10/6/08: Autumn Surprise

Sometimes, even though there’s plenty to entertain me here what with OU football and my other pursuits as well as my social life and work, it’s sometimes hard for me to not miss Ohio in the fall.  Imagine skyscapes brushed with leaden blue lake-effect clouds and fiery backlit maples and you might begin to understand.  But then mother nature brings me a rare treat to remind me that she is as beautiful elsewhere this time of year.

Today brought a broken line of thunderstorms from the southwest; this was snapped from the backdoor of the old homestead.

Chaser convergence happens all over the world…

Kinda reminds me of chasing on weekends in OKC…

Best Photos of 2008

Now that 2008′s season is about over, I went through all the pictures I took and rounded up what I consider to the be the best. Of the over 3,000 pictures, only 15 made the cut (I have high standards).

Of course I’ll pop in here to add others if I manage anything fantastic. Enjoy!

A Brilliant Read

I highly recommend purchasing the Spring 2008 edition of The Missouri Review. It contains an account of chaser/writer Amos Magliocco’s experiences during the final days of his close friend and chase partner Eric Nguyen’s life. The writing is quite elegant and definitely made me feel like I was “right there”. At the very least, it serves up several poignant reminders, such as the importance of cherishing the special people in my life, taking the time to live my life to the fullest, and perhaps most importantly, remembering my humanity.

click here to purchase

6/14/08: Good to be Back in the Panhandle

I left OKC this morning around 11:45 AM targeting Clarendon, TX. I took I-44 W to US-62 W to US-83 N to TX-256 W to US-287 W and stopped in Memphis for food/data (the Island Fire Burger’s back, baby!). Storms had gone up to the north and west, but they weren’t painting on KAMA radar yet, despite their apparent size. I decided to go after anyhow, continuing west on US-287.

I turned N on FM-294 from Goodnight and drove under the leading edge of the baby storm that would eventually be the big HP beast of the day.  When I got north of I-40, I expected the storm (which was no longer looking so nice on radar) would turn around to move southeast as I approached it, so I turned west on FM-293.  On the way into Panhandle, I watched lots of persistent dust plumes kicked up from the outflow.

I made it to town in time to watch the storm threaten.  The original storm that I drove under the southeast started to look better and was barely moving, so I hooked it back south (US-60 E to TX-207 S to US-287 E).

Got between the storms and sat at a nice little pull off between Claude and Goodnight, taking pics of both.  They didn’t do much but rain and hail lots, but it was fun to watch them anyhow. I ended up sequencing a wet microburst and nabbed some nice structure shots while I fought to keep rain off my lens.

Finally called off the chase around 6:45 PM and started back the way I came.  I reached the core of the storm just west of Altus around 8:15.  As I was drove through town, the storm killed the power, taking the traffic lights with it.  I was amazed that it didn’t cause traffic pandemonium.

Of course I stopped east of town to take advantage of the day’s magic light and the lightning storm that was now to my south.

I wrapped up around 9:00PM and made it back to the house around 10:45.

6/13/08: Electric Sky at Night, Chaser’s Delight

Just some lightning pics from the house as the “meso” portion of a threshold storm moved right overhead. The pic with the red lines is one where an ambulance went by while the shutter was open.

6/12/08: Panning for Gold near El Dorado

I left OKC around 2:00 PM enroute to El Dorado, Kansas by way of I-35. I wasn’t quite to Kansas yet when storms started going up in SE Kansas just north of US-50, lumbering northeast. This was perfect, as far as I was concerned, since US-50 runs more or less southwest-northeast in that area. This meant for good viewing. Sometimes, things are just too good to be true.

The line of storms stretched northeast from the Florence area. When I got in there, there were still two separate cells at the tail end. I went after the lead storm because it was tornado-warned. I caught up with it as it was occluding and mushing out to become part of the line, so I turned around and went after the second storm. Meanwhile, the line is back-building.

