for self-defense and a concealed carry weapon. As a .40 caliber, it is more powerful than a 9mm round, but short of a cannon as is the .45 caliber. It is perfect for my needs and for my price range, the best pistol out there in my humble opinion. I also enjoy the peace of mind now should I ever have to neutralize a threat. That could be man or animal. After all, I do end up in some crazy places in some desolate areas of the Panhandles region. Plus, with all of the gear I carry, I'm certainly a desirable target for burglary and theft. And of course, I'll sleep more soundly at night. :-)

I've put 50 rounds through it this evening at the range. It is very comfortable, balanced and natural feeling. In fact, right off the bat, I centered 10 of the first 13 rounds at 15 yards...pretty decent grouping if I say so myself. :-) It is a very accurate weapon. In the future, I'll be adding some accessories to it like a laser and tactical flashlight.

I'm now ready for my Concealed Handgun License (CHL) class in within the next couple of weeks. After completing that, I should expect to get my CHL in about 10-14 weeks and maybe sooner if the Texas DPS can recover from the huge influx of requests the first half of 2009...which equaled what they did all of 2008. Hmmm...could it be because of the Big 'O' in the white house and his loony band of idiots in Congress? btw...know who the #1 gun salesman of the year is right now? Barack Obama. LOL!!!

Outside of self defense, I'm looking forward to recreational use as well. The G23 will easily convert to a 9mm which is cheaper when compared to the .40 ammo. So, going to the range and plinking will be more affordable. I'm also interested in exploring some competitive shooting as well. A couple of groups exist in Amarillo for that purpose should I decide to pursue that down the road.

So, a happy gun owner now. Next up is joining the NRA. That'll be sure to most assuredly establish myself as a right wing extremist whacko nutjob amongst various liberal circles. LOL!!

Possible Big Changes Coming Soon

2009-07-23T23:19:00.000-05:00

I wish I could say that about the weather, but unfortunately I'm not. Details later down the road, but it's safe to say I won't be blogging for awhile. Check back in a month or so. I'll be back though blogging away when things settle down. :-)

Best Of - 2009

2009-07-19T09:56:00.002-05:00

The past few days have been a very welcome relief from the stifling heat wave. NW flow aloft has dominated the weather pattern for the Panhandles region which for this time of year is a great setup for convection. We've had some pretty impressive non-tornadic supercells too producing some large hail and damaging winds. One reason they have not been tornadic is the storm motions are generally southward with low level inflow from the E or SE. The bulk of a storm's inflow source is it's own precip-cooled air. We need S or even SW inflow into these storms to increase the tornadic potential. Additionally, lower dewpoint spreads would help too. As has been the case for 2009, surface dewpoints here on the high plains have been pretty meager.

As I sit around waiting for a sign on satellite to trek towards Dalhart today in anticipation of more chasing, I thought I'd put together my best pics of a meager and frustrating season. It didn't help to have a good part of May end up with an upper air pattern you'd expect to see in August.

So, I start off with a pic I took on May 3 at Wildcat Bluff Nature Center near Amarillo which surely was an omen for May's chase potential:

2009 started off pretty quirky for the Panhandles. After a near-record for lack of snowfall for the winter, we make up for it with a blizzard on March 27-28th. Up to 13 inches fell across the region with strong winds up to 40mph.

True to the spirit of the Panhandle, one week later on April 4th, we were experiencing major wildfires. I "chased" the big wildfire in Wheeler county.

On April, 16th, a very intense hailstorm occurred around Tulia, Texas with one of the most impressive hail dumps I've seen.

On April 26, I chased the high risk in western Oklahoma and bailed on the storm that would produce some nice tornadoes that many other chasers saw. I mean, it's a high risk, right? ;-) I opted for newer development in SW OK which was a major disappointment. Later on, I surveyed the damage from the earlier tornadoes and discovered the remnants of a trailer home.

I would finally get an opportunity to intercept a major tornadic supercell on April 29th. I couldn't leave work early, so had to make some quick, rash intercept decision to try and get to the outflow boundary near Plainview, TX. As I tried to head south on 70 instead of I-27, big storms erupted slinging out baseballs and causing me some delay. This is one of them...an impressive left-splitter:

So, some bad intercept decisions kept me away from a very impressive tornado near Cedar Hill, east of Plainview. Thank goodness for telephoto lenses!! :-) Still, an impressive sight of a tornado up on top of the caprock.

Despite the anemic August-like upper air pattern, a combination of a sharp, stationary dryline and cool front sagging south into a pretty unstable atmosphere, some caprock magic unfolded and produced a real beast of an HP tornadic supercell around Pampa and Miami. Again, work delayed me from reaching the storm in time to see the visible tornadoes, but I still got to witness some jaw-dropping merry-go-round structure of this beast. I'll have some better HDR images of it soon online.

On June 2, I grabbed a good image of a very intense core dump and associated rain foot south of Pampa.

My best lighting photo opportunity to date materialized on June 5 across the eastern Texas Panhandle from around Panhandle to Pampa. Check out these stunning images of a most surreal environment. I've never seen so many storms this intensely electrified!

Then one day as I was driving around on June 7, I saw the most bizarre contrail I've ever seen. The sun was setting just right for maximum effect.

Another potentially big chase day on June 13 resulted in some great storm structure...but no tornadoes...again...despite several tornado warnings. This storm was near Plainview.

A couple of days later on June 15th, yet another potential tornado day went pfffft, but yielded some beautiful structure and stunning sunset in the NE Texas Panhandle. Some HDR photos are coming of this too.

Lastly on June 27, a severe thunderstorm erupted over Amarillo and dumped up to 3 inches of rain in about an hour. Being that it is pretty flat, drainage is a major engineering challenge. The first pic is of the storm over Tanglewood developing towards Amarillo with an impressive rain/dust foot. If I ever get time, I'll edit some video of this event and post it.

Some other great images may still come in 2009, especially this fall, but they are usually rare. I'll post any that I catch though. Just like the past few days, anything can happen in the Panhandle. It's why I love living here. :-)

$1,000,000,000,000

2009-07-13T21:14:00.001-05:00

Congratulations, Obama and Demorats, on setting one of the most dubious milestones in our country's history. This country is now ONE TRILLION dollars in the red. What's even more sinister is that the end of the ballooning deficit is nowhere in sight. We could actually double that figure.

How much is a trillion? Some comparisons.....

You could have 1 million millionaires.

A trillion seconds = 31,546 years.

Here is what a pile of 100 packets of $10,000 each ($1 million) looks like:

A $100 million:

$1 BILLION:

and now...TADAAA...$1 TRILLION (and the pallets are DOUBLE STACKED!!!)

(source: http://www.zee.me/blog/2009/03/what-does-one-trillion-dollars-look-like/)

And now....guess who OWNS a large portion of this debt? China. Yep. I guess it was just a matter of time that "Made In China" would eventually become "Owned By China".

Thanks Obama and Demorats for that "Change" you talked about.

FryingPan-handle

2009-07-09T22:26:00.002-05:00

The Panhandles region today ended up in Ma Nature's frying pan...and I think she forgot and left it on the stove. LOL!! Records were smashed, no doubt. A sample of temperatures with the leader...Buffalo, OK.


BUFFALO OK           115 (highest Oklahoma temperature in 15 years)
CANADIAN TX          112
MESA VISTA RANCH TX  111
BEAVER OK            111
PERRYTON TX          111
GUYMON OK            110
HOOKER OK            110
SLAPOUT OK           110
GOODWELL OK          107
PAMPA TX             106
AMARILLO TX          106

Right now, at 10:30pm, Buffalo, OK is STILL reporting 97F!! I hope everybody's A/C units can endure the next few days.

Tomorrow looks like another scorcher without a doubt. I'm afraid that just like today, the models are underestimating the intense heat. Thus, the forecast high of 102F for Amarillo seems too conservative. We shall see what happens. Ugh. This just adds further insult to injury after a dismal 2009 chase season around these parts.

But, as they say, it's at least a DRY heat. LOL!!! It definitely beats the intense heat with high dewpoints I had to endure back in North Central Texas. Today, the dewpoints were generally less than 50F whereas back in my old stomping grounds, it was mid and upper 60's with the about the same air temperature.

Hopefully, the models are correct in weakening the ridge and even teasing us with a couple of weak fronts next week. This should "cool" us back into the 90's and with any luck, some cooling outflow from thunderstorms.

Is it October yet? ;-)

Amarillo Smack Down

2009-06-28T10:45:00.001-05:00

A "pretty good storm" spread havoc across Amarillo yesterday. Downburst winds of up to 70mph and 3-4 inches of rain in an hour resulted in serious flooding and a few trees down. Residential streets turned into whitewater rapids. Major intersections into swimming pools. It's a problem living in a "flat" city.

I started off watching it form and intensify over the Lake Tanglewood area SE of Amarillo proper. The core dump over this area created an impressive rain/dust foot which I caught in the first image below. Yep, I was out in the middle of it. :-) In addition to the wind damage and major flooding, a couple of roads were caved in or buckled. Yowsa!!

http://www.amarillo.com/stories/062809/new_13832189.shtml

http://myhighplains.com/content/video/?watch=1&cid=63761

http://myhighplains.com/content/video/?watch=1&cid=63731

My photos (video to come later):

2009 - Turn Off The Lights

2009-06-21T06:52:00.004-05:00

After a huge forecast failure in NW OK close to the KS border...AND perusing the models this morning, I'm turning off the lights and shutting the door on 2009. I'm happy to to do so on a very bizarre and frustrating season for me. I managed to get on many tornado-warned storms with VERY little to show for it. I've come to the point of being convinced that if you take a non-tornado producing storm south of the Kansas border and then place it in Kansas, it will spin and produce multiple, gorgeous tornadoes....especially when I'm not around it. LOL!!

My stormkiller reputation has been reaffirmed this year much to my own chagrin. Yep, I killed the "Caprock Magic" single-handedly. For 2009, it was more of "Caprock Illusion"....or "Delusion"...or "Elusion". Take your pick. :-) So for both 2008 and now 2009, it's been a pretty dull season out in these parts compared to what you would typically see. My odometer can testify to that. I'm experiencing Deja Vu from the North Central Texas curse. It always seemed the really good events were 500 or more miles away. What few setups did materialize, something would happen to totally screw up what looked to be a prime setup.

The biggest problem this season was the very dry airmass over the region. I think a large part of this was due to the massive dry air dumps into the GOM basin early on combined with the serious drought in the region. The total winter snowfall total for Amarillo through early March was less than two inches which was a near-record pace. Only the blizzard of March 27 produced any appreciable amounts with up to 13 inches of snowfall. Even with that, we were below the average of 17 inches. It was also our first truly appreciable moisture in several months since about late September based on my memory.

Sure, there were good severe weather events in other parts of tornado alley, but in areas with lower elevations....relatively speaking. The moisture depth was all too often rather shallow. Even with good return flow, the moisture couldn't make it on top of the caprock. It would quickly and easily mix out by early afternoon (or sooner) if any did make it up here. Not surprisingly, and as I often pointed out early on in the season, the dryline would mix east well into Oklahoma or central Kansas. Whenever the dryline would back up to the NM border, the dewpoints ahead of it would be below 50F with large dewpoint depressions.

So, for the naysayers out there who don't believe that extreme severe drought conditions west of I-35 combined with massive GOM dry air dumps doesn't affect the season, 2009 should hopefully be enough to at least consider it as "plausable"....especially with 2006 as another very similar year. This of course begs the question and debate as to the La Nina pattern affecting us. Was the drought the overriding cause of a dismal Caprock severe weather season...or was it just a small contributing factor and symptom of La Nina which screwed with the upper air pattern thus choking the season out here? The very bizarre and unusual upper air pattern in May that resembled July/August certainly didn't help the cause.

Fortunately, we are getting TONS of rain out in these parts. After nearly turning into the Sahara Desert for almost 9 months with very little if any rainfall, we are now prety much soaked all across the Caprock....especially around Tulia area and the eastern Texas Panhandle. These areas are very lush and green with water standing everywhere. All of the playa lakes are brimming with water and the air is moist and sticky with humidity....and TONS of bugs. My windshield alone has splattered a million critters....easily.

Will this trend continue this summer and into the winter? I certainly hope so. I hope we see a much "wetter" winter with fewer episodes of the massive dry air dumps deep into the tropics that we saw so much of this season thanks to frequesnt deep SE US upper air troughs and cyclones. We need them over the SW US as we would normally see in the winter and early spring.

With all of that aside, I'm looking forward to watching the tropical season crank up. I do not have any plans to chase any landfalling hurricanes in Texas. Part of the reason is having a new full time job, so taking time off will be almost impossible. Plus, it's an expensive venture which is difficult to make enough money through media busness to justify it. I'm needing a new vehicle as well as new camera gear....not to mention relocating to Panhandle, TX this fall (hopefully). Since experiencing the eyes of Gustav and especially Ike last year, I don't really have the level of desire to do so again as I did being a virgin hurrican chaser this time last year. :-)

I'm also just starting to play around with HDR which I have been wanting to do for awhile. In fact, I'm "behind the times" in this regard. I'm looking forward to producing HDR versions of my best storm photography over the years. My main goal is to achieve a more natural exposure balance in the often extreme lighting levels within storm environments. I will also do some more "artistic" versions with more extreme tone mapping. Stay tuned for that as this will be on the top of my "to do" list this season.

I'll also be doing some more work on my website as well. I made alot of positive changes, but want to dig deeper into some ideas I've had but with little if any time to devote to it. Chase reports in particular need alot of work. Another effort will be to transfer this blog to something other than this google blogger. I'm still having to jack around captcha crap everytime I do something because my blog is still marked as a spam blog. Despite submitting a request SIX times now to have it reviewed and returned back to a normal blog, I've not heard a peep from the google idiots. With this and some other crap in having to deal with them, I'm more than ready to abandon them.

Will I EVER do a highlights DVD? I keep thinking I will. Maybe this year will be the year to do it. It's just so much work for what I want to do and how to do it. Who knows? If I actually get started and make any appreciable progress, I'll let you know. :-) I at least want to work on some individual video clips for posting on YouTube. Watch for that as well.

Other than that, I'll be working on setting up the annual Tailchaser SDS party for August. We used my apartment clubhouse last year which worked out great. I'll likely do that again this year. It's always a blast with friends watching the season highlights and just hanging out. It's tough to have the time to do that during the busy chase season.

