Okay, I lied about the video. Here it is, in all it's glory.
Five minutes you'll never get back!
Saturday, December 19, 2009
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Wind and Snow at NIU
Decided to venture out and took a few photos and some video on the Northern Illinois Univ. campus once the winds arrived and some more snow began falling. Took some photos of the suckers walking to their exams in this stuff. Though, who's the bigger sucker, the people who are walking to exams or the guy out there for fun. I'll be the biggest sucker of all tomorrow when I'm walking to my exam and the temperature is oh, -5F or something like that.
Probably won't put up any video, as it's not exciting enough for the time right now as I have studying to do but here are a few photos.
Here's a pretty sweet image from around the time the low passed directly over us here in DeKalb. Barometer at the airport dropped to 28.90". Wonder how many times that has happened.
Probably won't put up any video, as it's not exciting enough for the time right now as I have studying to do but here are a few photos.
Here's a pretty sweet image from around the time the low passed directly over us here in DeKalb. Barometer at the airport dropped to 28.90". Wonder how many times that has happened.
Crappy Snow Time Lapse
Made a quick time lapse yesterday, though it really doesn't show anything cool. We got about 6 inches, but you can't really tell that in the images. I suppose if you watch the roof next door or something you can see it mount up. Heaviest snow comes from the convective bands that we experienced midway through the video. Rates probably hit 2 inches per hour for a short time.
Kind of a bummer thus far, though I guess a fun first system for the winter. Six inches and 30 mph wind gusts is not really that atypical for this location in December. Surface pressure did hit 28.90" last night, which is pretty impressive. Wonder when the last time that occurred around here. Temperature is still holding at 29F but that won't last. Subzero tonight is the plan, so I guess if I'm going to take any photos of the snow I should do it now.
Kind of a bummer thus far, though I guess a fun first system for the winter. Six inches and 30 mph wind gusts is not really that atypical for this location in December. Surface pressure did hit 28.90" last night, which is pretty impressive. Wonder when the last time that occurred around here. Temperature is still holding at 29F but that won't last. Subzero tonight is the plan, so I guess if I'm going to take any photos of the snow I should do it now.
Monday, December 7, 2009
Snow Streak / Upcoming Storm
Caught a nice burst of snow on Thursday night (technically very early Friday morning!). Was heading to bed late that night around 2 a.m. and was surprised to peak out the window and see the ground covered in a white coating. I thought the flurries were more or less done with but we were actually experiencing a fairly high snowfall rate at the time, which lasted about an hour. The snowfall showed up on visible satellite images the next morning and showed just how thin the snow band was, and what a direct hit we experienced here in DeKalb.
Crappy cell phone picture of snow covering the east quad on the Northern Illinois Univ. campus.
Looks like a decent system coming in a couple days on Tuesday evening / Wednesday morning. The real threat appears to be blowing snow at this point. DeKalb seems to be bordering on getting pretty close to the rain/snow line with this one as the low pressure track settles in. At this point I'd venture to guess 6 inches of snow is not out of the question here, give or take 6 inches! If we do get a few inches at least, the main issue looks to be the winds on the back side of the system which could take only a couple inches of snow and create a white out situation in a hurry. Temperature will also take a nose-dive into Thursday. Luckily, I will be able to enjoy the mass chaos on Wednesday, but then bail south to Champaign-Urbana on Thursday where there will be no snow cover to deal with! That's about as close to a winter storm perfect world as you can get. I'll enjoy whatever fun mother nature brings, but then be able to avoid driving around a snow covered town for weeks!
Crappy cell phone picture of snow covering the east quad on the Northern Illinois Univ. campus.
Looks like a decent system coming in a couple days on Tuesday evening / Wednesday morning. The real threat appears to be blowing snow at this point. DeKalb seems to be bordering on getting pretty close to the rain/snow line with this one as the low pressure track settles in. At this point I'd venture to guess 6 inches of snow is not out of the question here, give or take 6 inches! If we do get a few inches at least, the main issue looks to be the winds on the back side of the system which could take only a couple inches of snow and create a white out situation in a hurry. Temperature will also take a nose-dive into Thursday. Luckily, I will be able to enjoy the mass chaos on Wednesday, but then bail south to Champaign-Urbana on Thursday where there will be no snow cover to deal with! That's about as close to a winter storm perfect world as you can get. I'll enjoy whatever fun mother nature brings, but then be able to avoid driving around a snow covered town for weeks!
