A last minute decision to chase tomorrow has been made and I will be heading out to SE Kansas tomorrow with Tony Laubach and Tom Dulong.  I was fortunate enough to be able to work some crazy trades out here at work tonight allowing me the opportunity to chase tomorrow.  I haven’t been able to look at the models yet today but from what I saw yesterday I think we should be in good shape to see tornadoes.  I will be riding with Tony tomorrow so tracking on Spotternetwork will be under his handle of KW0LF.  Streaming will be done with my ChaserTV account.  I think he is trying to get my feed onto his website tomorrow but it will also be available here from my link or on the ChaserTV website.  Simulcast!  Cool!  Once I get home tonight and get a good look at some current models I should be able to figure out a more specific target but Wichita seems like a good preliminary target for now.  Update to come later tonight!

***Tuesday Night Update***

From the SPC:

...N CENTRAL OK INTO SERN KS...
   LOW-TOPPED STORM DEVELOPMENT IS FORECAST ACROSS CENTRAL/N CENTRAL OK
   DURING THE AFTERNOON...N AND E OF THE SURFACE LOW CENTER FORECAST TO
   BE SHIFTING NEWD ACROSS OK IN CONJUNCTION WITH THE COMPACT UPPER
   LOW.  DEEP-LAYER SHEAR WILL BE SUPPORTIVE OF ROTATING
   UPDRAFTS...WHICH COMBINED WITH COLD TEMPERATURES ALOFT WILL SUPPORT
   THE POTENTIAL FOR LARGE HAIL.  IN ADDITION...VORTICITY-RICH
   ENVIRONMENT COMBINED WITH STRONG STORM-SCALE ASCENT SUGGESTS THE
   POTENTIAL FOR TORNADOES AS WELL.  THREAT INVOF THE LOW SHOULD SLOWLY
   DIMINISH OVERNIGHT...AS IT SHIFTS NEWD INTO MO.

This will be our play tomorrow I’m guessing.  One quick view of the most current vorticity scan:

Bullseye painted in SE KS...A likely target...

We will adjust that target as we go for sure, but I need to get at least a few hours of sleep for now…It’s going to be a long day tomorrow but should yield good results.  Check the stream around 4pm mtn time and I will be posting updates on the real-time chase page as the day progresses…fingers crossed as always!

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Ugh, I can’t even look at Spotternetwork right now.  A few lucky Colorado chasers are en route or already in western KS chasing which has made me insanely jealous.  Tony Laubach, Mark Farnik, and Travis Speakman are on their way along the I-70 corridor and Verne Carlson is out in the rhino Subaru already in KS.  Definitely check the TVN live tracker for Verne’s stream if he goes live and Tony is posting pretty regular updates on his website.  Links for both on my sidebar.  Good luck lads!

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On the night of July 20th, a strong cell made it’s way into the Denver Metro area off the mountains bringing with it a ton of lightning, inches of hail, very strong winds, and possibly a tornado.  I kind of wanted to revisit this chase for many reasons.  Not only was this my biggest surprise chase (yes, it actually beats the 3 tornadoes I saw on June 15) of the year, but also because I feel the NWS did an unsatisfactory follow up investigation that was hardly thorough enough to come to the conclusion that they did.  Here are the initial storm reports from the SPC that day:

Red dots in CO

The next day, the NWS in Boulder did not make a trip to the scene to see the damage themselves or to conduct a survey.  They said they didn’t detect any rotation on the storm, therefore it could not have been a tornado.  Also, I believe they said winds only reached a maximum of 61 mph.  Many Colorado chasers were on this storm and I thought it would be cool to post their initial write-up’s in this article:

Scott Hammel’s

Dann Cianca’s

Tony Laubach’s

Verne Carlson’s

It think it would be safe to assume that based on all of the above write-up’s and first person experience, a tornado is a very likely possibility.  You can see on all of the radar scans that there was for sure a weak couplet embedded in the cell right over Wheat Ridge.  Yet the NWS says there was no rotation in the storm?  Then why was a tornado warning ever issued?  And doesn’t a storm that caused 50,000 people to lose power and $350 million in damages merit at least a visit to the area?  Apparently not.

My friend Carl Wells was up camping that night on Kingston Peak (directly W of Blackhawk/Central City) and noticed the cell starting to form.  Not even realizing what the cell would do once it got down to the Metro, he still took some shots which he has kindly let me use for this piece.  So here is the storm in it’s infancy in the mountains:

Notice the anvil, and the yellow is reflecting city lights...

Huge thanks again to Carl Wells for letting me use these!