Outside of chase-related activities, I'll be getting a new or newer vehicle this year. My Honda Element has nearly 140,000 reliable miles on it and still going strong. But, it needs some maintenance done on it which could get pricey. It makes sense to use that on a new vehicle down payment. The dilema I face is whether I should keep it? It's been such an awesome litttle vehicle..AND it's paid off, I hate to sell it. It would make for a great second vehicle. I've considered making it my official chase vehicle and fully rig it out and get the maintenance up to snuff for next year. It would make it easier with a non-chase vehicle to get into work too. ;-) So, I'll be lamenting and pondering that as well over the next few months.

The other big plan is moving from the SW side of Amarillo to the little town of Panhandle. It would shave 40 miles per day off my current commute. This also translates into a time savings as well. Coming back from weeknight chases in the E TX PH or W OK, it's a 30 minute savings in time as well as 30 minutes of a morning. That translates into an extra hour of sleep. :-) Plus, doing any lightning photography would be simply driving a few blocks and setting up the camera. I've checked out the town pretty well and love it. It has all of the basic amenities I would ever need including cable internet, nice grocery store, gas stations, post office, etc. In fact, it even has a nine-hole golf course! :-) For chasing, it's in about as strategic of a location as you could hope to have.

Other than that, some photo excursions are in store (hear that Jason Boggs? Get your camera ready!). There are so many cool things to go explore and point a lens at including New Mexico. With the HDR being added to my skill sets this year, I'll be looking forward to it. Hopefully I'll get the new Rebel DSLR by then. :-)

So that's it from me for at least a week or two in this blog unless some bizarre setup creates a local chase opportunity. Lightning photography is still an option as would be any NW flow event storms (whcih I see no opportunity for in the crystal ball). I'll put together a "best of 2009" photo slideshow down the road. Maybe in a week or two in my next blog entry. So for now....shutting the door and turning off the lights for 2009....

[click]

Chasing Today

2009-06-20T11:37:00.000-05:00

It's amazing how things can change in 24 hours. Overnight and this morning, a large are of prolonged light to moderate rain across the western half of the TX PH and W TX into Kansas had created a large rain-cooled airmass in these areas. The interesting aspect is that this area was pretty much stationary with a sharply delineated cloud shield. The result is a large, sharp baroclinic zone between the coll airmass and "warm sector" immediately to the E and S where strong insolation is ongoing and expected to continue.

Already, strong cumulus congestus field is setting up in the E TX panhandle along this boundary area from about Wheeler to Clarendon. Additional agitated cumulus is showing up in NW OK. With boundary layer dewpoints from 68-73F all across the area when combined with very strong insolation cooking this tropical-like airmass into the upper 80's and 90's, the instability will be pretty good today. Most important is the expected 0-3km CAPE values which will be quite high.

Aloft, 500mb winds from the SW at 30-45 knots above southerly 20-30 knot 850mb winds and SSW 700mb winds 30-40 knots are favorable for some nice supercell modes today...in particular any storm that gets deeply rooted along any boundary and moves slowly or with a strongly deviant motion. Above 500mb, the winds are fairly weak, so storms will be more HPish.

So, after not planning on chasing today, this is a nice turn of events and another reason why one should not count the season over until it truly is. :-) However, the models are pretty certain that the season for me at least will be over after today. The summer upper ridge, which made a very annoying premature appearence in May, will setup over the weekend and settle in for awhile.

So, I will be chasing today...my finale to the 2009 chase season.

6/13 & 6/15 Pics

2009-06-18T21:45:00.003-05:00

6/13 North of McAdoo, TX. Classic wall cloud on a tornado-warned storm. (Storm #1).

6/13 Plainview, TX. (Storm #2) Impressive storm structure hovering over the city. You can see what remains of the earlier double-bell shaped updraft. Also note nice beaver tail and the wall cloud on the horizon.

6/13 Plainview, TX. Same storm with ominous wall cloud over Plainview.

6/13 Plainview, TX.

6/13 W of Lockney, TX. Storm but now approaching Lockney.

6/13 W of Lockney, TX. Note the very weak funnel. Wall cloud was pretty agitated and looking it's most threatening.

6/13 W of Lockney, TX. Dig that green core!

6/15 W of Lipscomb, TX. (Storm #1) Awesome structure of tornado-warned supercell. Nice LP variety. Earlier, I saw a nice white funnel halfway to the ground as I approached from a distance.

6/15 NW of Lipscomb, TX. Excellent LP supercell now. Although no longer tornado-warned, was still producing large hail.

6/15 Booker, TX. (Storm #2).

6/15 N of Follett, TX. Last gasps of storm #2.

6/15 N of Follett, TX. I love Panhandle sunsets!!

Great Chase Monday

2009-06-16T22:43:00.001-05:00

Just now getting around to processing all of my pictures from Monday 6/15 and Saturday 6/13. We speaketh not about Sunday's fail. ;-)

The 6/15 chase resulted in some spectacular structure, one nice funnel half way to the ground from one storm and a thin whispy funnel from another one. No pics/video as I was busy trying to get positioned and setup in case an actual tornado formed from the strongly rotating wall clouds. As is my season for 2009, no such luck getting a tornado out of the deal (these aren't Kansas or Colorado storms after all...lol). But, the consolation prize of gorgeous storm structure certainly made up for it.

6/13 was a great chase as I did everything right including being right under the eventual tornado-warned storm north of McAdoo before it even showed up on radar. Nice storm structure with a big honking wall cloud was the result and about three small, needle "shear" funnels. Merging storm clusters killed it though.

However, I made a run towards the newere storms around Plainview and Silverton. The Plainview storm had one of the thickest, sharpest rock solid anvils I've ever seen. As I got some backlighting on it, I could make out a vertically duel bell-shaped updraft base in the distance. It was quite the spectacle..but hazy. I had to get closer for a decent shot. Naturally, the storm structure lost it's best appearance from earlier as I got closer. Still, some great structure and an ominous wall cloud dragging the top of Plainview. Those folks were lucky I was there to weaken the storm. :-)

Overall, I've improved my cell data connection with a new antenna, but discovered my cellular amp is on the fritz. That will need replacing for next season. I also had some serious re-connection problems with my stream. It "looked" like everything was ok, only to discover it had disconnected and would not auto-reconnect. I discovered this on Monday. Argh! I'm not sure what the problem is, but I'll have planty of time to fix it before next season.

Did I say "next season"? Yep. I'm pretty much resigned to the fact that it is just about over with. The models keep wanting to build a ridge over my "playground" and usher in summer just in time for it's official arrival this weekend. However, I'm not ready to close the book on the 2009 season and shelve it (or throw it in the trash where it blongs...lol). Some hints that the upper ridge might not set in as strong as earlier advertised. We shall see.

Pics coming within the next couple of days.

Quickie Forecast - 6/15

2009-06-15T07:24:00.000-05:00

Pampa, Texas. :-)

Today's Thoughts

2009-06-14T14:33:00.001-05:00

Had some fun yesterday, but not quite the spectacle I had expected. Too many storms I think were a major fly in the ointment along with the boundary/dryline moving westward. Still, got some great structure pics I'll post later.

For taday, I am currently sitting in Canyon, TX preparing to head to Happy. VERY strong localized convergence is shaping up SW of Canyon where a pronounced outflow boundary is intersecting the sharpening dryline. This area has been exposed to alot of insolation today and destabilizing quite nicely. I'm already seeing some nice cumulus building up in proximity to the boundary intersections. Some elevated storms are moving this way from around Clovis indicative of approaching upper level dynamics. I'd prefer a target north of I-40 with better upper winds, but that won't do any good with a rain-cooled, stablized airmass. Hence my chosen target. :-)

Headed back to Canyon for some supplies and then southward. Catch me live at http://texastailchaser.com/livechase.

Big Chase Day

2009-06-13T09:55:00.004-05:00

Finally, it appears things are coming together quite nicely for a significant chase event across parts of the Panhandle and W TX. As I have continually watch severe weather setups this season either avoid the Panhandle by 500 miles or totally crater by the afternoon setup, it is quite invigorating to finally see something within range for me to chase...and a good setup at that.

After ALOT of careful forecasting considerations between E CO and W TX, I'm going to stick with W TX. Right now, my thinking is that the current W/E frontal boundary around Tulia/Plainview will remain in place. It might perhaps sag a little south according to the persistent RUC forecast and 12z NAM. I'm thinking it won't however. Therefore, I'm picking Plainview/Tulia as my target for today.

Just as the monster tornadic supercell developed in Jack County yesterday owing to extreme instabilities, we wil have the same setup today. My only concerns are too many storms erupting at once and marginal mid level and 850mb flow. Stll, a well defined boundary, acceptable storm-relative winds, and CAPE busting 4000, a prime, classic Caprock severe weather event is unfolding. I just hope that the bad luck streak for setups out here doesn't continue today.

A special note. My niece will be joining me today on her maiden stormchasing voyage. I hope mother nature cooperates and puts on a spectacle for us.

That's it....gotta get things ready and hit the road in a couple of hours.

Spiral Vortex Contrail

2009-06-08T21:44:00.003-05:00

Here is something you don't see everyday. I captured this on Sunday. An aircraft flew along the bottom side edge of a cirrus streak. As it emerged, the contrail looked normal, but quickly morphed into this beautiful spectacle. It certainly appears to be punching downward. Pretty unusual.

Also, a special shout out to a long time friend coming out of temporary retirement to chase tornadoes and storms like the do on the Discovery Channel! Check out Brian Fant's blog!

Zeus' Panhandle Rampage

2009-06-06T21:22:00.007-05:00

Wow! After a prolonged drought of lightning photography opportunities, the storm gods unleashed an electrical hellstorm across the region the likes of I've not seen in years. I shot about 200 lightning images!!! Every cell that popped up was a prolific CG producer starting right at sunset. Prior to that, the action was pretty anemic. I haven't a clue as to what caused the atmosphere to start going nuts with lightning. Amazing.

I initially got on the first storm in Oldham county prior to it going severe. I had considered going north to the first severe cell in the OK PH, but I stuck with my analysis and forecast. The storm took on some very nice structure and looked like it was going to be a real brute. It waned abit (but still severe) and at one point became a high based, laminar storm of the most boring proportions. I almost went home, but I kept reminding myself of the instability and helicities/EHI values east of Amarillo that it would soon move into.

Following it to near the Pantex facility, it finally started to morph and look alot more menacing. Later by Panhandle, the CG barrage started cranking up as did the storm itself. It was a perfect setup with the setting sun creating a nice palette of colors as a stunning backdrop for the intense electric-blue CG bolts. As I let the storm move away to the east, I started focusing on a new area of CG barrage to the west from a new cell popping up. Then, I noticed on radar my original storm was quickly organizing into a serious supercell with a TVS on it.

One look at radar instantly screamed at me to book east towards White Deer and Pampa (and avoiding the massive hail core on Hwy 60). As I did, I got a good look at the new updraft base...my jaw dropped. It was a rounded, bowl-shaped multi-striated updraft!! Yowsa! I was still SSW of the hook when the tornado warning was issued. Dang my luck!! Spotters confirmed a tornado somewhere within a stone's throw to my NE om the other side of the intense hooking core. I talked to the sheriff later on who saw it as well...a nice cone shaped funnel. Ugh! I finally got into excellent position ESE of the hook, but the tornado had long dissipated. I was still hoping to catch another attempt and get my first good night photo of a tornado. No such luck. I did get to stand in awe of the incredible striated bowl shaped updraft overhead being illuminated by lightning.

The tornado warnings were still ongoing and now included the newer cell to the west. I got into better position for this one east of Groom, but it didn't produce...as far as I could detect. At one point, I thought I could faintly make out a large dust plume under the updraft, but believe it was likely RFD dust getting kicked up. Both cells continued weakening below tornadic thresholds, but the CG barrage didn't!!!

I managed to setup and capture LOTS of lightning photos. Some were abit out of focus or my camera shifted thus cutting off the horizon. A few did not have the correct ISO/aperture. This is in part of trying to hurry around and find a good spot as well as sitting in the car with my tripoded camera outside. The cable release was threaded through the window. :-) The CG activity was that intense and wicked! My ham radio antenna was crackling with static electricity. I didn't want to get fried by a CG bolt.

I am quite happy and fortunate to have had everything come together as it did. Good lightning photo opportunities AND situations are rare. You have to have the right storm (not moving very fast, lower precip, LOTS of continuous CG activity), good, flat open terrain (thank God for the Panhandle!), good places to setup away from annoying light sources such as cities or big security lights, road networks and dirt roads to park (dirt...not mud pits like I found alot of), AND on a non-work night or at least close enough to home.

The only imperfect aspect was the only decent dirt road I could find had power lines in the way as you will see in some of the shots. I ran around like crazy trying to find a good road and they were either very muddy, lots of tall grass, weeds or shoulders blocking the view, or had a big annoying light source in the way. I didn't have alot of time to explore. :-) I shot most of the night shots on Hwy 70 just about 1-2 miles north of I-40.

Overall, I'd say about 50 photos were well worth keeping and processing. Out of those, I've selected the jewels of the bunch and posted them below. Some had some rain droplets on the lens, so I had to spend alot of extra time photoshopping those out. That and editing out all of the hot pixels along with regular processing has taken up a good part of the day today, but well worth the effort. My camera has really been through hell and taken many thousands of pictures. The sensor is starting to have more hot pixels show up in my lightning images. I hope to have a new camera soon. :-)

Lots of images here, but wanted to show off my best ones.... a hard decision to make just to get it down to these! Some of my best lightning photos to date. I'll post my 5/4 images later down the road as these 5/5 pics blow those away. Please note the the quality level of the pics below was intentionally "punked" abit. The quality of the originals is much better. :-)

The first four images were shot near Panhandle. I could not have asked for any better a setup right at sunset!

The CG is in fact part of the big bolt above it.

I really liked this shot with all of the CGs staggered along in a row as if in formation.

You can make out a couple of big water droplets on the lens at the bottom of the image.

6/4 Festival Of Vortices

2009-06-05T07:03:00.001-05:00

A pretty crazy chase yesterday. Of ALL the days I left my video cameras at home, I had to pick today. I could have had some really great video. Argh! Saw numerous gustnadoes including some very intense ones. I also believe a couple of "technical" tornadoes occurred as well across Deaf Smith county.

