Prairiestorm Media Blog

A few South Dakota oldies

2012-01-29T18:59:00.003-06:00

Due to the lack of anything photogenic around here lately I've been forced to dig into the archives for something new to toy around with. Last night I pulled out a few photos that I never actually posted from the May 22 2010 Bowdle South Dakota event. Even though this date produced a ton of quality storm imagery for me, it still haunts me as I missed the 30 minutes or so when the storm produced the massive Bowdle EF4 tornado. Either way, here are a few images from before and after that tornado.

There will also be a few somewhat big changes coming to the site in a week or so. Nothing drastic I suppose, but it's something anyway.

This is right as the initial EF2 tornado wound down, and the storm went haywire and the massive EF4 tornado began to spin up. A small funnel cloud is visible amongst the ragged violently rotating storm base.

There may be more than one tornado on-going at the moment that this photo was taken, hidden behind the rain. At this point I had missed an incredible tornado, and also done damage to my vehicle by hitting a pheasant at 65 mph, so I was in damage control mode and taking the path of least resistance by hanging back and shooting structure photos of the storm.

On the way back to the motel that I had reserved in Sioux City, SD I kept looking up at these mammatus near Aberdeen, SD, in a sour mood not wanting to make any more stops before eventually convincing myself that I would regret not popping off at least a couple of photos.

Fire in the sky

2012-01-24T19:30:00.003-06:00

No, not the aurora kind that I had hoped for, but in waiting I did manage to have some fun with the approaching cirrus deck. The first shot is facing toward the massive glow in the eastern sky that the city of Chicago and surrounding suburbs creates. Then we swing around to the west where the setting sun is still casting it's last gasps of twilight. The aurora borealis never did make an appearance before clouds completely moved in. Timing on this week's CME was poor as it arrived around 9 AM this morning and had essentially spent itself by the time the sun set this evening. Next time!

WX in Motion 2011 - Weather Time Lapse

2012-01-17T19:10:00.002-06:00

I spent a little bit of time last weekend throwing this little time lapse video together. I didn't make a DVD this fall as I normally would, so I needed to do something with all of the B-roll time lapse footage that I shot during the summer and threw it in with some overplayed clips from 2007-2010.

Full moon

2012-01-12T15:56:00.003-06:00

Went out and took advantage of the full moon and a fairly mild night before the snow arrived earlier this week.

We're getting dumped on pretty good right now for our first legitimate snow event of the winter. I called for about five inches yesterday, and right now I'd put us at about three. It's nice that the first event waited this long, for a summer lover like myself. Generally I am okay with the first snow or two, but after about a month of driving and walking around in the stuff I generally get tired of the snow being around. Given that our first decent snowfall is generally around the beginning of December, give it about a month and by early to mid January I'm generally sick of the snow. That doesn't usually work well for me given that in early January there's still at the very minimum another month of awful weather, likely two. So, we're in mid January now when I would typically already be sick of winter, however we just enjoyed a week of 50 degree weather and I'm actually sort of enjoying this first snowfall of the winter. So anyway, it all just makes the last part of winter a little easier to take.

Graffiti and Melanie

2012-01-08T00:33:00.003-06:00

I woke up this morning and was happy to see another sun filled blue sky. I briefly mentioned the other day having made plans to do a modeling type portrait session with my friend, Melanie. We met up a little bit after the lunch hour and set out to take full advantage of another great day weather wise. I'd been brainstorming ideas the past couple of days as we made our plans to get together, and decided I wanted to go back to this area in NW Champaign with several overpasses that are covered in graffiti. I went there to shoot engagement photos for my friends last week, and thought it might be an easy place to ease myself into the idea of portrait photography. Looking at the photos you'd figure it to be a pretty sketchy area for the two of us to be out taking photos, but this is actually adjacent to a really nice park, and there was a trail where people were walking their dogs and jogging right by us. Lucky for me, the graffiti and Melanie did all the work, so my first attempt at modeling was pretty easy. Melanie is obviously a pretty girl to begin with which makes things easy, but she was picking out photo locations left and right and then striking the pose all on her own, so it's hard for me to take any of the credit on what I think what a pretty good first outing. She and I both have other ideas that we're eager to put to work in coming months too, so hopefully here's to a little variety from the wind farms and star trails as we head back toward the spring.

Here's a link to the entire flickr set.

For lack of better words...

2012-01-05T20:26:00.002-06:00

Here are some stars.

Going to try something different. My ever so loyal friend Melanie is going to let me photograph her in a model type shoot tomorrow, somewhere. I'm not entirely sure what we'll come back with, but she's the first person I've run into that has actually been gungho about letting me experiment with her in front of the camera. Most of what few ideas I have would probably be better suited for the warm season, but she seems equally stoked so hopefully with our powers combined we won't come away empty handed. Either way, it will be above 50F and sunny, so it will be nice to spend some time outdoors.

Campus star trails

2012-01-03T01:35:00.004-06:00

Got bored tonight and went out on the University of Illinois campus to shoot some urban star trails. I went onto the main quad, and set up facing the southern sky and Foellinger Auditorium.

Here's a link to the higher resolution flickr image.

http:http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif//farm8.staticflickr.com/7167/6626419471_b7b9c34c88_o.jpg

Social networking revisited

2012-01-02T20:54:00.003-06:00

I've decided to start the twitter up again as a source of frequent updates during the warm season and an outlet for non-sense and the occasional astro-photography during the winter. I get a lot of requests on my person Facebook page, but deny the majority as I decided a long time ago to keep that page limited to only those I have a relationship with in the real world. I lost interest in the idea of networking when I became an anti-social jerk years ago. So, whether you're a storm chaser groupie, or just another chaser interested in networking, I can't imagine that you'd really care to see all the photos of my dinners and hear about all the Red Bull I've consumed as I make myself a candidate for a future test subject on the long-term effects of high taurine consumption. Anything weather related worth a damn would just be posted here for your blogging pleasure. That said, if you really need all the nonsense, you're welcome to follow my Twitter account now. Of all my four loyal readers, if you're not already following go ahead and do so. I'll try to make things interesting as we slowly grind toward warmer days.

http://twitter.com/#!/PStormMedia

Top 10 from 2011

2011-12-27T18:12:00.001-06:00

It's been a tradition of mine for a couple of years now to put myself through the trouble of skimming down the list of the thousands of photos that I took over the last year and somehow pick out my favorite ten, and then post them on here with a little nostalgic blurb about the moment. That time came again today. So, here they are, in no particular order other than the random order that they get uploaded, are my top ten photos from 2011. There are certainly photos that received more positive feedback from others that did make the list, but for whatever reason these are my favorites.

April 10 2011, Lake Shabonna. On one of the rare beautiful days this past spring I managed to sneak away for an evening walk around the lake. It was early enough in the season that I essentially had the entire place to myself aside from a few fishermen out on the lake. I snapped this photo just as the sun was setting below the horizon behind me along my favorite trail.

April 15 2011, Williamsville IL HP supercell. Witnessed a small funnel cloud and unconfirmed tornado south of Springfield earlier in the afternoon, and then watched this ominous core approach as the day came to a close miles to the north.

February 21 2011, abandoned house south of Champaign. This was another one of the old high school regular spots that I revisited last winter. I was hoping to do a star trail image over the house, but those high level clouds ended that idea. However, the distant glow of Champaign-Urbana and a full moon helped create a surreal scene.

January 4 2011, Block IL revisited. The first stop along my high school favorites list was this railroad crossing down in a valley south of a cluster of houses that go by the name of Block. This place has an erie calm about it that keeps me coming back.

July 26 2011, Sky drama north of Philo, IL. When thunder roars, head outdoors. While sitting inside on a muggy summer afternoon, thunder began to rumble gently outside. I grabbed my camera and hopped in the car and went out to see what all the fuss was about.

August 22 2011, looking the wind farm in the eye. Gilbert Sebenste from NIU gave me a call this afternoon and asked if I wanted to join him and a friend as he did some maintenance on top of the old AT&T microwave tower. The tower was right in the middle of my favorite spot in DeKalb County, so I of course obliged.

August 13 2011, collapsing updraft. I spent the entire afternoon photographing strong to marginally severe thunderstorms with my brother in southern Champaign County. As we photographed each scene thinking that it would be the cherry on top, the sinking sun cast an even more beautiful light on the quickly evolving sky. It was hard to pick just one photo out of this set, but went with this collapsing thunderstorm with an expansive precipitation area gliding across the soy bean field.

August 13 2011, daytime lightning. Okay, well by 'pick just one' photo from the aforementioned date I apparently did not do that and did end up selecting two photos. This is the first time I ever had actually mentioned to capture a day time lightning bolt. The staccato bolts were just so frequent and close, and my brother and I were continually out-foxed by the lightning's sporadic behavior. However, on one bolt we both let out an exclamation as we realized we'd caught the bolt with our cameras.

August 10 2011, Villa Grove fire. A major downtown fire in the town of Villa Grove south of Champaign was probably my favorite event to photograph this entire year. Shooting the sky will never be replaced, but spending hours watching these guys do work, and interacting with them as they fought the blaze was an experience I won't forget.

October 24 2011, aurora over the midwest. This is probably my favorite photo of the year, for several reasons. I was alerted earlier in the evening that there was a marginal chance at the northern lights making an appearance during the night, but to not waste my night on it. I was then given a phone call by fellow photographer / storm chaser just across the border in Wisconsin saying the sky had gone crazy. I scrambled to gather the camera and managed to capture this image just across the street from my house in DeKalb.

Shabonna Twilight/Star trails/Moon rise

2011-12-11T22:06:00.001-06:00

Had quite a fun little solo-excursion to Lake Shabonna this evening after cabin fever set in around 3 PM. I got out there at an awkward hour, right as the sun was setting where the lighting is at kind of a useless point. It's too bright for any twilight imagery, but too dark for any real landscape photography. That being the case, I walked the length of the dam on the south end of the lake and watched the sun go down, and then slowly walked back as it got darker. Once I got back to my car, I decided to drive around to another area where I shot star trails on my first ever trip out there a couple of years ago. (Flickr set from that first trip) That very last photo is what I was looking for.

Apparently I overshot the target location, but stumbled upon an area that I had either never been, or never appreciated. I found what would be a great sunset viewing location, and what turned out to be a great place to shoot a few twilight photos of a little bend in the lake. The geese were insane, flying over in huge clusters while I tried a few photos from this platform.

Eventually I made my way down to what I thought was going to be a little peninsula in the lake where I could walk out and start shooting star trails. I didn't find that, and ended up finding a little trail that led into the woods, and eventually into a big clearing with a nice view of both the main portion of the lake, and that little inlet that I was shooting moments before. I once again high-fived my ability to ignore the sounds in the darkness as I grabbed my flashlight and set off into the woods in the falling darkness. By the time I headed back to my car it would be completely dark outside.

I found a nice angle for shooting star trails, looking over a picnic bench and some trees, with the very bright Venus slowly setting toward the horizon. I only shot for an hour or so, before I got bored with the spot and started walking around some more. Eventually the cold reached my core, and it was time to start heading back to the car. I was literally ten feet from my car when I saw something red coming up over the trees way across the lake, and soon realized this was the massive, almost full moon. It's ridiculous how many times I set out on these photo trips, whether they are weather, sky, or landscape related, spend multiple hours out shooting what I think is what I set out for, only to happen upon something that completely steals the show just as I have called it a day. The moon slowly rose above the trees, casting an orange and red glow on the partially frozen lake as I danced a happy dance to stay warm. I ran around the shore for a few minutes looking for additional angles, before deciding that I had enough and was ready to return to the warm car to start thawing. I was home in thirty minutes with a mug of hot cocoa with cinnamon, and began going through the photos.

I spent some time yesterday updating the actual website, namely creating a 2011 accounts page with all of my weather related excursions, and in doing so realized how little I had posted this fall. It's definitely time to get the winter astro-photography season started. I'll be heading back down to Champaign-Urbana on Tuesday, so I'm sure a few visits to Block are in store.

This is that first platform where I shot the twilight over the inlet. There's a big wooden deck with a couple of benches and a picnic table.

Moonrise time!

Star trails over the lake. Venus is the brighter spot just above the lake in the middle.

I miss this...

2011-11-29T19:21:00.003-06:00

I'm not a big fan of winter, or anything below 60 degrees (unless it's a crisp 50 degree night and I'm in my tent under the stars). I also realize it's only the end of November and has yet to even snow substantially. That said, I much prefer this kind of thing.

I really need to get out and get the astro-photography season started. Tonight should be clear, but temperatures dropping into the 20s with 45 mph wind gusts isn't what I'd call an ideal situation.

Earth from Space - Incredible Time Lapse!

2011-11-13T23:52:00.003-06:00

I generally try to keep my posts specific to my own ideas and work, but this was too fascinating to not share. Check out this compilation of time lapse clips shots from the International Space Station high above the Earth. Seen are the lights from various cities around the globe, lightning flickering inside of thunderstorms, and the Aurora Borealis!

http://vimeo.com/32001208

Shallow Convection

2011-10-30T00:08:00.003-05:00

A deep upper level trough worked through the midwest during the middle part of the week bringing much colder temperatures and overall unpleasant weather for this summer lovin' fella. However, during the day on Thursday, very cold upper level temperatures created lapse rates that were steep enough to kick off isolated areas of shallow convection across northern Illinois. Most of these little areas were having trouble getting their precipitation to make contact with the ground before evaporating due to the very dry lower levels. This in turn led to some photogenic 'virga'. I sat looking out my window for a while as I did some work on the computer thinking to myself that it might behoove me to grab the camera and go for a little drive. This ended up being a fairly decent idea on my part.

I immediately gave pursuit to one little cluster that had just moved through the DeKalb area that had a very photogenic precipitation shaft extending from its base, again, with much of it evaporating before reaching the surface. At one point, the slowly setting Sun cast a vibrant rainbow. I was unable to get to a worthy foreground however, before this disappeared.

I did still manage to have a little fun as daylight waned, and will slap a couple photos in the space below.

Attention is already beginning to turn to a potential major storm system at the end of the coming week. At the end of October, I'm always game to turn my attention to something well into the future to take my attention off of the gross weather currently in place. I'd like to get out and get back in the star trails game, but it seems we are back in that pattern of sunny days with a nice deck of upper level clouds moving in during the overnight that block out the stars. One can't complain after the northern lights display that I caught the back end of earlier in the week, I suppose.

Aurora borealis returns!

2011-10-24T23:34:00.003-05:00

Finally!!

After a good six year drought, a brief but dramatic display of the northern lights returned to the region. Scott Kampas had notified me earlier in the evening that the chance existed, but was minimal so I went about my evening. While relaxing at home an hour or so later, Scott Weberpal called me and left a voicemail saying that the northern lights were going insane at that moment, so I sprinted out the front door and looked up, greeted by a big red glow. It's extremely rare to have them almost directly overhead this far south into the middle latitudes, especially considering that it was a marginal CME in the first place. The last time I was treated to a display such as this was back in May of 2005. That one takes the cake however, as the show persisted for almost the entire night versus this brief display.

Luckily I did not attempt to drive out into the open country as I would have missed the show for the most part. There happens to be an open area with a drive leading down toward a water treatment facility across the street to the north of my house, so I simply set up shop in the middle of that big drive and started popping off shots.

The foreground could have been a little better, but who's looking at that, anyway?

Wisconsin / Shabonna

2011-10-04T18:42:00.007-05:00

With a weekend essentially free of plans, I decided to escape northward for what is probably the last trip to the family lake house in 2011. Scott Weberpal had the day free on Saturday so we made plans to meet at my family's place during the afternoon. I was treated to a nice comeback victory by the Univ. of Illinois football team which actually ended the moment that I pulled in the drive. I arrived a very tired soul, so I power napped upright on the couch until I heard a car pull in the drive and went out to greet Mr. Weberpal. After relaxing for a bit, we headed to a local bar/grill on an adjacent lake and watched his Badgers take on Nebraska, ending in an easy victory for his guys.

Afterward, we headed back to the house and grabbed the cameras for some night photography. Conditions were about as perfect as they get... the stars were popping and the wind was dead calm. There was a bite in the air, but it wasn't too cold. We walked down to an old boat launch where there was a large beach area where we could walk around and play with different angles. I used this location to shoot a couple of my favorite star trail images last August. After an hour so, Scott was on his way home and I went back inside to relax. I'd had minimal sleep the last few nights so I was ready to take a coma. I was about two seconds from bringing the tent up there that weekend, but I probably wouldn't have even bothered at that point because I was just ready for a nice warm bed.

Temperatures dipped into the lower 30s overnight causing a neat layer of steam as we played with star photography around midnight, so I can imagine things were still cooking around sunrise. I set an alarm for sunrise, but was way too tired to even bother. I'm sure the steam devils were going crazy, but at that point sleep won out. Last year's adventure will have to do.

Sunday was spent relaxing outside with some quality Andrew time. I really couldn't have cared less if the water temperature was in the middle 50s... after breakfast I ran down and jumped in. The water was pins and needles cold, but felt incredibly refreshing once the air returned to my lungs! I spent the rest of the afternoon and evening just traipsing around outside, before watching the sun go down over the lake during the evening and then eventually making my way back home.

Beautiful fall weather with warm temperatures finally returned this week, after five solid days under a cut off low that just spun away bringing periodic rounds of heavy rain and clouds mixed in with cold temperatures. With yesterday's temperatures sitting in the middle 70s without a cloud in the sky, my home girl Ellen and I decided something needed to be done outdoors. I hadn't returned to Lake Shabonna since returning to northern Illinois this fall so I vetoed her idea to visit a local nature trail and drove us out that way. There wasn't much time before the sun hit the horizon so not much trotting around was done, but we did find a nice place to sit and enjoy the quiet (excluding the geese sharing their dumb stories). I did a double take at a picnic table behind us thinking it was a deer, only to then have a couple of young deer run out into the open a moment later.

Well, of course these images are horribly out of order. I think it was Dann Cianca suggested a way that I can fix this issue but I've completely forgotten where that was at this point. Anyway, during my last hour up north I decided to take a couple wide angle shots of the actual dock / beach area at my family's slab of land on the lake. The water was like glass... perfectly relaxing. Who wouldn't want to just jump in... temperature is nothing but a number!

The stars were just popping.

Sunset along Highway 82 as I made my way back home on Sunday evening. This is about 10 miles west of the lake.
Now we're on to Monday evening back at Lake Shabonna outside of DeKalb.
Ellen admiring some spiders that had made webs on the plants.
And I guess to throw in a little bit of weather related material, here's a water vapor view of the cut off low that spiraled overhead for the better part of the week. There are some incredible loops hiding out in the open on the internet that I should probably track down and post, but...

Wisconsin in the fall

2011-09-18T23:17:00.004-05:00

Another update for the sake of updating. The weather has been pretty hit or miss lately around these parts so the camera has been sitting idle. I did finally get the engine problems taken care of on the ole yellow Mazda. It was exactly what I had suspected, with a bad front cylinder coil pack, but ended up costing me about 1/4 of what I was expecting to shell out. It looks like the only decent day this upcoming week will be Tuesday, and I have major exams on Wednesday and Thursday so it looks as if I'll be waiting a bit longer for anything photo-wise.

When I get bored at the computer I often find myself digging through the old photo folders on my hard drive, which is the same way I found all of the photos that I displayed during the "overlooked photos" series back in February. I will go out and shoot between 30 and 200 photos on an outing, and upload maybe an average of five. Mostly because the other photos sucked a lot. But sometimes a decent one sneaks by, and I happened to find one I liked quite a bit from the lake in Wisconsin last October. I shot the photo from a canoe while Scott Weberpal tried his hand at fishing.

Saturday afternoon I attended the Wisconsin vs. Northern Illinois football game at Soldier Field, which didn't exactly go the way I had planned. My plans did not include an NIU victory, but they certainly didn't include a 49-7 loss that had us headed for the exits at the end of the 3rd quarter. Normally I'm completely against leaving games early, but given Chicago traffic leaving the stadium, the Illinois football game being in a couple of hours, and us being down 42 points to a legitimate national championship contender, I was willing to head for the exits. I shot this panoramic shot on my droid during the first half. Since both schools share the same primary color of red, there was plenty to go around. It was hard to tell who was rooting for who until one team did something decent, which ended up not being us most of the time.

Wisconsin Paralysis

2011-09-12T18:29:00.006-05:00

A new first, as I didn't take one single photograph on my entire stay in Wisconsin this past weekend. I don't think that has been accomplished since I got my first film camera as a kid. I was accompanied by David Bellmore who made the trip up separately from Champaign.