Anyway, it’s always fun to recall that night because it was so odd in nature.  And it always seems to come up whenever us local chasers get together.  In fact, it was talked about at Chasercon last weekend as well.  The smell of the downed tree’s and the hail fog are still the things I remember the most.  I know the utterly lazy follow up from the NWS Boulder made a lot of us angry but unfortunately we will probably never get a solid answer about what really happened that night.  I want to believe! (see song 1 in the music player)

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Well, Chasercon 2010 is over and it was definitely an interesting experience.  It was the first I attended and I came away fairly impressed and had a good time.  I finally got to meet some people who I’ve only seen their websites or seen posts from on Stormtrack, so it was nice to finally put some faces with names.  Anyway, this whole thing kicked off Friday night with a mixer that apparently got pretty crazy.  Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to attend because I had to work til late Friday night.  Saturday, registration and check in was at 7:30, so I got up on 4 hours of sleep and made it to the hotel right around 7:15.  I placed what turned out to be a wake up call to Dann Cianca while he was dead asleep at his house to see if he was here already.  Obviously he wasn’t (Sorry but glad I woke you up man!  Hahaha) but as soon as I hung up the phone I ran into Ed Grubb from Twistex and got a good seat for the days presentations.  Tony Laubach and Carl Young joined our table and tried avoiding weirdo’s randomly asking questions about the Storm Chasers show…pretty successfully.  Hahaha…Tim Samaras and Roger Hill gave a quick introduction speech and then we were off.

Jon Davies was the first presentation of the day which was interesting, yet painful for most chasers to sit through.  His talk was about the June 7, 2009 supercell in NW Missouri that had every chaser in America on it and why it never made a tornado despite all the obvious parameters screaming that there would be one.  He had some really good hodograph observations pertaining to low level shear and how that might have led to the cell not producing.  It was also painful for me because on that same day, we had the Southlands Mall tornado that no Colorado chasers were on either.

"Don't chase in Missouri Suckers!"

Next up was Tim Marshall who gave in my opinion, the funniest and most entertaining presentation of the conference.  He was with the Vortex 2 convoy last year and did a presentation on why May of 2009 sucked so bad.  It was titled “The May Tricks of 2009″ and did his presentation in a Matrix (get it?!) style where he dressed like an Agent.  It was really funny and very entertaining.

As Public Enemy would say, Don't Believe The Hype regarding the month of May

After a quick break, Josh Wurman gave the next presentation and it had a lot of Vortex 2 information in it as well.  I’ve never met Dr. Wurman before or heard him speak but he is the real deal.  Most chasers, myself included, chase because we like to see tornadoes, document storms, like to get out, and like the occasional adrenaline rush, but not this guy.  He is all about the data and all about his radar.  I found his talk to be quite interesting because he wasn’t really what I expected.  Anyway, he had a DOW out in the parking lot which a bunch of people went and checked out.

"I hate attenuation on my radar scans!"

Nice seeing one of these while not being stuck in traffic behind it...ugh

After that about 20 of us all went over to Jim & Nick’s (aka Stevie Nicks) BBQ for a great lunch.  I ate with Verne Carlson, Paul Austin, his wife, and another couple (who I cannot remember their names because I suck with names!) who were from Florida.  They flew from Florida into Dallas but kept having flight after flight after flight get cancelled because of all the snow down in Texas.  Finally they said “screw it” and rented a car and drove 14 hours over night from Dallas.  That’s dedication!

We all returned from lunch and began the afternoon presentations which were a little drab to be honest.  Actually, Mike Bettes from the Weather Channel got called to cover the blizzard in Atlanta, so Tim Samaras gave a quick 30 minute presentation in his place which was really good.  He talked about some of the data Twistex got during the season and debunked some of the things that happened on the TV show.  It was really good!

Turtle probes and the such...

Howie Bluestein gave another presentation about the mobile radar observations during the Vortex 2 project.  Then Erik Rasmussen gave a presentation about what we are still trying to learn about tornadoes that we don’t know already.

We then got a 2 hour break before the banquet dinner.  I ran home really quick and let Remy out and had to do a quick wardrobe change as I spilled a 20 oz coffee all over myself on the drive back.  Nice.  I went back and sat with the usual Colorado crew for the dinner before Dr. Greg Forbes gave the keynote.  Dinner was pretty good consisting of a southwestern style chicken, rice, beans and salad.  Dr. Forbes presentation was a look back at the most significant severe weather events of the past 10 years.  It was pretty good.  He gave a lot of background about himself and was pretty funny.  He then did a Q&A session which led to some awkward/funny questions from some weirdo in the back of the room.  He handled it like a pro though.  That pretty much wrapped my day up at the convention as I had other plans Saturday night.

