Author: Doug

Here is a rare look into the past from 19 years ago.  In this photo that has the date stamp on it showing it was taken in July of 1992 which is “4 BT” or four years before the movie Twister came out and made everyone want to be a chaser.

While it is not my greatest work and in the big picture of my photography, this photo is pretty bad. 

What is does show is a time line of my chasing and interest in weather. Back in 1992 when everyone I knew saw that I was into chasing and weather, they thought it was pretty damn strange.  Now chasing is looked at by the general public much like the X-Games on ESPN or other extreme sports. 

While chasing has come a long way and has now become part of the everyday pop culture, the weather has not changed but chasing has.  Now it is possible that you can find more people chasing after one super cell thunderstorm in the month of May in Kansas this spring than were even called chasers in 1992.

Heavy snow fell over central Minnesota this afternoon and caused numerous accidents along Minnesota Highway 10 just north of the city of Saint Cloud MN.

The east bound lanes of Highway 10 heading into the Twin Cities had to be shut down while rescue crews cleaned up a chain reaction pile up.

In the first part of the video, I rolled up to a truck crash scene on Highway 10, where pickup truck spun out and flipped over on its side in the center ditch of the highway.  I saw some smoke rise up from the truck, I didn’t know if it was about to catch on fire or not so I set the camera on the dash and got out to check on the driver. 

As soon as I got around to the other side of the truck, I found a woman and her three small children were trapped in the truck.  Fortunately they were all belted other than a few shaken nerves and crying kids being scared, everyone appeared to be OK.  Another motorist stopped to help as the women in the truck was able to open the drivers side window and started handing us her children before climbing out of the truck herself.  The Minnesota State Patrol was on the scene in a couple of minutes and we helped them to the troopers truck. 

The footage continues with several more scenes of accidents due to the poor driving conditions. 

Tonight was the best Northern Lights / Aurora Borealis display in at least five years for central Minnesota. 

I have waited a very long time to see the lights dance on the horizon and finally was able to show Neva what the Auroras looked like and how they danced across the sky. 

We left the house after dinner and as soon as it was dark enough and clear enough to be able to see anything.

Was it cold outside?  Oh you bet it was hella cold out and there is a Wind Chill Advisory just to the north of where we were watching the auroras. 

I figured out the wind chill at the location that we go to that is pretty much out of the way from traffic and city lights, it was -25F with the wind chill. 

Here is Neva and me while waiting for the green glow on the horizon to start doing something in the insane cold temps.  Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

Over the weekend I was in Denver, CO for the yearly National Storm Chaser Convention which is now just being called ChaserCon.  My very first convention was not even a convention but a party at Tim Samaras home in Denver, CO back in the year 2000. 

Back in early 2001, about thirty people showed up to Tim’s home and I was the hard core chaser that drove all the way from Minnesota to attend this obscure little party and Shane Adams drove up from Oklahoma to make this the first unofficial National Chaser Party.  Before this party, we were just faceless names on a computer screen in weather chat or the WX Chase email list and this was a great way to finally meet up in person for a lot of us.  Fast forward 11 years later and over 300 people were in Denver, CO for this weekends ChaserCon. 

Over the years, it was expensive to attend the ChaserCon but that was by choice and not by design.  I know of some chasers that spend less than $400.00 to attend from out of state while car pooling with other chasers and bunk up four to a hotel room.  In the past I would spend well over $1,500.00 or more to attend the conference where I end up missing a lot of the speakers and end up talking to people behind the scenes about BNVN and video production.  

So this year, I wanted to get back to my roots and I promised myself I would keep my budget to under $500.00 for everything.   Now how could I keep the budget so cheap while attending ChaserCon?

With the price of admission to ChaserCon at $103.00 (with the T-Shirt option) that took my working budget down to $397.00 for travel, food and hotel for the whole weekend.

Now how do I get to Denver, stay for two nights and survive on $397.00?  Simple, the answer is to use coupon codes, travel points along with a very fuel efficient vehicle. 