The trip was fairly uneventful, which was perfect! The weather was flawless, so I came back with a healthy dose of Vitamin D. The water temperature was down to about 72F which was refreshing at first, but felt amazing.

The most eventful part of the trip was probably the bout of sleep paralysis that I had while in my tent on Saturday night. For those who aren't familiar, here's an interesting read.

Essentially, you're awake while your brain is still in a dream state. Your brain still thinks your asleep, so your body remains paralyzed, but you become aware of your surroundings. "Sleep paralysis was first identified within the scientific community by psychologist Weir Mitchell in 1876. He laid down this syntactically old-school, but accurate description of how it works. “The subject awakes to consciousness of his environment but is incapable of moving a muscle; lying to all appearance still asleep. He is really engaged in a struggle for movement fraught with acute mental distress; could he but manage to stir, the spell would vanish instantly.”"

Anyway, this used to happen to me somewhat frequently around ages 11-15 for whatever reason, but hasn't happened since. You'd swear there was a time zone change between the real world and "at the lake" world, because we always retire early for the night. We watched the Notre Dame/Michigan football game and then decided to call it. I went to my tent around 11 and was almost instantly asleep. For whatever reason, I woke up a couple hours later around 1 AM feeling completely refreshed, almost like my body took a nap and was ready to go again. This was a problem. Luckily a friend of mine texted me shortly after and kept me company for a while as I lay awake in the tent under the bright moonlight. I wasn't exactly pissed, as being out in nature on a beautiful clear night with temperatures in the middle 50s is a pretty good place to be unable to sleep. I talked to my friend until after 3 AM before deciding to go for a walk. I have absolutely no reservations about being out in the wilderness or in rural areas in the middle of the night completely alone. I was never an easily scared kid, and what reservations I had before have probably been erased in years of spending nights alone shooting photos, whether on a storm chase or simple night photo outing. You eventually learn that the only thing you have to fear is your brain. In time you learn that the thing that is making the crunching noise in the brush behind you that sounds huge, is probably no bigger than a football and could be punted about 40 yards if you felt so compelled.

I made my way back to the tent and decided to try that sleeping thing. At one point I heard something sniffing around outside my tent and briefly contemplated smacking the side of the tent to startle it and send it running but the idea that it could potentially be a skunk had me thinking better of it. The next thing I knew it was sleep paralysis time.

I don't remember ever falling asleep, which perhaps added to it seeming so real. My mind had awakened in a dreaming state, my body still paralyzed but my conscience becoming more and more aware of my surroundings. I was 100% convinced that there was a snarling wolf first directly outside my tent, but then actually inside my tent grabbing my left arm.

Fast forward to 0:38 and that's almost exactly what I heard. That slow, low snarling noise. This lasted what seemed like maybe a minute or two, all the while I was unable to move anything but my eyes. It's almost like a lightswitch is flipped when it ends too. I immediately became aware of what had happened. When I was younger I wasn't overly aware of what sleep paralysis was, but when I came to this time and realized the "wolf" was really my blanket bunched up in the corner of my eye I immediately knew I'd been had by Mr. Paralysis. It was just odd that it had been so long. Ah well. Like I said, I can't remember the last time I was even a little bit afraid while out at night, but this had my heart racing for several minutes afterward just given the realness of the situation. When I was a kid it seemed to come more under the guise of the alien abduction scenario that is frequently reported. I would simply 'awaken' unable to move a muscle, but knowing something evil was in my room before I would quickly regain complete awareness and be able to look around and see my empty bedroom.

Anyway, I guess that was the final motivation I needed to get to sleep because after that I didn't remember a thing until the sun was well up in the sky and my tent was quickly becoming an oven. The rest of the day was spent on the lake and manning the grill before we headed back down south during the evening.

As I said, I didn't take any photos this trip but I do have a photo or two from the last week or so that I could toss up here. They're inevitably going to be from the wind farm, but if you're reading this blog you've grown to expect that crap.

Miscellany update

2011-08-31T22:19:00.004-05:00

Well, I'm back in DeKalb. I'm not sure if I've updated since that transition was made. I've reunited myself with the lovely Lee/DeKalb wind farm, and actually just returned from there an hour or so ago. Oh right! I forgot about the tower photos from last week. Indeed, I have updated since I returned. Anyway, I've made a few random trips in the last week and figured I would post a couple of the photos. It's all honestly part of a larger picture that I'm working on. I've already mentioned that I won't be putting out one of my annual storm chasing dvd's, so the PWX 20XX series will have to skip a year (unless the fall brings insanity to the midwest or something). To make up for this I will likely be putting together a little time lapse project. There have been some incredible time lapse projects coming out on Vimeo.Com. This will be nothing near as cool as those, but it's something to challenge and occupy myself with!

Anyway, a couple of photos...

It's been a good couple weeks back in the DeKalb area. It probably is no secret anymore to my four loyal readers, but the lovely Tia and I decided to end our five year relationship back in the spring. That largely explains my absence from the blogging/photographing/chasing world, which was a real bummer. Not letting something like that affect your daily life is easier said than done, but the summer did me well. It was not a hostile deal at all, which I think at times made it harder. We did it with the idea of simply remaining best friends. ...speaking of things easier said than done. While we still are not on bad terms, she and I did decide recently that perhaps it would just be easier if we only interacted if we really needed to. We'll always have each others back, but for now we'll leave it at that. She's a great kid and will do amazing things in her life in spite of all the obstacles she has overcome in her life.

Anyway, this isn't meant to be a downer of a post, but rather the opposite. I made several posts in prior weeks about feeling completely comfortable in myself again, finally. Tia and I shared our entirely lives with each other, and for me that included storm chasing / photography adventures. While I loved spending essentially every chase and many photography trips exploring new places with her, I spent most of the summer regretting it thinking now that it wouldn't be the same and hating that all of those chases were now filled with memories of happier times with her. But that isn't how it needs to be at all. Simply part of the adjustment process I suppose. Driving around the country looking for cool clouds is what makes me who I am, and I simply needed to be a whiner and hate on things for a while before I realized that and got back out on my horse and started spending all of my money on my gas tank doing those things that made me happy again. Once again I am at peace standing out in the corn fields of Illinois watching the wind turbines turn while listening to the subtle whooshing noise of the blades, or pulling off the side of the road with a mind full of ideas as a thunderstorm blossoms in front of me. When I think back to all of the chase days that I shared with Tia as my passenger I no longer feel regret and the desire to go back and do it alone, but see happy memories spent with one of the best friends I have ever had.

Again, I didn't mean for this to come off as a pity party because I honestly feel amazing. I was certain I would spend the rest of my life with that one person, but that's exactly how life goes. If I wanted pointless attention I'd post emotional song lyrics or complain about how unfair life is via Facebook status or something. I was simply doing some thinking while I watched my barely-moving wind turbines tonight and figured some writing would do me well, and my much smaller, but ever loyal blog audience would be a decent outlet. What I dealt with this summer, everyone out there has or will deal with it at some time or another. One of the biggest leaps that I took in the pitiful grief recovery process occurred on the day that I first saw video out of Joplin, Missouri following the EF5 tornado that obliterated that town. This guy is sitting here down on himself over a relationship change, while others are dealing with their loved ones being blown out of their homes and killed. While in a sense I was losing a loved one of my own, I couldn't hardly feel sorry for myself at all when thinking about how my situation paled in comparison to what any number of people in the world are going through at a given moment.

Gah, I feel like I'm simply ranting and am losing readers by the minute. And I'm in an amazing mood too, tonight. The last two weeks have been a perfect return to DeKalb and Northern Illinois University. I've been out late "doing Andrew", running around town meeting new amazing people, hanging out at the wind farm, and learning annoying new mathematical formulas to explain why the cool clouds I'm after every year are there in the first place. Live freaking life.

Looking the wind turbines in the eye

2011-08-23T23:09:00.004-05:00

Yesterday evening I received a call from Gilbert Sebenste with a photographic offer. His friend, Steve, would be doing maintenance on top of the old AT&T microwave tower about 150 feet in the air, right around sunset, in the middle of my favorite place in the state - the Lee/DeKalb wind farm. He told me to think about it, and that he'd call me back in about ten minutes with instructions. Thirty seconds later my phone rang again with him asking if I could leave immediately. Of course, I was doing nothing with my evening at that point so I was out the door.

The tower is probably a 10 minute drive outside of DeKalb and the Northern Illinois Univ. campus. After unlocking 5 different padlocks, we were finally in the tower. The sketchy looking elevator wasn't responding, which I was certainly okay with, so we climb the nine flights of stairs on foot. Then, it was two rusty ladders to the roof of the tower.

The view was unreal, but I'll let the photos do the story-telling on that one. We stood up there for a half an hour or so while Gilbert and Steve debated on whether or not it would be a good idea to ride out a severe storm in the tower, until the sun dipped below the horizon and Steve finally got to work on his radio maintenance.

The last ladder to the roof of the tower, looking up.
Gilbert joining the club at the first platform.
The elevator shaft that I was not disappointed to not be using.
Looking to the north at a little farmstead and some turbines.

Back on the ground. The farm stead on the right side was burning a little something.

Hanging out with my shadow.

August 13th Incredible Sky

2011-08-14T12:44:00.005-05:00

Another day, another slight risk for severe weather in the region. Would it be another typical 2011 bust in this area, or would we have a repeat of Monday evening? I had the luxury of a lazy Saturday to keep an eye on the sky (or radar, in this case) as numerous thunderstorms developed to the west and north and moved toward the area. One little cluster looked to be developing into a small line segment as it approached the area, so with the dry conditions we've experienced in this region I hoped perhaps we'd get some dust kicking up along the gust front. That was my vision upon leaving the house, anyway. My 16 year old brother, Wil has taken up an inthttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.giferest in photography and often asks to come along on these little atmospheric adventures but is usually in the wrong place at the wrong time. A lot of non-chasers don't quite understand the difficulty in arranging someone else coming along at last second. When it's time to go, it's time to go, and I'm gone. Anyway, I knew well enough in advance that I'd be heading out locally and extended the offer. Once the storms were about 30 miles out, we headed off, both picking up a couple of fountain Cokes as I gassed up and headed out.

As the line approached, the storms quickly tanked and went downhill fast. What was left of an ugly shelf cloud quickly dissolved. Not sure whether the time lapse I shot of this will be interesting or just depressing. I told Wil that sometimes you just have to be patient, and the early portion of playing with a storm can often suck, and if you stick with it through the suck you are sometimes rewarded with some not so sucky scenes.

I dropped south of Philo ahead of an ugly (and not the good kind of ugly) shelf cloud. What was weird was how early the actual gust front winds slammed us and began kicking up a little bit of dust in the field outside the car. The shelf cloud was nowhere near us, and there was no real sign of the winds coming in advance. Not sure if this was the same situation that the were faced with at the Indiana State Fair last night with the same thunderstorm complex.

Still bummed about the lack of photogenic convection, but not wanting to head home yet, I dropped southeast toward, you guessed it, Block Illinois. I ventured to the same grain bin / barn on a hill location that I shot the star trails and Milky Way Galaxy a couple of weeks ago. That's when the day finally turned around.

A rain free (though we were anything BUT rain free at the time) base emerged to our southwest and a little tail cloud quickly developed from some scud and began racing to the southeast. Rapid fire cloud to ground lightning began slamming out of the updraft region. We were in heavy rain being driven by northwest winds that pelted the passenger side of my car. Like a true pro, my brother quickly scurried from the passenger seat to the back seat on the driver side so he could shoot the base of the storm while being shielded by the rain. We made note of the incredible lightning activity and how we hoped to time it just right to catch one of them in a photo. It had to be less than a minute later when another bolt flashed and we both let out a "AH!" as we both realized we had caught the same lightning bolt on film. This would be a lot less exciting if shooting lightning at night, but during the day when you consider that your camera shutter is open for only a fraction of a second, the difficulty in capturing a daytime lightning photo is largely luck based. To both have caught the same bolt was pretty gratifying and pretty awesome. We both high fived, and continued shooting before the storm overtook us.

During the core of the storm my car was rocked by 50 mph sustained winds, perhaps with a gust or two at severe levels as it took down some small branches in the trees up the road. At the rear of the storm some pea sized hail finally began falling. Hail seemed to rule the day as far as severe weather reports went, so I was beginning to wonder when it would show up.

The rest of the evening was pure sky bliss. The sun sank down toward the horizon, and the numerous updrafts in the region simply came alive. We saw several full double rainbows, and countless sunlit updrafts spitting out lightning and dropping hail across the fields.

High resolution flickr set: http://www.flickr.com/photos/prairiestormmedia/sets/72157627307383633/

Downtown Villa Grove, IL Fire

2011-08-11T00:37:00.010-05:00

I was alerted by a text message from David Bellmore around 6:30 PM of a major fire in the downtown district of Villa Grove, a smaller town about 20 miles south of Champaign-Urbana, suggesting I go document the blaze. I quickly made my way and grabbed the camera gear and hit the road. Immediately upon exiting Urbana on Route 130 southbound I could see the smoke plume, from nearly 20 miles away. It wasn't hard to spot either. Not like an "oh yeah, something must be going on way down there" but more of a "oh crap."

Anyway, for an event such as this I will simply let the photos do the talking. It was very fun to later meet up with David, who also happens to be a fire fighter for the Edge-Scott FPD who was called from Urbana to assist in the fire.

I'm all for sharing by the way, but please don't let me find these images on other sites with my name cropped out. That's stealing.

August 8 surprise mini-supercell

2011-08-09T02:03:00.007-05:00

Today was as fun as they come. I spent the better part of the day texting back and forth with Colin Davis about how today seemed to be just another day in 2011 where local storms would dodge us and leave us hanging dry. I've spent the better part of the last month or so enjoying the beautiful summer nights shooting astro-photography, but I've been dying for something convective!

I saw a line of storms blowing up in northwest Illinois that seemed to be taking a dive to the southeast along an outflow boundary that was draped across the area. This would potentially bring the storms fairly close to my home base in Champaign. I glanced at visible satellite imagery and noticed a large area of clear skies as a result of subsidence behind the grunge that I was sitting under at the moment, which made me think that I may have a pretty good view of the storms as they passed to my north. I knew for a fact that almost all of my camera batteries were dead, so I got those charging in hopes for a time lapse opportunity once the storms drew nearer and the sun began to set. I'm a complete sucker for convection at dusk. A large billowing updraft tower being speckled by lightning just after sunset glowing in the twilight gets me just about as excited as a violent supercell in the plains.

I still wasn't confident in the storms even surviving long enough to make it into what I'd consider an acceptable range for a day such as this (not planning on any tornado warned mini-supercells, at this point!). I was invited to dinner at El Toro, which I can rarely resist and decided to take that offer up. I'd have plenty of time to gorge myself on delicious Mexican food and still be able to make it out for a time lapse / twilight photo op should the storms survive through my dinner.

After I'd finished up, I glanced at the latest radar imagery on my phone and saw the storms weren't looking all that impressive anymore, but figured I'd head out anyway. I grabbed a 32 oz. fountain Coke and was on my way! I initially headed east away from town and just planned to find a spot a few miles outside of town to just sit and kill the next hour photographing whatever came my way. Upon driving east down the country roads I noticed that beautiful sight - a nice crisp updraft tower surging above the muck. Perhaps not all was lost. I pulled off briefly to look around, admiring both the resurgent storm to my northwest, and other storms exploding from the disorganized mess that I sat under all day as it moved into Indiana. That's when I looked back northwest and had an odd realization, for this region anyway. I could already see the base of the thunderstorm to my northwest, near Bloomington, which would place the storm 45-50 miles away still. That is almost unheard of in this region, especially in August! You're lucky to see the base of a storm at 10 miles out given the above circumstances. It was almost like being on the high plains. It was at the same moment that I realized I could see the updraft base that I realized that a Tornado Warning had been placed on the storm. I almost didn't react and continued to sit there. I shot Colin a text that said something to the effect of "I can see the base of the tornado warned storm near BMI from here". That's when I finally had that 'duh' moment... uh, you are looking at the base of a tornado warned storm. Perhaps... perhaps, I should move closer? Has it really been that long since I did this dance?

I began flying north down one of the classic central Illinois back roads, grabbing my video camera to do a quick narration essentially stating "I'm hesitant to call this a chase, but look over this way and we've got an isolated tornado warned storm to my northwest". Local chases are the best for ease of navigation, especially when your home turf is central Illinois. Paved grid road networks! I just continued to blast north down my little country road until I found my spot. I still wasn't sure what to make of it. Out of the blue, I was starting at a tornado warned storm. I located the main updraft region, set up the video camera and began time lapsing the storm.

I could tell the main region which produced a tornado near Hudson, IL was being replaced by a new updraft to the south which actually worked to my favor as it would be much more visible. This new updraft quickly sprouted a blocky wall cloud which upon reviewing video did exhibit rotation. I was sitting back a distance still so that I could shoot uninterrupted time lapse video and structure shots. I wasn't under the impression that I would be seeing any tornadoes, so I hung back to have a more ideal vantage point for the time lapse / structure shots. This would be the safer bet image wise, but if the storm -did- produce any brief tornadoes they would be easy for me to miss.

During the peak appearance of the new wall cloud I did note what appeared to be one or two brief slender funnel clouds, but again, I was sitting back much further than I otherwise would on a traditional tornado oriented chase. The wall cloud soon fell apart and it became a structure / updraft tower / lightning session.

As I stated above, I can hardly contain myself sometimes when I see that glowing updraft surging upward into the twilight while being illuminated by frequent summertime lightning. I dropped south and east a couple of times in order to keep the low clouds out of my shot before I finally let the big sweeping gust front overtake me. There's no way to really convey to an 'outsider' the kind of 'high' that these experiences bring. I've whined before and don't need to go back into this being a very up and down summer for me, but I think the end of this intercept may have been about the highest I've peaked as far as overall emotional bliss. A camera full of convective photos, the rushing noise of the outflow blowing through the corn stalks in the distance as the gust front glides down the road toward me, the moon now in full swing illuminating the still flickering updraft. I stood in the middle of the road for a while honestly not even wanting to leave. I legitimately wanted to stand in that road for the rest of the night letting the scene suck me in.

Of course, this wasn't an option, and I was anxious to see what kind of imagery I'd come away with so I gradually made my way back to the car, picking up my tripod/camera and the Coke that I was still sipping on. Again hitting on the luxury of local chases, I didn't bother looking at any maps to plot a course back home, but simply started driving. I'm rarely in the northeast part of the county so it was fun to revisit some places that I remember passing from storm intercepts of the past. Immanuel Luthern Church in Flatville, Illinois stood out like a beacon on the horizon. I remember first seeing that church on a chase with my father, and mentor / the reason I am the weather nerd that I am today, Ed Kieser back in May of 2003. While I'm trying to quickly find a photo of this place, I see the website calls itself "The Cathedral in the Cornfield". I almost stopped to snap a photo for nostalgia sake, but didn't. The name really is fitting, however. Here's someone else's flickr set based solely on the church. http://www.flickr.com/photos/zaruka/sets/72157624233301697/detail/ I have video of us just sitting in the parking lot there plotting our next course of action, back when I was a silly 16 year old filming hours and hours of pointless video, that I now find not quite as pointless as it's filled with all sorts of memories that can now come back to me when I pass through these open roads that so many city-dwellers will never take in. Central Illinois may not be filled with the abundant natural beauty and dynamic landscape that regions out west my have, but I'm certain I will miss the simple beauty should I fulfill my dream of leaving this state behind in the near future.

I rolled back into Urbana right as the sweeping gust front, or "whale's mouth" engulfed the city lights.

I shot plenty of time lapse video, but I only have my laptop down in Urbana and it is about on my last nerve so I won't bother uploading any of that. The most likely outcome will be to have it thrown into a time lapse compilation that will likely be put out in place of a DVD this fall. There simply is not enough material to make a DVD a worthwhile effort this year.

Anyway, the photos.

My initial view of the storm after deciding to give chase.

At super wide 10 mm, it isn't very easy to make out details along the updraft base, but the photo below displays the developing wall cloud. No still photos of any of the hard to see, slender funnels.

And, it was show time. The following photos are probably out of order, but the general idea is clear.

If you still need more, the full high res flickr set is available here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/prairiestormmedia/sets/72157627266813957/

More night fun

2011-08-08T15:16:00.004-05:00

We've finally had a "cool front" or two roll through the midwest to relax the heat and humidity over the area and I've been taking advantage by getting out and enjoying the night sky. We've hit rock bottom as far as thunderstorm activity goes locally, so night photography, which is usually what gets me through the boring winter months, has been my go to activity.