I followed one of those near Dawn, TX and was immediately behind it. Rotation was very tight and pretty intense unlike a typical gustnado. It lasted for a good 5 minutes with several upward motions of dust and vegetative debris. I distinctly noted strongly converging winds at the surface colliding at the vortex's center thanks to the plowed fields. NE winds merging with N and NW winds. There was some agitated rotation above it in the cloud base, so a tornado? There were some large tree limbs downed in Dawn. Later south of Hereford I believe, a very large and intense dust swirl organized and again took on characteristics more of a tornadic circulation complete with agitated rotation just above it.

Since these "tornadoes" occurred along the gust front, one could easily debate the definitions of such vorticies. I've accepted the fact over the years that mother nature doesn't always color within the lines and sometimes blurs across man's arrogant attempts to box her in. I simply refer to these vortices as "hybrids" as I cannot think of another way to define it. Still, it was pretty wild observing them up close and personal!! Very fun chase!! :-)

Later on near Needmore, TX, I encountered true ZERO visibility in blowing dirt (not dust...dirt!). I had no choice but to stop in the middle of the road as I literally could not even see even the end of my hood!! The dirt combined with with some rain to coat my driver side windows with a thick layer of west Texas red dirt. I would try to crawl along only to catch a brief glimpse that I was nearly off the road in the grass on one side or the other of the narrow FM road. I finally found a little side road to pull over and ride it out so as not to get hit by any idiot driver. Finally, the core arrived and dumped some intense rain and nickle hail to settle the blowing dirt and clean my windows. For about 3 minutes, my driver's side window was a miniature mudslide. :-)

Pics will be forthcoming. I have to hit the road to work and wait for today's setup to materialize. Latest model data doesn't have me too excited for today around the Panhandle region. But, I will have my video cameras just in case....which will ensure nothing worth videoing will occur today. LOL!! Unfortunately, the dry air problem we've experienced most of the season west of the I-35 corridor and in particular W TX and the Panhandles is going to be a real pain for awhile. The GFS wants to keep this region scoured out of any appreciable surface moisture for anything within my chase range for the next week. I'm not so sure that the GFS is correct though. We shall see. I'd love to be heading to NE CO today. I'll have to settle for the table scraps on the floor closer to home.

Oh and for those wondering about my lack of streaming video, I have resolved some technical issues and should be be back doing that again today.

6/2 Pics & Weekend Chasing Ahead

2009-06-03T21:57:00.003-05:00

It appears that the long awaited upper air pattern change is underway. This will herald in a very active severe weather mode for at least the first half of June. Buckle your seatbelts. :-)

Alot of uncertainty is swirling around however as to the quality of the setup. Models are showing some signficant differences in the details with the upper level configuration. This of course affects what happens at the surface. One concern will be the quality of moisture return (theme for 2006 and 2009 so far) for at least Friday and Saturday. Thank the recent major front plowing into the GOM coastal areas spreading a big chunk of dry air all across the plains. It is going to take some time to get the moisture back up to June standards. That might not be until Sunday at the very earliest...more likely Monday.

Friday definitely has alot of ingredients for tornadic supercells, but the moisture will be pitiful creating large dewpoint spreads and high based outflow dominant storms. With great vertical veering profiles, they should be pretty photogenic. Beyond that, my confidence level quickly drops as alot of variables have yet to be filled in...lots of doubt. More on that later.

On Tuesday, I headed towards Miami/McClean and intercepted the storms there. I saw some nickle hail and winds up to 60mph for a brief moment. One cell around Lefors did develop a nice little wall cloud with persitent weak organized rotation. That was about as exciting as it got as outflow dominated storm mode quickly ensued. Made for some decent pics. And for the chasers out there convinced that most law enforcement "hates" chasers, I once again had a friendly and positive encounter with a Texas State Trooper whom I shared data with and shot the bull with briefly. I think I'm now well over 200 positive encounters now in my "chase career" without a single negative encounter. Hmmmmm.....

And one more gripe...to the chasers in the white Saturn SUV headed W on 287 around Clarendon....was it really necessary to be heading up the highway at 85mph+ with your emergency flashers making traffic clear the left lane with only a piddly, weakening, high based, extremely outflow dominant little thunderstorm up ahead? It's rare that I would ever want wear the stormchaser police badge, but c'mon. Use a little common sense and chill out. Ok?

Anyway, pics!!

Intense precip core with nice rain foot.

Intensifies further and scud begins transforming into a wall cloud which would exhibit organized, weak rotation in concert with the storm base. GR3 was also showing some weak rotation in the storm too at this time with a little bit of a hook appearence.

I refer to this as a hybrid between shelf and wall cloud.

Attempting a little artsy shot with the beautiful golden wheat field in the foreground.

June Cometh

2009-05-28T22:25:00.004-05:00

After alot of careful scrutiny of the models, my confidence in an active June is increasing. The meteorological crystal balls are becoming more persistent in advertising a significant and quite favorable change in the upper air pattern. Some level of throughiness becomes established along the west coast out through 14 days...starting as early as this upcoming Sunday and especially be next week.

The question of course is how deep and broad it will develop correlating with just how far east/south it's effects will be. The GFS of course keeps flopping around with such details, but seems to be trending towards putting the TX PH and W TX in the middle of the action. IF it's current solution were to verify beyond 10 days, then the Caprock is going to be in for one helluva ride in June as is the rest of tornado alley a good ways west of I-35....draw a box from W half of OK to E NM and northward into the central plains.

What this really reminds me of are "classic" and historical Junes of years long past. Repeated days of drylines, stalled fronts, triple points, numerous outflow boundaries, strong to even outrageous instabilities. The result being big, behemoth supercells rampaging across "the alley".

So, I am making plans to tie up loose ends regarding equipment, vehicle and other responsibilities to clear the slate for June. Living here in Amarillo might just be about to pay off. :-) I will certainly be eager to turn the page of every calender both here and at work. I may have to perform a special version of "The Forbidden Sacred Dance Of Chaser Merriment". :-)

Stay tuned as we count down the last few days of May.

5/25 Hemphill County, TX & Pratt, KS 2008

2009-05-26T23:08:00.000-05:00

Caught the nice cell SE of Canadian. Met up later with Jason Boggs and Warren Faidley & crew SW of Miami on a nice hill overlooking the Canadian River valley. Waited for some good CG shots, but Ma Nature wasn't cooperative. The pics have more blue hue to them than I'd like, but just too tired to mess with it right now.

Also, on this day a year ago, David Drummond and I caught a nice, wispy multi vortex tornado near Pratt, KS.

Last Sputtering Gasps Of May?

2009-05-23T23:46:00.004-05:00

Latest model runs this evening aren't too encouraging for a good setup in the panhandles for Monday. Still some opportunity for some strong storms as the dryline sharpens up under increasing mid level flow up to 30 knots. The problem is cratering dewpoints across the PH (sound like 2006?). I'm watching it though because deeper/better moisture won't be too far away.

Tuesday is looking better with each run across west central Texas centered around Breckenridge perhaps. Too far out for specific locations, but that general region is really starting to look like a solid chase shaping up. Unfortunately, I have to work, so no chasing for me.

Beyond that, things appear muddled, but some spurts of marginal mid level flow with juicy dewpoints in place across Texas....just not around the panhandle. [sigh] Even further into June, I'm still siding with the idea of a signficant pattern change sometime around the June 6th range. I'm not ready to write off the season just yet. I know what June typically holds in store for the Texas Panhandle. :-)

Here is an image I caught last year on this date of a spectacular supercell erupting near Canadian, TX along the dryline.

It would go on to produce a very nice tornado around Fort Supply, OK. This tornado was pretty much stationary with even a slight westward drift. The video is timelapsed....and ends as I run out of tape in my camera. DOH!!! But I got most of it...thankfully.

Some Crystal Ball Gazing

2009-05-22T18:01:00.004-05:00

Like everybody else suffering from the WORST case of Supercell Deprivation Syndrome in May I've ever seen, I am continually analyzing a plethora of model data. I'm trying to conjure up something to rescue the last remaining weeks of a chase season left abandoned by a schizophrenic atmospheric pattern. So far, it's been a "Castaway May" isolating many a chaser in a supercellular void.

Some distant pinpoints of light on the horizon however are starting to show up. First, next Monday/Tuesday look like potential chase days around here. Mid level flow picks up to 30 knots from the W/WNW with pronounced backing of lower level flow with SE 850mb winds. At the surface, a nice triple point surface low and dryline are forecast over the area. If the instability is there, and I think it will be, then some isolated supercells are a good bet in my opinion if the cap can be busted. With winds still lethargic up at 250mb, some HP beasts like we saw last week around Pampa could be in the offering. Still a ways out, but the models are showing some convincing consitency right now.

Beyond that, there are signs of at least marginal westerly flow further out in the crystal ball. In fact, the models and associated spaghetti ensembles are teasing us with some stronger mid level flow as we get into the June 6 range. They have been flopping back and forth like a Nancy Pelosi news conference, but have been trying to break down this bizarre upper air pattern for several days now.

My confidence level is shored up with the fact that even now, the subtropical jet is pretty pronounced and active deep into Mexico. Look the 500-200mb flow down there. It wouldn't take much to translate this further north into June. In fact, I remember some very active June's in years past that even deep down into Texas, the upper level pattern was active with zonal westerlies associated with the subtropical jet lightning up the dryline. Given that June is historically an active month for W TX and the Panhandles, it stands to reason that this is within the realm of realistic possibilities. With such a bizarre and strange upper air pattern currently in place, anything is possible! LOL!!

5/15 Pics, May Fizzle, David Drummond Video

2009-05-16T17:59:00.002-05:00

I caught the big beast near Pampa, TX after getting there about 15 minutes after the visible tornadoes. I had hoped to leave work a little earlier. Ugh. Still, this was one helluva HP supercell that was rotating like a merry-go-round. There were all sorts of mid level bands streaking cyclonically into it. Pretty impressive!

Amarillo NWS is on top of things and already published a summary with pics HERE.

This was about the time of the last reported tornado. I was looking north into the wrapping precip core so if it was in there, I couldn't see it. The lower cloud mass was rotating pretty good.

Looking west as Pampa was under assault form high winds and baseball hail.

Approaching Lefors, Tx.

Just north of McLean as it tries to organize one more time...good rotation to the right of the green hail core.

Now we enter into a classic late July upper air pattern. A strong anticyclone aloft sets up over the plains bringing the chase season to a brutal and decisive end for awhile. And to add MORE insult to injury, a pronounced upper level low, very similar to a TUTT low, parks itself over the northern GOM and meanders around for quite awhile. In fact, believe it or not, a weak tropical depression is even forecast to form!!!!! This is like something out of a science fiction novel. Un-be-lievable! The result is that even with some glimmer of hope of some semblence of SW flow by next wekend, the TUTT-ish upper low will in effect seal off any sort of return flow from the GOM.

I'm thinking we'll be out of commission for at least two weeks regarding any good setups. There will be some opportunities for severe storms somwhere between TX and Canada, but it will overall be very slim pickin's for chasing and most likely high based stuff...for what little does form. Once again, May ends up in the crapper. Hopefully the atmosphere will complete it's cycle of identity crisis by the end of May and set us up nicely for June....the best month for Panhandle magic!

Lastly, my friend David Drummond captured some INCREDIBLE video of a tank battery fire and violent explosion near Lamesa, TX. It's being shown all over the globe by now and rightfully so. Even more incredible is that a large iron valve impacted his vehicle and knocking it out of commission. He's one lucky fella as are the courageous fire fighters that were even closer. This is certainly a classic video clip that will be around for many years to come and seen on various programs even longer than that. His work will join the ranks of other famous video captures we've all seen numerous times over the years. Congrats David! :-) Here are his two blog entries of both real time and slo-mo video clips:

http://daviddrummond.com/blog/2009/05/15/lamesa-tx-tank-battery-fire-explosion/

http://daviddrummond.com/blog/2009/05/16/lamesa-tx-tank-battery-fire-in-slow-motion/

Today 5/15

2009-05-15T06:46:00.002-05:00

6 years ago today, I enjoyed a most incredible chase near Stratford, Texas. This is why I moved out here. :-)

As far as today, I will be chasing, but not sure on my strategy. I have alot of concerns for the cold front coming into the N TX Panhandles later today. It appears to be "too strong" with forecast SFC-850mb winds behind it up to 30 knots by 00Z. It's not like the other cold fronts the past couple of days which produced impressive tornadic supercells along it. I am concerned with the front moving too fast and undercutting storms. In addition, such fronts create ALOT of strong linear forcing usually resulting in a quick explosion of a squall line of linear storms. This in turn helps promote the front's progress even more and quickly developing a shallow outflow pool out ahead of the storms. So, unless I see something to indicate otherwise, the front is not likely to be my play today.

So, that leaves the dryline which I actually like. Models indicate temperatures remaining near or below 90F today with lower to mid 60 dewpoints. While not within my <20F dewpoint depression rule, it's close enough. The models are keeping strong instabilities ahead of it with more capping equating to more isolated storms. The 0-1km and 0-3km EHI values are also stronger with model suggestions of some locally backing boundary layer flow. It will also be an area of reduced chaser hoardes, something that is increasingly becoming part of my forecast considerations. I'd hate to have Vortex 2 try and commandeer my viewing spots. LOL!!

So, as usual, I'll be monitoring the situation throughout the day and ready to bolt from work around 4. Hopefully that won't be too late! Check out my LIVE CHASE PAGE too when I'm heading into the storm. I'm actually turning the stream off unless I have something worthy of showing. It wastes bandwidth and interferes with radar downloads in "thin" data areas. Plus, it's just extremely boring watching the highway. ;-)

Another Chase Day?

2009-05-13T07:09:00.000-05:00

I'm not holding out too much hope for being able to chase today due to the distance involved. I can't leave work until 4, so anything east of the Texas state line on I-40 is pretty much out of range for me. Still, I'll be eyeing model and data trends with all my gear in the vehicle....just in case. ;-)

After a long dissappointing chase yesterday, hopefully something will shape up within my chase range this week. It's getting pretty annoying having everything develop 250 miles away on a work day and nothing happening on a weekend within 1000 miles. This despite the fact I live in the middle of the Texas Panhandle. What gives? Oh yeah, right... the Stevoid. :-)

More later...gotta hit the road to work.

