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Ok folks, I’m back home in Minneapolis and for those who don’t check the gps tracker stuff or my blog and call me to ask if I’m seeing any tornadoes when I’m actually picking up my bags at the airport, I will slap you if I see you for being an idiot. Yes, i got a call like that today just as I was picking up my bags…

Anyway, I’m at home and just relaxing and had to restore my contacts list since my computer goofed up on me. Just hope I don’t get everyone sending me an instant message all at once tomorrow. Well, I think I’m going to run down and get something to eat. I see there is a line of storms coming but looks like they will die off by the time they get here and there turning to the south so I think today’s big chase will be to cub foods for some milk and stuff.

What a day in Houston. Well, the crowd was not one for DVDs and sales covered the cost of the trip but I think for now, unless I get some big money backer that is willing to put money into a lot of advertising, I’m holding off on any new DVD projects. The crowd of almost 2000 for the hurricane workshop were not there to buy stuff, they were their to learn and hang out.

I did have a problem with people even shop lifting a few of the DVDs when I was talking to others and they would come right up and just move the price sign and take one. One lady was like “what, they cost money? fu I’m here for free stuff…”

Well I’m glad I did this trip on a very limited budget so it was not a loss but I did have hundreds of business cards picked up by the crowd so if I get a couple stock video sales or on line DVD sales then it will be worth it. But the Punta Gorda block party day it was not.

The highlight of the day was the talk I gave about being in the hurricanes. Dr. Chris Landsea who is a well known researcher sat in on my talk along with a bunch of NOAA and FEMA staff and that pretty cool enough for me.

Well one good thing about this trip is the hotel. I got a freaking deal on it from Hotels.com I’m staying at the Inn at the Ballpark in downtown Houston. The rooms are what I would expect to pay $200 a night for and I got them for $80 a night. That is the price I would be paying at a best western motel or some other no name shit hole motel in tornado alley. This place is great and the hotel is done up in a hard wood style of an old baseball head office. The rooms have one of the most comfortable beds I have ever slept in and there is even hard wood floors in the room in the entrance and bathroom.

The internet is hella fast and there is even a ceiling fan above the bed and the furniture is just nice. This place just says, ahhhhhh relax in here, it will all be better.

Ok, this stranger all alone in a strange land is calling it a night. After dealing with the shop lifters at the hurricane workshop what I had to deal with next was worse. Some homeless guy was pissed that I would not give him my drink cup from Subway so he could go and get free refills. I walk out of subway with a full diet coke so I don’t have to spend $2 for a can at the hotel and he is pissed and bitching at me because I won’t give him any coin and I won’t give him my drink.

Oh well, off to Dallas in the morning time to get some sleep.

After checking into my hotel here in Houston, I was up most of the night and got an hours worth of sleep on the plane so I was fried big time.

I had to wait an hour in the lobby which had wifi so I was able to catch up on stuff to work and got up to my room about 4pm and this place is sweet. I’ll post a full review of it after I leave tomorrow but for a 5 star hotel at $80 a night on hotels.com, this is pretty cool.

Anyways, I’m here and needed some sleep but can’t sleep before huge events or trips. Yes my record is almost 4 days without sleep so I can deal with it but it sucks ass to go without sleep. I got up to my room, took care of a few things then called down for a wake up call. I told them I needed a 12:30 wake up call.They said “you want what?”

I said, I needed a 12:30 AM wake call. I’m working in a different timezone on stuff so I’m in Houston just not working on Houston Time. They guy at the front desk said “ah, okay, makes sense…” I thought that was the easy way to tell them that I have a fd up sleep schedule.

I got the wake up call and now I’m just finishing up some last minute changes to my talk I have to give today.Oh yeah, if your in the Houston Area. I’m speaking today at the http://hurricaneworkshop.com

I left this morning for Texas. I hate traveling because I can never sleep and things get rushed and I get burned out easy.

I got into Texas in a couple hours with trying to sleep on the plane. I got maybe a hour but the kids behind me would not shut up. I swear, Sun Countrys service rocks but some of the stupid first time family flying public annoys the shit out of me.

If you see someone grab a gray bin to put stuff in it, DON’T go and put your own stuff in it if someone else is using it.  Damn Newbee flying public…

Made it into Dallas and got the rental car which is kind of a POS. I hit the breaks and the rotors are warped big time and shakes like crazy. The joys of traveling. Here is a pretty sweet Dallas Skyline photo I took on the fly.

Made it down to Houston this afternoon.