I'm not a big fan of the terrain and lack of abundant photo foregrounds in the immediate Champaign area so I've continued visiting the old high school favorites. There's a clearing in a corn field with a couple silos and an old red shed on a hill north of the railroad crossing near Block, IL that I frequented over the winter that I decided to visit a couple of nights ago. The view from the spot is among my favorites. The photos below won't convey it, likely due in part to the super wide 10 mm shot, but you can see for miles and miles on the western horizon. The 'views' in central Illinois are few and far between, so I've grown to love this spot. Like the little valley that the railroad crossing south of Block sits on, the hill is there as a result of the glaciers depositing rocks and boulders in mounds known as moraines.

Last night I was feeling antsy again, so the abandoned house that I found back around age 16 that I revisited last winter came to mind. I still want to shoot a star trail time lapse there, and yet again I didn't accomplish that. However, I was happy with the star filled sky coupled with moonlit foreground shot that I came away with.

And finally, this was a hastily composed shot on my way back from Sidney the other night. The shot isn't very impressive, but it wreaks of nostalgia. My friend David Bellmore and I frequented this spot on 1100 North when we were little pubescent kids wasting film.

Summer Convection

2011-07-27T15:48:00.004-05:00

Had a nice ten mile 'chase' yesterday. A summer instability driven thunderstorm pulsed up north of town during the mid-afternoon. I was initially uninterested and actually spent the next hour at the gym (periodically checking radar, of course... I'm not -that- out of it). Walking out I was pleased to see the towers still erupting to my north. I went home and checked radar to get a better feel for where things were popping and what storm motions were going to be. My financial situation right now and a couple maintenance issues on the vehicle don't allow for a bunch of "just for fun" driving but it was apparent that the storm to my north would be crawling toward me, so I figured it would be silly not to venture out to my little view point south of Urbana.

Since I really went around the same two or three square mile country road grid during the entire hour or two I was out there, I won't write up about any specific and will just post some photos.http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

The entire flickr set is available here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/prairiestormmedia/sets/72157627166180513/

Annoyingly blogger posts all of these photos in a jumbled order, so the time sequence is off here.

This is looking to my south toward the farm house that has already been featured several times before.

All I could hear at this point was a loud whooshing roar from the precipitation shaft to my east. This is at super wide 10 mm, so while it looks somewhat distant here, I was actually just a stones throw from being soaked.

The ole farmstead to my south upon initially arriving at my spot. Amazing how quickly things change from this, to the first image above. Summertime in the midwest!

This is looking northeast toward the storm, again, after first arriving out at my sitting spot.

The storm is probably at one of its strongest points right now as it makes one final surge before dying out.

Summer in Illinois. I'm sure I will miss this eventually once I am finally able to leave this state. I'm not sure what it is about this image, but even though it's only existed for less than 24 hours I get very nostalgic looking at it.

Late Wisconsin night sky update

2011-07-08T17:03:00.003-05:00

Not going to write a lot, but did come away from the trip up to Wisconsin with a couple decent night sky photos. I originally started with that static shot posted below, and was going to trail the stars in the southern sky, but my family lit up a bonfire to my north so I quickly abandoned that first shot and spun around and trailed the north sky.

More from last week...

2011-06-28T15:55:00.002-05:00

I had a few more photos from the sunset / star trails adventure last week outside of Urbana that I figured I would throw up. Likely will not have anything new to add for the rest of the week, but as per usual I will be spending the coming 4th of July weekend in Wisconsin with my family on what should be an amazing and well needed vacation. I will hopefully have plenty of new material following my return next week.

Oops, I did it again...

2011-06-21T21:27:00.006-05:00

I promise this is the last time that I will neglect my ever so important blog. For all of you four readers out there, I apologize again. I believe I had somewhat of a moment this evening. I hit on it a little in a previous post, but I've been somewhat of a lame bum this spring and early summer, for various reasons. I've lacked the motivation to do all of the things that I love, including hunting down storms and going on random outdoor adventures.

That all said, I've progressed light years in the last month and have been returning to my normal self. Today, a round of mushy, yet still intense thunderstorms plowed through town. I only drove a mile or so to an open parking lot on the edge of town where I was blasted by 50-60 mph winds. After dinner I received a text message from a friend demanding that I go out and photograph the sky because there were cool clouds.

I'd just finished eating dinner and figured I may as well. I invited my younger brother, Wil along and we set out for the open countryside just south of Urbana. We caught a glimpse of a pretty sweet rainbow fragment as we were leaving town but just as we got outside of the urban surroundings the sky had changed and the rainbow was no more. We made it to one of my favorite spots on a hill (a moraine left by the glaciers during the last ice age, actually!) and set up shop.

There was nothing extraordinary about this sunset, but what I felt certainly seemed that way. Being out in the open, surrounded by nothing but corn and a rolling summer breeze, with an ever transforming orange sky to my west, I finally felt back at home. This is where I belong. Not at home feeling sorry for myself for whatever reason. All this time I have lacked the motivation to do the things that I love, because of how I was dealing with these things, when it was exactly where I needed to be. I'd gone out to the state parks a few times in the last month or two, but it didn't feel right. It felt forced. Even while nabbing tornadoes in Oklahoma a few weeks ago, I still felt held back. But tonight, for whatever reason, it became clear that I am finally back.

Fairview, Oklahoma Tornado

2011-05-26T11:19:00.006-05:00

Sorry for the delay in posting the visual results of the chase on the 2 4th in Oklahoma. Yesterday was spent mostly sleeping and recovering from the chase. As I'd stated in an earlier post, I hadn't felt well and did not sleep well the nights leading up to the chase and doing a one day marathon chase with minimum sleep... well, turns out my body couldn't resist sleep anymore after that one.

Myself, Colin Davis, Scott Kampas, and Heather Brinkmann had a chase day that was hard to complain about on Tuesday. Despite the bad wrap that they receive from storm chasers due to their frustrating nature (which I agree with) I'm now 3 for my last 3 on seeing good tornadoes on High Risk days. We did see the Canton wedge from a rain wrapped distance where we were only able to see the right side of 'something big'. We originally though perhaps we were seeing the wall cloud, and it wasn't until the reports of a large tornado began coming in that we figured out that this was no wall cloud that we were seeing. While the storm was ingesting a lot of rain from the southern storms, we had originally decided to hang back and let it organize but at this point realized that we needed to go in closer.

We were almost immediately greeted by a classic wall cloud that had that imminent tornado appearance. Almost perfectly timed, we found a nice secluded spot to pull off as a funnel cloud began to descend. The tornado ended up being on the ground for several minutes and was probably as graceful as they come. Just a skinny rope doing no apparent damage slowly snaking its way across the fields. No other chasers were in the immediate area giving the illusion that we were all alone out there. A lone tornado siren could be heard wailing in the distance embedded in the howling inflow. As quickly as it set down, the tornado roped out in beautiful fashion twisting around itself in large looping kinks.

Video captures, video at the bottom of the page.

This supercell finally met its demise at the hands of the supercells to our south. We began plotting our course for intercepting the storms to our south, realizing it would take us over an hour, and that the storms could have congealed into a line by that time thus ending the tornado potential. That said, it was only 3 PM or so. We had plenty of daylight to work with, and were already 10 hours away from home.

After several storms broke out hearts by congealing and gusting out, we finally got a break. Even if that break was the final one minute of the Norman, OK area tornado, it was enough. We intercepted one other supercell near Shawnee, but it wouldn't produce for us despite several areas of broad rotation.

Video capture of the last moments of the Norman, OK area tornado.

Blah blah, long drive home, blah blah I guess I need to whine about not seeing a tornado more often. Definitely want to thank my friends for getting me out there. This was exactly what I needed.

This probably was not the intercept for shooting super wide angle images on, but here it is no less.

2011-05-24T16:30:00.000-05:00

Have observed a beautiful rope tornado near the town of Fairview, Oklahoma. Kind of screwed right now though as storm of the day at the moment is a good 60 miles to our south, and not at all easily approachable.

2011-05-24T05:52:00.001-05:00

Sunrise on another potentially devastating severe weather day. General consensus in the vehicle is a targer very near Enid, Oklahoma.

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Another unexpected chase

2011-05-24T01:27:00.001-05:00

I have some outstanding friends, and will be chasing what looks like a potentially devastating severe weather day in the central plains tomorrow. Just left DeKalb with Heather Brinkmann and will be meeting up with Scott Kampas and Colin Davis in Galesburg at 3 AM and hitting the road for the dryline near the Kansas and Oklahoma borders. I plan to fulfill my constant promise and update the blog frequently via mobile as I'm doing right now. Check back often for mobile photo uploads and updates.

I know I don't have a major audience, but to any non-chasers (though the same applies to chasers), be safe tomorrow.

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.8

Streak over

2011-05-23T14:18:00.003-05:00

I began editing a couple photos from yesterday's chase in eastern Iowa and northern Illinois, but quit because I realized they were all pretty sad. Then, I began compiling a short video of the hail and downbursts we intercepted near the Quad Cities but then quickly exited the program without saving. Such is my 2011 storm observing season.

It was easy for me to feel down when going to bed last night. If any day was going to net me a tornado, it would be May 22nd. I had literally never not seen a tornado when I chased on this exact date. I went to lie down in bed exhausted, a little more broke, and already in mid May, convinced I won't see a tornado this spring. Then I watched this video from Joplin, Missouri that was filmed while I was feeling bad for myself watching garbage storms further north.

That video is absolutely horrific. I haven't been able to sleep for the last two days for reasons beyond me, and exhausted as I was hitting the bed last night I still couldn't sleep for the early morning hours after watching that video. The 2011 severe weather season has been an incredible eye opener to the destruction that is possible when the powerful storms myself and others enjoy observing in the spring and summer interact with dense population regions. I have yet to witness a killer tornado, and hope to remain that way. Several of the tornadoes I have seen over the last few years certainly had the potential to be accompanied by fatalities, but they all managed to avoid dense population centers thankfully.

It's easy to feel down on yourself when you envision something panning out a certain way, sink a large sum of money and energy into it only to have things come up short. However, when that ultimate goal is to witness the weather in one of its most destructive and potentially fatal forms it really becomes hard to be upset. While I may have spent a handful of dollar bills yesterday and come away with little in the way of pretty pictures or video, that very fact may be the reason that no one died in my home state yesterday as a result of the weather. Not the direct fact that Andrew Pritchard did not capture any powerful photos, but at the very moment I find my adrenaline pumping as I film a powerful tornado producing supercell, lives are being threatened.

I'm not sure how much I will be out over the next week. I have invitations to chase Oklahoma tomorrow, but may turn them down as I honestly need to focus on building up my budget before I don't have money to do squat in July. There is also a tornado threat in the backyard on Wednesday, but that's highly conditional.

4 of 5?

2011-05-22T09:39:00.002-05:00

Throwing a stat out there that will likely jinx the day, but I have at this point, seen a tornado 100% of the time that I have chased on May 22nd. That being three of the last four years, in 2007, 08, and 10. 2009 there simply were no storms, and I was at a friend's wedding. Well here we stand, May 22nd 2011, and there is a moderate risk over the home turf.

Currently doing my morning analysis and can already see two obvious areas. The first being right around the Quad Cities, maybe the Quad Cities toward Rockford, IL. The other is further south near a remnant outflow boundary from say, Macomb to Peoria, IL. One target is under an hour drive from here, the other, maybe two hours. Hard to complain about either of those. But then you face the dilemma; do I go for the further target that looks slightly better and then risk having something go nuts right over your home area (DeKalb being 20 minutes from Rockford)? The perils of chasing.

There is a pretty obvious boundary along Interstate 72 from the Mississippi River toward Springfield. Surface winds are backing strongly along this boundary, which should slowly lift northward through the day. Cloud streets can already be seen on visible satellite imagery. Really hard to ignore that sharp boundary down there. Let's just say, there will be at least one tornado producer between Interstate 72 and the Wisconsin border across the northern half of Illinois, and I need to pick the correct one. Will try to update from the field.

Much needed update

2011-05-18T21:53:00.004-05:00

Well, I'm still here. I want to apologize for this place being so dead lately. I haven't been out on the hunt for storms much at all this year, and haven't really been out doing my usual photo explorations either. I'm hoping to change both of those soon, but in the mean time I wanted to post a few photos that I've been sitting on over the last month or so.

Most recently, I snagged this shot in heading back down to Champaign on Friday evening. That upper level low that was sitting over the area sparked off a few thunderstorms over the state. As the sun began sagging down toward the horizon, numerous rainbows appeared underneath the elevated showers and thunderstorms. I finally decided to get off of the interstate and grab a photo of one such rainbow over a flower filled field.

Even though the weather has largely sucked in northern Illinois this spring, I did manage to sneak away to my favorite DeKalb area location, Lake Shabonna. I won't go into a lot of detail on these either largely because so much time has gone by since I composed the images that the moment has passed. Instead I'll let the photos talk.

I'm in the Champaign area for the summer, and with warmer weather I am hoping to do some more outdoorsy stuff and will hopefully be updating the blog much more frequently. I hadn't planned on being dormant for so long, but crappy weather and some personal issues combined to create a perfect storm of no blog updates. Stay tuned, the tide is turning.

4/15 chase photos, and today's plan

2011-04-22T12:21:00.003-05:00

Bummed that we didn't get a surprise tornado, and then even more bummed that I sat out a day that produced significant tornadoes in central Illinois I have delayed in putting up the photos that I took on the chase to sw Illinois a week ago today.

Fellow meteorology student, Heather Brinkmann and I intercepted a minisupercell right on the surface low from Farmersville, IL north to Williamsville, IL, near the Springfield area. It produced one funnel cloud that lasted for several minutes, and was reported by law enforcement as a tornado. Never did follow up if it touched down or not, but from our distant vantage point it looked fairly harmless.

I'm going on a convenience chase solo this afternoon toward the Springfield and Jacksonville areas, perhaps further south toward St. Louis. I might not otherwise consider it being this far north, but being a holiday weekend I am planning on heading to Champaign to spend the weekend with the family anyway, so since I'm heading south for that I'm going to keep an eye on perhaps diving a little bit further west before heading home.

It doesn't scream an obvious tornado day, and the target area is currently being worked over by a large mcs. That usually goes one of two ways - either subsidence sets in, and holds strong all day leaving you under nothing but sunny skies, or elevated grunge. That, or subsidence clears things out letting the atmosphere destabilize before clearing out and allowing for thunderstorms to erupt in the wake of the mcs toward evening. We'll hope for option two. I'll likely play right on the warm front, perhaps re-enforced by an outflow boundary left by the current complex of thunderstorms. At this point, lets call my target along a line from Litchfield to Winchester in sw Illinois. This is probably further north than most are playing today, so we'll see how that works out.

Current plan is to get off my butt and actually leave DeKalb, and then evaluate things on the road. If it looks like there is no way in hell things will go once I'm at Bloomington, I'll just head se toward home. But, if it passes the Bloomington test, I'll drop to Springfield and do the same. Once I'm there, I'll figure out if I want to head toward the Winchester target to the west, or drop south to the Litchfield target. I'll do my best to update the blog as I travel using my new nifty droid. Well, new as in, I got it last year and am just now getting to use it for chasing purposes. The stupid thing was having a hell of a time remaining connected to my lap top on the chase last week. Ah well. I need to freaking leave.

Here are some photos... first one is a video capture of the stupid funnel cloud that tried, second being the supercell over Springfield, and last and certainly least, the supercell becoming an HP as it is overtaken by the bow echo behind it.

Big won't do it, so we'll go marginal

2011-04-15T08:02:00.002-05:00

Going to try my hand at a fairly marginal cold core-esque chase near St. Louis this evening. Will be pairing up with fellow meteorology student here at NIU, Heather Brinkmann. I've been eyeing this one for a few days, and at times it looks amazing, and others not so much. But, typically with a day such as this you won't know for sure until a storm pops up and develops a hook echo quickly and goes tornado warned. That, or we sit and watch mush all afternoon and drive back empty handed.

Will be shooting to be near the St. Louis area around 1 or 2.

Shabonna Hike

2011-04-13T23:59:00.002-05:00

Made my first trip out to Lake Shabonna for the year this evening. Temperatures were well into the lower 70s, so the weather couldn't have been more perfect. I didn't take a huge hike, and probably wound up walking maybe a mile and a half before parking my butt next to the lake in a little wooded area and just enjoying the quiet for an hour.

The sun eventually began heading down toward the horizon so I decided to start walking back. I hadn't taken any photos yet, so I got the camera out with the idea of taking a few shots on my walk back to the car. I snapped this guy shortly after turning around. With low expectations, this might actually be my favorite shot that I've ever taken out there. Perhaps it's just me. Just something very relaxing about it. With low expectations heading in... this guy just may make it into a frame on my wall.

Sameday Lameday

2011-04-11T10:23:00.003-05:00

Well, another chase op, and another botch by Mr. Pritchard. Obviously should have been in northern Iowa on Saturday evening but commitments back home in Champaign prevented me from even considering it. I saw some incredible looking hodographs prior to the event but didn't torture myself by watching the entire thing unfold. It wasn't until I was heading back to DeKalb around midnight on Saturday night that I heard what all had happened (and was STILL happening).

Sunday... it just wasn't there. Once I saw the 0z model suite once I arrived back in DeKalb around 2 AM my storm chasing heart sank. Waking up in the morning, it was more of the same. I never even got into chase mode... it was either far into northern Wisconsin or nothing. I should have just gone to the family cottage up there because according to preliminary reports a tornado passed 10-15 miles north of the lake. Of course, had I known that, then yes I would have gone up there but who would have known.

I spent my moderate risk day doing yard work, going grocery shopping, and then making a taco bar for myself and Tia for dinner. An orphan anvil from convection that -tried- to go to our southwest sprinkled on me as I walked back from the grocery store with food in hand. After making a delicious dinner and stuffing my sorrows away, the cold front began to light up. I was in no mood to get suckered out for a storm to die, so I waiting until things were knocking on the door here. A storm rapidly intensified and I figured I was in business, so I finally flew out the door to head NW of town to shoot lightning photos. Once I got out there, it was quiet. Too quiet. Not a single flash of lightning. I brought up radar on my phone and sure enough, I had immediately killed the storm by even leaving the house.

There was more stuff trying sadly to go to the southwest, so I said the hell with the storms, I'll just go to the wind farm. At least I'm happy there, regardless if I have a storm to shoot. I scraped by the west edge of DeKalb and then eventually headed south of town on my usual route to my "sittin' spot" at the wind farm. I didn't even make it halfway before the sky just started lighting up! It was the craziest thing. This storm just went from no flashes at all, to flashing about every 5 seconds. I didn't have time to look for fancy spots to shoot, so I found a farm entrance deal and whipped my car off the road. Threw the camera up and had maybe two or three minutes of lightning before the storm tanked as fast as it blew up. It was quite beautiful for the time that it was around. The moon was out, directly behind the storm and illuminated the towering clouds a light blue color. I could even see the base of the storm (though, no tornadoes like there was supposed to be this day!).

Anyway, I shot this guy, and his little neighbor in the wonderful warm howling south winds before the outflow boundary over took me and I was being sprayed by rain and 40 mph winds. Headed back in a slightly better mood... but not exactly carrying what I'd expected from a day that had everyone poo'ing their pants at three days out.

Sunday Funday

2011-04-08T15:12:00.003-05:00

Well, it took some convincing but I'm finally there - Sunday looks fun. People had been screaming about this day for the better part of a week already but I just didn't see it. The shape was just not there, if that makes any sense. However, I'm ready to call a fairly decent severe weather event for Sunday evening and the overnight hours for parts of the midwest.

I'm going to be back home in Champaign-Urbana until Sunday morning and am actually going to keep this discussion short so I can hit the road, but here's what I see.

The obvious cons to me are the lack of surface convergence along the dryline during the afternoon and early evening hours across the warm sector in central Iowa. Right ahead of the dry punch in central or eastern Iowa is where I would ideally plant myself right now, but I'm becoming concerned about day-time supercells in this chaseable region. I'd like to see a percentage of how many chase days I'm NOT concerned about potentially not getting daytime supercells in the days preceding them. Also, I would like to see the surface winds back a little more in the warm sector. Where we stand now, we would still probably be talking about supercells producing tornadoes on any storm that managed to erupt, but back the surface flow even slightly and I think we add wedge tornadoes to the menu on this one. The low will essentially bomb out right around sunset, which will likely force a backing of the surface winds in the warm sector. While this would greatly enhance the tornado threat (and associated LOCAL tornado threat in northern Illinois overnight) it may also mean the fun holds off until right around dark.