Confusion/Chaos Today

2009-05-12T06:50:00.000-05:00

Every model run, crystal ball, super-duper-fast-action-laser-3000-model from TV stations, my cat, each NWSFO, the SPC and tarot cards are all forecasting something different today concerning various ingredients for today's setup. Hopefully be late morning (6:30 am as I type this), the details will become abit clearer as far as a target area.

The one thing I seem to find agreement on is the better mid level winds are close to I-40 and northward. The dryline will be somewhere between New Mexico and far western Oklahoma. Cloudiness and fog will linger all across the TX PH today and just how long is a mystery. This could be a big ol' horsefly in the ointment.

However, in sorting through everything and going with my gut, I'm picking Tulia to Panhandle (the town) to Turkey (the town again..not the critter). I'll fine tune this later this afternoon when I can get a peek at things. With the potential setup, it could be a pretty darned good chase day.

Programme: 1) Climax 2) Entr'acte

2009-05-11T06:42:00.002-05:00

Based on model runs last evening, I'm gaining optimism for two good chases ahead on Tuesday and Wednesday with a longshot on Thursday. After that, prepare for a lengthy intermission or Entr'acte. (Bet you didn't think a redneck could come up with a fancy word like that...lol)

Tuesday/Wednesday is entirely dependant on busting the cap. I have concerns about that at this point because of the upper air configuration still imposing some semblence of subsidence over the region and just how much surface convergence there will be in relation to that. I believe Wednesday will have the better potential for busting the cap, but again, I'm not very confident on model solutions at this point. Hopefully, runs this afternoon and evening will shed some more light on the developing situation.

The *potential* is there however for anything that does pop to be severe and likely supercellular. Tuesday looks like a classic isolated supercell setup along a dryline bulge probably setting up in the NE parts of the PH (and attracting 1000's of chasers to one storm...ugh). Wednesday has a strong potential for a storm to erupt along a slow moving and perhaps stationary frontal boundary which can be quite a show. But, forecast mid level flow will be less than 30 knots....hopefully that will improve. Thursday has a real long shot potential, but more on that since my confidence even 36 hours out is low at this point.

Beyond Thursday, prepare for a lengthy down period as models continue to insist on a July upper air pattern to take hold. This is starting to become quite annoying each year watching the atmosphere change seasons like this in May. At least with fronts plowing into the GOM, it won't be oppressively hot for any length of time. Excellent for some outdoor activities I have planned. :-)

There are some faint signs of hope flickering at the end of the tunnel with the past three runs of the long range models. But, confidence is very low that far out considering we have to endure a major shift in the upper air pattern first. There is no telling how long the "doomsday" pattern will establish itself. I've found that a large upper ridge setting up over the central part of the country usually doesn't go away very easily. Hoepfully this one will be the exception and die a quick death and allow something more resembling May to retun. We shall see.

Until then...chase on!

Star Trek - 3 words

2009-05-09T14:13:00.004-05:00

Wow......wow.....and WOW! The new Star Trek movie is simply spectacular and stunning. It exceeded my expectations in every category including breathtaking special effects. Hands down, it is THE movie of 2009. It respected not only the story line and theme of Star Trek, but honored the individual characters themselves. The actors/actresses and entire crew deserve a huge round of applause for a job very well done. I cannot imagine them doing any better of a job in filling a big gap in the story line of the origins of the Enterprise with James T. Kirk at the helm. For true trekkies, there was even a reference to Captain Archer of the first Enterprise of the TV series "Enterprise". :-)

Bottom line is that I enjoyed this movie tremendously. I will see it again...and again. :-)

As far as stormchasing, I see a long shot Tuesday/Wednesday withn chasing range for me. Other than that, the atmosphere quickly transitions to July pattern and royally screws up good chasing opportunities for the plains as far out as the models extend. Normally, I wouldn't get too hung up on long rang crystal ball madness, but the models have been very consistent over the past few days. I see no signs of hope.

In fact, the news is made even more negative by the CPC's 6-10 forecast of strong confidence in model solutions for that period. Extrapolating Day 10 out to day 16 using the GFS as guidance, I'm gaining more confidence that May is going to sputter out and once again be mostly, if not entirely, void of any really good chase days south of Nebraska....in the peak of the season.

Welcome to the "new climatology" as I've been saying for years now. I guess that old addage of "If it's May, chase." is in need of replacing May with April or June. :-) I feel fortunate now to have had some fun in April and a few tornadoes under my belt...despite screwing up a couple of times. I remember telling a couple of people that you better get out and chase the setups in April because you never know what May holds in store...especially with what we've experienced over the past several years. I can only hope that the end of May and most of June will end the season around here with a bang like last year.

With that in mind, I will have ample opportunity to work on my main website, fix my sprung car door, and plan some camping/fishing/hiking/photo excursions. If next Tuesday/Wednesday craps out, I'll be catching up on posting some non-chase photos.

Police Standoff, Caprock Canyons Park & Dismal May Ahead

2009-05-08T06:56:00.000-05:00

After work yesterday, I went and checked out Caprock Canyons State Park & Trailways. This is an incredible destination and one that has quickly jumped to the top of my list. The scenery is stunning with excellent facilities fo camping, hiking, exploring, fishing and photography. In fact, the small deep lake there is an excellent fishery with bass, crappie and catfish. While I was talking to a gentleman there, he caught a decent bass right on cue!! More to come with pictures.

In fact, according to the models, May is quickly shaping up to be another big dud as we've too often seen the past decade. Already here around the first of the month, the jet stream has quickly migrated north into the Dakotas and upper Mississippi valley region. It was waaaayyyy too early for such a pattern to setup...but setup it has. This will pretty much put the chase season directly into the crapper for any hope of good chases around these parts. There might be an isolated opportunity or two by mid week, but I'm not holding my breath. After that, things appear to go downhill in a hurry and brings the chase season to a rude and abrupt halt for awhile. Unfortunately, the ECMWF is in step with the GFS and spaghetti plots....for several runs now. I guess there is always June, eh?

I will definitely be stepping up my other hobbies as I mentioned previously. Some fishing and camping trips are being planned (if we can avoid the 100F+ heat!) along with other excursions and entertainment. The chase gear certainly will be stowed away for awhile in favor of a fishing pole. ;-)

As for chasing today, the RUC and current observations tell me no way in hell to even bother trying today. [sigh] With such a dismal forecast ahead, I think I'll have time to migrate my blog away from Google Blogger and into something better. For the past month, my blog has been threatened to be locked down as it was somehow flagged as a possible spam blog. For the third time this morning, I've had to "request a review" for it to be unlocked which, according to THEIR spam message says should only take a few days. After exceeding 30 days and apparently no way of contacting anybody to get this resolved, enough is enough. Idiots.

Back to my day yesterday, on the way back home, Jay McCoy informs me of a police standoff just a couple of blocks from where I live. Being the budding cub reporter, I setup my camera across the street and tweaked the camera for the low-light situation, and got some excellent video including the final surrender and handcuffing of the suspect. Full story here.

4/29 Tornado Video & New Rebel

2009-05-06T06:32:00.004-05:00

The weather for chasing around these parts continues to not cooperate. I may have to wait until the middle part of next week. Hopefully, with such strong fronts plowing southward this time of year, we'll see fronts making it down and stalling across my neck of the woods later on in the season. :-)

There is also a new love in my life which I will soon acquire:

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/find/newsLetter/RebelT1i.jsp

Oh yeah..... ;-)

Today, beyond, and 4/29

2009-05-05T06:32:00.000-05:00

Today is a very interesting setup for the Panhandles. The SPC has no severe outlook for us likely due to model runs. However, a dryline sharpens up today in the western parts with an increasingly better setup down to the 380 corridor around Post, TX south and southeast of Lubbock. But, for something within range I can chase, I'm looking at Muleshoe to Plainview to Amarillo today. In fact, this area, synoptically speaking, is akin to an outflow boundary setup. If we get enough insolation today...AND the cap can break, then very high 0-3km helicity values will favor some pretty good chasing around these parts even with marginal instabilities.

But, there is considerable uncertainty of surface based initiation. A weak impulse is advertised to come through early in the day creating weak subsidence over the dryline. I can't identify it this morning as of yet, so am not all that confident in those solutions. However, being on the south side of the mid level jet is also conducive to some weak subsidence. However, models do indicate the nose of upper jets to shift southward today into the region, so this will work to our benefit.

Bottom line, strong insolation is needed in my opinion to give us a shot at busting the cap. My gut instinct says it will bust and produce at least one or two isolated storms. The convergence along the dryline is very strong and will certainly favor getting a parcel through the cap somewhere along it today and sustaining it.

For the next 7 days, the models are flip flopping around with each run. Confidence is very low on any solution right now until I see some better continuity and agreement.

Back to 4/29, I finally reviewed my video footage and was actually impressed!! It is much cooler video than I thought it would be. Thank the storm gods for telephoto lenses!! :-) The video confirms what a truly unique tornado this was regarding it's structure and behavior all while two big windmills churn in the foreground. It ends with two tornadoes with one being a long, snaky one of the dying larger tornado which really dances around while what appears to be a second tornado to the right. I've not seen any other video out there like it. I can't wait to get it mixed down and online to share with my friends. It is an excellent companion to the awesome up-close-and-personal video of Jay, Ben and David. So, sometimes getting stuck miles away isn't such a bad thing. ;-)

Wildcat Bluff Nature Center

2009-05-03T18:32:00.003-05:00

Took advantage of a lull in the atmosphere and a day off with cool weather to visit the Wildcat Bluff Nature Center just NW of Amarillo. I walked all three trails and am about tuckered out. This will be a new favorite place for me to do some hiking in order to get into better shape as well as photo ops. I desperately need to get a quality telephoto lens. At the end of one of the trails, there is a working windmill where I enjoyed a drink of cold, refreshing water.

A pretty big (and old) oak tree down in the creek bottom. (no...not me...the thing behind me!) I don't usually do self-pics like this, but I wanted to put the size of this tree into proper perspective.

Watching my antics from an overlooking bluff, I think this critter senses the smell of wretched defeat emanating from my last two chases. LOL!!

Then, one of his buddies show up. I'll name them....4/26 and 4/29 respectively. ;-) Seriously, what a cool photo op. I got quite a few of the one extending his wings.

Oops...seems like a dispute over the ownership of this perch.

An interesting part of the lower bluffs.

A curious hole in this very large rock. I don't believe it is man-made.

Again, I model in the pic to put things into perspective. Yes, I was abit nervous given my propensity for bad luck. ;-)

A new cactus springing up with lots of dew. I tried to work on the exposure balance and curves, but to no avail. I might work on this more later or try some HDR on it.

Some of the many wildflowers found out there. They are just coming out, so another trip on a more sunny day is in store.

A scissor-tailed flycatcher.

Since my previous post, the models are starting to make a more convincing shift into a more positive pattern for chasing this week...especially this weekend. Keep your fingers crossed!!

Another Dud May Shaping Up?

2009-05-02T07:56:00.000-05:00

After a major disappointing week for me and missing the the tornadoes on the biggest two days of the season so far, the medium range forecast models are now advertising some pretty dismal forecasts out through day 10 and beyond. Yeah, I know all about "model accuracy" in that time frame...blah blah blah....I have chased and forecast for a few years now. ;-) But, the solutions are persistent and when combined with extrapolating the pattern from the day 7-10 range..AND the spaghetti plots...AND the ECMWF with the GFS...it looks rather dismal. But then, we should all be used to Mays that for the most part end up crapping out for at least half of the month.

This is not to say some isolated opportunities won't pop up here and there...especially across KS and NE where the jet stream will reside for awhile. But the overall synoptic pattern isn't very conducive for chasing opportunities...especially if the GFS is correct beyond Day 10 (and a very persistant forecast at that) of strong NW flow aloft driving big, bulldozing fronts well into the GOM. Sound familiar?

Maybe I'm still in a very negative mind frame and the models will change significantly in the next few days. If not, then May 2009 will be another in a long series of Mays in the past 10 years that sputtered and choked. We shall see. But it certainly seems like a golden opportunity lies ahead to pursue some other hobbies with alot less frustration. :-)

4/29 Pics

2009-04-30T22:38:00.009-05:00

First two are of an anticyclonic left-splitter. I confirmed this at the time with SRV showing strong anticyclonic rotation. I could see it visually too. I even thought at one point it might spin something up. The last one of course....we all know. :-) I wish I could have gotten closer to the wind farm though as you can faintly make out. Still, I thought it kind of a cool pic with the large tornado being on top of the caprock like that. Also, note the sign in the lower right: "Bridge Out". That pretty much summed up my day. .

Frustration Continues

2009-04-30T06:50:00.003-05:00

First off, a HUGE and hearty congratulations to everybody who socred big time yesterday...especially to my buds David Drummond, Ben Holcomb and Jay McCoy. Their video I saw yesterday and this morning is incredible! David and Ben's is online at: http://www.kcbd.com/global/story.asp?s=10276457

Now for my pissy vent....

Yep, I screwed up yet again. This despite my early morning forecast of Plainview along the OFB. With not being able to leave from work until 4pm combined with another regrettable tactical decision, I missed the tornadofest yet again. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't just a little pissy about it this morning made all the worst by seeing pics/video of another spectacular and memorable event where I ended up on the sidelines. One simple flip of the coin in my decision making would have put me in the middle of things with the seemingly hundreds of others that were dancing with tornadoes.

Speaking of which, how in the hell are SO many people able to get time off to chase in the middle of the week in April? There were an incredible number of chasers out yesterday. I am really getting concerned with the numbers that will be out in May on chasecation with the added 70+ vehicle Vortex 2 crews. One isolated tornadic supercell is going to create literally 1000 vehicles in and around it. The simple fact is that it will become impossible to even find a good place to pull over to watch the storm. Heavy congestion on small rural roads will add considerably to the stresses of being in close proximity of a dangerous storm and navigating around it. I've only had to worry about the storm itself, but that is rapidly changing now. At least we'll get to see hundreds of videos and pics of the same thing. ;-)

I have really started having some serious reconsiderations about this beloved hobby of mine. It is quickly losing everything about it that appeals to me. It's becoming "not fun" and instead full of frustration and increasing stresses of the hoardes. Other hobbies of mine are quickly rising to the top of my "most fun things to do" list. And it's not just because I'm pissy this morning.

Okay, venting over with. I did setup quite a ways to the east of the Cedar Hill beast and witnessed the distant tornado. It was very high contrast, large and "tall". It was the most spectacular "distant" image I've personally witnessed. Thankfully for zoom lenses, I was able to stream it and get some good video of it. So, I guess I should be thankful, eh? Again, it's tough when you see breathtaking and stunning video up close knowing you could have easily been there.