Storm Master G keepin it real...

Michael Carlson and Dann Cianca not paying attention to the keynote. Hahaha...

There were a few more presentations set for Sunday but to be honest, none of them really grabbed my attention and after a super late night on only 4 hours of sleep, I bailed on it.

Overall, a pretty good conference.  I got to meet some cool people.  I finally met all the Carlsons and got to see Verne’s rhino lined Subaru which looks really nice.  I talked to Chris Chittick from TVN for a minute and he was really down to earth.  I also got to talk some Android with Brandon Ivey and Matt Hughes from The Storm Report.  Tim Samaras and Roger Hill were both really cool to talk to as well and did a hell of a job putting this thing together.  I was really looking forward to Kestrel Instruments being there but they weren’t which was pretty disappointing.

One last thing I noticed this weekend is that the storm chase community on a whole is extremely clique-ish.  It’s kind of like being back in high school.  While I did meet a lot of outgoing people, most just stuck to their own groups and wanted little to do with anyone else.  That’s their right I guess.  I just assumed this would be a huge networking situation where everyone would be outgoing and want to meet as many people as possible.  Not the case which is too bad.  Who knows?  Maybe it’s just me that no one wants to talk to haha!  Anyway, I’m glad I was finally able to attend one of these things because I’ve really wanted to over the past few years.  Who’d guess that meeting new people out in the field in the middle of nowhere would be easier than meeting new people at a storm chaser convention?  Oh well…

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Whew!  What a hell of a road trip!  I’ve got a 20 minute mini documentary of my trip ready to go but I’m having some encoding issues and hope to have it up by tomorrow.  In the meantime I thought I would at least post my write up of the trip and put all of my photo’s up.

The Off:

I woke at 5am and took a quick shower anxious to get a good jump start on the day.  At first I had decided to bring as few items as possible.  Basically, just my camera and an iPod.  Of course that turned in to 3 cameras, my laptop, lenses, tripods, etc. and next thing you know, my back seat was full of stuff.  I figured it might be a good chance to test some new equipment out before the chase season gets going.  I was in my car in front of my house ready to leave at 5:40, but didn’t leave my block until 6:25.  Why?  I couldn’t get my cell phone to tether to my laptop.  I was using PDANet (which worked perfectly fine the night before when I tested it!) and for some reason I was getting Windows errors left and right when I tried to run it that morning.  I was hoping to GPS track on Spotternetwork but I finally got too frustrated and hit the road.  I hit I-70 and was still in the morning darkness.

Sunrise on I-70

Rarely ever seeing the sunrise myself, it was a pleasant experience.  I still don’t think it’s worth getting up early for but I can see why some people think they are neat.  I rolled into Limon and started to make my way south on 287 toward Kit Carson.  Still frustrated with my laptop tethering situation, I pulled over for a brief minute in Aroya to tinker with it again.  I rebooted Windows and it connected just fine and I had internet service!  That is when I logged into Spotternetwork and was able to GPS track.

“…And The Law Won”

I’m not trying to sound like a BMW fanboy when I say this, but damn that car is smooth!  Normally when I’m out on the road for long road trips, I’m in my Pathfinder on a chase.  When you are going 80 mph in it, it feels like it.  My BMW though is the opposite.  There were a few times I caught myself going VERY fast not even realizing it.  Well, the CHP also caught me going a little fast.  I’m not bitter or anything.  At least she was nice.  There ya go Cheyenne County, I hope you use my $169 in a productive way.  Of course it made me paranoid the whole rest of the trip and I didn’t speed again which was tough because I had tons of people passing me left and right.  At one point an elderly couple pulling a camper trailer whizzed by and gave me the “get off the road tortoise” look.  Humiliating.

In Car Entertainment

One of the most important parts of a successful road trip is having ample in-car entertainment and my trip was no exception.  I did a massive filter sweep of my iTunes library for any song, album, or artist name that had the words “kansas”, “green” or “burg” in it.  Well, I didn’t think that out very well because it pulled every “Green” Day album in existence and of course multiple hits on the band Kansas.  So I’ve listed below some of the songs that I will remember this trip by.  Music nerds unite!

Gil Scott-Heron – Billy Green is Dead/Gorillaz – O Green World/Green Day – Having a Blast/Green Day – J.A.R./Hum – Green To Me/M83 – On A White Lake Near A Green Mountain/Mark Ronson – Pretty Green/Memory Tapes – Green Night/Neds Atomic Dustbin – Grey Cell Green/New Order – Everything’s Gone Green/Quasimoto – Green Power/REM – Stand/Real Estate – Green River/Rolling Stones – Not Fade Away/Squarepusher – Tensor in Green/Kansas – Carry On Wayward Son/Kansas – Dust In The Wind/The Get Up Kids – Campfire Kansas…uhh you get the point.