You just don't see a primed air mass like this ahead of such a dynamic system very often. Look at last week, we had a system that is all sorts of messed up dynamic wise combined with a shallow moisture plume returning to the target area literally just in time. Now, we've got a system that at 60 hours out looks like a system that is darn hard to complain about kinematically, with the MAJOR factor being the fact that a conducive warm and moist air mass will actually be in place the day before the event! Moisture is already surging northward at 60 hours out, and will be in place the afternoon before the event is even progged to happen. Middle 60s dew points have already reached central Missouri. So we've got the system with early spring dynamics, plus an unseasonably buoyant air mass in place well ahead of time. I think that is what interests me most.

I'm confused on what to do about the day though... but there is time. I'd love to scoot into eastern Iowa and bag a tornado or two, but in talking with Gilbert Sebenste moments ago he and I are both concerned about two separate tornado maxima. The first being along the dryline (a dryline in Iowa?!) and cold front during the late evening hours across central and eastern Iowa into southern Minnesota, and then hours later into the overnight a second tornado maxima may occur over northern Illinois, perhaps into southern Wisconsin and central Illinois where the low level jet absolutely howls after dark. That will greatly enhance the tornado threat in what may end up being a broken line of supercells by that point. In that case I would likely try what I can during daylight in Iowa, and then race home down Interstate 80/88 so that I can be back at the homestead before any tornadic supercell came knocking on my overnight doorstep.

So, I'll be handling the forecasting duties for NIU this weekend and have inherited a High Risk from Gilbert Sebenste, so after running through the forecast tomorrow morning I will try to nail down some more specifics on the ole blog. For now, I'm watching the eastern half of Iowa chase-wise, but keeping my third eye on the homestead for a potential duck and cover event.

Cycle exploration and campus lights

2011-04-04T10:15:00.002-05:00

I finally started on that little idea I had earlier this winter; exploring the DeKalb area on my bike. I'm only planning to live here until I am done using the city for it's University. I'd still like to say that I came, saw, and conquered. I figure, what better way to see the area, and get out in the fresh air than to take to the road on my bike. I've got a sweet early 1980's Sekai 2000 that used to be my grandpa's. I found it stashed away in the back of the garage at the lake house in Wisconsin. It hadn't been used for decades, and I was in need of a new bike. The thing was still in excellent shape and just needed cleaning up, and a new set of tires!

So, Friday afternoon I found myself watching the Cubs lose on Opening Day in classic fashion blowing a lead. My cabin fever was just screaming, but it wasn't an overly beautiful day. It had just finished spitting large snow flakes, temperatures were in the low 40s, and the north wind was screaming. I couldn't take it anymore though, and set off on my bike with no real target in mind. Before no time I was on the outskirts of town, and soon cruising the open country roads. I hit up the airport first, since I had never actually been out that way before. I was hoping I'd time it right and catch a plane landing or something, but it isn't exactly near the top in terms of business.

I hung around on some of the back roads a bit, before looping back around into the east side of DeKalb, actually hooking up with the bike trail that passes through town. I then took that back down toward the old coal loading tower down in the old industrial part of town.

I was about 30 minutes from sunset at this point and could tell we may be in for a decent one, so I decided to just hang there for a half an hour and enjoy some quiet while waiting on the sun to duck below the low clouds we still had in place. In that magic moment, the sun finally peeked out from behind the clouds casting everything in a red glow. It soon disappeared, and I made my chilly way back home. I ended up right around 10 miles for the trip, which wasn't bad considering the weather conditions. Hoping for better this week...

I decided against chasing yesterday in Iowa. If the storms had been a bit closer, perhaps I'd have been in the mood for some fun, but I just couldn't get myself to drive 2-3 hours for a non-tornado situation at this point in the year. I figured stuff would blow up into a line and march this direction shortly after dark which is what ended up transpiring. I ventured back to the parking deck on campus and was actually surprised to find quite a crowd. A few were fellow meteorology students from the school, a few were just hanging out enjoying the show and there was another photographer who's name I did not catch who seemed to be out there fairly regularly. I'm sure I'll run into him plenty more.

I had hoped for more cloud to ground action, but a few dinky crawlers on the leading edge had to suffice. The next couple days look fairly bland, if not a little warmer at least. Here's to hoping I can finally get myself inspired to get out and chase down a tornado soon.

NW Illinois surprise today?

2011-04-03T12:36:00.000-05:00

I'm looking much further north than most are today.

If there is any chance for long lived discrete tornado producing supercells I can't see it being anywhere but right on the triple point in northwest Iowa, and along the Illinois/Wisconsin border. Unfortunately, this is where quality moisture will arrive last, so we may never see CI occur in this region. However, right in the moisture tongue where it curls nw ahead of the surface low I do think there will be a narrow daylight shot at an isolated supercell or two. I'd put my money somewhere around Dubuque, IA. Unfortunately this is a difficult target as it hugs the Mississippi River valley. If I feel there is a decent chance at quality moisture arriving in time, and seeing the cap erode in this region I will likely set up somewhere on the Illinois side of the river just south of the Wisconsin border. I'm optimistic that moisture will arrive literally just in time, and that forcing ahead of the low will be enough to kick off a storm before sunset. While it's certainly getting ahead of the game, I believe that if we do see a supercell or two in this region they could be quite beautiful. With these 'moisture arriving just in time' events you'll often end up with high visibility for this part of the country and perhaps some beautiful structure at twilight. That is of course, if we get a storm to go.

I feel strongly about anywhere in se Iowa and northern Missouri being nothing more than a sunset view of a ragged shelf cloud. Due to locational bias, I haven't even looked at the Kansas target.

Spring has arrived! Sort of...

2011-04-01T15:30:00.003-05:00

Well, by all accounts we are exactly where I want to be. The Chicago Cubs are on TV, and I've got a potential chase day coming up! That said, the Cubs have already blown a lead late and are down big and the huge snow flakes falling outside in a rain/snow mix with the temperature hovering around 40F don't scream severe weather. But hey, I'm not about to complain. There isn't much that makes me happier than eyeballing a potential storm chase while watching the Cubs on WGN, win or lose. That pre-season anticipation looms huge on both sides. As always, on opening day I am forever hopeful that this year will be a big one on the North Side. I'm hopeful that the youth movement can make some noise for the Cubbies in 2011! On the weather side, on April 1st I'm always just certain that this will be my most successful year of documenting severe weather ever. Some years it works out that way (2008), and some years it just doesn't (2009)!

2010 was a year of mixed feelings. On paper, it was a year that I have to say is hard to complain about. Several decent tornado intercepts, and perhaps my biggest leaps photography wise even though I only came away with one tornado photograph. That has to change this year. I've already informed Tia that when she chases with me this spring and summer, she is ordered to force the video camera out of my hand and demand that I shoot still photos. There is more than one instance on video this year where Tia has a beautiful shot of the tornado, and rather than snap still photographs I grab the video camera from her and botch the video while not shooting any stills. No more!

I'm wary about getting too excited about the upcoming chase opportunity in Iowa on Sunday evening. After June 5 2010 I said I would not chase in Iowa until it produced a photogenic tornado. I sat out the op a week ago and low and behold a beautiful rope tornado was produced near my target in SW Iowa. I never really considered chasing that far on such a marginal day, but the state did finally produce and my ban has been lifted.

At 48-54 hours out I'm not going to talk about targets, but I'm eyeballing the triple point just ahead of the surface low which should be somewhere in SE Iowa, perhaps into northern Illinois if we're lucky and the more progressive SREF is correct. Ridiculous H7 temperatures for this time of year seem to be capping off every potential warm front day we see in this region during the early part of the season. It appears that the EML will work into the target region early in the day capping things off, but cooler H7 temperatures are advected in during the evening which would theoretically allow for thunderstorm development near the triple point. Now, whether the erosion of the cap is a fluke for this morning's run or not will remain to be seen. I'm hopeful, even though the day will likely place me in Iowa. Monday's potential has gone to crap, and chasing on a weekend would be easier anyway.

So, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't letting myself get a little bit too excited about this one. After such a long winter in which we're WELL above average in terms of cloudy days I really need to get away. Didn't I just come back home from Arizona?

Green Street fire on Univ of Illinois Campus

2011-03-26T18:35:00.004-05:00

Early on Wednesday morning I awoke to messages on various mediums alerting me that 'Za's', one of my former employers was "on fire!". Sure enough, in waking up and getting on the computer it became clear that there was a major fire underway on the University of Illinois campus. In addition to working with Ed Kieser in the WILL weather office, I worked for three years in a popular 'italian cafe' on campus. It was one of the most popular places on campus, and constantly had lines out the door on Friday and Saturday nights before the college crowd hit the bars. I had a love / hate relationship with that place, but I did meet a lot of cool people working there, and it funded plenty of chases from 2006 to 2009.

My former employer, Mia Za's Italian Cafe` also shared a building with my all-time favorite place to eat; Zorba's. Home of America's favorite gyros! This place has been a campus staple since it's inception in the early 1970's. In fact, both were once featured in a Sports Illustrated article outlining the time line of a typical student's day before attending an Illinois basketball game. Zorba's for lunch, and Za's for dinner said SI. Zorba's was absolutely filled with old Illinois sports memorabilia dating back to old bowl games and Final Four births from the 70s and 80s. They had a big plasma TV that I sat and watched the opening rounds of the NCAA Tournament on when I visited Champaign-Urbana and had lunch at my favorite spot just four days before the fire.

Thanks to the amazing world of social media I was able to do nothing but sit and watch these two places burn all morning. This video was shot by someone in the apartments across the street, and is what really made it sink in for me: http://illinoishomepage.net/storm-tracker-weather/share-your-weather-photos/share-your-weather-videos#vmix_media_id=74633241

Pretty weird to watch a place that I worked almost daily a couple years ago, and a place that I just ate lunch at a few days ago up in flames. The area above Zorba's and Mia Za's was Mia Za's seating area. I'd hide up by those windows and check data on my phone on the morning of a chase day, or to keep tabs on weather elsewhere. And then Zorba's, I would go out to lunch with my parents there when I was just a kid. It was one of those 'treat' places. Gyros aren't the first choice of your average kid, but I couldn't and still can't get enough of them. In being a connoisseur of gyros, I've yet to find anywhere to top Zorba's.

I used to go out to lunch occasionally with my friends to Za's, and it always had a fun atmosphere. So, when the U of I budget cuts had my hours at next to nothing at my primary job in the weather office at WILL, I went on a trip to campustown in search of an additional source of income. Za's was the first place I went (I was going next door to Zorba's next!) and the GM at the time liked hiring townies, and said the job was mine if I wanted it. I started the next day, and worked exactly three years there before transferring to Northern Illinois University in 2009.

I'm not sure what either place is going to do in terms of rebuilding. I don't think they have been able to get inside and determine a cause yet, because the building needed to be partially demolished before it would be safe for an investigation crew to enter. Only after a cause is determined will the owners even be allowed to get in and assess the damage. My guess is Zorba's rebuilds somewhere, if not in the same building. The founder of Mia Za's has franchised to other college towns in the midwest, so it may be that he just focuses on the other stores, and opening new locations. However, this was his first, and the lines out the front door on the weekends show that the place has a solid following and it would surprise me if he just let it go. But, time will tell the real story of what kind of a time frame we are looking at for renovation. Much of the top floor needs to be demolished, and the main floor is likely a complete mess with fire, smoke, and water damage. There is another video that showed water rushing out the front door of Za's like a river.

I've turned this into a novel, but just wanted to post a few photos that I took yesterday evening once I got back into town. They were in the process of demolishing the front facade. It's even more exposed this evening but my phone battery was too low to take any photos. My guess is they'll get whatever demolishing they need to get done, and then the building will be covered up while they do their renovations.

Here are the photos that I grabbed while they worked. You could still smell charred wood.

For comparison, this was the only photo I could find in a quick look for the building before the fire. Obviously only the Za's portion is shown, but you get the idea.

Overnight elevated convection / Tuesday

2011-03-21T10:11:00.003-05:00

We had a line of pretty weak thunderstorms move through DeKalb around 10 PM last night. Well timed after my Illini fell in the NCAA Tournament. I expected a little bit more in the way of lightning, since the earlier round that evening was fairly well stacked. Unfortunately I didn't time that cluster of storms well and rolled into DeKalb only half an hour before they erupted just south of town. Such is life!

Anyway, infrequent as the lightning was, I did manage to capture a few strokes atop the parking garage on the NIU campus downtown. I will certainly be hitting this place up more in the future as there are quite a few interesting angles that would make for cool foregrounds in a lightning strike.

This is looking west as the line moved into DeKalb with a little roll cloud along the leading edge.

Moments before this, the moon (which is directly behind this storm) began poking through a little hole in the cumulus clouds adjacent to the storm. I began almost crying anxiety tears praying to the storm gods for a lightning strike as the moon was shining through. This flash came probably two exposures after the moon finally disappeared again. Of course! Hard to complain though... finally have the first lightning and storm shot of 2011. Here we go!

I'm a bit perplexed by Tuesday, but in just getting back to town I haven't done much more but take quick glances at the forecast guidance. The NAM seems to be somewhat of an outlier with a further south placement of the surface low and warm front across Iowa. It's easy to throw it out, but at the same time it seems that with these early season storm systems it's very common for the models to struggle with warm front positions often showing them surging northward allowing for a tornado outbreak, while in reality on the day of, the darn warm front doesn't budge an inch and your target area remains in the 40's with elevated hailstorms.

The SREF, GFS and ECMWF all have the surface low around Des Moines, IA at 7 PM on Tuesday evening with a warm front near the Quad Cities. If this ends up being the case, giving sufficient destabilization it does appear possible that a few tornadoes could occur in the southeast 1/4 of Iowa ahead of the surface low and along the warm front.

The 80 knot 500 mb jet streak will be punching into the tri-state intersection of IL/IA/MO at 7 PM with a 997 mb surface low over Des Moines according to the SPC SREF model. Instability doesn't seem to be too robust despite surface dew points near the 60F mark. I've done a lot of "well you only need such and such amount of instability with such a strong early season system" chasing and seen a whole lot of nothing so I'm not dying to go after this one.

I'm almost watching a sleeper target on the nose of the H5 shortwave along the warm front in western or central Illinois. This target is a lot closer, so I could sit and watch and decide last second rather than get up and leave early for a southern Iowa target that may or may not produce tornadoes. I like the potential for maybe an isolated tornado report somewhere near Peoria or Bloomington in central Illinois during the mid-afternoon.

I just don't see myself shooting into Iowa tomorrow, and if I did it wouldn't be very far into the state. Perhaps Iowa City? Eh, probably not.

March 14-18 Arizona Trip

2011-03-19T14:43:00.006-05:00

Well, back in the midwest now. Gone are the 90 degree temperatures and abundant sunshine! However, with a shot at thunderstorms over the next several days I suppose it isn't the worst time to be coming home. I don't foresee any storm chasing expeditions in the next week, but hearing some thunder would be nice.

I don't have a lot to write, but I figured I would post a few photos from the last several days in the Phoenix area. The photos can do the story-telling, I suppose. The bulk will be from the White Tank Mountain Range, west of Phoenix.

Halo around the moon on the first night in town with one of the many palm trees that dot the Phoenix city scape. The high level clouds are under-lit by the city lights.

Some of the interesting petroglyphs that can be found all over the rocks in areas around the mountain range.

Tia in yellow, and then my sister Kaylin a little bit further down.

The view to the north up on the little ledge that I was photographing the petroglyphs from. Whoever it was that etched those carvings into the rocks many many years ago had quite the view!

I love these cholla cacti!
More petroglyphs a little bit further up the mountain.

Tia admiring the canyon at the top of the mountain, where a little water "fall" trickles down. During the monsoon season this place is surely hopping, but around this time of year a little pond is all that was to be found.

My poser Tia, and then Kaylin in the background photographing something. We sat here for half an hour eating some sandwiches and enjoying the cooler air. It's amazing when you're out in the desert how drastic the difference between the open sun, and shaded areas really is. Here in the midwest when the dew points start pushing 70F during the summer, it's hot wherever you go, shade or no shade.
Looking up toward the top of the canyon where the waterfall trickles down.

Heading back down the mountain now.

Looking east toward 'the valley'. The city of Phoenix can be seen way down there.

Just classic desert landscape.

Looking back toward the mountains that we were just playing on. I miss this already!

More cholla fun!

Sunset on our final night in Phoenix was quite spectacular!

White Tank Mountain Regional Park

2011-03-16T14:39:00.001-05:00

Here's a little preview of our exploration yesterday in the White Tank Mountains west of Phoenix. We wound up taking a little trail up into the mountains and having lunch next to a water "fall" inside a canyon. I say waterfall in quotations because at this time of year, the falls are no more than a trickle of water falling into a two inch deep puddle. During the monsoon season however, the place is certainly hopping.

Plenty of photos to come this weekend, but for now here's a shot from my phone!

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ORD - PHX

2011-03-14T12:40:00.001-05:00

I realized I had never even mentioned it on the blog, but I will be flying out to Arizona this morning. I'll be flying out to Phoenix in about an hour with Tia and my sister, Kaylin. Will be spending the week in the Phoenix area playing in the desert and enjoying the forecast high temperatures in the 90s. In a dry heat, that will do just fine!

It's been 8 years since I ventured to the southwest so I'm thrilled! That was the last time I did anything adventurous for spring break beyond chasing moisture starved storms in Kansas back in 09.

Intrigued by the storm system that will be impacting the region when I return next weekend!

Anyway, I will try and update through the week and will certainly have plenty of photos upon my return.

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Sean Casey's Tornado Alley IMAX Film and Aurora Borealis!

2011-03-11T16:11:00.004-06:00

I was lucky enough to be contacted by the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago earlier this week with an invitation for myself and a guest to attend the exclusive world premiere screening and banquet for Sean Casey's IMAX film, Tornado Alley. Being a tightwad, I had hoped to see the film but wasn't dying to pay museum prices to do so. Who was I to turn down a free invitation, though?!

I was joined by the lovely Tia for a wonderful evening at one of the coolest museums in the world. The banquet was nice, with an open bar along with the typical catering heaters stocked with pretzels, quesadillas, and miniature pizzas. But of course, I'm not writing to discuss the quality of the overly salted pretzels, or the far understocked miniature pizzas!

Sean's film far exceeded my expectations. In a way that's hard to say though, because I wasn't really sure what to expect. I was not sure if he'd go the route of a quiet nature documentary, or something with a lot of behind the scenes mumbo jumbo. As it turns out, he found the perfect middle ground.

I would equate the film to the movie Twister, but without the crappy Hollywood special effects. Plenty of action, but with 100% real in your face tornado video. Rather than computer animated houses rolling on to the field, you've got real life 50 gallon oil drums flying past the camera like leaves blowing in a breeze. There was a lot of shuffling around and mix-matching dates, but when you're fitting a decade of filming into a 45 minute film there isn't a lot of time to establish different filming dates. Any storm chaser could probably tell you that each subsequent scene was not from the same date, but the general public would probably never know. He was also able to mix in some behind the scene information on the Vortex 2 project, but not so much that it became boring and lost its way. A little information was cool, but people aren't filling the theater to see IMAX footage of gear covered trucks and gangly grad students hanging out in wheat fields.

As if anyone familiar with the storm chasing world didn't see it coming, his featured "shot" was during the Goshen County, Wyoming tornado. The scene from the Discovery Channel show Storm Chasers can be seen here. The shot was definitely sweet, but I don't even think it was in the Top 5 coolest shots featured in the film, but that may just be the storm chaser in me.

Sean and crew were inside Wadena, Minnesota on June 17th 2010 when a massive EF4 violent tornado rolled through the town. The footage captured by his IMAX camera while they drove through, and came to a stop in a residential town were just incredible. You can see the Discovery Channel clip from this intercept film here:

There a snippits from Sean's IMAX camera in there, but the quality is low and for obvious reasons they did not air any of the coolest shots. I couldn't help feel like I was a helpless resident of Wadena standing on my front lawn watching this monster fly by my home while I watched this scene.

The other thing that struck me while watching this film, was that it was almost like getting to stand and watch a tornado in real life while in a protective bubble. As a storm chaser I've been close to significant tornadoes before, but during these moments your heart is racing and you're often concerning yourself with several things while you watch the tornado churn. Being able to see a tornado in as close to real life as you are going to get without being there as it happened, but being able to sit in a reclined leather chair while it happens was amazing. You've got a life size tornado, with your body shaking from the loud roar of the tornado, and you're able to just sit back and look up/down and side to side at all the beauty of the tornado in front of you.