So, my venting is about over with for this morning, but my introspection and reflection will continue. The numbers of chasers will only continue to rise in the years to come. It's already starting to reach a critical saturation point and my personal tolerance level. It is ludicrous to believe that "it won't be that bad". I am convinced that in another 2-3 years, in particular when the economy improves, it will routinely become a massive chaser convergence for each and every storm from March through June instead of just May.

It just so happens that those are the best months for bass fishing. Could it be possible for me to sell everything and use the money I burn during those months and put it towards a nice bass boat, camper on a lake, and tournament fees? As I sit here this morning, that option is looking pretty darned good. Stay tuned......

With all of that being said, the next few days for chasing doesn't look very appealing based on the models. I'm due for some down time anyway to lick my wounds and stop being so pissy. :-)

4/29 New Mexico Recap & Today!!!

2009-04-29T06:51:00.000-05:00

Real briefly, made it to Conchas Lake and Veriadero area of New Mexico (WNW of TCC) just in time to catch the last gasp of a tornadic supercell. I thought the storm would have made more eastward progress towards Tucumcari, but it didn't. Still, I managed to FINALLY get south of Veriadero to see the strong mesocyclone occlude into a faint rotating barrel updraft. it just *almost* produced though and made for some interesting moments. A second cell blew up and produced a nice broadly rotating wall cloud before becoming totally outflow dominant. Pics and video later, but nothing very impressive....so might not be any at all. :-) I felt like I was chasing on Mars though with no cell data and NWR was very faint and mostly all static. However, I was surprised at just how much flat, chaseable terrain there is among the big mesas out there....although the road network is horrendous as to be expected.

I did discover that there is a problem with my cell data hookup with either the booster , antenna or data card antenna port. I'll be trying to work that bug out SOON.

For today, OFB down near Plainview stretched W/E parallel to mid level flow. With expected destabilization today and pretty good veering profiles, a tornadic supercell or two is likely in my opinion. I'll be watching to see of the OFB remains intact and if so, will be my target. Otherwise, will expect to see something close to Amarillo today.

4/26 - Day Of Frustration & Pics & Looking Ahead

2009-04-27T18:09:00.003-05:00

First of all, I have to highlight a spectacular photo of Sunday's tornado in Roger Mills county. Breathtaking and certainly of cover quality for a magazine and calendar. It is simply stunning. Check out Dick McGowan's photo!!!

No tornadoes for me. That's the way it goes sometimes. What causes it to sting more though is that I was all over the storm that produced the spectacular Roger Mills tornadoes, but made a regrettable decision to pull off of it because of what seemed like a good idea at the time. Data outage issues combined with potentially getting trapped against the Canadian river valley with horrible road options strongly pursuaded me to drop back and let it go in favor of intensifying "tail end" storms coming out of Wheeler county. Looking at all of the fantastic video and images of what I easily could have witnessed is a twist of the proverbial knife. ;-) But, enough wallowing in my own self-pity. A hearty congratulations are in store for all those who scored big on this one.

I've always felt comfortable in cutting things close when I have reliable radar data and an escape route. I had neither of those when making the decision to hold up near Reydon. I had intended to head around the big road void of what is the Candian river valley to 283 up to Roll. But, the last radar image I mustered up looked like the storm was about to get munched by a small developing line segment. The risk of that when weighted with the time and distance to get to Roll wasn't worth it with newly developing and organizing cells to my west.

I eeked out one more radar image after shutting everything else off while sitting on top of a hill. The new cells were already showing some weak rotation couplets. With screaming surface winds and the fact we were under a "high risk"...AND the fact these cells would not be competing with anything else nearby to the south, I bet the farm that these would also go tornado warned soon. Instead, they were higher based, linear looking cells. Are you freaking kidding me? LOL!! I'd watch some organized rotation get going in the cloud base and then get undercut by strong outflow. This was totally ludicrous to me with SSE and SE flow of 35-45mph and gusty force feeding the updrafts.

So, I hung with them for awhile and eventually just got tired of wasting my time and gas. The frustration with that combined with a massive data outage for what seemed like hours ended up pushing my button to stand down. Yep, another "high risk" bust chase for me. I finally ended up north of Roll (STILL no data!!!) on 287 and County Road E0770 where I encountered some tornado damage. Trees were snapped and uprooted along with pink insulation hanging everywhere in the remaining trees and fence. Not good....my heart sank. Fortunately however, nobody was in the mobile home at the time it was destroyed. The only thing left was the frame trailer which was tossed about 200 feet on the other side of a hill.

The trailer home was sitting off frame just to the right of the image. The remaining frame (in the last pic below) is in the far left of the image.

While I'm posting pics, here are some from Saturday 4/25:

NOT a funnel cloud OR a tornado NW of Leedey, OK but rather an excellent scud look-alike. I'll be submitting this for spotter training material.

...and neither is this one...despite it being claimed as one.

Looking at tomorrow's setup now and am really intrigued with the possibilities up on the Caprock from SW of LBB up to Hereford. ALOT of variables still need to play out such as extent of cloudiness and precip. Any breaks in the clouds will certainly up the ante for tornadoes in my opinion. The other factor will be what is left of the current front south of LBB and how much of it is left and where it migrates to. Precip will play a role in keeping it sharp and well defined as well as it's position in the afternoon. Like I said, tons of variables that demand an analysis by late morning to see how things are coming together. I will be ready to chase after getting off work though...albeit I'm a bit pessimistic.

Wednesday looks pretty good however depending on the extent of precip. All other parameters look awesome with my favorate setup of westerly mid level flow perpendicular to the dryline orientation. The NAM is very persistent in keeping the action closer to Amarillo.

Thursday again holds some serious promise with continued westerly mid level flow across the dryline. However, the NAM wants to weaken the 500mb winds to below 30 knots. Any little increase behyond that though will setup another great scenario for some isolated supercells.

Beyond Thursday, things get muddy and may in fact shift things pretty far away. But, more on that as that time frame gets closer. I've got the next three days to keep me occupied. :-)

4/25 Report and Today's Action

2009-04-26T08:25:00.006-05:00

Yesterday was quite a surprise for many forecasters as the expected tornado event across W OK didn't materialize. Although I was one of many hyping it up, I did so in very good company with the SPC guys as well as many others. An old lesson of Ma Nature doing her own thing despite mankinds best technologies to figure her out certainly was reinforced yesterday. Man will never fully understand such a complex creature as woman. :-)

What happened? In my opinion, three problems.

1) Meager mid and upper level storm-relative winds. This was allowing the cores of the storms to dump very close to the updraft. It also didn't help that the storm motion was the same as the wind direction at those levels either.

2) Dewpoints were scoured out. I noticed on the GR3 OK mesonet that dewpoints had generally fallen to 57-59 across a big chunk of SW OK and NW TX. Models had forecast lower 60 dewpoints which would have gone a long way in aiding lower LCLs and critical 0-3km CAPE.

3) Several storms across SW OK erupted which likely had at least a small part in stealing some of the thunder (pun intended) from the storms erupting along the stationary front in NW OK.

The storm I and about 100 others were on starting out in Wheeler county tried hard to tornado on several occasions only to undercut itself with strong outflow. The rotation was definitely within the cloud base, but it could not extend to the ground because of the outflow. I was close enough to confirm this. :-)

In fact, Chris Nuttall and I encountered some insane surface mesocyclonic circulation around Mobeetie. While we were watching the storm with S winds, just about 1/4 mile to our south, dust was getting kicked up by west winds. As the outflow passed us, winds turned NW. As we headed east, the winds quickly shifted to south again and were quite strong and gusty. It definitely got our attention!!!

North of Reydon, OK just south of Hwy 33, the storm reached it's best organization and came within a prairie dog's hair of producing a very nice white tornado. The rotation and chaos in the storm base and attendent wall cloud and scud was very strong and violent. I have never seen such intensity end up not producing at the very least a brief tornado. It was definitely a helluva spectacle without a doubt. I've got video of it I'll post later when I have time.

Other than that, stayed with it as it cycled down and then back up into a nice HP supercell with good visual structure NW of Leedey. Dave Fick and I watched a nice attempt to organize a rotating wall cloud at one point only to have the outflow undercut it again. Dave suggested that the storms further south along with the dewpoints being a few degrees lower than forecast were culprits which I totally agree with.

After a futile attempt in lightning photography, Chris Nuttall and myself embarked on the journey back to Amarillo. We stopped and ate McDonald's in Pampa and just as we were getting ready to leave, I popped on ST to check reports from the day and noticed a post mentioning that Robert Hall was stuck in Pampa because of a vehicle breakdown. I picked him and his fiance up and headed to Amarillo so they could get a rental car. It was good to visit with an old friend I hadn't seen in years as well as being able to help a brutha out. We marveled at the odds of everything working out like it did in the end.

It was also nice to see some old friends Dave Fick and Scott Eubanks yesterday too....especially Dave since I had no idea or expectation he would have made the drive from Houston. I look up and there he is! LOL!! Saw Jason Boggs briefly too and finally met Ben Holcomb in person! Saw David Drummond, Scott Bennett, Jay McCoy and Jeff Bernard as well. It was literally a big SDS party under the meso! How awesome is that?

As far as the massive hoardes of chasers, there were quite a few, but once again, everybody was courteous and conscious of everybody else out there. I did see one stupid idiot pull right in front of another chaser without even looking. I don't think they even knew he was there bearing down on them. Luckily, the oncoming chaser had slowed down or else this would have been a major wreck. The vehicle in question had at least 3 and maybe 4 people in it and plates I didn't recognize. So, I was not able to identify this moron. Geeze, why in the hell somebody wouldn't at least look over their shoulder before pulling out into traffic totally mystifies me. Anyway, this was the ONLY incident I witnessed that caused any concern. Remarkable given how many of us were out there.

So...today...hmmmmmm.....

I'm just waking up and already the action is getting primed to erupt in the TX PH close to Amarillo. I'm tired, but need to get going for an early show today. The thing we have going for us today are a little better surface moisture with Td in the lower 60's at least and better 0-6 and 0-8km shear. The dryline should also be pretty sharp today as well. The big question mark is how much the boundary layer flow will back today.

The models are at odds once again with this critically important feature. The RUC isn't as backed as the NAM, but still maintains enough 0-1 and 0-3km veering to get my attention and think that tornadoes are still likely today per the SPC outlook. The instability appears to be better too, especially across the NW parts of OK where the dryline will be the sharpest along with it bulging across that area.

So, where is my target today? I think McLean, TX for now, but eyeing a little to the south towards Childress. I'd like to get away from the massive hoardes of chasers that I encountered yesterday. Plus, storm motions would keep my egress route close to I-40 so I can get back to Amarillo at a decent time to start another work week tomorrow. I was feeling abit less than 100% yesterday for some reason, but I think it was just fatigue. So, pulling a late-nighter for me isn't an option this evening since other chase opportunies are ahead this week.

But, I also like some of the parameters I see shaping up down around Childress based on the 12z RUC run. There is some suggestion of pehraps a meso low forming down there with some locally backed flow. Such mesoscale features are of course a gamble based on model runs, but it certainly would make sense. And again for selfish reasons, I'd like to enjoy the chase without the added stress of 100 or more other chase vehicles to contend with. No offense. ;-)

I'm trying to get ready to head out the door, so no pics from yesterday. I'll try to catch up on everything sometime this week. As usual, I will be live streaming today, so check out my LIVE CHASE PAGE.

Saturday 4/25 Forecast & Video Uploads

2009-04-25T07:40:00.006-05:00

With SDS raging across the stormchasing community, the moderate risk, 15% tornado threat, it being a Saturday, a relatively small target area.....an army of stormchasers is expected to descend on an area around Shamrock, TX today. I'm already issuing a "PDS Chaser Convergence" watchbox for the area bounded by Woodward, OK, McClean, TX, Childress, TX and Hobart, OK. :-)

I will certainly be out there among the hoardes today pointing my lens along with hundreds of others at mother nature's spectacle. This is by far the best setup of the 2009 season. Everything is coming together quite nicely for some raging, tornadic supercells two-stepping across the eastern TX Panhandle and the western half of Oklahoma. Of particular note are the crazy forecast hodographs among the models by 00Z and beyond. It is impressive to say the least with forecast SRH values well exceeding 500 and even closing in on 1000 immediately north of the frontal boundary!!!! There is no doubt that these storms will be rotating strongly from the surface through 25,000 feet creating some spectacular storm structure and definitely tornadoes.

The *only* caveat I see are *potentially* weaker mid and upper level storm-relative flow helping to trend supercell mode towards the HP spectrum. Thus, tornadoes, especially the stronger ones, will have a good chance of getting rain wrapped. Forecasting this type of "tornado mode" is very tough however. I'm just keeping this possibility in the back of my mind as I chase today to help shape my strategy. One option I'll be considering is backing off a few miles and documenting what I believe will be spectacular displays of storm structure. We shall see.

As far as my target? I actually think a broader target is in order today as I think anywhere along the front will be good from Alva/Woodward down to Shamrock/Childress. In fact, with so many chasers targeting Shamrock, I think the potential along the front up near Woodward/Alva to perhaps even Wakita/Enid/Wichita is being overlooked by many. I think several tornadic supercells will be lighting up the entire broad target area. For me, I'll be heading towards Shamrock later because of starting out in Amarillo.

The critical factor will be the position of the frontal boundary and where it intersects the dryline. Right now, there is a good surge behind the front helping it make good southward progress. However, strong upstream pressure falls along with increasing daytime heating ahead of it will help impede its progress and eventually stall it this afternoon. So, I'll be watching the front's progress very carefully today.

One thing to also watch out for as well is an even better setup for strong, violent tornadoes right at dark and into the overnight hours as the LLJ kicks up a couple of notches and the hodographs get even crazier.

I'll be teaming up with David Drummond, Jay McCoy, Jeff Bernard, and perhaps Kanani today as we get ready to enjoy a stormchaser's feast offered up by Ma Nature. I also hope to run into my twin from OK Steve Miller, Ben Holcomb, Shane/Bridget, perhaps even Glenn Dixon as well as my other friends out there. It's gonna be fun!!!

I've also uploaded video from my chases on 4/16 and 4/17 below. Enjoy!