I was also turned on to a new 80’s DJ mix done in a turntablist fashion that I was promised would be a “fun road trip mix.”  Lots of cuts and scratches and hopefully some good blends.  It was hit and miss.

The Dodge House Is No More!

During the chase season of 2008, some friends and I chased western Kansas and blue sky busted in a big way.  We ended up bunking the night in Dodge City and were feeling pretty down.  We went to Montana Mike’s and got a nice steak dinner and then decided we wanted to find a local, Western style bar to go drown our sorrows in.  Well, we found the Dodge House Saloon and drowned our sorrows in an epic, “I’m never drinking again!” kind of way.  It was bad.  It involved 7&7’s until I couldn’t see straight.  We drank and drank and drank and somehow managed to find our way back to our hotel rooms.  How we didn’t get kicked out of there is still a wonder.  Anyway, I was hoping to re-visit the bar on this trip and exercise my demons.  It took me damn near two years before I could drink a 7&7 again.  To my dismay, the Dodge House is no longer.  The building is still there but it’s been turned in to a bingo parlor!  The slaughterhouse just east of town is still there and it still smells really bad.

4:47PM – Greensburg, KS

Finally, as the sun was starting to get low I rolled into Greensburg.  The progress they’ve made was immediately seen.  On the outskirts of town, the temporary trailer style hospital was still there.  Across the street though, the brand new hospital looks like it was just completed.  A tremendous step up as you can see:

I was losing light pretty quickly so I then proceeded into the main part of town and went back to some of the places I had been before.  The stripped trees was the image that really struck me the last time I was there and I was actually kind of relieved to see that most of them were still there.  I’m not sure if they are still there intentionally or if they are going to be removed eventually but I think it’s a reminder of what happened.  My favorite photo from the trip is below which is of a new house built right in front of the old one.  Also, stripped trees are still there along with newly planted ones.  Life goes on, but we will never forget.

Next I drove down main street looking at all of the new buildings that have been built.  It’s tremendous to see how many new buildings have gone up and are open for business in the year and a half since I was last there.  When I was last there the only thing open was a Kwik Stop gas station.  That’s still there but so are all of these:

Above are all brand new buildings that were not even started when I was there the first time.  Knowing I had an insanely long drive home, I decided I better get to it.  I took one last shot of main street at sunset and one other shot because I’m a dork:

The Quick Way Home

Although the mileage is less by taking some of the smaller highways and state roads, it is definitely not faster!  I found this out the hard way as I was almost 3 hours behind schedule of where I thought I would be on this trip.  Time to take the longer but quicker way home so I bolted to the 183 North and passed through Kinsley, and LaCrosse finally emerging back onto I-70 in Hays.  By now I was driving in the dark.  The moon was in either an early phase or late phase because it was a sliver for about 10 minutes and then completely disappeared altogether.  It made the I-70 drive home a dark and lonely one yet I found it peaceful and relaxing at the same time.  Fortunately it was a much quicker drive than the route I took to get to Greensburg.  After a gas up in Oakley, I was able to make it back in to Denver without another need to stop.  I walked in my door at 11:35pm wrapping up my long yet very relaxing day.

Conclusions

Road trips to me whether they are storm chases or not, always end up relaxing me.  Even if its just for that day, they take the stress out of my life which I need.  Some people see road trips (especially to Kansas) as boring and mundane.  They certainly can be.  But it’s what you make of it.  Some of my fondest memories have come on road trips or storm chases whether they are with friends or I am by myself.  I’m not sure what I was really looking for out there but I returned home after an 18 hour driving day feeling relieved and refreshed.  A lot of people would be pissed about getting a $160 ticket but to me it’s really not that big of a deal.  In fact, I think it adds to the memory of the trip.  Honestly, it makes me laugh my ass off now when I think about it.  And that’s how I know that this trip was a success.  I was out there trying to relax and get rid of the daily stress I feel and the fact that I got an insanely costly ticket and my first thought was, “Cool!  I got it on film!” lets me know that it was mission accomplished.

Again, I hope to have the video up by tomorrow.  I think people will get a laugh out of it and probably end up thinking less of me…hahaha!

