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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