Exponential Stormgasm

2009-04-24T06:51:00.001-05:00

Those who know me have heard my reminiscing of "the good ol' days" when you could have an entire week of nearly perpetual red boxes....a significant chase each and every day. A true stormgasmic smorgasbord of incredible storm structure, CG barrages, gorilla hail, wall clouds and tornadoes.

After a very dismal start to the 2009 season, the sputtering and choking of the atmosphere is about to turn into a full, all-out convective melee of mayhem. The models are solid in establishing a large upper air trough setting up residence in the four corners area...for at least a week and perhaps longer. The orientation of it is about as perfect as you would ever dream of. Impulses and little shortwaves will continually eject out of the trough across the southern and central plains over a warm, juicy airmass. With various boundaries and surface lows shuffling around stirring up trouble, the situation is primed and volatile. I personally have not seen such a pattern establishing itself in many many years.

While this is a dream-come-true for stormchasers, residents throughout tornado alley are going to be in for a helluva ride...the unfortunate side of a severe weather cornucopia. Undoubtedly, people will be adversely affected somewhere. I certainly hope that it is very minimal. I strongly urge those who are reading this to ramp up precautions, purchase a weather radio if you haven't already (and if you have/do, get it programmed and tested, replace those batteries), and review your action plans for both at home, work and on the road. Please be weather savvy each and every day for at least the next week. Mother nature will be on the warpath I'm afraid.

With all of that, I will be VERY busy each and every day and of course streaming live video as well as documenting everything with standard video and photos. I will do my best to post at least a couple of photos each day I catch something. Emails and normal correspondence will be put on hold until I can catch my breath. Stay tuned!!!!

Stoneburg, Texas

2009-04-21T22:23:00.001-05:00

I've been busy trying to catch up since Thursday. I still have more pictures and video to process from the 16th and 17th. I hope to have it completed this week before the big chase weekend arrives. It promises to be the best setup so far this season where 50Td has ruled the plains. Not anymore. :-) A broad SW flow with embedded impulses around a large western trough will allow the atmosphere to really prime itself in addition to not creating a massive convective melee. Drylines, surface lows, triple points, oh my. :-)

As I was coming back from DFW on Sunday, I surveyed the towns of Sunset and Stoneburg which were devestated by wildfires on April 9th. Sunset had a few buildings heavily damaged or destroyed, but the town is mostly intact. However, Stoneburg was not as lucky. Most of the town'sbuildings and homes were burned to the ground. Only a very small few escaped. I estimate that only about 20% remain.

I have uploaded a photo gallery detailing this sad tragedy. I might get some video loaded later this week. A sample of the photo gallery is below.

Wild Day In SW OK

2009-04-17T23:32:00.004-05:00

Today, I am proud to announce that my tornado-less curse in SW OK has been lifted. Not only did I see a tornado (technically speaking), the ground circulation actually formed only about 25 yards in front of me on the east side of Hollis. It was more like a very strong dustdevil as tumbleweeds were spinning around wildly across the road. Two more little vortices would spin up in front of me as well....including some wildly shifting, strong winds that bufeted my vehicle. All of this underneath a pretty good rotating wall cloud with a tight, rapid circulation overhead. Needless to say it made for a tense few moments as I jumped east to gain some safety margin.

I watched the nicely rotating wall cloud as it lumbered NNE from Hollis. The clear notch worked in nicely and "isolated" the wall cloud as it underwnet slow occlusion. Soon, a nice funnel formed and began to descend, but didn't touch down as far as I could tell...although rain curtains were roataing around pretty good underneath it. Jay McCoy confirmed that he saw it on my streaming video. A HUGE kudo goes to Jay for informaing me of problems with my stream thanks to some weak and very spotty cellular data connectivity. I got up and running just in time!!! LOL!! In fact, Jay has been instrumental in several instances this year with some connectivity issues. Thanks, Jay! :-)

This was sweet success for me because I drove straight from work stopping only twice...to fill with gas and one stop about 45 seconds to watch a storm near Shamrock. Other than that, the intercept strategy worked out exceptionally well....along with some luck and a cooperative storm. :-) It was by far the best and most intense rotation I've seen this year in a storm base and wall cloud. In fact, if we would have had a little more CAPE in my opinion, this storm would have produced a very nice tornado. The odd thing is that this storm had very little hail and what I encountered was pretty small...dimes or less. I was in the hook too.

I ended the day with a McDonalds feast in Altus with my Oklahoma counterpart Steve Miller, Shane Adams, his main squeeze Bridget Geaughan, and Scott Bennet. It was fun visit, albeit a brief one. It's another aspect of chasing that I really enjoy.

I'm posting some pics, but these were dressed up on my laptop computer with a screen that is not calibrated properly. It's difficult to tweak photos to see what they actually look like on most monitors. So, if they look kinda wierd or out-of-whack, you'll know. :-) I'll redo them later along with loading some video (which is better)...probably Sunday/Monday.

Funnel cloud.

See the bowl-shaped lowering that was rotating very strongly. You can see the entire rotating wall cloud becoming isolated as it occludes.

The last gasp of a funnel cloud.

RANT:

Oh, did I mention that fact that the NWS OUN DID NOT issue a tornado warning for this storm? Yeppers, you got it. Despite streaming video (at the very least my nice, distinctive funnel cloud), Spotter Network reports by Jeff P. of a brief tornado and my funnel cloud report...AND some nice rotation couplets at least on GR3....no tornado warning. I know there were other chasers streaming too. No mention of a tornado (so far) in the LSR either. I have a feeling that it won't either. I'll be happy to be proven wrong of course.

The reason for my skepticism is my past dealings with NWS OUN and the fiasco a few weeks ago on March 27 where both mine and Jeff P's (again...what are the odds? lol) reports of a bonafied tornado were ignored by the NWS. The warning on that came out about 25 minutes after the fact and I believe were based on other reports not related to the one we reported. Throw in some stories I've heard from a couple of other chasers' reports being ignored despite video and photo evidence, then a very disturbing trend is emerging. I've tried on a few occasions make a phone report of severe weather to OUN only to have it received in a condenscending manner or at the least a very disinterested manner as in I'm just wasting their time and annoying them. Those reports I made were NOT recorded either.

So, anybody from the NWS reading this, what the hell is going on here? I have had zero problems with the LBB and AMA offices and I certainly am not aware of any negative reputation that may have been falsely spread around concerning the validity of my storm reports. Why are reports from well seasoned and reputable chasers being dismissed/ignored? Yeah, I consider myself one of several. ;-) It certainly does not motivate me to make any more effort in the future to make reports anymore. Doing so has cost me some good video footage...not to mention all of the money I spend in order to submit those reports. NWS OUN is pretty much off my list from now on for making reports. It's local 911 from here on out if I feel there is a tornado threatening a town. I really hate to be that way, but what should they expect? I guess they have an overwhelming amount of spotter and media chaser information feeding into them. I dunno. [shrug]

Anyway, rant over with. I feel much better now. LOL! I'm crashing out in Vernon for a trip down to McKinney/Plano tomorrow for some personal business. There is a chance of something popping up down there worthy of a chase. But, I'm sitting it out unless my previously made plans are cancelled on me for some reason.

Crazy Panhandle Weather!!!!

2009-04-16T22:53:00.003-05:00

I couldn't leave work until 4pm, so I missed the tornado warnings around Tulia. I eventually met up with Jay McCoy and we broke away from the storms around Plainview and went back to see what the earlier storms had left behind. We saw incredible hail drifts and flooding. I-27 was even shut down because of flooding...which at points was a river of ice! I am tired and needing to hit the sack for another round tomorrow...probably around Silverton to Childress for me anyways. Here are some pics of the day's events. Cool video is coming in a few days when I get back home and have time to work on it.

Nope...not a blizzard, but hail!!

This critter has had one helluva day.

One of many snow plows out and about clearing roads.

I-27 southbound shutdown.

A hankerin' for a Panhandle chase!

2009-04-16T06:27:00.004-05:00

Not much time for details, but I will be heading out to chase today.
Model data suggests Amarillo to Plainview, and I'll be out there for
sure and
streaming video. I think I may need to update the code
in my live chase page to display the video, so if it doesn't show up,
you can find me over at ChaserTV. I am sooooo looking forward to chasing on
the caprock. Tomorrow looks pretty interesting too and perhaps even
Saturday if my plans for that day fall through. So, stay tuned severe
weather fans!!

Upcoming Chase-o-rama, Wierd Hail, Doan's Crossing, Tea Party, 10th, Seals

2009-04-14T21:34:00.009-05:00

It looks like a real chase-o-rama is in store for my neck of the woods starting tomorrow through Friday...and with any luck Saturday too and likely a cold core event being the best setup. Although, I have some special plans on Saturday and won't be stormchasing unless the plans fall though. :-) Nothing really to add to all of the buzz and discussion out there. Wednesday and Thursday look good for chasing close to home. Friday is looking like it might be just down the road.

Thursday right now looks like the best day because of the best combination of ingredients..in particular the surface setup. it looks like a tornado day to me...tempered by marginal instabilities. Any increase in CAPE profiles would certainly up the ante for more signifcant tornadoes. The biggest problem in my opinion will be little or no cap resulting in widespread cloudiness and precip working to reduce instabilities. Wednesday will be a high-based storm event, but those can be fun too out here on the caprock with some incredible CG production. Friday is going to be a toss up between the warm sector setup and a cold core event closer to the TX PH.

That's just the problem with these big upper level lows. Everything is going to be in a "T-minus 6 hour" forecast mode looking for boundaries, clearing skies, embedded impulses in the upper flow, etc. In fact, these closed upper lows are infamous in moving slower than model forecasts. They can be a real headache for forecasters. It's something to keep an eye on.

The big story will again be a significant rain event across Texas...better than the last system. One thing to consider though, if the models are correct after this system departs, we may have a long wait for the atmosphere to get back into a favorable pattern for chasing storms. It's looking pretty dire for the last half of April.

I'm finally got around to loading the blizzard video from March 27-28th. It's posted below along with my very wierd hail experience this past Sunday north of Vernon, Texas around Fargo and Doan's Crossing. I have never seen nor heard of hail up close to golf ball size that was just as mushy as a snowball. But, that is exactly what I encountered. None of it was solid ice like normal hail. The video, down below the pics, speaks for itself. The only other excitement Sunday was a nice elevated funnel cloud north of Childress and a cool looking hail shaft.

Some pics followed by video....

One of my favorite spots in the TX PH east of Silverton.

I was just outside of Childress when I noticed what looked like a funnel cloud poking out from the hail shaft.

This is Doan's Crossing which I came across just north of Vernon. Interesting history here.

Hey, can I count this as a tornado? ;-)

Strange Hail Event of 4/12/09.

Blizzard...

Tomorrow is the tax filing deadline. It is also "Tea Party Day". If you are as sick and tired as I am of the actions or inactions of the federal government this year, make your voice heard and participate in a local tea party. Someday, I hope we can return back to "We the people....".

In fact, just today, the Governor of this great state, which I am proud to call home, came out and supported a resolution that affirms (and I hope asserts) Texas' guaranteed constitutional right to sovereignty outlined under the 10th amendment. The resolution, HCR 50, also designates that federal legislation which Texas is forced to comply with in the face of civil or criminal penalties or losing federal funding to be prohibited or repealed. Hoorah for Gov. Rick Perry and the rest of the state representatives!! I also just heard that 33 other states are discussing something similar? How awesome would that be? LOL!! We will not be assimilated! :-) It's long overdue that "we the people" reign in the federal government back to within the bounds of the Constitution. I also say it's about time to excercise Texas' right to secede from the union too. Enough!

As long as I'm being patriotic this evening, how about a shout out to the US Navy Seals, eh? Great job, guys! Looks like ya'll have some more pirates to take care of though. I kinda feel sorry for them. :-)

That's it for me. LOTS going on this week and weekend for me. I'll update whenever possible, but it might be sporadic if things get as hectic as I think they will be. And that's a good thing! :-)

Today's Plans & Texas Fire Disaster

2009-04-12T09:09:00.006-05:00

Sitting here in Lubbock this morning trying to figure out what to expect today. I'm trying to put together a cold core scenario for this afternoon, but the models aren't cooperating. :-) It appears to me that the models are struggling with the smaller surface details. All agree with having some sort of boundary near the Red River Valley towards Amarillo. Will there be enough horizontal vorticity along the boundary to get stretched? I truly don't have a clue at this point. But, other parameters are coming together to lure me out towards Childress.

A nice clearing slot is shaping up in west Texas spreading into the Red River Valley and southern TX PH. With cold core temperatures of -22C at 500mb based on the 12z AMA sounding, strong insolation today beneath this cold dome will create some very steep lapse rates today. The 0-3km lapse rates are expected to exceed 8C/km! Some CAPE 500-1000j/Kg is also forecast today along the boundary. That along with any boundary around should present some interesting possibilities.

In addition, the NSTP parameter in this area has some maxed-out bullseyes. 0-3km MLCAPE values up to 150j/Kg (decent), 0-3 SFC CAPE up to 250j/Kg (pretty good), 0-1km SRH up to 100 (marginal). Overall, the helicities are weak, but the lapse rates are going to be incredible. The critical 0-3km instability parameters and lapse rate values are certainly quite healthy. Throw in some sort of boundary and presto.

Therefore, I expect to see some action today worthy of a deviation from a straight path back home to Amarillo. I hope to be streaming today because I left an important email at home regarding some server changes. If I can get that info today, I'll be running a live stream. I have a feeling that some nice little surprises are in store today. Think of it as a stormchaser's easter egg hunt. ;-) I just hope I find a treat instead of bunny poop. LOL!

The raging wildfires that erupted across OK and TX on Thursday have sadly claimed 4 lives in Texas and destroyed two, yes TWO, towns. Sunset and Stoneburg near Bowie, Texas in Montague county were razed along with over 38,000 acres destroying over 100 structures in that county alone. Thankfully, significant rains have spread over the state to help alleviate the volatile fire conditions. We need ALOT more though. Detailed stories:

Reuters article.

wfaa.com

Texas Forest Service

Saturday? No go for me.

2009-04-11T10:05:00.003-05:00

I'm in the middle of helping out the family with moving some stuff from Sherman to Lubbock today, so am pretty much out of the game for any chasing. I agree with the SPC outlook generally, but think the 5% tornado threat is too high. Current surface observations are pitiful and any marginal moisture making it into far SE NM and SW TX will be thin and narrow. Such is chase season 2009 so far.