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Oh man, I really need to chase something!  I know my SDS (Storm Deprivation Syndrome to my non-chasing friends) is bad when I start having multiple tornado nightmares.  I rarely remember any dreams that I ever have, but the one last night involving a tornado in Parker was extremely vivid.  I dreamt that I was in Parker (for some reason) going to a movie with a girl I dated when I was a freshman in college (not sure what that’s all about…yikes!), and as we were walking in to the theater, she says “Wow, there’s a tornado!”  I flip out and start searching for my camera or camcorder or something to photograph it.  I rush back to my car and I have none of the above items.  Wait a minute!  My phone has a camera on it.  And of course, in my dream the cell phone I have has the worst camera of all time on it.  I kept trying to take pictures of it but none of them would come out.  I did however remember to phone it in to the NWS!  Jesus.  So anyway, I tell the girl to get back in the car because we needed to get closer to it.  Then what happens?  We hit a bumper to bumper traffic jam and cannot move.  I roll down the window and I’m yelling at everyone to get out of the way because a tornado was coming.  Everyone just looked at me and waved and all had these very toothy, clownish grins on their faces.  Every person had the same creepy smile and just kept waving non-stop until about 100 or so people were just waving and smiling.  Some people even got out of their cars and just stood next to mine smiling and waving.  What the hell?  I woke up terrified.  I shuddered and then want back to sleep, but damn I need Spring to get here.

Parker, CO tornado from 2008...Tornado in my dream was eerily similar.

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Whew, this has been a doozy!  The snow has finally stopped for the moment.  The trough that dug in and brought this prolonged snow storm has finally started to show signs of moving out.  My ruler to measure the snow totals got buried so it’s well over 12 inches here in Englewood.  My guess would be about 15″ or so.  Is this the start of a long winter, or just the usual October dumpfest followed by a mild few months of cold weather?  I’m hoping for the latter of course but we shall see.

A table in my backyard from last night...

The snow finally stopped this morning

From my front porch

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At first I thought the media calling this kid “Balloon Boy” was pretty funny.  I mean, how could that not make you think of the “Bubble Boy” from Seinfeld?  And sure, the media coverage of this story is finally dying down but what does strike me as concerning is the fact that this guy is constantly being referred to as a serious ‘Storm Chaser.’  That couldn’t be further from the truth!  But not all is lost as finally an article appeared telling our side of the story.

Times Online Story

I’m glad they used quotes from my blog as well as Tony Laubach’s because this guy is a joke, fraud, and a bad parent.  I hope charges are filed and the actual storm chasing community can move on without this tarnishing our reputation any further.  Let us never speak of this guy again…

Scott

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Phone Geek Scott here and all I will say is peep the MLB game tonight and you’re sure to see a new aggressive ad campaign from Verizon about their new Android phones coming.  The phones in question are the HTC Imagio (called the Hero on Sprint), and the Motorola Droid (which is the one I’m salivating over).  Supposedly these ads will be focused around what these phones can do and what the iPhone can’t; what Verizon is now calling the “iDoesn’t”  I guess those ‘iPhone coming to Verizon soon!’ thoughts are no longer.  Also this is very unlike Verizon to actually promote a phone instead of their network in their ads.  Just one other bit of info regarding this; is it just a coincidence that if you visit http://www.droiddoes.com it takes you to the Verizon homepage?

**UPDATE**

As usual, I was right on the dot!  Hahaha…here’s the commercial: Youtube

I gotta admit, it puts a smile on my face…

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It's a bird! It's a plane! It's a...storm chasers experiment gone awry

I thought my eyes were deceiving me, but all of a sudden breaking news confirmed that there was a runaway weather balloon out near Hudson.  Apparently, an avid storm chaser had been constructing this balloon to launch in to storms but today it got loose and up it went.  Some thought the family’s 6 year old kid Falcon (irony) was in it as it soared away but when it landed, he wasn’t to be found.  The thing looked kind of like a UFO and was designed to be a foil type of craft.  I know nothing about airplanes and the such, but it made a pretty soft landing.  After it landed, authorities moved in and started pitchforking it to deflate it.  I thought if that kid was in there, he was going to be terrified!  He wasn’t in there.

UPDATE: I’ve been at work all afternoon and didn’t get to see this thing play out, BUT it sounds like it was a hoax the whole time.  I’m not even really sure if this guy is a storm chaser as I’m familiar with or know most of the Colorado chasers and I’ve never heard of this dude…ever.  Anyway, the family did an interview on CNN and the kid even says “we did it for the show.”  Hahahahahahaha!!!!  Duped everyone, myself included.  Now that the kid is okay, I can fully admit I was laughing my ass off the whole time I was watching this go down.  Oh man.  Absolutely made my week.  I just pictured some X-Files nerds freaking out that their homemade UFO got loose somehow.  Plus it was airing on every national news station in the country!  Everyone must think we are a bunch of lunatics here in Colorado.  Very entertaining television today.  Thanks again Heene family!

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