Monday, November 30, 2009
Thanksgiving / Lightning
Well, Thanksgiving weekend was a success on my end. Hopefully all was well on everyone else's end as well. My first Black Friday experience was a success. Tia and I waited for only about 45 minutes in the cold until 4 a.m. when Sears opened. From the time the doors opened, til we had the items and had checked out successfully only 8 minutes passed. I looked at my cell phone to see the time as I was walking to my car to pull it up to the door and it was only 4:08. I call this, great success. If only we had that much success chasing together this season! We browsed a couple other stores for the hell of it since we were already out, and returned home and were in bed by around 6.
On a more "chasing" related note, I finally got around to playing with some old video this weekend. I had always wanted to do a higher quality upload of the August 22nd 2002 lightning bolt that I captured striking a tree 17 yards from the camera during an insane lightning barrage. I don't think I've ever encountered a more electrified storm. For about 30 minutes we constantly took cloud to ground bolts within 100 yards. Just watch the video clip below. After the initial strike 17 yards away, the camera falls to the ground, but you can still make out the flickering from the following bolts. There are a good 3 or 4 additional strikes with near simultaneous crashes of thunder. Never seen anything like it!
As seems the norm around the web community, I'll be spending the next couple months updating old logs. Since buying my current domain in late 2007, I had not moved everything from the cheapo geocities domain I had hosted everything on previously. Without warning (that reached me!) geocities was discontinued and I lost everything prior to 2008's season. I guess that's the final motivation I needed to update everything! Some will be lost for good though I suppose, as I'll likely only replace those worth replacing as I simply don't care to do 25 logs a year dating back to 2001/2002 when I first started getting out there regularly. However, those that I do replace I hope to do a little more in depth than I previously had. I won't be able to do near the detail in my chase summaries after so many years but I'm going back and gathering radar images and other such data to try and give a little more background on each day.
Anyway, as promised:
On a more "chasing" related note, I finally got around to playing with some old video this weekend. I had always wanted to do a higher quality upload of the August 22nd 2002 lightning bolt that I captured striking a tree 17 yards from the camera during an insane lightning barrage. I don't think I've ever encountered a more electrified storm. For about 30 minutes we constantly took cloud to ground bolts within 100 yards. Just watch the video clip below. After the initial strike 17 yards away, the camera falls to the ground, but you can still make out the flickering from the following bolts. There are a good 3 or 4 additional strikes with near simultaneous crashes of thunder. Never seen anything like it!
As seems the norm around the web community, I'll be spending the next couple months updating old logs. Since buying my current domain in late 2007, I had not moved everything from the cheapo geocities domain I had hosted everything on previously. Without warning (that reached me!) geocities was discontinued and I lost everything prior to 2008's season. I guess that's the final motivation I needed to update everything! Some will be lost for good though I suppose, as I'll likely only replace those worth replacing as I simply don't care to do 25 logs a year dating back to 2001/2002 when I first started getting out there regularly. However, those that I do replace I hope to do a little more in depth than I previously had. I won't be able to do near the detail in my chase summaries after so many years but I'm going back and gathering radar images and other such data to try and give a little more background on each day.
Anyway, as promised:
Thursday, November 26, 2009
Thanksgiving!
Updating for the sake of updating here. Happy Thanksgiving to all 4 of my readers out there! Did a couple Thanksgiving meals with family here in the Champaign-Urbana area this afternoon or evening, which was delicious as usual.
I'm actually having my first ever Black Friday experience in a few hours. I'm actually getting really excited to dominate some shoppers with Tia at 4 am. I don't have anything that I'm actually interested in purchasing, but Tia found a couple deals that she wants to snag so I'm going to team up with her to conquer a store or two before returning home to join the rest of the sane world in dream land.
Clearly no weather news to update on here. Thought we might see our first flurries of the year in central Illinois, but that wasn't the case in the C-U area at least.
I'm actually having my first ever Black Friday experience in a few hours. I'm actually getting really excited to dominate some shoppers with Tia at 4 am. I don't have anything that I'm actually interested in purchasing, but Tia found a couple deals that she wants to snag so I'm going to team up with her to conquer a store or two before returning home to join the rest of the sane world in dream land.
Clearly no weather news to update on here. Thought we might see our first flurries of the year in central Illinois, but that wasn't the case in the C-U area at least.
Sunday, November 8, 2009
Wind farm at twilight
Figured I had to enjoy the 70F temperatures out there. What better way than a photography trip. I had no idea where I wanted to go, but gassed up the car and grabbed a 32 oz. Coke and was on my way. I left DeKalb and quickly decided I wanted to play with the ever expanding wind farm just south of town. Here is what I came home with.
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
PWX 2009: A Tale of Two Seasons
Well, a typical late release on my end, but it's finally here.