Sunday looks interesting and will take a look at it this evening after getting back to Lubbock.

Blog-o-rama

2009-04-08T21:39:00.010-05:00

Lots to chat about. First off, Saturday's system which looked promising early on is fading faster than Obama's "messiah" status. ;-) The upper system is quickly trending to a slower/deeper solution which might actually make for a better Sunday event. With this trend, the moisture return will be late in cranking up for Saturday along with weak dynamics aloft arriving towards dark.

However, based on this evening's 00Z and projecting the 84hr forecast through 96hr, Sunday is looking a potential VERY potent setup for severe weather across Texas. We could be looking at a significant I-20 outbreak. More on that though because this is a very classic storm system coming in that almost always trends slower and deeper with each model run. But, it is also wise to caution against putting too much faith in model forecasts until this system gets more into the RAOB network. Definitely bears watching though. Regardless of the details, this is a power house upper level system that will produce widespread, heavy rains across the Lone Star State...something we are in desperate need of.

Regarding my coverage of the big Wheeler County wildfire last Saturday, my video ran at the top of KVII's newscast Saturday night and has run a couple of times since then. The news director seems like a pleasant, no-bullshit guy to work with. I look forward to some possible future endeavors with them. I've completely given up on the other local stations. I'm pretty worn out from the typical media attitudes and business practices which are a sour combination of incompetence and unabashed dishonesty. No wonder I don't ever trust what I hear or read from the media. :-)

I had an inquiry from a national media network regarding the use of my fire video. I was charging a reasonable fee for a 7 or 10 day license agreement. However, the person I tried to work with claimed to have never heard of such a thing. ROFL! Instead, this person expected me (after I kept grilling them about the licensing details) to agree to a perpetual rights agreement which basically gives them unrestricted usage of my video...forever...AND to distribute to affiliates. Ummm.....yeah....right. I then wanted a much higher fee for such an agreement, but they refused. They wanted the video NOW and to review and sign THEIR licensing agreement the next day.

Yeah, there was an opportunity there on my part to play dirty and take advantage of this, but I'm not going to stoop to their level....and never will. In the end, the deal was never worked out. I'm certainly not crying over it. No wonder I'm not overly enthused in trying to provide national networks breaking news video. The effort in trying to do so and being insulted, negotiating/haggling over license agreements, and then the real work of trying to get paid within 6 months after many many hours on the phone and multiple invoices....why in the world would I want to go through all of that crap for a few c-notes which only puts a dent in my expenses? Thankfully, I have a great full time job and paid quite well so I don't have to. I do feel considerable sympathy for some of my comrades though who run a business that depends on media sales to the big guys. My hat is off to those that can pull it off.

However, on a positive note, I did get an inquiry from the Texas Forest Service to use some of my photos to provide information and heighten general awareness in their public relations efforts. The TFS has done an outstanding job over the past few years in helping small, underfunded fire departments in many rural areas acquire training and critical equipment. Now, anytime a wildfire breaks out across the Panhandle or elsewhere, it is immediately assaulted by an armada of firefighting crews with more equipment like 18-wheeler tankers, more modern trucks and even graders and bulldozers from TFS. It has also better facilitated with federal resources to coordinate air assets such as helicoptors and tankers.

So, I was more than happy to donate a couple of my photos to TFS. For future fires, I'll be working with the TFS crews in the field to better document these events a little more up-close and personal for their use. I'm looking forward to that opportunity!!!

But, I'm not likely to quit my day job though. :-) I am really fitting in quite comfortably and enjoying it. It's the first time that a bunch of red flags haven't shot up within the first two weeks of working at a place. I'm really hoping that things continue to work out so I can truly settle down out here. I am so deeply grateful to have had things work out like they have. In fact, I spent some time today driving around the town of Panhandle, eyeing it as a potential for calling home. It's a pretty nice small town and "fit"me like a good pair of old jeans. I discovered that there are good internet options there and even a new grocery store (not a little mini-mart). It's got everything I could ever want or need regarding the basics. There is considerable new development with some nice homes very recently built. I found a couple of great rental opportunities too which I will pursue with more vigor this summer. I'm really excited about it. :-)

That's all I've got this round. I'll try and update later for the weekend potential. See ya'll!

Wheeler County Fire Video & Pics

2009-04-05T15:01:00.006-05:00

UPDATE: Latest details are that 15,000 acres burned and 8 homes destroyed. 26 other structures were also lost. Thankfully, no fatalities or serious injuries. Four firefighters were treated and released for dehydration and/or smoke inhalation.

While documenting the accidents on I-40 due to a blinding dust storm which shut it down in both directions, NWR sounded the warning tones. It was an emergency message for a large fire in Wheeler County and urging people living in Wheeler to evacuate to Elk City. I worked my way onto I-40 where it was open and headed east.

After encountering blocked roads on Hwy 83 north of Shamrock, I weaved around on some back roads to get a better vantage point of the wildfire while keeping an escape route open. Thank goodness for GPS. :-) The sky was thick with billowing smoke as the wildfire raged out of control fueled by 40-50mph winds with higher gusts. It was pretty surreal. I found an ideal place to set up and wait for the fire to approach. I had a good escape route and was able to stay out of the way of fire crews.

The result is some pretty good video of the event along with a few pics. I captured several firenadoes with a couple of impressive ones. I was able to document fire crews in action including graders plowing fire lines. There is even a scene of cows stampeding from the fire. I found a local station, KVII-7, that wanted my video which they ran at the top spot on the 10pm newscast. The good thing is, they didn't expect it for free (a rant for another time).

I was expecting the big tanker planes to swoop in, but the winds were too strong. I understand a couple of them showed up after dark to squelch the remaining fires. However, I did watch a frequent spotter plane flying around overhead and two SEATs (Single Engine Air Tankers similar to crop dusters). A huge round of kudos go to the various volunteer fire departments, forest service and other first responders in battling this beast of a fire. It is truly remarkable that they were able to contain it and eventually gain the upper hand and extinguish it. The lessons of 2006 were well learned.

So, here are a few of the many pics I took. A link to all of the pics and the video further down:

The pileup and poor visibility on I-40.

One truck burst into flames when it hit a vehicle.

Thick smoke billows upward which is clearly seen on satellite spreading well into Oklahoma and towards Kansas.

A firenado spins as a forest service grader works to create a fire break.

Fire crews attack the fire line.

For all of the pictures I took:

http://caprockphotography.com/gallery/7808820_3xUh5/1/505541377_S22QS

And the video:

Wheeler County Wildfire

2009-04-04T20:04:00.002-05:00

I intercepted the big wildfire today and got some good footage inluding firenadoes. En route now to channel 7 to get it on their 10pm newscast. I'll get something online tomorrow!!

No Go Saturday & Singin' Da Moisture Blues

2009-04-03T22:50:00.007-05:00

Latest model runs this evening pretty much put the exclamation point on not chasing tomrrow. I do believe that the surface low up in KS along the NE border will be a good play, but too far for me with as much doubt as I have about the cold core setup. It's just not what I personally like to see with cold core events. As far as anything southward along the dryline, an isolated storm or two might pop up down into OK and maybe even the Red River Valley. But, the odds of anything before dark are very very small. Again, just too far for such long odds.

So, I will be hanging around home this weekend. Things might get pretty exciting in the Panhandle as surface winds could be pretty fierce gusting to 60mph on Saturday. With the fire danger still at "explosive" levels, I can't help but think that a big fire event will unfold. Winds that high are going to knock some power lines down or arc them somewhere. At the very least, there is an idiot out there with a cigarette ready to toss it out the window. We've escaped the fire weather season so far with no major fires, but I'm afraid our luck will run out tomorrow. I hope not.

With the current weather system evolving into a very large and strong cyclone over the eastern CONUS, it isn't likely to budge very quickly and the strong, deep bone-dry NW flow at all levels will bulldoze the GOM moisture down past Cuba leaving a very large reservoir of dry stable air in it's wake. This should serve to continue a stranglehold on the nice, juicy return flow for any systems next week. That's not to say we won't see severe weather, but for the real meaty stuff stormchasers crave, I'm afraid we'll have to wait until tax day at the very least to get the GOM in shape for such feasts.

At least it appears the upper air pattern is shifting back to something more normal for this time of year and perhaps more "March-ish". Could this be a confirmation that indeed La Nina is coming to an end? This would certainly correlate nicely with the Climate Prediction Center's forecast to move towards a neutral ENSO pattern which offers hope for a more active May and June ahead of us. Maybe we can get some good rains for the western half of Texas and the Panhandles if nothing else.

I finally dumped my chase and blizzard video to the computer this evening. I've been busy trying to get adjusted to the new job and getting up at 6:20am every morning. But, I'm getting back into the working man's groove thankfully. I'll spend some free time this weekend working on it and get it uploaded. There is some interesting stuff on there.

Until next time....

Saturday's System

2009-04-02T06:45:00.003-05:00

Right now, I'm not too optimistic on chasing Saturday based on pretty good model consensus. Why?

1) 80-90 knot 500mb jet streak over my preferred target areas. I'm just not motivated to try and chase down storms moving up to 50mph or more. Plus, if instability isn't that great (see reasons below), this is far too much speed shear.

2) A "just in time" moisture recovery scenario. I can't recall a good chase when the surface moisture arrives within a few hours of expected inititiation. It's often shallow and mixed out. Plus, the models could certainly be too aggressive with the dewpoint recoveries as well. It wouldn't be the first time.

3) A very good chance at low and high level cloud cover over the warm sector.

4) A very very fast moving upper air storm system. The odds of getting everything in phase at peak heating AND west of I-35 are slim.

5) Season is just starting and models are advertising much better setups over the next 10 days. Plus, it's only early April with most of the season still ahead of us.

The only thing I'm keeping an eye on at this point is that this system is still well offshore and poorly sampled for model intialization. So, it is still possible this system could slow down some and make for something closer to home. Still, for the resons above, I'm not that optimistic even if it does slow down. I'll be watching it though.

On the job front, it's been a great week so far with a very positive feeling about it. Absolutely no red flags raising up as in previous jobs. I'm a happy camper....so far :-)

Blizzard Pics

2009-03-29T00:55:00.011-05:00

I was pondering today just how fortunate I have been in experiencing mother nature's various tantrums. Tornadoes of all shapes and sizes, behemoth supercell thunderstorms, gorilla hail, wicked lightning, violent downbursts, dust/sand storms, haboobs, floods, sub zero temperatures, intense 113F heat, heavy snow (including thundesnow), sleet storms (complete with CG strikes!), ice fog, hurricanes, and now a blizzard. This one produced the most snowfall I've ever experienced (officially now 10-13 inches across the area) and of course the blinding whiteout conditions under 40+mph winds. Certainly this isn't the monster blizzards they get up north, but for these parts, it is major. I mean, really, if you want to get technical about it, the South Pole blizzards have got you yankees and even Canadians beat by a mile. :-)

Here is a satellite image from this morning showing the snow on the ground with clouds from the departing system to the east. Note the interesting contours such as Lake Meridith and the Canadian River Valley together where apparently little snowfall occurred?:

Video clips will come later as I have ALOT to sift through. Heck, I still need to upload my chase video and pics from last Thursday. LOL! I have a full photo gallery of the blizzard now online. CLICK HERE to view it.

Some samples below:

We got into the lower 40's today and with full sunshine, alot of the snow melted. The rest should be gone by tomorrow as we get to 60F. A few spots in the shade will defy death by solar radiation for a couple more days. The massive piles of snow driven by the parking lot plows may hang around for a couple more weeks. I remember that from 2007. :-) Also, props go out to the City Of Amarillo, the plow operators and other crews who quickly dominated the situation and cleared all of the major city streets early this morning. It was an amazing feat. The big award goes to the city police, fire, EMS and AES for doing their duty in the middle of horrendous conditions in responding to calls for help and aid. True heros in every sense of the word.

Looking ahead, there is a storm system that may in fact bring a round of severe weather and chasing next weekend. Stay tuned for that. I'm looking forward to starting the new job on Monday, so I will likely be abit out of pocket next week. But will keep an eye on the weekend potential.

Blizzard of 2009 & Tornado Road Deadend

2009-03-28T09:30:00.006-05:00

What an amazing storm system!! Here in Amarillo, we have 10-11 inches of snow on the ground with 3-4 foot drifts common and some even to 6 feet. In parts of NW Oklahoma, they reported 17 inches and in Kansas, 25 inches!!!

Every major road to the west, north and east of Amarillo was shut down including I-40. Although this stranded many travellers here, at least they are in safe, warm shelter and not stuck out in the middle of nowhere in their vehicles or worst yet, a major accident. I covered a big 20-30 vehicle pileup on I-40 yesterday on the far east side of Amarillo. According to reports, whiteout conditions with zero visibility was the culprit. Why is it people will continue to drive 30-40 mph (or more!) when they can barely even see the front of their hoods is a deep mystery to me. Where in the hell is common sense nowadays?

Anyway, the sun is out as I will be here shortly. My streaming video through ChaserTV yesterday was a big hit. I will be doing that again this morning as I survey the area. After about 2pm, I'm calling it quits to attend to other matters such as getting ready to start work Monday. :-)

On an amusing note, the much heralded show on NBC called "Tornado Road" has been officially cancelled.....not surprsingly. Not only was this hastily put together by perhaps the most inept and scatter-brained production company I've ever heard of, there were also some solid rumors of behind-the-scenes antics of one particular individual in railroading other experienced, seasoned veteran chasers that actually live in tornado alley year round in favor of his own posse who are lucky to make it out on the plains two weeks per year to chase. The production company was too stupid to figure that out.

If you are going to do a show about stormchasers, do it about the ones that live in tornado alley year round and chase often throughout the entire season. Discovery Channel certainly figured that one out with their excellent "Stormchasers" series last fall with Reed and Joel the stars. And yes, I'm pissy about it since I was one of the ones who got screwed last year after busting my butt to make arrangements to head out to the plains for Tornado Road only to get railroaded in the end (pun intended). In hindsight, I'm quite thankful I didn't try to be part of the show. In any event, it's nice to see karma finally come around with the demise of this fiasco. I feel sorry for some of the "good guys" that were going to be on that show though. But, another season of opportunity is around the corner. :-)

Okay, enough venting. Headed out the door to play in the snow!!

