Time for a bit of humor...and a brief outlook.

It looks like the severe weather season returns to W TX and the PH next Tuesday as a front settles into the area and a resident surface low and dryline sets up. I love these patterns because nobody is really paying attention to it yet because the GFS kills the mid and upper winds. However, good instabilities, boundaries and 30-40 knot mid level winds (despite model forecasts) will be plenty. Things get better after Tuesday. In the meantime, we are enjoying some reallly nice, cool weather in the PH.

btw...anybody remember the old promo commercials for The Weather Channel? They're showing a few of them in celebrating their 25th anniversary. I just saw one of the old "The Front" commercials. It's like a sports bar but totally decked out weather weenie style right down to little anemometers on the tables. LOL!! I loved those commercials. Here is the only links I find:

http://www.adweek.com/aw/creative/best_spots_90s/90s_167.jsp

Here is a "truckboat" David Drummond and I saw in Miami, Texas. It needs a name as the ultimate stormchasing vehicle. Why a chase vehicle? Well, it has an amber light right on the hood....old school!! LOL!! Miller OK should get a kick out of this one.

It's not an optical illusion. Somebody welded the boat trailer with the truck frame. It certainly looked drivable, but probably needed a little work.

As The Meso Turns......

Man, where do I start? One thing that is a constant in the world of stormchasing is drama. No, not the drama of experiencing the power and awe of nature's fury. I'm talking the soap opera type stuff. I find alot of it pretty amusing and much better than most prime time crap on TV. Whether it is the stormchasing gestapo (my old fan club) and my personal stalker from last year's chronicles.....to one hurricane chaser publicly flogging another one in public.....to blatent lies and deceit in the name of profit......to lunatics like Lanny Lampshade (if you don't remember that, ask me sometime)......to the politics of personal destruction......to love affairs gone bad......to amber light bars.....to showing emotion on your chase video.......the "stormchasing community" is always busy producing the next "episode" for me to watch. Enter the great amber light bar debate!

In 2007, I was kinda disappointed that the annual amber light bar topic didn't come up by the first of March. I really need to start a betting pool on this one. I was actually starting to believe it would pass this year without being ignited. But fear not! It has blossomed once again in all of it's glory like an exploding supercell on the dryline with 5000 CAPE. This is even better than the great geography debate about the Mason-Dixon line recently on that same list. WX-CHASE indeed. ROFL! For those curious souls out there, I side with them being used...responsibly of course (which is alot of the debate in defining this)....but being used. David Drummond has made very compelling and convincing arguments, at least to me, in using them. Since alot of preaching is devoted to chaser safety, I'm puzzled as to the contradictive arguments out there against using them at all. Speaking of stormchaser police activity......

Just as the stormchaser police (SCP) badges were about to be handed out, it seems that a particular law enforcement officer in the SE TX Panhandle steps up to beat everybody out...hands down. He gets an extra big badge and complementary large, glo-in-the-dark magnetic decals as well. Good job!!! Read all about it by CLICKING HERE.

This guy sounds like a dangerous loose cannon to me. He was in such a stormchasing police frenzy that he was appearing all over the place and really cracking down on every chaser he could find. I know at least a couple of other stormchaser police members out there that have wet dreams about wielding such power to keep us all in line. ROFL!!

Be that as it may, I've also heard reliable accounts of a few individual chasers doing some stupid crap too like hanging all the way out car windows and even one account of them being on the roof...all while speeding down the road. I've seen one picture of that happening and the guy looks like he is about to fall out. It's not clear though how many were doing this. My experience in the past makes me believe it was probably one or two vehicles.....very isolated. Who knows really. Maybe the next time they do it, they'll win a Darwin Award and take care of the problem.

My point is that this type of behavior certainly didn't help the situation there. But it's certainly not going to result in legislation against stormchasers. Such legislation would be impossible to enforce, offer a huge abyss of ambiguity and vagueness, and would never pass the constitutional smell test.

However, what WILL be more likely to occur is more aggressive law enforcement activity against chasers using exisiting laws. There are rumors that a couple of counties in KS are threatening to do that. I don't particularly think that is a bad thing really as our numbers continue to swell around the big storm of the day. As long as they do it within legal grounds, then those of us who follow the law when chasing have nothing to worry about. And those that regularly break the law will be dealt with accordingly. Let the "real police" take care of the problem. We don't need a stormchasing version of the spanish inquisition.

With that in mind, I always take the time to talk with law enforcement everytime they drive up or you see them out somewhere looking at a storm. Call it being an ambassador if you will....even if some think I'm an "outlaw chaser" LOL! Unless it is a supercell dropping tubes, I don't mind spending a little extra time chatting with them and offering radar data to them or anything else. In fact, I've had some very interesting conversations with them. One in particular was with a Childress County Sheriff Deputy last year. The storm wasn't doing much anyway and the conversation was better than the storm. LOL!!

I wonder how many of those out there wailing about our image problem with law enforcement ever do this? I have been with groups of chasers before when a patrol car pulls up. Everybody gets uneasy and walks away and even leaves. I'm always the one walking up to them and engaging them in respectful and courteous conversation. Communication is THE most important avenue to mutual understanding and respect as well as goodwill.

I'll also extend this to the local citizens that come up and ask about the weather and what a storm is doing. It's something I need to work on personally because after the 50,000th time of being asked if it is going to rain at their house, it's easy to react unfavorably with an air of annoyance. However, I sometimes stop and think what an honor it is that somebody takes the time to stop and ask you for information that could potentially threaten their lives and property. They didn't get it from the local TV station, radio, TWC or NWR...they asked little ol' me. That's a pretty big responsibility. Plus, by leaving a favorable and positive impression in their mind, the next time Barney Fife decides to play stormchaser police or they try to pass legislation, his "boss" the taxpaying citizen that you just chatted with will be rooting for you...and not against you. And of course if the area you are chasing does get smacked, stop and help. Something to think about.

OK, time to pop some popcorn and catch up on my next episode of "As the Meso Turns". :-)

And, yes, the stormchaser police badge and Monty Python gif above were created by little ol' me. Feel free to steal them , but try and give me a little credit if possible. If not, that's ok too as long as you use them in your next debate melee. ;-)

I certainly hope that the last half of April, May and June heat up as much as the ongoing debates.