In the times that I have run into Sean Casey and his TIV in the field I haven't always been thrilled with his presence. On two separate occasions I was honked at aggressively to move out of my lane to avoid a head on collision due to other cars parking on the roadways. As Sean mentioned in the Q&A section as someone of course brought up the issue of "non-professional" storm chasers getting in his way while filming, no one has any more right to the road than the other, regardless of their purpose. I realize he had built a tank, and was filming a multi-million dollar project, but I did not take it kindly being honked at to attempt to coax me into driving into the ditch so he can drive on the wrong side of the road in my lane. But, I've let things go, and after seeing this film am glad he was out there filming.

While he likely has no idea who I am, and I haven't rarely been thrilled to see his giant tank driving down the road toward me, I can definitely say that the final product is something that I was thrilled to be able to experience. I know many of my friends already have tickets to see the show this weekend and am sure they will not be disappointed.

On a completely unrelated note, with a minor X-class flare from the sun 36 hours ago I was hopeful for a minor geomagnetic storm and a chance at seeing the aurora borealis in this region. I was slammed with seeing the performance of Casey's film during the evening and having two exams this morning but I ducked out for about 20 minutes last night and caught a few dim glimpses at the northern lights just outside of DeKalb last night.

Very faint pillars and a slight green hue near the horizon. Nothing to get overly excited over, but after a 5 year absence I'm glad to welcome the aurora back!

Marginal storm threat along I-55

2011-03-03T22:18:00.002-06:00

I wouldn't be surprised to see a few marginally severe thunderstorms along Interstate 55 in western and central Illinois tomorrow (Friday the 4th) afternoon or evening. Weak lapse rates will likely limit the overall severe threat, but given substantial clearing and insolation sufficient low level buoyancy in the warm sector ahead of a deepening surface low could be enough to ignite a broken line of thunderstorms along the cold front and perhaps near the warm front as far north as Interstate 80 in north central Illinois. Widespread thunderstorms will develop in central Missouri by mid-afternoon, and more isolated development will then likely expand northeast along I-55 in central Illinois around sunset. The threat for any severe storms will likely be short-lived and limited to an hour or two around sunset as convection becomes more widespread after dark and a flooding threat becomes the main story. The area most under the gun for heavy rains and thunderstorm activity should be along a Springfield to Pontiac line.

WX in Motion, Meteorological Spring, and a lazy friend shows his face.

2011-03-01T20:17:00.003-06:00

Happy first day of meteorological spring everyone! I did the "Overlooked Photo" series to get myself through the 28 most painful days counting down to the kickoff of meteorological spring, and what I consider the unofficial beginning to the storm chasing season. I don't often find things very fun to chase until mid-April, but mother nature usually throws a couple teasers out before that period that allow me to get my hopes up foolishly for that elusive early season tornado.

As a capper to my 'Countdown to Spring' I've decided to upload a slightly tweaked version of my "WX in Motion" segment that was found on my PWX 2010 DVD this winter. If anyone suddenly becomes interested in purchasing a copy, the information can be found on the main PrairieStormMedia.Com website. I think that ship has sailed for the most part, however as even I have already begun thinking about the 2011 edition.

Also, I'm proud to announce that long time friend, and one of the only people I will share a vehicle with while storm chasing, Colin Davis, has finally released his new website. Without sounding too much like I'm writing a eulogy here, Colin is someone I'd consider a brother in storm chasing. We both came onto the storm chasing "scene" at approximately the same age and time, and have had a mutually beneficial relationship as we grew up and collectively fell back out of love with the storm chasing "scene" over the last decade. We have both stepped back into the shadows, but our friendship only escalated. It's been damn fun sharing chases and stories with this dude, someone who shares my love of simply going out, shooting some neat photos or video, and writing about our collective adventures. Being an anti-social asshole is a lot more fun when you've got someone to keep you company. I knew I'd turn this into a big description of my man crush... so without further gushing I present the web-return of Mr. Davis himself.

The dude can write circles around me so he'll definitely push me to be the best that I can when it comes to sharing my adventurous 2011 with you. Check his stuff out at: http://donkeysanddownbursts.com

Overlooked photos finale

2011-02-28T21:04:00.003-06:00

Hard to believe I overlooked this one way back when, but I did. July 21st 2008 was simply a lightning chase. I'd played restaurant league softball for the better part of the evening know that there was almost a 100% chance of explosive convection along a boundary after dark. Sure enough, around sunset towers began exploding as severe storms erupted in central Illinois.

I initially went northwest along Interstate 74 toward Peoria, but given convective trends I detoured at Mahomet and caught Hwy 47 south toward the Monticello, IL area and stopped there. I then spent the better part of the night sitting there alone in a cornfield with lightning strobing all over. At one point, the anvil crawlers became epic. If only there was a time in my past that I had the wide angle lens that I do now.

Anyway, here's another in the top 5 moments that I am at my happiest - mid-summer in a corn field all alone with lightning surrounding me.

Dekalb Coaling Tower Circa 1900

2011-02-28T14:44:00.005-06:00

Got a phone call late at night over the weekend from Gilbert Sebenste saying he was heading out in the freezing drizzle to stand outside for a couple hours. How can one refuse an offer such as that? The goal was to check out an observing park on the Union Pacific line in the industrial region of southwest DeKalb. My cabin fever is about off the charts right now, so I accepted his offer. Immediately this old coal tower caught my attention and I was in love. I don't know what it is about really old stuff, but that abandoned house I shot last week, and now this old massive structure along the rail line that was probably built around 1900 are just so fun to shoot. They really do all the work for you.

Looking east down the UP line toward Chicago with the awesome old structure in the center. Hard to believe that thing was built around 1900 and is still in structurally magnificent condition. They just don't build things like they used to!

Probably the best graffiti I have ever seen. After thinking about it I could have sworn I had seen this before. I came home and 'googled it' and found out that it is in fact based on a sketch by comedian Demitri Martin.

Train coming westbound now with his high beams illuminating the freezing drizzle. This was the only shot that I had that wasn't screwed up by all the tiny water droplets on my lens.

Going eastbound now.
The best part of the night came at the end. About half an hour before I had spotted this coyote running around by the lake on the other side of the trees. We watched him for a while before we lost sight of him. Well, just as we are packing up to head home he comes into view. He was checking us out slowly as we watched him. He held still long enough that I wondered if there was any way I could get a halfway decent photo of him. I slowly switched from my wide angle 10-20mm to my crappy 18-55 kit lens. He was still behind some bushes and a good distance away so I slowly and quietly crept back down into the clearing where I had a nice open shot of him and set up my tripod. Low and freaking behold, he just comes trotting over like my own dog would do in our backyard. It was the damndest thing. He came to a stop about 15-20 feet away and just began posing for the camera. I was working incredibly fast because I didn't know how long he would hold still, and that combined with the crappy lens led to a terrible quality photo - but you can definitely get a nice view of this amazing little guy.

I run into coyotes all the time in doing my night photography sessions, but never in those times have I had one just come jogging over to me. Coolest and momentarily very intimidating. As I stood looking through my lens as he jogged over toward us I quietly asked Gilbert if we should perhaps be moving the other direction.

While shooting his photo, we caught the attention of one of the DeKalb police officers. He pulled up in the parking lot and shined his hand lamp over on us and watched for a few minutes. It was pretty obvious what we were doing (and probably best that we weren't near the tracks anymore) and he eventually left.

That's when we caught view of the coyote again! He had now wandered out onto the ice and was giving a flock of geese some fits! They were sitting safely in a melted patch of water, but the coyote trotted around the flock as if to say that they better not venture to solid ground or he'll be catching a late dinner.

Probably one of the most bizarre night photo outings I have had and only had to travel a mile away from home. Being so close, I can definitely see myself biking out there a few nights this spring to play around with some new angles. Since I will likely only be in DeKalb for another year as I finish up my B.S. I want to get out and explore the town so I can say I've seen it. There seems to be a ton of history hidden around town (that big coal hopper for example) mostly related to the railroads. I figured a fun way to check out the city before I leave would be to just head out on my bike and ride around in a new area each time and photograph the neat little things that I find. Once I'm done with school here, there will probably be no real reason for me to come back to this town very often, so it will be a neat way to explore it and take some cool photos back with me.

Overlooked photos, Western IL HP

2011-02-27T19:15:00.002-06:00

Uninspired tonight as my friends score their first tornadoes of the year - overlooked photos not seeming so fun! Now I'm ready to take an entire new album of photos to forget about and discover in two years.

Tonight's photo comes from the June 21 2010 HP supercell in western Illinois. I shared this beast with Colin Davis and other area chasers. Not a big talk severe weather day at all, but just a storm that fired along a boundary in extreme summer instability and did it's thing. Several tornadoes were reported early in the storm's life cycle before I had made my intercept, and one was even reported only moments after this photo "lofting tornadoes into the air". I have yet to be proven wrong in discounting that report. With this photo being super wide angle, you don't get much closer to the area of interest than this and somehow let a major tornado like that go un-noticed.

Overlooked photos, the Collyer Beast

2011-02-26T20:03:00.004-06:00

Tonight's post will be quick, mainly because it's from a day that I have hammered into the ground with this series. That said - it's still from a supercell that has yet to be featured. As I've said... what a freaking chasing it was.

This shot was taken on the second supercell of the day along Interstate 70 outside of Collyer, Kansas. This storm turned out to be the biggest "beast" of the day even though the tornadoes that it produced were lackluster. About ten minutes before this image was taken we had a diffuse landspout-esque tornado. I don't think it formed by typical landspout processes, but it had that tiny skinny funnel / long narrow dust plume appearance. The mesocyclone then got cranking as it passed over Interstate 70 and then right in front of us. It was some of the most violent motion I have ever seen (video can be found on the second half of this clip) but it could never get a substantial tornado to touch down. It had several funnel clouds with brief touchdowns underneath but it never planted the beast that I thought was inevitable.

This shot was taken as the violently rotating wall cloud passes directly to our west down the dirt road. High winds were sandblasting me from the back as that little funnel dipped out from the sky. I expected that funnel to slam down and become a substantial tornado but it just couldn't get it done. This photo was about as intense as it gets though in an tornadic-anticipation situation as they get - violent motion with sand blasting inflow:

Overlooked photos - The Bowdle Approach

2011-02-24T21:08:00.003-06:00

This photo may not have the 'wow factor', but it really symbolizes one of the moments in the spring and summer that I am at my happiest. I took this photo on the approach heading west out of Aberdeen, South Dakota on Highway 12 approaching the exploding updraft of what would be the Bowdle, SD EF4 tornado producing supercell.

You get up at 4 AM, make your forecast, hit the road, and spend hours staring at the pavement getting periodic weather updates that only further fuel your adrenaline and it all culminates at that magic moment when the first storm comes into view. I shared this chase with Tia which ended up being her longest distance chase thus far, and first time to the high plains!. We decided on driving halfway and crashing at my family's lake house cabin in central Wisconsin the night before. What better way to cut a long drive in half than spending the evening cooking out and swimming in a spring fed lake? It was early to bed however, as I was setting my alarm for 4 am.

Initially what I saw scared me. A strong cap was in place, and while things looked to be off the charts during the evening the thought of driving another 6-8 hours and seeing blue skies when I now had the option to spend the entire afternoon swimming in the lake and cooking on the grill wasn't going over real well. However, I did a little more analysis and decided something big was in the works for South Dakota, and I was going to be there. Tia is not a morning person by any stretch, but she was surprisingly chipper this morning! On days when she is accompanying me, I always feel like a huge ass when I finally finish my morning analysis and decide it is time to hit the road, and her slumber must end. This morning though, she was out of bed and quickly in the car by 5 am, and we were off. I expected her to immediately pass out, but she ended up staying awake for our sunrise journey through the western Wisconsin hills and into the southern Minnesota flat lands. A lunch in Sioux Falls, SD did her in though, and I was on my own in the car as we fled north to keep up with the advancing warm front.

We ended up meeting up with Dick McGowan and Reed Timmer along with the rest of the TVN crew at a Shell Station in Aberdeen where we shot the breeze while Timmer and McGowan chilled their nerves with a couple cigarettes. Things looked insane, and we were all giddy. The TVN and Discovery Crew made a grand exit and plowed west on Hwy 12 while Tia and I lagged behind emptying our bladders and stocking up on cold Red Bull for the approach. A cu field had just begun bubbling to our west, so it was time to get our move on as well.

It wasn't long at all down Highway 12 that radar returns began to explode near Hoven, SD - just up the road. The tower immediately became visible and began it's upward explosion. Very soon we had an anvil canopy expanding over the highway and a tornado warning was slapped onto the storm - the show was on, and this photo was snapped. What was going to happen in the next two hours - who knows? That's the beauty of it... you never know if this chase will just be another in the ordinary category, or if the next two hours will be the pinnacle of your storm chasing career - all you know is that at this moment, the trip was definitely worth it:

Overlooked photos, March 11 2010

2011-02-22T21:12:00.003-06:00

I actually uploaded quite a few of the photos that I took on this gentlemen's chase, but in going back I always find stills that I love and wish that I had uploaded. It was a beautiful sub-severe storm that deserves attention, so what better place than to dump one more on you all here in the last week of my overlooked photo series.

March 11 2010 was my first "chase" last year, if you want to call it that. I'd hoped for a cold core type chase in northern Illinois, but was back home in Champaign for spring break so I didn't end up taking the risk. In doing late morning analysis, it became evident that the strongest surface convergence would be along a pre-frontal trough in eastern Illinois right along Interstate 57 from Champaign to Effingham. Instability and moisture were both marginal, but there was enough there to get the job done. I got a little down when the sun was an hour away from setting below the horizon and nothing had formed so I decided to get away from the computer and enjoy the weather outside. You're a sucker if you spend a day with mid-70s temperatures indoors in March in central Illinois. Of course, venturing away from the electronics screens and under the big blue sky something to my west triggered my attention. A big plume of convection was now reaching skyward. There she went!

I hopped in my car and headed north out of town to get a better view of the developing storm. That's where the shot below comes in. Very early in the life cycle of the storm when barely any precipitation had been observed. Decent cloud to ground lightning activity was underway however, and a relaxing intercept was under way. When they come to casual storm observing, it doesn't get any better than this - in March no less! This storm was absolutely crawling along and was putting on a photogenic show. Beautiful March convection in front of the setting sun.

If only every first chase of the spring went this smoothly.

Two fold update

2011-02-21T19:55:00.007-06:00

Going to start off with today's overlooked photo, a shot from July 22nd 2010 in DeKalb County, IL. Hours earlier, Tia and I witnessed a pair of tornadoes in Wisconsin and had since returned home on steak filled bellys. Once I got home and was busy uploading photos and videos while Tia vegged with crappy TV shows, my phone rang with a call from Gilbert Sebenste. He was informing me of incoming supercells still ongoing just to our northwest. They were prolific lightning producers and would be in DeKalb County in an hour. I unplugged everything and threw it back in the car, picking Gilbert up on the way out of town as we made one more intercept before the day was over.

Unfortunately the strength of the thunderstorms quickly waned as they approached, but the night sky optics only increased. A full moon was in place to our south where skies were clear ahead of the approaching storm. This provided a rare night time front-lit situation for the incoming storm. Also in play were the city lights in distant Rockford which illuminated the underbelly of the storm a glowing orange and red.

Making this shot is what it is, we have the moon to the left illuminating the banding along the front edge of the storm, various towns illuminating the storm in an orange glow, and then Gilbert Sebenste checking data on the laptop on my car in the center.

On to reason #2 of my update this evening, that being the results of my night outing over the weekend. I expected nearly completely clear skies on Friday but was greatly mistaken. I spent some time with the family down in Champaign during the evening, but finally decided to head out and do my thing a little after midnight. With the full moon I wanted a fun foreground, but was really stumped as to where to go. That region is full of flat land that is optimal for storm viewing, but not really so great for dynamic landscape for a photographic foreground.

In following my trends from over the winter holiday season an old high school favorite spot came to mind - an old abandoned farm house about 10 miles south of the city. When I first got my drivers license at age 16 I'd spend my evenings in my parent's minivan with my crappy digital camera in tow looking for things to photograph. Being at the mercy of my parents for my entire life and now having the freedom to see what lay beyond the city limits was an incredible feeling.

One day in the winter of 2003 I stumbled upon this amazing piece. In a region where very ordinary farm steads are commonplace every mile down every country road, this place stood out for certain. I threw the van in park and got out, walking around it for a bit letting the history of the home fully engulf my naive 16 year old mind. It's hard to fathom how long ago it was, and what life was like when people were first occupying this home. Some silly 16 year old boy such as myself could have been running around in the very front yard that I was standing in, in a time when the only way for him to make a trip into the "city" to his north would be by foot, while my parent's minivan sit idle a stones throw away.

There is actually a more modern home adjacent to this building, and I wonder if perhaps it's owned by the same family. I do plan on heading out there some afternoon and knocking on their door to find out. I'd love to find the actual history behind the home.

Here's the shot I came away with on Friday night. No star trails, but the full moon is always a good guarantee for surreal lighting in the middle of the night.

For kicks, here is the photo that I took back on that day in 2003 at age 16.

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1127/896761676_b75dc3d0a8_o.jpg

Overlooked photos, day 14 - July 17 2010

2011-02-18T15:03:00.003-06:00

Cutting this short today as I'm about to head back down to Champaign for the weekend momentarily, so I'm uploading a shot from a time and place that was already well described in an earlier post from this series.

This photo goes back to the photo of the anvil over the farm at my old favorite spot back in Champaign County. That was during a two day stretch of me spending the afternoon at this very spot time lapsing convection in the unstable summer air mass. Those who saw my 2010 DVD might recognize this shot from the time lapse sequence at the end (those who don't, I may or may not end up uploading the time lapse bit to the internet eventually). I time lapsed the crap out of this guy as it pulsed up and down from mature thunderstorm to tower and back, from an hour before sunset to an hour after sunset when it was an electrified cumulonimbus in the distance. This shot, came from this guy an hour later.

There isn't a lot to be said about the photo today, as I already got nostalgic about this spot a week or two ago in one of the earlier overlooked photos posts.

On an unrelated note, while down in Champaign it looks like we'll finally have clear skies overnight and I'm itching to play with star trails again. Unfortunately down there I don't have as many favorite night spots, but I'm sure I'll figure something out just to get out there. Astro-photography has almost become as bad as chasing for me now... if I don't get my fill I start having withdrawals.

Overlooked photos, day 13 - Father's Day 2008 Dust Storm

2011-02-17T19:39:00.002-06:00

Father's Day 2008, that being June 15th that year had a disorganized bow echo crossing central Illinois during the early afternoon. I had no plans of chasing, and was spending the afternoon out at my dad's in Sidney, IL. I'd been periodically checking on the radar watching the bow echo pulse up, let the outflow surge ahead, have new cells fire along that boundary, and then gust out again.

Once the storm began pushing into the area I figured I would just head out on my dad's porch and watch the gust front push through. That's when I noticed a dark brown hue to the sky and realized there was a ton of dust being kicked up and pushed ahead of the gust front. I immediately grabbed my camera and ran to my car and bolted down the highway out of town. I was leaving literally as the gust front blew through town so there was no getting ahead of it. I snapped a couple bad photos of the wall of dust passing over me, and then snapped this guy as the wall of dust pushed on to my east. Winds were probably sub-severe, but a dry spell in that region left plenty of dust for the kickin'!

Overlooked photos, day 12 - June 4 2010

2011-02-16T20:30:00.004-06:00

June 4 2010 was as fun as chase days without tornadoes get. Relaxed, local, and full of photogenic moments. I shared the chase with Tia, later meeting up with Colin Davis in Monmouth, IL in the northwest part of the state. Tia and I left late morning, reaching Monmouth right around the lunch hour. I was unfamiliar with that town at the time, so we picked a random Mexican joint for some lunch, which turned out to be pretty delicious. We were able to relax over our lunch while peering over some data as we waited on Colin to arrive. I can't stress how relaxed the day was at this point. Every chase day has some underlying adrenaline and anticipation, but for whatever reason this day was completely casual. It was almost as in The Field of Dreams I had some voice whispering in my ear "If you sit here, storms will come". That, or perhaps it was the marginal "day before the big day" moisture that had me aware that tornadoes were unlikely, and thus relaxed me a little.

Tia and I, along with Colin traipsed south a little to get ahead of some towers that were erupting in far southeastern Iowa that would be moving our way. One such storm struggled initially, but then blossomed into a powerful supercell. It did go tornado warned, but again with marginal moisture it never really had that look except for one time. The initial mesocyclone occluded and it almost appeared the storm may be tanking. We were swallowed by the core only momentarily before emerging under a beautiful ragged wall cloud. It took me several minutes to finally snap a shot of the storm as I had to navigate a couple tricky turns before finding a safe place to stop my car. Nothing to be done about the power lines as staccato lightning had my butt planted in the seat of my car.