The next in the line of PWX 20XX storm chasing DVDs, PWX 2009; A Tale of Two Seasons features the beautiful, and the very ugly sides of storm chasing in the central United States. 2008 featured one of my most successful two week periods in the end of May and first week of June including the western Kansas events on May 22/23, culminating with the June 7th wedge-fest in northeastern Illinois. I came out of the gate sprinting in 2008 and fell flat on my face in 2009. A very difficult year for storm chasing which did still prove fruitful to some was unrelenting on my end. If I wasn't being hosed by mother nature, it was such inconveniences as a totaled car in a construction zone. PWX 2009 is packed full of 2008 action, and 2009 pain (and I suppose a few nice storms as well!).
Charging $15, shipping included. Any chasers out there wanting to trade can shoot me an email.
All the information can be found here: http://prairiestormmedia.com/PWX2009.html
The next in the line of PWX 20XX storm chasing DVDs, PWX 2009; A Tale of Two Seasons features the beautiful, and the very ugly sides of storm chasing in the central United States. 2008 featured one of my most successful two week periods in the end of May and first week of June including the western Kansas events on May 22/23, culminating with the June 7th wedge-fest in northeastern Illinois. I came out of the gate sprinting in 2008 and fell flat on my face in 2009. A very difficult year for storm chasing which did still prove fruitful to some was unrelenting on my end. If I wasn't being hosed by mother nature, it was such inconveniences as a totaled car in a construction zone. PWX 2009 is packed full of 2008 action, and 2009 pain (and I suppose a few nice storms as well!).
Charging $15, shipping included. Any chasers out there wanting to trade can shoot me an email.
All the information can be found here: http://prairiestormmedia.com/PWX2009.html
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
DVD Production
The 2009 DVD is about 90% complete. For the bad luck that I faced this spring, I'm pretty happy with how this one is turning out. It helps that my DVD's always cover the current year, and previous year and I wound up having an excellent 2008. The crappy luck this year kind of played into the theme for the DVD which wound up being "A tale of two seasons". Just watch how quickly your luck can change out there!
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Help Needed...
Figured this should be posted here as well. Some may already be aware of the situation, but might not be aware of the new method to help out here. If you had not heard, good friend and fellow chaser Darin Brunin and his girlfriend Alexis Sullivan lost their apartment the other night during a lightning induced fire. Dick McGowan has set up a method for donations to them, so I will let him finish the talking:
"As some of you already know, yesterday morning, Darin Brunin and his girlfriend Alexis Sullivan, were woken up to a fire that was triggered by lightning in Lawrence, Kansas, which consumed the top apartments where they lived and left their apartment uninhabitable. Fortunately, two good samaritans rang all of the resident's door bells in the building, giving them all enough time to escape, unharmed. Here is a link to the story.
According to the fire department, they have lost pretty much everything and unfortunately didn't have any insurance. They both have received support from the Red Cross and have been temporarily moved to another apartment, but still lack a lot of essential goods for their new home (including clothes) . It is to my understanding, that they will not be able to return to the apartment to see what's left/salvageable for another week, until a structural engineer evaluates the scene.
Unknown to them, I am asking anyone who wishes to contribute to their devastating loss, to send funds to my paypal address: midwesternmeso@hotmail.com
You may also email myself at the same address to give Darin and Lexi any support or encouragement, and I will pass it along to them. If you wish to donate anything else, please PM me or email me and I will send you an address to where you can send something.
If you can not do this, I fully understand (as would Darin and Lexi). Thank you so much to everyone who have already given their sympathies to Darin and Lexi; they are both thankful for all of those who have been so kind to them and have given them the support they need."
"As some of you already know, yesterday morning, Darin Brunin and his girlfriend Alexis Sullivan, were woken up to a fire that was triggered by lightning in Lawrence, Kansas, which consumed the top apartments where they lived and left their apartment uninhabitable. Fortunately, two good samaritans rang all of the resident's door bells in the building, giving them all enough time to escape, unharmed. Here is a link to the story.
According to the fire department, they have lost pretty much everything and unfortunately didn't have any insurance. They both have received support from the Red Cross and have been temporarily moved to another apartment, but still lack a lot of essential goods for their new home (including clothes) . It is to my understanding, that they will not be able to return to the apartment to see what's left/salvageable for another week, until a structural engineer evaluates the scene.
Unknown to them, I am asking anyone who wishes to contribute to their devastating loss, to send funds to my paypal address: midwesternmeso@hotmail.com
You may also email myself at the same address to give Darin and Lexi any support or encouragement, and I will pass it along to them. If you wish to donate anything else, please PM me or email me and I will send you an address to where you can send something.
If you can not do this, I fully understand (as would Darin and Lexi). Thank you so much to everyone who have already given their sympathies to Darin and Lexi; they are both thankful for all of those who have been so kind to them and have given them the support they need."
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