And I really can tell I’m not in Liberal-Sota now. While waiting for the room to be made, I’m working down in the hotel lobby and I went to get a beer to relax and this is the sign on the wall.

Ok, at least I can say that I did not get suckered into the major hype since I did not leave to chase until the first watch went up this morning.

I chased the area of Wisconsin just north of Eau Claire and it sucked!

I saw some decent storms… in between the hill’s and tree’s. I made it to Colfax when I saw this just drop out of the sky for about 90 seconds. By the time I made it to the north side of the town to a clearing, it was gone.

The radar reported that some of the storms were moving at 60 miles per hour. Funk That!!!

Anyway, Here is the images of what I saw that was not reported since I could not see through the stupid trees and hills to confirm anything.

*** Update *** Notice the direction of the flags in two of the photos. Their blowing towards “The Fun Thing” at the time I saw this, there was a tornado warning, hmmmmm. Oh well, I still did not call it in since I could not confirm it. Based on the Radar Data, screw it, its a very shitty funnel that did not last long as it was ripped apart by the storm motion.

I swear I have had a half dozen phone calls asking “you going chasing…” NO NO and NO. The setup looks like a shitty July capped out setup.

So, I chased laundry and finishing up a speech I have to give on Saturday in Texas. Seriously, I looked at the setup today and the posts from other chasers who some sounded like they were in tears because they could not chase and said to myself, get a life people. It’s only a storm.

There will be many more and with a lot better setups then what was today’s setup.
I called Scott Weberpal and talked to him about today’s setup and he told me the same thing.

Got better things to do then to drive 500 miles away and watch the sky. Is this the next step in storm chasing? Yes, it’s called getting a life people. Yes I will chase but I won’t chase more then a 3/4 of a tank of gas from home. It’s just not worth it since I’ve seen it all.

Maybe if a great setup comes along like the May 2004 setup but honestly, there has not been a good setup to really get me excited over chasing long distance for tornadoes since April of 2005. Sorry if you were one of those yahoos I insulted who chase after all these shitty setups but, Save Fuel, Learn To Forecast!!!

Today is the first day of hurricane season and Tropical Storm Barry just formed this afternoon.

This is pretty crazy and it looks like it will hit Florida this weekend as a pretty weak storm. But, it could be like Wilma. Looking at the sat images this morning, Brian sent me this pic and he even said this looks like Wilma on satellite and may explode during the overnight.

Um yeah, um, we are going to need to go over the TPS reports and the lack of a cover sheet… The tornadoes today are in Kittson County MN.

Um yeah, were going to need to talk about where that is. Kittson County is 50 miles from, um yeah, Winnipeg Canada.

One can drive to Lawrence Kansas from Minneapolis faster then one can drive from Minneapolis MN to Kittson County MN. Kittson County is BFE on the boarder of Manitoba. It’s still May, and when I checked there was some sweet storms in western SD and even in NE.

Dang, if the storms don’t do something in the next hour, this bust is really going to burn a lot of people. Just not me, I’m on Sam Adams Lite #2

This morning, Eric called me up and asked if I was chasing today and my answer, “um no”. I really did not like the setup today based on the upper level heating or Cap. I did not feel like driving all the way to North Dakota when my gut told me, sit your ass at home and relax and get some work done.

At least Eric lives in Fargo so he only chased in his back yard. I saw on SwiftWX and Spotter Network that people were coming up as far away as Texas. That is just insane!!!

I also talked to Tony and he was up there too but he was chasing on someone else’s dime for a project so that makes the busts a little less painful when its just your time and not your money.

This goes out to everyone following the SPC forecasts and not doing their own forecasts, I’m sitting at home waiting for the weather to come to me tomorrow but for now, I’m going to have a Beer Chaser!!! BA HAHAHAHAHA

On a good note, I now have 60 of the almost 500 videos to start with for the new website all set and trans-coded with all the stuff. I’m just working on 3 computers at once today. One for email, one for trans-coding and one for cleaning up the final video catalog editing. Once the final video catalog editing is caught up, I’ll be trans-coding on two machines at once to speed things up.

I’m still around.  I have been focusing on work and helping out the SCV crews in the field for chasing instead of chasing myself this spring while I wait for the auroras. 

I was again treated to an amazing display of the Auroras or Northern Lights a few days ago and even was able to play around with a highly modified setup to do VR Aurora videos.

Here is the VR Video.

https://youtu.be/kcri0ppponw

I was also shooting video with my other camera to get some real time Auroras dancing around the sky.

And of course I was able to get some still photos but I do need to upgrade my old Canon to something more modern.