Here's what I think is the first actual still photograph I've posted of the first supercell of the day at the peak of its life, new Lewistown, IL.

Overlooked photos, day 11 - May 23 2008

2011-02-15T22:24:00.004-06:00

Tonight's overlooked photo comes from a day that didn't show me uploading any still photos I don't think. May 23rd 2008 was the second in a two day tornado outbreak in western Kansas. While we should have stayed glued to the warm front, we spent most of the day further south along the dryline where intense supercells would erupt, but lack the added punch to produce significant tornadoes as the storms further north (Quinter EF4).

The first storm we intercepted north of Dodge City looked like it wanted to do it for a very long time, but remained in a quasi-HP form early in its life producing a rain wrapped tornado. It was apparent a tornado was on going (minutes after this photo) but we didn't get a view until the entire mesocyclone occluded revealing a choked off mesocyclone with dancing vortices underneath only for a few seconds.

This photo shows the intense supercell moments before it produced the rain wrapped tornado to our south. I invite you to check out our "main event" as we experienced 80-100 mph winds in the RFD to another supercell later in the evening.

Overlooked photos, day 10 - The great Missouri bust.

2011-02-14T21:42:00.004-06:00

This is probably the most painful and spite filled structure shot I have.

April 23 2010 was going to be MY day. Go back through my archives and read my forecast posts in days leading up to the 23rd. I knew this day had sleeper tornado day written all over it and could not for the life of me get anyone to believe me. There were two areas of interest this day, neither of which was in eastern Missouri where I was looking. Nebraska had chasers flocking to it after tornadoes in Texas the day before, while a moderate risk was slapped over the entire state of Arkansas. Perhaps I really was seeing things as others suggested, but I had given myself an early birthday present with a Friday off from classes and was going to head out to confirm the thoughts of others.

I wound up heading to the town of Moberly early in the afternoon and grabbing lunch there. I began noting from strong backed winds near St. Louis along the warm front and thought to myself "yeah, something is going to go down there". However, the warm front was inching northward into my area as well and rather than give up on my target, I held strong. Little areas of convection would flare up over and over in this one area just west of town. I figured one of these pulses was going to go and I would be in tornado city. It just wouldn't go though. Up and down, up and down the towers went. The warm front was now lightning up to my south and east, from just south of my area to the St. Louis area, where those strongly backed winds were located. No moving though I thought, hold strong, let the storms to your south hit the front and you will be glad you stayed.

One storm tried, it really tried. As I rode out the core allowing myself to get into position, the storm briefly took on a weak hook echo signature. Business time! Not. As I quickly jogged north to keep up with the storm, it took a turn for the worse. That's when I looked to my southeast. A -classic- supercell was now producing multiple tornadoes right where those backed winds were in the St. Louis area. My poor little heart sunk. The sun was almost at the horizon, and there was no way I could quickly intercept this cyclic tornadic supercell only 30 miles away.

Hope lived, as a new supercell began approaching the warm front near Columbia. I had to get there fast, but I could do it. Sprinting south down Hwy 63 approaching the storm just south of Columbia. The chase terrain in this area, not ideal for last second dusk chasing. I could see a beautiful base between the trees but for the life of me I couldn't find anywhere to stop. If this storm put down a tornado behind the trees I may not have been here talking to you right now. After 10 minutes of cursing and steering wheel pounding I found a school yard on a hill where I was able to drive down a questionable gravel drive way and get a decent view to my southwest. The storm was dying, and the structure was not all that great, but it was -something-. After seeing the incredible structure and tornadoes that the storm near St. Louis, knowing that my sleeper call of the year had verified and these average at best structure shots were hardly soothing. Here you go, my forecast from 48 hours out: http://prairiestorm.blogspot.com/2010/04/friday-tornado-potential.html

I made my way down a rain soaked Interstate 70 (even watching the car directly in front of me do a 360 turn before sliding off the road into the ditch) before returning to Illinois, uploading a couple photos and forgetting the day ever happened. It's hard to have your forecast verify beautifully and miss the main event, but I've proven before and will prove again that it is indeed possible. Case and point... one day short of exactly a month after this day in the state of South Dakota. :)

Anyway, the photo looking across the school yard at the supercell at twilight.

Overlooked photos, day skip-a-few 9 - WaKeeney, KS RFD

2011-02-13T23:23:00.004-06:00

Well, I certainly fell through on the "once a day, every day until spring is here"! Sort of anyway - you could swear it's spring outside right now... finally! Either way, I spent the weekend in Champaign and went technology free save for my droid, so I was unable to upload an overlooked photo. Turns out, for at least this week and next week, my weekends will actually be busier than my weekdays.

That said, I'm back. Today's photo is from, you guessed it; May 22 2008. I'm really sorry... but I can promise you that only a couple people aside from Mark and I have even heard the story behind this photo.

We had just finished our incredible day filled with four tornadoes from four separate supercells. After viewing the WaKeeney tornado at dusk, we had to quickly bail south to get out of the way of a developing supercell. The entire dryline was now lighting up as the low level jet increased towards dark. We bailed south quickly down 283 driving through sustained straight line winds at around 60 mph and 1" sized stones. Here you go, watch my PWX 2009 trailer... skip to 0:58. That's the tumble weed hurling rip roarin' core that I got the pleasure of white knuckle driving us through.

We finally got to a clearing and decided to pull off and simply relax on the side of the road for a moment to allow the storm to cross the highway, allowing us to get back to the motel we had already booked in Hays, KS. We sat there on the side of the road for probably 20 minutes, before at the very same moment, Mark and I gave each other a very uncomfortable look, before looking back out the window, and then back at each other. I think Mark was the first person to say something... but it was dead calm outside the vehicle. We immediately both looked up. Of course it was dark, so we saw nothing, but we both were very aware that we were immediately underneath the updraft of another rapidly developing supercell. The howling southeaster'lys that had been raging for the last 48 hours had come to a perfect calm outside the vehicle where we sat. Without needing to be told, I turned the vehicle around and back south we headed. Only a few miles down the road, I got out of the car and tried looking north to where we had sat. It was completely dark outside now to the naked eye but my digital slr was able to pick out some detail. I shot the following photo looking north at the RFD slot wrapping around on the freshly formed supercell crossing the road where we had sat before. Not long after, WaKeeney was clipped by a tornado.

Overlooked photos, day 8 - Oglesby, IL HP

2011-02-10T22:17:00.003-06:00

As far as linear storm chases go, the June 23rd embedded HP supercell intercept was about as fun as they get. A big severe weather day was forecast with extreme late season instability in place in advance of a strong upper level system. Low level wind shear was fairly unidirectional with surface winds veering to the southwest across the entire warm sector in northern Illinois. There was hope for something to go tornadic along an outflow boundary along Interstate 80, but that wasn't to be. I was on one thunderstorm from it's towering cumulus stage that eventually went tornado warned. All hope looked lost early as storms went linear, and not a very powerful form of linear. Only marginal severe reports seemed to be coming out of the system.

I held strong though, and flew east toward Interstate 39 to drop south to get ahead of some new development in advance of the squall line. I then got a text from Colin Davis reporting incredible straight line winds, and then other storm reports began coming in reporting damaging winds uprooting trees and taking apart buildings. I set my sights on Oglesby, IL remembering the placement of the outflow boundary laying there earlier in the day, and hoped for some form of interaction. An HP supercell became obvious embedded in the line, and was taking aim dead on for Oglesby. I set up at a dead end on a road in the fast food/hotel district just off the interstate and began filming the storm. I uploaded several shots of the HP supercell as it moved in, but never this photo, which captured part of a lightning strike poking out from the leading edge of the storm. The cloud to ground lightning was so prolific that I was able to snap this shot just by getting luck in waiting for a bolt. Perhaps because I didn't capture the entire cloud to ground bolt I didn't find this photo worth uploading the day of the chase, but I find it only fair that it sees the light of day.

Overlooked photos, day 7 - Mount Pleasant, Iowa

2011-02-09T20:55:00.004-06:00

Today's overlooked photo comes from the beloved state of Iowa. On the heels of my intercept of the June 7 2008 tornado producing monster, I was giddy. June 12 2008 looked somewhat similar with the presence of an east-west oriented boundary and the approach of a strong shortwave. I had high hopes of carrying my early June momentum, and set sail for northwest Illinois. During the afternoon I was able to meet up with long time chasing pals Colin Davis and Scott Kampas in Galesburg.

Two supercells exploded during the late afternoon in northern Missouri and immediately began producing tornadoes, but we held our ground for some time. Eventually it became apparent that northwest Illinois would not get the job done, and our only hope was to cross the border into Iowa. We held off for a long time, but it eventually was very clear that it was either cross into Iowa and likely get screwed over in some fashion, or get a grade A sun tan on the east side of the river.

The rest is history. The menacing tornado producing supercell immediately became a still menacing storm visually, but completely outflow driven and tornado production came to an end. Of course, this photo has little to do with that first storm. No... hope still lived on for the hopeful trio from Illinois. Another supercell had gone tornadic to our southwest. Fighting data issues we shot south in efforts to get ahead of the new supercell near Mount Pleasant. History repeats itself for what seems like the millionth time. The storm goes outflow dominant, and refuses to produce tornadoes any longer.

This photo shows the dying supercell as it nears Mount Pleasant, Iowa. We were treated to some cool outflow air and a pretty rainbow, before heading home with another serving of shattered dreams from the state of Iowa.

Overlooked photos, day 6 - Grainfield, Kansas

2011-02-08T19:23:00.005-06:00

At first glance this doesn't appear to be one that I missed, as it's pretty damn close to the timing that another very similar shot was taken of this tornado near Grainfield, Kansas. However, this shot was taken shortly after the other publicly posted photo and shows the vortex snaking around a little more as it begins to rope out. It's also contrasted a little better and gives better detail on the dust plume at the base of the tornado. I actually like this "overlooked" photo better than the image I've had floating around since the day after the chase back in 2008... that first photo was simply the one that caught my eye first in quickly uploading photos at the motel that night after the chase. This is what I'm talking about. I upload the first couple photos that catch my attention the night after the chase when I'm tired as hell and thinking about getting some sleep and chasing the next morning, and then I don't look at the album for 2.5 years and everything gets forgotten. That's how one of my favorite tornado photos ever goes unnoticed for almost three years.

I gave a little write up on the formation of this tornado as it was the first overlooked photo in my series. Sorry to hit the same day twice, but this was a hell of a day and I only actually posted a handful of photos covering a chase that included four separate supercells and four separate tornadoes, spanning five hours. There was a lot missing! The video from this day has been beat to death... if you've not yet seen it then you're certainly a Pritchard-newbie and need to increase your stalking of myself. A lot of video posted, but only 5 or 6 photos. In short, I'm not going to promise you won't see this day return again before the February Overlooked Photos is through.

After being stubborn as hell and refusing to touch down, this tornado refused to give up once actually getting itself going. It remained in this long rope stage and was among the most photogenic tornadoes I have ever seen. I can be heard several times on video saying "Unbelievable" or "I don't believe this." I try not to wear my emotions on my sleeve while I'm chasing, not because I think it's uncool, but for my own good as I simply don't like hearing my own voice getting excited on video. After hearing my reactions on video after my first few tornadoes, I simply learned to shut up. So, "I don't believe this" coming out of my mouth means I'm pretty damned happy.

With quick north storm motions, we were lucky to have a nice north-south highway to keep pace with the tornado while more unfortunately souls were sliding off muddy back roads left and right. We made one final stop as the tornado gracefully slid northward and began to rope out where I shot this photo. You simply can not win them all though, as we decided to bail south for the next storm in the line without being aware that as this rope tornado winded down, and much larger multiple vortex stovepipe was just getting its act together.

Anyway, this is getting a bit "chase log" like, so I'll leave things at the photo:

Overlooked photos, day 5 - May 30 2008

2011-02-07T18:48:00.003-06:00

Today's overlooked photo comes from another local chase back in 2008. This photo was taken just off Interstate 72 outside of New Berlin, IL in the west central part of the state.

I spent the better part of the early afternoon on the north side of Springfield eating lunch and listening to my Chicago Cubs pull off an unthinkable comeback and winning after trailing in the game 9-1. I was watching weak convection pulse up and down along a mid-level shortwave as it pushed into the area just waiting on something to go. Eventually, one little storm began developing a hook near Lincoln. This photo is not that storm. No, that storm went tornado warned quickly and grabbed my attention so I shot north passing on another developing supercell to my south. I intercepted the first storm and quickly lost it's ugly ragged base due to poor road network and quick storm motions.

Bummed, I decided to go after the storm to my southwest which had already produced a handful of tornado reports. I decided to quickly pass through Springfield and make my intercept on Interstate 72. Quickly, I thought, not realizing that I was attempting to do so during the 5 PM rush hour, with construction cutting things down to one lane. Among the more annoying things in the life of a storm chaser is being stuck in traffic a stones throw away from a tornado warned supercell. Those who have my DVD from 2008 know this moment in my life.

Just keep on trucking though, and eventually you'll get there:

Overlooked photos, day 4 - NIckerson, KS

2011-02-06T21:21:00.004-06:00

Today's overlooked photo comes from the April 24 2007 Nickerson, Kansas tornadic supercell. Not known for the brief tornadic circulations (or the fight to the death about the actual number of separate tornadoes that myself and others pointlessly took part in) but for its beautiful structure.

I shared this chase with Skip Talbot and Chad Cowan. The day ended up being a high risk day in south Texas, far away from where this supercell actually occurred. It was a highly anticipated day that had us leaving the state of Illinois around 10 PM the night before. It ended up being a last minute scramble on my end that had me getting out of work early that night, running home, showering and getting everything together before Skip and Chad picked me up at home in Urbana. We were treated to watching the Protection, KS supercell continue on radar for hours after dark while we made our way southwest.

The forecast synoptic setup ended up getting scrambled by early morning thunderstorms like a magician putting a ball under a cup and swapping the cups around frantically and then subsequently having you guess where the ball finally came to rest. The ball of course in this case was our favored location for severe weather development. We spent the better part of the day in Enid, OK before realizing that the only hope was further north along the dryline in central Kansas. Thanks to some swift driving by Chad, we emerged to find the supercell in the middle of it's first tornado.

The tornadoes this day however, paled in comparison to the structure of the supercell on a whole:

Overlooked photos, day 3

2011-02-05T17:39:00.004-06:00

Today's "missed" photo is just from this past summer. July 15 2010 isolated summer instability driven thunderstorms popped up in central and eastern Illinois. I decided to head out and shoot some time lapse of the pulsing cumulonimbus clouds at one of my "classic" spots while back home in Champaign. When I was just a harmless newcomer to the storm chasing and photography world, back before I had a drivers license or a clue in the world, David Bellmore and I would drive out here to watch thunderstorms rolling into the area. Many of my earliest thunderstorm intercepts occurred at this spot just south of Urbana. A few miles south of town there are some rollings hills caused by moraines left by the last glaciers. We would venture to this spot with great views to the east, and rolling hills on all other sides. I decided to go back in time and head back to this spot a few times this summer, just getting away from all things 21st century. No technology driven weather observing... just myself, the weather, and my cameras. I was probably out there for almost six hours watching these things from mid-afternoon, until the sun set behind the hill to my west, and the clouds went from bright white cauliflower to a hazy light blue illuminated only by disappearing twilight and the constant flash of inter-cloud lightning strikes. Dead silence with only the rare passing cars, and myself swatting off the thick coating of mosquitoes. I didn't post a lot photograph wise after these days, but several of the time lapses shot did make my 2010 DVD. Here's one shot looking south at a farmstead up the road, flush green soybeans and the mature thunderstorm anvil moving off away from me. If I do end up leaving the state of Illinois over the next couple years, I'll certainly miss this.

Missed Photos Archive Day 2

2011-02-04T18:47:00.004-06:00

Day two in the series of overlooked photos from the past to help keep cabin fever at bay! Snow is piled 20 feet tall on the sides of the roads, but I can feel it! It's coming!

The second photo in the series is from June 3 2008 near Carrollton, Illinois. Myself, along with an automobile caravan of other chasers (Mark Sefried, Darin Kaiser, Scott Kampas, and Brad Emel) chased a classic mini-supercell that produced a gorgeous cone tornado that evening. After bailing on the initial storm as it crossed an outflow boundary into cooler more stable air, we dropped south and intercepted this tornado warned supercell. Surface winds were fairly weak and it took the interaction with the outflow boundary to spawn our earlier tornado, so low level rotation was not very intense on this storm but the structure was gorgeous. I lost my caravan while driving through a town, so I pulled off on a small country road and just enjoyed the show where this photo was taken.

Photo a day, to keep cabin fever at bay.

2011-02-03T21:11:00.004-06:00

I'd intended on doing this once for every day during the entire month of February, but the blizzard distracted me during the first couple days. My plan originated with simply going through old folders filled with photos from each storm chase. I never delete anything, and after each chase generally just quickly thumb through the folder and post only a handful of photos, maybe four or five out of upwards of 100. The rest just lay dormant, and never see the light of day again. Eventually, I get bored and start rifling through each folder and sometimes a photo catches my eye and I wonder why I never chose to upload it. This whole process got me on a roll and I began shuffling through every single folder picking out a photo or two from each day that could have made the cut but slipped my eye for whatever reason. I gathered up a decent collection, and my plan has been to post one photo with a little story behind it each day through the month of February. This month is when I typically start really craving warm temperatures and bubbly cumulus clouds. I commonly call it the "February Itch". I typically call March 1st the kick off of severe storms season, as it is the official starting date of meteorological spring. Whether or not severe weather occurs during early March is not always the case, but it's when I consider it reasonable to start getting excited about the prospects.

Anyway, the point of this post is not about how often storm chasing in March is fulfilling (not often!) but to post photo #1 from the "Missed Photos" archive, and to keep plowing ahead toward Meteorological Spring 2011!

The first photo in the series is from May 22 2008, in western Kansas. Mark Sefried and I witnessed four tornadoes that day right near Interstate 70. Supercells initiated early in the afternoon, but took several hours to organize. I was worried we would be looking at the dreaded High Risk bust, but as if someone flipped on a light switch, the day went mad. Mark and I intercepted a supercell near Grainfield, KS and it immediately went tornadic. It produced a beautiful funnel cloud that taunted us for near 5 minutes dancing around before actually making ground contact. You get a classic funnel cloud and immediately get the "I'm about to see a tornado!" adrenaline rush. Then, the funnel cloud taunts you by never touching the ground for a period of minutes and you begin wondering if you're just going to walk away from the day with a funnel cloud aloft! Eventually, sparing the town of Grainfield the tornado finally extended toward the ground in a snake like fashion.

Photo #1 in the series shows the Grainfield, KS tornado moments before it makes full condensation contact with the ground, complete with a classic RFD clear slot.

Verification of the composite snow forecast parameters

2011-02-03T14:20:00.008-06:00

In the days leading up to the blizzard that struck the southern plains and midwest early this week, all the buzz was on different model forecasting sites that were spitting out impressive snow totals. The pretty colors and high totals had these images going viral minutes after they were released. The most common of which was likely WGN's RPM model run on Sunday afternoon which showed a staggering swath of 30"+ totals over northern Illinois and surrounding areas. It's a fairly well know fact that buying completely into these composite maps is simply naive, but just how accurate are they? They're generally posted with a "totals will be slightly less than this" disclaimer. I decided to save the model outputs from Earl Barker's WXcaster site in particular as it's one of the more commonly used models and does not seem to put out the outrageous totals that some in house model suites do for the days leading up to the blizzard in order to see how well the model rendered version of the NAM and GFS models did in the totals and placement of the heaviest totals.

On each map, the yellow shaded figures depict the actual measured storm total snow fall, overlaying the model forecast totals.

We'll start with the 12z GFS for Monday, the day before the storm:

It's hard to argue with this one. On a whole, the idea of taking the extreme totals and shaving a couple inches off seems to jive well with what the map shows. In addition, it handled the rain/snow cutoff line in the south fairly well. As expected, the northern extent of the heavier forecast swath didn't do quite as well. A northward shift in the system as it developed and moved through the area is partially to blame. From Iowa City, IA to Rockford, IL we see a lot of 9-12" totals in the red shaded areas that would have suggested totals surpassing 15". Then, take a look at the Kankakee area in northeast Illinois. I mentioned in my forecasts prior to the event that I expected both dry-slotting and a higher amount of precipitation falling in the form of sleet to cut down on totals along Interstate 57 in the Kankakee area which is exactly what transpired (pat on the shoulder for the Pritchard model!). This run of the GFS would have suggested in surplus of 20" of snow, where they really only experience about 30% of this forecast total. Dry-slotting is a hard to forecast, but crucial element to these powerful storms. A combination of dry-slotting during the evening, and a mix of precipitation types is also to blame for almost 50% reductions in forecast totals from Springfield to Bloomington, IL. The model at 36 hours in advance of the storm handled the overall southern transition line between liquid and frozen precipitation well, but did not handle the blend of sleet and snow well at all. This is probably the single most important reason to not buy into extremely high snow totals automatically. Ask yourself if they truly make sense, and what reasons other than a truly historic snowfall could be responsible for the model output.