My plan was to drop back south in US-77, but the updraft base of the storm cut me off, so I ended up meandering on winding dirt roads (darn Flint Hills) trying to pop out on US-77 south of Florence (and the storm’s nougat). Nothing doing. While I was winding around and about, the back-building parts of the line started to wind up, so it seemed like everytime I popped out, I was in the path of the teeth of each storm. This is not necessarily a bad thing… it lends itself well to taking pictures. But at the same time it hurries you up and makes you spend your time trying to pick and guess your way out of the back roads (which are NOT straight forward in this part of Kansas… many thanks be to Delorme & GPS).

After a couple hours of playing dodge-em, I finally found a paved road (don’t remember what it was called) that allowed me to get an edge on things. By then, the structures and colors of the storms had become fantastic. I didn’t see any tornadoes, even though I was on the storm that someone claimed a stovepipe on. In the fading light, I finished the chase were I expected to start: El Dorado. A pleasant little town. I got there just in time to meet the blobs behind the line, and shot south on I-35 just in time to have yet another close call with a meso just north of the MM-16 toll gate. Eased on down the road on I-35 to get back home around 12:45 AM.

When I pulled into the garage, I was greeted by a spider the size of one of my hands. I actually looked to make sure my hands were still there when I saw it.

After having driven down all those dirt roads today, at times feeling like I was driving a slot car, I can’t help but wonder why in the world Kansas’s dirt roads are smoother than Oklahoma’s interstates.

6/9/08: It’s a Bob Ross Sky!

I just couldn’t resist stopping to take a few pics of a sky just full of happy, puffy clouds. Note that the Cu in the last pic seems to have an itty-bitty-wall-cloud-wannabee danglies. Almost makes me want to get out my fan brush… or not.

6/8/08: Lucky to be Alive

I left OKC around 2:00 PM enroute to Canadian, TX but never made it. Amarillo radar (KAMA) showed monster high-precipitation (HP) supercells entering NW Oklahoma west of Vici. Took OK-34 north to Vici and then US-60 west of Vici toward Harmon and Arnett. There was no way I was going to get too close to these storms with the how intense KAMA was painting them from so far away. (This was later found to be crazy talk.)

I stayed with the storms eastbound along US-60 as the storms slowly lumbered just north of east. My storm tried to wrap up as it made mesocyclones and wall clouds and was eventually even tornado-warned before it became a sloppy mess. I didn’t see any tornadoes today, but did see plenty of neat-o cloud features.

The storm about got me in Fairview, but I escaped on US-270 southeast and OK-51 east. I dropped the chase around 7:30 PM as the storm had become just another blob in the line.

This is where the “lucky to be alive” part comes in: I picked up OK-51A south from OK-51. As I approached some 45 mph curves in the highway at 65-70, I tapped my brake to turn off the cruise control. It didn’t turn off and suddenly I was a little late for the curve. Somehow I managed to turn off the cruise manually, keep it all together by dropping into the blind oncoming lane, and slow down without killing myself or anyone else.

This was as close to death as I’ve ever been in a car.

I continued to Watonga still pretty freaked out about the whole thing. So freaked out that when I rolled up to the light to turn east on OK-33, I stopped, and then continued left through the red light. Nice bit of driving, that. At that point, I decided it was time to stop and calm down.

When I got back into the car, I couldn’t shift it out of park. That told me that my problem was most likely the “BOO” switch. The BOO switch tells the car to turn off the cruise, allow shifts out of park, and turn on the brake lights. Yep… as a bonus I got to drive home without brake lights, too. That’s not so fun in a state where drivers tailgate incessantly.

This all just goes to show how that know matter how much fun chasing is, the most important thing a chaser has to do is pay attention to their driving. Even with a well-maintained car, a $10 switch can fail and put you in big trouble real quick. If I had been distracted doing something else at the time, it could’ve been curtains (and not rotating rain curtains, either). Yes, this could happen to YOU.

I continued back via OK-33 to Kingfisher and then south on US-81 to I-40 east. Got off on OK-4 and continued south through Mustang and Tuttle and back home.

Turns out that my focus was unlocked on my first dozen or two pictures. That may have been the case on my soft pictures from 6/5/08 also.

6/5/08: Night Mammatus from Home

Here’s a few I took as the squall line approached my house after today’s chase. Enjoy.