I rented a vehicle in advance and did a google.com search for discount codes to get a very decent rate on a compact car.  The weekly rental rate for the car was $182.06, which dropped my remaining budget down to just $214.94 to use for food, fuel and the hotel.

My food receipts were only $35.15, which included the pizza that I order with Evan Bookbinder on Saturday Night and it did not show up until Sunday at 11:00 a.m.  Thank you Papa Johns for your great service because we ordered the pizza on line before your store closed and your driver was an idiot and could not grasp the concept that he was 11 hours late.  Also, I brought my own travel size coffee cup so I was able to fill up at breakfast which was provided by the conference so coffee was a non factor. 

Brandon Clark bought a pizza for lunch on Saturday and even hooked me up with a late dinner at IHOP the night before for helping him out on a bunch of stuff.  The main meal was part of the fee for the conference so that was covered on Saturday night.   My meals on the road driving out to Denver were meals I made at home and brought along so it was nothing out of pocket because I would have ate that at home if I stayed home.

Anyway, after the $35.15 food expense, I need to factor in $13.00 for the one and only drink I did buy at the hotel for a grand total of $48.15.  So now were talking a working budget of $166.79 for fuel and hotel expenses. 

With only $166.76 now came the big expenses, fuel and hotel costs.  The fuel receipts came in at $159.37 for the whole trip which left me with a balance of $7.39 to pay for a hotel.

My hotel was pretty nice and was much nicer than the rooms at the hotel the convention was held at.  I stayed at the Holiday Inn down the street in a executive suite on the top floor with a million dollar view of the Denver Skyline and the mountains.  Seriously, just check out this view from my deck, yes, it had a private deck.  It felt like I was at my old home in Burnsville, MN with the billion dollar view.

What was the cost of this executive suite with a king sized sleep number bed? It was FREE!  I was able to shop around for the best price on a rental car and use discount codes to get a cheaper weekly rate for a fuel economy car.  I use discount programs with various hotels and joined up with their rewards programs to get free nights after so many times staying with them, I was able to save $250.00 alone just from my normal stays at their hotels over the years where at one point I had about 10 nights worth of free hotel rooms that I was able to use. 

Now if you were at the ChaserCon and said wait a minute, I was there too and I saw you at the bar or in the lobby with a drink in your hand almost all the time so how did you not pay more then $13.00 for drinks?

Simple, I took a challenge and won a bet with someone about putting a sticker on the back of the Reed Timmers “The Compensator” (aka The Dominator).  The bet was they would give someone a big fat kiss if someone took a picture of a ChaserTV sticker on the back of “The Compensator”.  Well I said I would do it for a free drink tab and it only took about 2 minutes to walk into the vendor area and grab a sticker off their booth and then go out back and take a picture of the ChaserTV sticker on “The Compensator” and I got free drinks for the rest of the night. 

On Saturday night, Shawna Davies was on a mission to get her husband Jon and me drunk so I ended up getting a few free drinks from her after getting a massive Jag Bomb from Mel to drink before dinner. 

Since I had to drive back to the hotel down the street, I was sipping on 6 drinks over 6 hours.  What did me in the next morning was the fact that Papa Johns failed to deliver the pizza we ordered and I went to McCRACK and got a burger, fry’s and a soft drink.  I have not eaten at McCrack in about 6 months and Neva and I gave up drinking soft drinks months ago and have opted to drink fruit juice from the juicer at home.  Needless to say my body was in toxic shock the next morning from the food and HFCS or high fructose corn syrup in the soft drink.   

The ChaserCon was a lot of fun and it was great hanging out with just about everyone.  I did answer the “Who the hell was that guy with you on Tornado Road” about 50 times but it was all good.  Heck I even got to sign some autographs so that was pretty funny for me but it was cool to talk to people about what I have been up to and what BNVN will be doing this spring and summer. 

I even got Mike Bettes from The Weather Channel to goof off in a couple of photos.  I know Tony wanted try and get me to take a serious photo but hey, this was hella funny.