Now, the 12z NAM forecast:

This model was on a whole, way too far south with it's heaviest snow totals swath. Again, it included the Interstate 72 corridor in 20" snow totals where in reality a blend of snow and sleet kept totals at only about 30% of this level. In fact, the entire eastern half of the heavy band in the forecast output fell victim to mixed bag precipitation types and dry-slotting as the storm moved into the area. The northern part of Illinois was significantly under forecast on this model run, which owes to the northerly shift in the system that neither the GFS or the NAM handled.

18z GFS Monday, the day before the storm:
The 18z GFS, oh those lovely off-hour forecasts that always seem to throw in some extreme variable to excite weather enthusiasts. Upper air sounding are only done twice a day under typical circumstances, at 12z and 0z. The 6z and 18z model suites have no new upper air data ingested, so falling for their every move isn't advisable. This particular off hour run of the GFS did not handle the southern line of the heaviest banding well at all. Areas along that St. Louis to Kankakee line are forecast to be along that southern line of totals in excess of 1 foot, but experienced prolonged periods of freezing rain and sleet. The northward shift and precip type difficulty again plaguing the model.

Now, we've got the 00z NAM for the night before the storm:
The most noticeable trend on the 00z output is the widespread reduction in snow totals. The path is on a whole unchanged, but totals have taken a significant hit. The biggest reason for this was the forecast increase in convection in the deep south near the Gulf Coast. Widespread convective storms were forecast to break out across the deep south (which did in a sense occur, but not to the extensive level forecast) which will commonly rob the conveyor belt of moisture from feeding into the low pressure system to the north and reduce snow totals. This is a legitimate concern that needs to be addressed even if the model run does not suggest it will be an issue. This was also the model run that spit out incredible 24-30" totals in the Oklahoma City area which went viral seconds after the model was released. I was immediately skeptical of the over-forecasting of snow totals due to mixed bag precipitation, which indeed turned out to be the case in most areas. The one thing this model did begin to handle well, was the enhanced snowfall accumulations near the Lake Michigan lake shore in Chicago.

12z Tuesday NAM from the day of the storm:
The morning of the storm, we see the models catch on to the northerly shift in the system track. Areas along Interstate 72 that I suggested would see a high amount of sleet and a high reduction in their snow totals are now beginning to be backed up by the model output. Without being too critical of the model's transition line forecast, 4-8" totals from St. Louis, MO to Danville, IL are on a whole fairly well handled. The yellow shading of the snow totals along this line clash with the colors a bit, but I assure you they're there and do jive with what the NAM suggested. Also notice that snow totals have increased dramatically again. The overall track of the heaviest band is well handled, but again, shaving 10% off the forecast total seems fair. The tan band from NE Missouri into the Chicago area suggesting 18-20" is spotted with totals that do fit in to that range. A few outliers are easily noticeable inside the band where totals on the order of only 13" or so occurred, and then 20"+ totals were found near Lake Michigan where lake effect snow occurred before and after the storm. The variations between actual totals in the heaviest areas were due to the model's inability to forecast where the heaviest mesoscale banding and embedded thunderstorms were to occur. Among precipitation type and dry-slotting, depicting areas that will experience the heaviest banding inside the deformation zone is something that a model of any resolution simply cannot forecast in advance. It can suggest a region where it is likely, as we see here, but getting down to fine resolution isn't going to happen.

And just for kicks, the 18z NAM from Tuesday, as the storm began impacting the area:
Most notable is the dramatic over-forecasting of totals in northeast Illinois from Kankakee southwest to just north of Champaign. The NAM, at even mere hours out still can not handle the fact that the dry-slot was already pushing in to southern Missouri taking aim on this area. I mentioned in my forecast discussion, as did many others forecasting the storm that portions of eastern and northeastern Illinois could see a lull in precipitation because of this, but it just is not something that forecast computer guidance has a good handle on. For what it's worth, the 4km WRF precipitation forecast model did try to handle this factor with relative success. Some over forecasting of totals is seen in eastern Iowa around Iowa City, which is likely due to the model suggesting inaccurately that mesoscale banding and heavy convective snows would set up in this area, which did not occur.

This isn't ground breaking evidence, as the difficulties that higher resolution models experience in forecasting snow accumulation were already commonly known but it's an interesting overlapping look at where the models seem to struggle the most. Exaggerated totals were common along the southern track of the heaviest forecast due to a tandem of inability to establish the crucial correct track of the center of low pressure, and the inability to distinguish precipitation type in high reflectivity zones where heavy freezing rain or sleet may be the dominant mode rather than obscene snow totals. Dry-slotting along the southern edge of the heavy forecast totals swatch is also another factor that the models commonly struggle with.

Ultimately these pretty colors are nothing more than that; pretty colors that can give a broad suggestion of the area that will see the heaviest totals, and how heavy these totals will be. Taking these specific totals as gospel is falling victim to meteorological cancer. Take this model suggestion, and pick it apart asking yourself if it makes sense given the above mentioned impacts.

Blizzard aftermath

2011-02-02T18:16:00.006-06:00

Well, it's hard to give detailed photographic aftermath photos simply because it's impossible to gauge scale when it comes to drift height. I thought about sticking Tia out in some drifts, but thought better of myself and didn't ask. As much as she hates snowflakes in her eyeballs, I can't imagine she'd love snow up her pants. For hating winter so much, she and I made an awesome team digging out the driveway from waist and shoulder high drifts. I've never had to dig out from a snow of this magnitude, and it gave me an entirely new appreciation for my friends up north. It's a very helpless "where do you even start" feeling when you are standing in the middle of snow up to your waist, and it's all you can see around you. Okay shovel here, now where do you PUT it? Either way, we survived. After an exhausting exciting day yesterday watching the storm, and exhausting annoying day digging out today, I'm looking forward to doing -nothing- tomorrow. Northern Illinois University has already shut down for tomorrow as well, as temperatures will be dipping down to around -20F and they still need another day to finish digging out. I hope they pay those guys well, because it would take a lot to get me working in -20F air. I didn't sleep a lot yesterday so I wasn't dying to shovel out the drive today, but knew it wouldn't even be an option doing it tomorrow.

Anyway - I did take a quick walk around the neighborhood this morning to try and catch some of the aftermath. There wasn't a ton to shoot though... everything is pretty much just white.

This is looking out our unused door in the kitchen. I like the door indentations.

Back door.
This is our front porch / yard. Hard to give a sense of scale, but that ridge in the middle is probably waist or chest high. I had to guess where the steps were from the porch since it was drifted over, and guessed horribly wrong. Note my "step step SLIIIIDE" foot prints in the snow coming down.
Tia's car in the drive completely drifted in.

Found this unfortunate guy on my walk around the neighborhood.
Backyard.
Looking out the back door. My car may be brighter than the sun, but unfortunately it does not share it's warming properties.

No outdoor dinners in the backyard anytime soon. Darn, that's something I'm starting to miss doing right about now. Okay snow, hurry up and melt and let's start talking temperatures in the 60s again.

February 1 2011 Insane northern Illinois blizzard with gale force winds ...

2011-02-02T00:22:00.002-06:00

Still getting very intense snowfall here in DeKalb, with perhaps hints that it will be continuing into the morning. Check out the 850 mb uvv chart for 6 AM tomorrow morning. That suggests fairly heavy convective snow bands across northeast Illinois. Plows have already ceased in the area and the interstates have been shut down. Planning on waking shortly after sunrise in hopes of shooting some aftermath photos before things get disturbed.

Photo from the center of Hwy 23 in DeKalb, completely covered in snow.

Thundersnow likely any moment...

2011-02-01T20:43:00.003-06:00

Upper level low continues to rotate into northern Illinois bringing with it a band of very heavy snows and widespread thundersnow. Should be experiencing the worst of the storm within the hour, right on with my 9 PM forecast. Check the live stream!

Click here for the live stream!

I'm heading out now to see what I can get video wise. Heading out on foot, of course... not that I could get my car out if I tried. Not sure who these people are that are still out driving around.

Northern Illinois blizzard update! Feb 1 2011

2011-02-01T13:59:00.001-06:00

Lake effect snow has taken full force reducing visibility to under 1/2 mile in DeKalb County in northern Illinois. Snowfall rates are approaching 3/4" per hour, and this is not even "system snow" related to the main snow complex moving toward the region, though it is indirectly caused by the strong easterlies off the lake right now. It's fairly uncommon to see lake effect snow reach as far inland as DeKalb, but with a 70-80 knot low level jet we're having no problem at this point.

Check out the forecast track of the 850 mb low across central Illinois. Northern Illinois is set to get absolutely creamed in about 6-12 hours. The northern edge of the heavy snow is already approaching Interstate 88, with strong easterlies still off Lake Michigan lake enhancement is very possible. The next 12 hours are going to be a blast, and I'm not even a winter weather lover.

Live Stream

2011-02-01T10:19:00.003-06:00

Alright, since it takes minimal effort on my end I've decided to throw a live stream up of the impending blizzard here in DeKalb, IL. I won't be around the entire time so if it goes down, it goes down. I'm hoping to send in updates via mobile if things do get bad. As it stands, still holding tight to my 15" prediction for DeKalb and Northern Illinois University. Getting light to moderate lake effect snow already, with the main system still off to our south.

You can find my live stream on this page by clicking on my icon in northern Illinois.

http://chase.tornadovideos.net/pages/full_screen

Snow Update

2011-01-31T14:57:00.006-06:00

Well, I've had 24 hours to cool off from the epic snow storm model parameter induced widespread panic we faced Sunday afternoon. Going to lower my storm total from 20" down to about 15" total for DeKalb, IL. Looking at 1-3" tonight with the first wave of warm air advection snowfall. Tuesday late afternoon the first bands of snow start making their way into northern Illinois before things pick up in earnest by late evening. I originally wished I was a little further south near Interstate 80, but am becoming a little more content with my placement here. Once you get into central Illinois near Interstate 72 you reach the rain/snow cutoff line. This line will be bouncing around between a heavy wet snow, sleet, and perhaps some freezing rain. This will have a chance to dramatically cut down on snow totals near Interstate 72. In Champaign, I'm going with 8" total accumulation.

Totals should dramatically increase as you head northwest. My bullseye at this point for snow maxima is west central into north central Illinois. Anywhere from Quincy/Macomb to LaSalle, IL I'd give a shot of 14-18" with embedded higher amounts. I was initially worried about my location in DeKalb being too far north, and that very well may be the case. However, once you near Interstate 80, from LaSalle eastward toward Kankakee you start running the risk of being dry-slotted. The dry slot on these powerful systems has a habit of working it's way northward and choking off the precipitation. Whether this happens or not again remains to be seen, but it's another key element in how widespread the heavier snow totals wind up.

All that said, in the deformation zone north of the dry intrusion and surface low, a benefiting factor for higher snow totals will be the strength of the system as it rapidly deepens/occludes, strongly forced bands of at times convectively induced heavy snow bands. Thunder and snow fall rates nearing 3 inches per hour are possible in these areas, and the placement of these bands will be the main deciding factor in snow totals. At this time I believe the best chance for an extended period of these heightened snow fall rates / thundersnow should be along that aforementioned Quincy to LaSalle line.

This is fairly disorganized, but I don't pretend to be a big winter weather guy. To summarize I suppose, along Interstate 72 in central Illinois I believe the composite parameter projections of 20+ inches of snow are likely being overdone and will be hampered by transitions between heavy snow/sleet/freezing rain. 8" forecast stands for Champaign. Further north, periods of very heavy snow Tuesday evening into Wednesday morning with a band of 14-18" with embedded higher amounts from Quincy to LaSalle, IL. Further east, potential dry-slotting lowers totals from Pontiac to Kankakee and eastward. I'll go with 15" total for DeKalb, including the 1-3" forecast for tonight. I didn't even touch on the ice storm potential with this system, but the real story could easily become ice accumulations with very strong gradient winds exacerbating that problem on Wednesday. If ice accumulations near 0.5"-1" along Interstate 70, as the surface low pushes to the east and strong northerly winds near 30 mph with higher gusts, power failures could become the norm.

I'm not sure what I'll have in the way of documenting the storm as I don't plan on driving anywhere for the next 72+ hours, but I'll be updating periodically with whatever little bit I have to share from the home stead in DeKalb in north central Illinois.

Midwest Winter Apocalypse

2011-01-30T15:35:00.003-06:00

Well, the word is obviously out by now but I figured I would throw my two cents in to the hype. My current forecast for the DeKalb area is right around 20 inches total between the first wave on Monday and the main knock out punch on Tuesday night.

I'm somewhat busy so I'm not going to hammer out a big synopsis, but this is starting to look nothing short of insane.

Just look at this forecast surface wind/surface pressure chart for 3 AM on Wednesday morning. Northern Illinois will simply be shut down. That's got sustained winds anywhere from 30-40 mph with higher gusts underneath an unheard of period of up to 6 hours of 3"/hour snowfall rates, along with very likely embedded pockets of thundersnow with 850 mb mlcape as high as 400 j/kg. Thunder and lightning, blinding snowfall, and howling winds? I'm not normally a huge winter fanatic, but when I tell mother nature to go big or go home, this is certainly along the lines of what I'm talking about.

Friends and family down in Champaign are very close to the rain/snow cutoff line. At this point, Champaign could still stand to see almost a foot of snow. Any shift north or south (which is still likely to happen) could add another couple inches, or leave them in a soaking wet state with a rain/snow slushy mix. Too close to call right there as the rain/snow line literally follows Interstate 72 right through that area.

Up here in DeKalb, I'll be on apocalypse alert as we find ourselves bullseyed for late Tuesday into Wednesday.

Heavy snow band in northern Illinois!

2011-01-27T16:40:00.001-06:00

Tia and I reporting on the spot via Android in northern Illinois this morning. This is mostly just a test to see how the blogger application for Android works. NYC got 20 inches of snow dumped on them last night, but 2 inches here is still enough to warrant some complaints on this end. Hoping we are reporting on the spot from a cumulus field sooner rather than later!

I have some stuff planned for the blog for the month of February that I will touch on soon, when I'm not writing on a cell phone touch screen. Here's to hoping this all posts well, and I've got an easy solution to posting frequent updates via android this chase season. I'm not likely to stream anything live, but blog updates are something I like doing.

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.5

Oldie, but a goodie.. 10/29/04

2011-01-19T19:38:00.002-06:00

Trying to keep the warm weather withdrawal at bay, so I've been playing with some older video and photos recently. I revisited one of my favorite chases of the decade that didn't produce a tornado... the October 29 2004 McLean, IL classic supercell. A beautiful catch during the fall season on a fairly low attention day. Most chasers were in Iowa and Minnesota where there was a moderate risk and 15% area outlined for tornadoes. I liked a pre-frontal wave in central Illinois that was barely given any attention. Sure enough, Iowa busted, and central Illinois lit up.

Back in 2004 I chased with paper maps and a weather radio, so this was a very fulfilling catch at age 17. I headed out during the afternoon and approached an area of towers near I-55 southwest of Bloomington. I encountered some hail in the town of McLean, and decided to stick with the storm. Once the hail ceased, a rain free base came into view to my southwest, and I knew the show was on.

Put together a little time lapse showing the evolution of the supercell from where I watched it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpoYdxd1Mlc

Whispy snow bands

2011-01-09T18:07:00.003-06:00

Just a quick post sharing a neat satellite image I saved the other afternoon. The white bands across the mid-west, namely across the state of Illinois and surrounding states is snow on the ground. This is not overly unusual, but I found the thin whispy bands interesting. During the overnight hours thin bands of snow spread across the area, and the result was narrow paths of measurable snowfall. Champaign ended up in the middle of one of these bands, and while amounts were only around an inch, the pattern at which the snow/no snow lines set up across the area were interesting.

Radar image from the overnight period showing the thin bands of snow:

Satellite image of the thin bands of snow covering the ground:

Block, IL revisited

2011-01-04T21:21:00.004-06:00

Another down evening, and another trip to Block, IL. This time I got an earlier start to get some twilight in the star trail images. I had a few places in mind, but went right back to where I was two nights ago. The place had a few more angles that I wanted to try, and I could already see trains in the distance so I wanted to utilize the creating angles that were possible using the tracks.

I ended up having a great time! Even though we were hovering right around 20F degrees, I managed to stay out there for about 2.5 hours. I was joined by a pack of coyotes in the distance, as well as an owl that perched in a tree across the tracks hooting at me every 30 seconds or so. At one point an elderly gentlemen drove down the road in his Cadillac and briefly investigated what I was up to. He left with the statement "boy, you must really want those photos bad to be out here in this weather."

Looking south a little while after sunset. Even nabbed a little shooting star up at the top.

Now looking back northwest towards Champaign:

Block, IL Star Trails

2011-01-03T11:03:00.003-06:00

Went out for another night of star trails on Saturday night. I wasn't sure where I wanted to go once I got in the car, but getting outside of town I decided to visit an old favorite spot of mine. Southeast of Champaign by about 15 miles there is a tiny unincorporated town (6 hours or so) called Block. Just south of there is a neat rail road crossing down in a valley that was left by the glaciers. There is a nice area of small hills in that area called moraines. Back in high school I used to frequent this spot.

The place has always given me a weird vibe, I'm not sure what there is to that. I have never been bothered being alone in the middle of nowhere taking photos at night, and in fact enjoy it quite a bit. However, just as it did in the past, I was unable to keep from looking all around myself the entire time I shot this exposure. It was the most still night I can remember experiencing. Not a thing was moving, and it felt like I could hear someone talking to me from 10 miles away if they tried. There wasn't a single hint of movement all around me, but I couldn't help but feel like I was being watched the entire time. This has never happened to me, and after about an hour out there both the cold and my head got to me. Just weird, since normally I love that kind of night. Something just felt off.

Either way, here is what I came away with. That streak above the horizon is a helicopter that left Champaign, and did a complete circle around me before returning to Champaign.

I spotted a couple of other spots that I used to frequent on my drive back that I'll probably hit up for star trails this week as well if skies cooperate.

Severe possible along and south of I-72 today

2010-12-31T09:08:00.001-06:00

Here's a snippet from my forecast for NIU this morning dealing with the severe weather chances:

A thin line of showers and thunderstorms is possible along the cold
front as it approaches the area early tonight, which should bring an
end to the precipitation. Minimal instability levels will limit the intensity
of any storms that enter the area, though some heavy downpours are
possible, and this coupled with rapid melting of a decent snow pack
will lead to flooding in some areas. Further south in central and
southern Illinois, somewhat higher instability will lead to a higher
chance at a couple severe weather reports. The best threat
appears to be damaging winds, but if enough instability is
present a tornado or two is possible over the southern half
of the state. Instability is much lower than that of winter severe weather
outbreaks of recent years (January 7th 2008 and December 27 2008
to name a couple) so while the potential exists, I'm not expecting
anything too substantial. Wind shear is very strong in the
southern half of the state however, so any pockets of increasing
instability will need to be watched. Tornadoes have already been
reported with the supercell thunderstorms located in southern
Missouri, that at their current track and speed would be entering
Illinois around the St. Louis area around noon. Instability
will be decreasing through the day with eastward extend, so
an atypical weakening trend though the afternoon hours is
certainly possible. Again, this does not pertain to the immediate
DeKalb area, but being a major holiday during a time when many
are not expecting severe weather it's worth mentioning. I would say
areas south of Interstate 72 in central and southern Illinois should
remain alert for changing weather conditions and the possibility
that the storms in Missouri do maintain their current strength, while
areas north of Interstate 72 can expect to experience only garden
variety, but still perhaps heavy rain producing thunderstorms.

New Years Eve thoughts cont'd

2010-12-30T11:51:00.004-06:00

For now, it looks like things will be too far west for me to really
care about chasing prospects, but it does look like there is the chance for some winter fun around these parts, that doesn't involve snow.