Weather Weenie-ness Maximus

2009-03-27T12:13:00.007-05:00

Yesterday was just one of those times when everything in the universe achieves harmonic balance. My ying and yang were in sync. I was at one with the atmosphere. ;-)

After finishing up up a little unplanned vacation paling around with David Drummond and then ending up at the Steve Miller OK's Luxury Inn, Suites and Resort where I was able to achieve my harmonic balance with the universe through bass fishing, beer, geek fests, and great food.....I headed down to the Red River Valley and Nocona, Texas yesterday where I targeted the days events. I was pretty elated to see that my target was a bullseye after the first SVR storm formed right over Nocona. :-)

I knew it would be a real good chase day with all of the parameters in place. I had seen the exact scenario in my old stomping grounds before and was excited about the prospects. Extensive cloud cover though was a major concern heading down I-35. But, the dryline/warm front intersection just east of Wichita Falls was well west of the cloud cover. This resulted in CAPE of 2000+ and very good helicities and shear along the warm front. Thankfully, and something I pointed out yesterday, the cap was strong enough to keep cells isolated and only along the warm front. Still, a good chunk of inflow into the storms was originating from the cloud covered areas which I believe impeded their full potential to be real monsters.

However, they were still some real brutes and produced some brief tornadoes and impressive radar signatures. It's been awhile since I've chased twin supercells munching along together creating havoc. These certainly did with mostly hail being the damaging factor from the reports I read along with some isolated wind damage. The largest and most serious hail damage appeared to have occurred in Sherman where baseball and even softball hail pounded the city including one of the TV stations there who were airing it live I understand.

I was able to get into prime position for the first tornado west of St. Jo by about 5 miles near Hwy 82 around 7:15 PM. I was close enough to discern some agitated motion in the broad storm base whcih was hugging the ground. These vertical motions were rather pronounced and created a little notch in the base. Soon, rotation became evident and I noted rotating rain curtains. No sooner had I entered that into Spotter Network than I noticed some debris swirl on the ground...looked like dust/dirt. A nice cone funnel quickly developed and the tornado briefly organized with several brief touchdowns.

I sacrificed video and pictures while it was at it's best to call it in to 911. I truly though that this tornado would grow and threaten St. Jo. I can't remember exactly what I said to the operator, but I do know I was pretty agitated and terse to get him to take me seriously. He mentioned having a spotter over there, but can't remember the details of the conversation. The important thing is that about 10 seconds after hanging up, I heard the town's sirens go off. However, the NWS DID NOT issue a tornado warning for at least 25 minutes after I made both my Spotter Network report and the 911 call. I saw that Jeff Petrowski also reported the tornado on SN too. Hmmmmm.

The cool thing is that I was streaming it live on ChaserTV! I understand that the stream was excellent and the sudden increase of hundreds of viewers was smoothly handled with no issues. This is perhaps the biggest reason among several that I am streaming with them. Kudos to Scott and Steve for making it happen. There are still a few minor bugs to tweak on my end, but I'm getting there.

Back to the tornado after that shameless plug (lol), it stretched out into a cigar-shaped funnel and quickly dissipated. I had my dashcam recording it, but thanks to a dirty tape head, the good parts of the tornado are all screwed up with big fat horizontal lines...which cleared up after the tornado lifted and began dissipating...naturally!!! I guess the storm gods have a sick sense of humor after what was pretty much a perfect day. ;-)

I stayed with the storm noting some distant and very low contrast lowerings that could have been "somthing", but just too far away and barely discernable. I watched the second big storm developing to the west and moved to intercept it. I think I got to near Muenster a little too late to see that brief tornado, but tracked it along Hwy 82 noting some very ominous bowl shaped lowerings which I seriously thought would produce at least a brief tornado. I've got video of that including what at one point certainly looked like a wedge-shaped wall cloud and possible tornado. It was dark and illuminted by lightning, so there is nothing definitive. I'll post vid clips later.

During the whole chase, the massive winter storm and blizzard taking aim back home in Amarillo was weighing on me heavily. I had about a 5 hour drive back home which would be cutting it close to the arrival of the storm. So, at about 9:30, I broke off with a new heading 285 degrees and 70mph out to Hwy 287 via 82. Everything was fine until I got to Claude, just SE of Amarillo. Then heavy rain smacked me with 40mph cross winds which quickly became mixed with snow. It was all snow by the time I reached Amarillo with temps of 32F, north winds of 40mph and gusty, and heavy snow. Blizzard!!!! :-)

This is my first bonafied blizzard to be in. What more could a weather weenie ask for in one day? I started off the morning with thick, heavy fog....bust into warm, clear humid air.....watched towering Cu developed into tornadic supercells....saw some hail....lightning....a tornado or two, and a few hours after that, a raging blizzard! The only thing missing is a hurricane. LOL!!

With that in mind, I will be out and about today around Amarillo documenting the impacts. I will in fact be streaming for this event into tomorrow. When I'm home, the cam will be pointing at my apartment complex's courtyard. I'll be doing some video footage too and hopefully sell some it. This is a blizzaard to be recorded in the history books before it's all over with. Stay tuned!!!!

One more last note, yesterday was also good to me in that I received final, official word that i will start the new job Monday. A helluva way to end the week and my little vacation! :-)

Red River Shootout & Historic Blizzard?

2009-03-26T09:40:00.003-05:00

My current status as a wandering vagrant camped out under the bridge at Steve Miller OK's house will come to an end today as what appears to be the best setup (in my opinion) of the season unfolds.

A warm front will shift/redevelop somewhere near the Red River Valley late this afternoon. At the same time, a classic dryline will sharpen up and bulge eastward intersecting the warm front. Latest model analysis indicate at least a small bullseye of 2500 CAPE around Gainesville with 60Td. Veering profiles will be impressive along with favorable speed shear. With mid level winds of 40-50 knots from the WSW, any storm that forms will have no problem munching eastward along the warm front.

The only caveat will be a strong capping inversion which seems to have alot of people worried and poo-pooing the event. But, capping inversions are what make for raging isolated tornadic supercells instead of multi cell convective melees with storms everywhere at once. Model forecasts and the SPC outlook discussion mention a weakening cap late this afternoon. With such strong convergence within the boundary layer, I'm quite certain the cap will NOT be a hinderence but rather a welcome ally in creating an excellent chase scenario.

I've been watching and expecting the models to back of such a strong eastward punch of the dryline as indicated on the 00Z runs last night. Sure enough, the 12z models have picked up on this. It isn't too surprising given that the strongest pressure falls will be further west in response to the upper system diving into western Colorado. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised to see storms initiate further west around Wichita Falls to Abilene. With that in mind, my initial target will be Nocona, Texas.

Then the fun turns to the approaching incredible winter storm. As the NWS OUN put it: "The equivalent to a PDS". Snowfall amounts up to 25 inches, yes, I said 25 inches, will be likely from SE CO, SW/S KS, N TX PH, and NW parts of OK. Right now, it looks like Amarillo will get perhaps 8 inches. This is the first time in a VERY long time I've seen any system like this in the southern plains. I'll blog more about this as I hightail it home later this evening after today's fun.

A BIG shout out to my twin Steve Miller in OK whom he and his wife Andrea have been more than gracious hosts in allowing me to park my cardboard box in their driveway this week. :-) I have had alot of fun this week not to mention being able to relax and partake of serious weather weeniness, fishing, and a few beers. In fact, I discovered an excellent on-tap wheat beer at "Coach's" here in Moore. I'll be back for more of that next time. :-)

Anyway, need to pack up my shanty, get a shower, and head out the door. Watch for my live streaming stuff later this afternoon on my LIVE CHASE PAGE.

3/23 Recap

2009-03-24T11:44:00.002-05:00

Had a fun but exhausting chase in Oklahoma yesterday. David Drummond and I headed east on I-40 stopping at various points along the way with the dryline watching towers going up. Eventually, we latched on to the big cell near Kingfisher as it went tornado warned. I had come around on it's east side and watched a nice clear slot wrap around a lowering. This area quickly developed a nice, strong looking wall cloud showing some weak, broad rotation. The cold outflow was just too strong and disrupted the storm's attempt to really spin something up. At one point, a small rapid "eddy" developed overhead and produced a brief but nice needle funnel. That was as good as it got.

After breaking off from the storm north of Guthrie based on it's weakening radar presentation and visual confirmation, I saw some wicked looking cells in the SW part of the state. A quick calculation of storm motion and distance, I decided to head after them to hopefully get some great night photography opportunities. I did manage to get a couple of nice shots before the CG activity ceased.

After playing around with the 3 different cells, I and David was graciously invited to crash at my twin namesake's house in Moore. It was awesome and we are sitting around being weather weenies and geeks enjoying some awesome coffee. Steve is an excellent host!!!

Hanging out here today and weighing chase opportunities tomorrow. For me, it's distance which I-20 is pretty much my southern limit. Anything too far south of that and it's just too far with terrain and data issues. More on that in the morning.

Here are some pics....

Note the clear slot wrapping around the lowering. This was just minutes before the tornado warning was issued.

The wall cloud.

Lightning from the storms in SW OK close to Rush Springs, OK.

Rocking Oklahoma

2009-03-23T11:04:00.002-05:00

Yesterday was a bust thanks to a quickly evolving thick cirrus shield. Had we gotten some better insolation, I believe at least one storm would have popped. But, it didn't, so David Drummond and I ended up eating at the Big Texan steakhouse for one heckuva great dinner. We repeated a visit there this morning with a very hearty breakfast. We are ready to tangle with some nasty storms today in Oklahoma. I'm on the road, so this will be short.

Our plans are to head east on I-40 watching things evolve. I'm content to hang back for somthing developing back towards Weatherford, OK along I-40 or a tad south of there rather than joining the mass hoardes in N Central OK into S KS. Model forecasts indicate that the more southern target will light up in time and right at dark and into midnight, another piece of energy rotates through NM into the TX Panhandle further enhancing the overnight severe potential in OK from I-40 south. There, inidications are more backing boundary layer flow with slight veering from 700mb on up. With more cooling and increasing boundary layer moisture in that time frame, models indicate further destablization. I'm believe that the really big show may in fact be after dark into the wee hours of the morning.

So, keep on eye on my live chase page today! Link is to your right.

Forecasting March Madness & Severe Weather Workshop

2009-03-22T10:12:00.004-05:00

TODAY - I'm liking some of the parameters coming together for a sleeper event today in the TX/OK panhandle. Combining the 12z NAM and RUC with a lean towards the RUC, I'll be targeting Amarillo to Guymon and east of that line as any storm that can pop moves into better moisture, instability and helicities. The expected storm motions will generally be east which I am quite fond of. This will place the moderately strong boundary layer flow perpendicular to the storm motion. This could cause storms to do a little right turn jog.

Alot of today depends on where the dryline sets up in relation to the forecast mid level impulse coming out of NM along with an impenging upper level jet nose into my forecast area creating some slight diffluence and divergence. VERY steep low level lapse rates (AMA forecast sounding is dry adiabatic to 700mb!) and decent mid level lapse rates are expected with MLCAPE 500-1000 j/kg when tempering the RUC forecast of nearly 2000 which that model often overdoes (when will they fix that?). Various helicity parameters pretty much bullseye the eastern OK PH in the the NE TX PH.

The major concern is both models showing nothing really developing by 00Z. I assume this is due to an expected capping inversion and weak boundary layer convergence. But, looking at NAM forecast soundings, it doesn't look all that formidable given that the AMA forecast sounding has little if any cap, albeit high LCLs. :-) In my opinion, the weak mid level impulse combined with some marginal upper jet dynamics, some weak surface convergence, and daytime heating should be enough to pop an isolated storm or two. The SPC has a conditional threat for us too.

With that in mind, I'll continue to monitor things to try and narrow down a more specific target based on expected initiation..pretty much where the dryline tries to setup. I have this funny feeling it may end up further west based on the current surface analysis. But, the day is still young and plenty of time to start mixing out the shallow moisture across the higher terrain.

For tomorrow, moisture quality and resultant instability forecasts will be an issue preventing a more serious tornado outbreak, but definitely a severe weather event is shaping up nicely. For me, the question is a target area. I'm strongly favoring far SW OK and the Red River Valley into NW TX. The models want to keep precip along and north of Big Red, so I want to be careful in being too far south. It definitely looks like a tail-end charlie play for sure. My plan is to head to Childress and wait for the situation to unfold...as usual. :-)

Yesterday, I spent a fun-filled day haning out at the Channel 4 KAMR booth at the Severe Weather Workshop in Amarillo. I met lots of nice folks and was able to hang out with Jay McCoy, Jason Boggs and Chris Nuttall along with the guys from the station. The presentations were pretty good and informal, but the one to note was Dr. Kevin Kloesel educating everybody as to the differences between a tornado and downburst event.

Huge kudos to him for making it not only entertaining, but keeping it simple for the non-met heads. I really felt like he made a difference in changing some misconceptions in the audience...in addition to spotters and how they report such events. He used some interesting science tricks including suspending a huge inflatable ball inthe air with a leaf blower....and tilting the darned thing at about a 45 degree angle and still keeping the ball suspended!

He also simulated a downburst with vortex rings using a trash can covered with a tight piece of rubber and a circular hole cut in the bottom of the can filled with fogging smoke. He'd tap on the top which created a perfect "smoke ring" that would eject out over the audience. He put a plastic cup on a guy's head about 20-30 feet away and knocked it off.

Overall a very interesting and informational presentation. Dr. Kloesel is very enthusiastic and knowlegable....very effective!

Also of note, my friend Steve Douglass had very nice visual presentation about the Texas Panhandle weather and skies. I though he did an excellent job in capturing the essence and spirit of the place I am proud and fortunate to call home now. Of course, I can't pass up the fact that he won the grand door prize a big LCD TV!!! What a bum! ;-) Be sure to visit his blog which I linked to above and over in the right column. He has an excellent artcle he just posted with some nice tips and advice. You can see some of his great imagery as well!!!

During the Channel 4 presentation by John Harris, myself, Jay and Jason were recognized as being a part of their team. The cool thing was Jay's dad, a long time and famous TV weatherman in the Amarillo market, was recognized and received a standing ovation from the entire audience. What a fitting tribute to have everybody warmly acknowlege Roy McCoy's career and impact on the community here where the weather plays such a tremendous role in people's lives.

I'll post some pics down the road, but for now, it's time to get things ready to head out the door! I will be streaming live video today, so check out my LIVE CHASE PAGE!