And last but not least, I did a time-lapse video of the drive from my home in Saint Cloud, MN to Denver, CO.  It is pretty funny as this fits in about 900 miles in just under 90 seconds.

Was it worth it to go to ChaserCon?  Yes it was to see friends that you don’t get to see all the time who are all in one place much like a high school reunion.  Will I go again next year? Most likely if it does fall on the third weekend of February.

What was the down side to going to ChaserCon?  The down side was driving home in a blizzard with an economy car that does not handle well in the slick winter conditions.  Yes, I almost died and I’m not making this a secret because the most dangerous part in chasing is not the chase, it is the drive.
 
While driving home “AFTER” the snow storm, the winds were still bad for someone as experienced as me in driving in bad conditions.
 
After driving all the way from Denver to just 25 miles from Saint Cloud, MN, I hit a snow pack on the road with ice under it.  Not that big of a deal since I had come across several of them on Highway 15 and it had not been a problem plowing through them in the little front wheel drive car.  That was until storm chasing’s four legged Angel Of Death was standing in the road blocking my way.
 
I went from winter driving rules where I don’t touch the break when I’m on a bad surface and try to do a controlled drive through the snow where I know the drift will end and the pavement will be back to normal within 50 feet, to hit the breaks and start to spin out of control upon seeing a deer in the road.
 
I was lucky that their was no other traffic on the road and I missed the utilities box and was able to recover where I was able to enter the ditch head on and not sideways and roll over.  
 
I was driving well below the speed limit when this happened and I think this is a sign of things to come for this season.  Nobody is going to die storm chasing but with the number of people chasing, I think we will see at least one or more deaths due to driving to or in the storm if not on their way home. 

This was taken from the side of the roadway before the tow truck came to pull me out.  I just have to get Verizon Wireless Roadside Assistance to repay me now to keep the trip to under $500.00 since they said their contractor would not come out until 8:00 a.m. and it was 3:00 a.m.  Someone stopped to see if I was OK and they told me of a place just up the road that was open 24/7 that could come and pull me out called Big Time Towing.  I gave them a call and they showed up within 20 minutes and I was back on the road to home in no time. 

As soon as I got back to Stearns County, the roads were fine.  McLeod County needs to learn how to keep the roads clear like Stearns County.  As soon as I got into the town of Kimball, Highway 15 was clean and clear to drive on.

When you don’t have a boat and you can’t use an ice house, the only thing left to use to stay warm while fishing along the Mississippi River is to park your SUV on the boat ramp. This photo was taken at a boat ramp just south of the Monticello MN nuclear power plant.

Went out to watch the Auroras last night since a solar wind stream hit Earth’s magnetic field and sparking a  geomagnetic storm.  The lights were not as bright as expected here in Minnesota but a lot better then what I have seen over the last 5 years of the solar doldrums.

I have been getting several emails about some footage that people have been seeing on The Weather Channel over the last week.  Here are the videos I shot of the black ice footage and the spin out footage that has been showing up in several of their shows such as Weather Proof and the new Extreme Driving Challenge.

The first video was from 1/4/2003 during a freezing rain event.

The next video was from 3/31/2008 during a winter storm.

It’s so cold out that… Ok today I had some fun with the cold.  I have shot a lot of video in sub zero temps of people in the cold and even did the throw boiling water in the air years ago.  Today I wanted to have a little fun on the cold story. 

So today I wanted to answer the age old question, what would freeze first, Beer or Water.

OK it looks as if the site transfer went as planned and everything is working.

I’ve added some new pages to the site for video and posted the Hurricane Katrina Documentary video.

The Katrina Documentary is several hours long and you can click here to watch it.

It’s going to be a busy week for me so I’m going to call it a night.

Doug

Ok, just a heads up, I’m moving server stuff today so their might be some down time or DNS issues until the new server setup is finished.  This will not impact the smugmug hosting setup.

Update: Looks like everything is transferred over and working.