I'll have family over for an extended family X-mas gathering,
and while I alerted them to the fact that I could not pass up stepping
out briefly for a December intercept, I won't be heading very far. If
we can get some clearing early in the day in west central IL I may be
interested. My eye is on the St. Louis area right now, if any.
Whether or not it's worth the trip for me will be figured out tomorrow afternoon.
Best case scenario for me is to head down 72 and intercept something
near Springfield, but I don't know how likely that is now. I think somewhere
along and near Interstate 70 in southwest / south central IL stands a
chance of a few after dark tornadoes tomorrow night. I expect storms
to initiate near St. Louis, eventually becoming widespread along the cold front
across much of Illinois producing potentially severe weather along and
south of I-80, and potentially tornadic over the area outlined above, in
southwest/south central Illinois.

Not likely a chase day, but certainly something exciting to watch in
late December.

Noisy New Years?

2010-12-27T11:27:00.003-06:00

With a potent storm system entering the picture at the end of the week, my weather senses are beginning to tingle with the potential for some thunder in the mid-west! Here's an excerpt from my forecast discussion for northern Illinois:

"There should be a brief pause in the heavier precipitation later on
Thursday as we enter the warm sector of the system. That said,
abundant dense fog and some drizzle are still looking like a good bet.
Once the center of low pressure begins pushing into the Great Lakes,
dragging with it a sharp cold front we'll begin to see a return to heavier
precipitation during the day on Friday. The rate at which we can melt
off the snow pack on the ground (DeKalb currently has 13" of snow
on the ground) will determine just how warm we get ahead of this very
dynamic system. At this point, it appears that we should at least
reach the middle 40s by Friday evening. Remaining snow on the
ground, coupled with thick soupy cloud cover and heavy rains
could cap us off right there, but with such a potent system
it's not yet certain just how high we'll get. For that reason,
it remains unclear whether or not we'll see any thunderstorms
with the passage of the cold front. A vigorous system such
as this one certainly lends the possibility, but the amount
of instability that we actually achieve will be the deciding point.
Whether the sky is illuminated and the ground shakes is
up in the air, but a period or two of heavy rain is a safe bet."

Downstate in central Illinois, some thunder looks a little more likely as temperatures approach the middle 50s by Friday evening.

Below is the European solution for New Years Eve at 500 mb. In April, that'd have us talking tornadoes.

Also, in some of the holiday downtime, I took the liberty to go and visit a neglected chase day and share a few unseen photos. June 19 2009, Tia and I chased a supercell from right over Urbana into western Indiana. This was the day after my car was totaled driving to Iowa for a storm chase. I woke up knowing the chance for storms existed but frankly did not care. Tia drove me to the hospital to get some neck and back pain from the accident examined. Right as we got to the waiting room, I was texted by Mark Sefried informing me of a supercell heading right for us. The appointment went quickly, and Tia was up for a chase and was willing to use her car as the chase vehicle for the day so we were off. No data at all, not even a paper atlas. Just our eyes and a car. It ended up being a great chase, however! But, once we returned home, I was still not a happy camper after the situation in the 24 hours prior so I didn't do anything with the photos I took.

Oh yeah! I remember why. I missed documenting an apparent tornado that afternoon south of Danville, IL. Rapidly rotating wall cloud narrowed into a beautiful white funnel which apparently touched down just north of us. I didn't see anything on the ground though, and the ground contact could not have been more than a hundred feet from us as the funnel passed directly overhead. I realized when I returned home that the camera was on stand by. That's what I really wanted to see on top of the situation. Anyway, here are a few photos of the storm...

Early in the storms life cycle, just east of Urbana, IL.

Crossing the border near Cayuga, Indiana.

Weakening now:

Geminid Meteor

2010-12-15T17:32:00.004-06:00

Was it really only 4 degrees above zero the other night? I didn't notice.

I went out and braved the cold to capture some of the Geminid meteor shower that peaked on the morning of the 14th. I counted approximately 60 meteors in the one hour that I was out there. I had on enough layers to clothe a small village, and managed to stay fairly warm for the brunt of the hour that I was out. It was the feet that got me... once your toes and feet get cold there is no turning back. The conditions were perfect, and the meteors were beautiful. I didn't get the fireball that I was after, but I did manage to capture one decent meteor in with the star trails. There are several others in the photo below, but they were too dim to pick up with the Sigma 10-20. Need something that can do lower than f4.0 for that.

Looking like another 2-4 inches of snow here in central Illinois. I'm back in the Champaign area for the majority of the next month for the holiday semester break. I'm always anxious to get the spring semester underway as the days only get longer and warmer, and after a few weeks that first hopeless "slight risk" always pops up somewhere in the midwest. That day that you know you'll regret going for, but after a long and cold winter you can't help but lose sleep over. Only a couple months and change until what I consider the beginning of storm season. Nothing is fun to chase until early April, but as I always say, *someday*, that early season violent outbreak will show it's ugly face again, and I can only hope it's not the day I finally give up on the early season chase.

Geminid meteor and about 30 minutes worth of star trails:

Beautiful water vapor illustration of the powerhouse storm system that brought the blizzard conditions to the midwest on Saturday and Sunday.

Tentacle like snow bands

2010-12-06T18:04:00.002-06:00

Saved a quick loop of the radar out of Chicago, IL this afternoon that showed some very bizarre tentacle like snow bands passing over the area. Each one was producing snow that was not making it to the ground.

http://prairiestormmedia.com/dec6LOTbrefloop.gif

Snow update

2010-12-03T11:34:00.004-06:00

Things becoming a little more clear with the snowfall totals across northern Illinois Friday night into Saturday. Looks like we're finally converging on what will likely be a swath of 3-4 inch accumulations with isolated 5-6 inch totals possible in the heaviest banding likely in northwest Illinois around the Quad Cities / Sterling area. The main swath of 3-4 inch totals should extend out of Iowa into NW Illinois from the Quad Cities to Rockford southeast toward Kankakee to Peoria. As the strength of the system wanes during Saturday morning areas downstate in central and eastern Illinois will receive lesser amounts, but will still be at the very least sweeping off their front porches by Saturday morning. I''ll go with more common 1-2 inches down there, with a few 3 inch reports possible along and north of Interstate 74 from Bloomington to Danville.

Snow should begin in northwest Illinois between 9 PM and midnight, and translate into north central Illinois and the DeKalb area shortly after. Central Illinois should begin to see their first flakes around midnight or so. It will take a while to saturate the very dry column, so while initially the radar may indicate snowfall, it will take a couple hours before snow begins making it's way to the ground in earnest.

I'll throw in the disclaimer that with such a dry powdery snow, any area that sees any period of banding/increased precipitation rates could easily stack up the totals quickly. I've done my best to outline where I think the best banding will line up at 24 hours out, but adjustments may need made once the action begins! I'll try to throw in another update once the evening model suite comes out.

First accumulating snow

2010-12-02T15:13:00.002-06:00

Looks like the first accumulating snowfall will glance the area over the weekend. Here in northern Illinois is looks like things will kick off late at night on Friday and carry into the day on Saturday.

Yesterday morning the models decided to go bonkers with snowfall amounts suggesting upwards of 10 inches, but have since calmed down to a more realistic scenario. Main killing factor seems to be the weakening trend with the H5 wave. Rather than the more amplified solution projected yesterday morning, a more subtle feature should sweep into the area and rapidly lose it's definition as it pushes over the area. This lack of upper level support seems to be the main instigator in the lesser snow totals. Initially as the dendritic zone becomes saturated it will remain above the more favorable omega layer, but over time into Saturday morning it should lower into a more favorable layer. Even with upper level support lacking this should instigate a period of fairly heavy snowfall over northern Illinois around sunrise.

It won't be the most organized system, but with a fairly dry snow things could accumulate quickly. Winds won't be overly strong, but again a dry powdery snow will let things blow around in rural areas through Sunday. Given QPF totals from around 0.3-0.5" and a dry snow ratio beginning around 12:1 and increasing upwards of 18:1 by Saturday morning, maximum totals of around 4-5 inches seem plausible in a narrow band. With large model spreads even only 36-48 hours out and the system not even onshore yet, nailing down the area of heaviest snow totals is pointless.

As is typical with me, I'm fairly excited about the first snow of the year. I'm generally okay with snow until about the end of January. By February as things start thawing out, I start getting that "February itch" to get out chasing and am about ready for frozen things to stop falling out of the sky, unless they're golf ball sized chunks of ice hitting my windshield as I search for tornadoes. So mother nature, you've got two months to get in all the winter storms you want so use your time wisely.

Top 10 Images from 2010

2010-11-30T15:44:00.007-06:00

Well, it's been forever since I updated this guy as it's been a fairly quiet period. I should add that it's been quiet for me, as northern Illinois was recently whacked with a late season severe weather event resulting in a fairly decent tornado in the Rockford area. I however was out of town for the week leading up to Thanksgiving and missed out on all of this. You would think a five day period in late November would be a safe time to leave town and not miss out on anything severe weather wise but mother nature once again proves her dominance. I am forever at her will, but that's what keeps things interesting.

That all said, I decided it was late enough in the year to go through my entire collection of images from 2010 and throw out my top 10 favorites. They aren't strictly limited to the warm season severe weather events, and there are certainly a few that probably could have made the cut that did not. However, on this day, at this hour, these are the ten images I feel are the best that I have taken this year in no particular order.

September 12 2010 -DeKalb County Illinois. Elevated convection worked its way across northern Illinois during the evening, one storm even going severe warned in the northwest portion of the state earlier in the day. By the time I intercepted the storms on my way back into DeKalb they were nothing more than elevated thunder showers. Hardly even any precipitation falling from the bases, but enough juice for intermittent bolts of lightning to snake around underneath. Right around twilight, the scene was almost surreal.

October 24 2010 - McLean County Illinois. Late season severe weather opportunity never really presented itself to the desired magnitude, but thunderstorms did erupt along a cold front just after sunset. I positioned myself in front of a cluster of on-again-off-again severe warned cells just west of Bloomington, IL and again was treated to an amazing twilight lightning display. The moon was even peaking up in the east giving me frontlit moonlighting, purple twilight, and lightning underneath with the stars shining above.

While the October 26 2010 super storm didn't produce much in the way of photogenic weather, the aftermath was certainly worthy. I ventured out to the damage path of an EF-1 tornado that struck a couple farmsteads northwest of Elburn, IL in Kane County where I shot this image. Even weak tornadoes can produce some impressive scenes.

April 4 2010 - Leroy, IL. This might be the best lightning photo I've ever taken. Tornado watches were out early this Easter Sunday but I stuck with family commitments. I was rewarded with this image as I intercepted a severe warned (previously tornado warned) supercell as it entered Leroy in McLean County on my way back to DeKalb that night. While impressive looking moving in, the storm's core had nothing to show in the way of severe weather.

July 17 2010 - Champaign, Illinois. This was a pretty fun non-chase. I shot a time lapse of this guy pulsing up and down for almost two hours across the Illinois/Indiana border. Once the sun set it looked like the show was over, but another pulse shot right up and this thing became electrified. One of the few times this year that I took the super-wide angle lens off.

June 4 2010 - Western Illinois. The day before the big day in western Illinois we caught this beautiful non-tornadic supercell just south of Macomb, IL. While it never looked overly close to producing a tornado this was one of the more fun chases I had this year. It was as relaxing a chase as they come.

May 22 2010 - Aberdeen, South Dakota. A day that I often try to forget for missing the Bowdle, SD EF4 tornado, I was just in a hurry to get to my reserved hotel room in Sioux Falls another two hours south of here and forget the day. I kept glancing up at the beautiful mammatus display above me and thinking I would kick myself if I didn't stop and at least shoot one photo. I could have been more creative in my composition, but angry as I was all I could muster was pulling off on a small side road and snapping this photo looking down the road to my south.

May 10 2010 - Wakita, Oklahoma. This tornadic mesocyclone was absolutely churning away in the sky as it passed to our north. Seconds before this image was taken a fully condensed tornado could be seen to the left of the road. There were certainly severe small tornadic circulations underneath this base as it rotated away. Watching video of this scene you'd swear it was time lapsed.

January 19 2010 - DeKalb County Illinois. Two straight days of thick freezing fog smothered northern Illinois. I went out the day before this shooting some of my favorite winter weather images as a thick soup of fog froze onto every surface imaginable. However, those images would be topped the next morning as the fog lifted and a deep blue sky emerged atop still frozen vegetation.

June 18 2010 - Shabonna, Illinois. The day after I sat out the biggest Minnesota tornado outbreak in years, I was treated to a minor consolation prize as two severe bow echos traversed the home land. I timed it just right to catch this beautiful almost blue shelf cloud go overhead at my favorite place in the world (the DeKalb wind farm) just as daylight faded away. The early afternoon bow echo produced much stronger winds, but it's passing was dwarfed by the graceful shelf cloud that preceded this weaker line.

August 15 2010 - Deep Lake, Wisconsin. I hit the star trails hard this year, and it finally paid off at the lake this summer. After being cut short by clouds two nights in a row before, I finally snuck in a much longer sequence getting some huge streaks in the sky. This was on the days following the Perseid meteor shower, but I didn't manage to catch much in this image though I did note a few out of frame while shooting.

For those of you counting, yes, there are 11 images in my top 10.

Lake Michigan enhanced convection last night

2010-11-04T17:30:00.004-05:00

I wanted to quickly point out some interesting occurrences over Lake Michigan last night. As a blast of cold air came down out of Canada and chilled surface temperatures into the 30s across surrounding coastal areas of Lake Michigan, the water surface temperatures remain in the middle 50s. This warmer surface temperature, coupled with much colder air blasting down aloft created an area of enhanced low level instability over the lake, very similar to what we would see in a lake effect snow event. You take that cold air mass aloft and lift it over the already cold 35F temperatures of the land surface and your temperature change with height as you go up is negligible when it comes to achieving any kind of instability, and unable to support convection. However, take that same cold air mass and move it over the water surface, which is about 20F degrees warmer than the land, and suddenly your low level lapse rates increase rapidly.

A few convective cells were able to tap into this area of enhanced low level juice and maintain themselves for quite some time as they passed SSE across the lake, even producing lightning at time, and showing the possibility of some small hail production.

I archived a couple meso-analysis maps, as well as a radar image of one of the more intense cells occurring a little before midnight.

Radar image of the storm over SE Lake Michigan. The green triangle indicated the potential for some small hail in the updraft.

Low level lapse rates bullseyed over southern Lake Michigan at 8 degrees C/km.

And then the lifted index maxima over the same area.

RUC analysis also indicated the possibility of surface based cape of 300-400 j/kg in the same area.

The storm quickly vanished as it moved ashore into the colder surface temperatures where instability was null.

Elburn, IL Tornado Damage from October Super Storm

2010-10-27T11:21:00.004-05:00

Well, the event ended up being a bust for me personally severe weather wise, but storms did cause significant damage in Illinois, and surrounding areas. Back in Champaign, a significant microburst removed portions of a roof from a home, and created havoc in the neighborhood. I'm sure estimated wind speeds will come out of that event as near or just above 100 mph. Just 10 mile away from DeKalb, an EF1 tornado damaged a couple farmsteads NW of Elburn, IL in neighboring Kane County. I went out during the evening to survey the damage. Most of the damage was limited to farm houses and other outbuildings, but one home that was directly in the path of an exploding barn suffered some damage from flying debris.

I put up a video with some clips of the damage, but personally think the photos below tell a better story. For video lovers, here you go. I suppose the high winds in the background a pretty neat:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjcAcsHPEbo

Here's the flickr set of images: http://www.flickr.com/photos/prairiestormmedia/sets/72157625249607212/

Convection at dusk last night / tonight's wind

2010-10-25T10:49:00.003-05:00

Went out on a "chase" yesterday that ended with a post-sunset intercept of some sub-severe convection near Bloomington, IL. Things looked decent for a couple supercells yesterday evening, but it was unclear if things would go before dark. Being a weekend, I decided to go for it since I was already in the target area of central IL. I left Champaign around 3 PM and made it to my Springfield target where I met up with Jarrod Cook, Mark Sefried and Mike Brady. We shot the breeze for an hour or so before the sun started getting lower on the horizon. Cells began popping up right at sunset, and were lining up along the drive home so we hit the road. I figured if anything went nuts I could easily pull off and shoot lightning photos.

Just as the last little bits of twilight were fading away a cell to my west started to organize, and began spitting out frequent enough lightning that I decided to pull off at the Hudson, IL exit along Interstate 39. I shot this little broken line of storms for probably an hour before they lost their photogenic appearance. With the remaining twilight behind the storms, a nearly full moon front lighting them, and city lights giving off a red glow and the lightning provided by the storms it was a photographer's dream. It's situations like that which almost make the camera operators job easy. All I had to do at that point was set up the camera and keep shooting.

The next 24 hours look very interesting in this region. It's not an ideal tornado chasing setup, but my meteorological senses are getting tingly all over for several reasons. The extreme storm system is expected to bomb out over the Minnesota and Canada border sometime tomorrow with a forecast low of 960 mb, which would rank it among the strongest in recorded history in this area. That alone will cause gradient surface winds of the likes that we have not seen in years. Surface gusts could hit 60-70 mph tomorrow afternoon in Wisconsin and northern Illinois as the dry slot wraps around the system, behind the cold front.

The cold front is another story, as it may bring with it a fast moving round of severe weather. I'd like to get excited about the tornado prospects, as I do think there will be a few tornadoes in central/northern Illinois into Indiana tomorrow, likely early in the morning. However, even if tornadoes do occur, almost everything is against one actually seeing it unless you are unlucky enough to actually be hit. The storms could very well pass through this area very near, or even just before sunrise which would obviously cause any tornado to be hidden by darkness. I don't expect a lot of lightning with the storms, so while night chasing in general is dangerous enough due to your inability to see the tornado, any tornado that strikes before sunrise tomorrow will be almost undetectable aside from radar, which will be hard enough in itself. Then, you add storm motions. Let's say an embedded supercell does begin producing tornadoes. You better be directly in the path of that thing right as it produces, because once it passes you up, at 60 mph the storm has passed you up and your chase is over. Then, you add the embedded nature of the tornado. See my video from the August 19 2009 tornado near Rochester, IL. Let's say you DO get near an in progress tornado. Congratulations, you've passed most odds. Now, can you see it?
The odds are any tornado that occurs tomorrow will not only be fighting daylight, and moving at 60 mph, but it will likely be partially or entirely obscured by rain. The best case scenario, is that isolated/scattered supercells form along confluence bands ahead of the main squall line and you're able to catch a view of one of those potentially classic supercells. However, I think this is a pretty unlikely scenario tomorrow unless some changes take place to the overall synoptic setup. If we end up with supercells ahead of the main squall line, we need to start talking historic tornado outbreak. I'm personally not ready to do that, but the overall "we've never seen anything like this" nature of the storm has my senses tingling, and my interest peaked.

Then, once the squall line of doom passes the area, the dry slot wraps around and we spend a good 12 hours in insane surface winds. We'll probably be seeing sustained winds above 40 mph for a couple hours, and I won't be shocked at all to see an 80 mph wind gust somewhere in Wisconsin or northern Illinois tomorrow afternoon.

I'm not planning a chase, per say at this moment. However, I'll be watching the event closely and will intercept whatever does occur that I feel I can do so safely, and with a potential reward. I'm not in to driving a ton of miles on a Tuesday for video of sideways rain, but should I feel my odds of photographing a tornado, or perhaps insane winds is decent, I have not put away the chase gear after last night's storm.

Flickr set with higher quality images: http://www.flickr.com/photos/prairiestormmedia/sets/72157625114217711/

Isolated tors in the Land of Lincoln today?

2010-10-24T12:05:00.003-05:00

Looking like a pseudo-surprise chase day today in central Illinois. Only a pseudo-surprise because I knew the potential was there, but it looked marginal at best until this morning. Even when I woke up this morning I was fairly negative, but as the day has progressed over just the last two hours I'm feeling much more optimistic about a couple supercells, and even a tornado report or two across west-central Illinois this afternoon. I've got a fairly board target right now, but since I'm in Champaign for the weekend, things will generally be moving this way so I can hang tight and let things unfold. Watching the Springfield to Litchfield area right now, which will eventually move towards the Decatur to Effingham area this evening.

Abundant sunshine and howling south winds right now... how long has it been since we had that on a potential chase day? RUC forecasts have plenty of 0-3 km cape all along the I-55 corridor from St. Louis to Springfield, and even perhaps as far north as Bloomington. Lapse rates in the low levels are very steep. Keep this sunshine going and we could get some low topped storms to erupt along Interstate 55 by around mid-afternoon. It would be nice if we could get surface winds to back to SE in advance of the wave, but I'll settle for southerly. Should be sufficient for at least a couple low topped supercells, and perhaps a tornado or two with the dominant storms.

I'll try to post as updates come along, but for right now I'm eyeballing leaving Champaign at 2 PM with a starting point of Springfield.