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Ok, today not much was happening. I did go out and shoot a video for The Weather Channel today of the record high temps.
On Sunday I ended up in Albert Lea and there were several other chasers there. This is what happens when the storms DON’T fire and stringers get together in southern Minnesota. Video by KMSP FOX 9 Storm Chasers…

Well, I would not call it a total bust.

Ended up at the same Shell gas station with Bill, Eric, Mel, David, Tony, and some new chasers that asked it they could tag along too.

For hours and hours this morning I reviewed data, looked at the ruc, reviewed even more data and picked two targets. One near Albert Lea to Owatanna MN and the other near Hastings MN.

Since Hastings MN is on the Mississippi River and the target area would be in Wisconsin, I said, eh, NO.

So I went with the southern option.

Why do I sucker myself into chasing setups that the surface, 850 and 500 mb winds all scream at almost the same direction? The best backing winds were from Hastings to Eau Claire WI but again, even that was 45 to maybe 90 degrees at best.

But it was not a total bust. I got to test out the new transmission and work out some bugs in the new data setup.

And yes, I did it, I took one for the team. After I met up with most of the group just outside of the base of Mt. RedWing, I did it… I went into the forbidden chaser land… I went into Wisconsin.

Half to chase and half to check out that area just for kicks. I made it to just east of Plum City where I said enough was enough and turned around after my phone got a signal.

Cell phone coverage from Mt Plum City WI to Mt Red Wing MN to Mt Prescott Wisconsin poor to none. I say MT. as a joke because their is no mountains but the roads all go through river valleys and you get on top of them from time to time. For the most part your maybe 300-500 feet down in the sub basement of a valley.

I did see some short lived lowering on the tail end of the stuff that went into Wisconsin but I did my Wisconsin chase for the year and got it out of the way on the first chase so I won’t be tempted to go again.

Lessons Re Learned:

Don’t go into Wisconsin. Highway 52 is your neutral ground to say, enter at your own risk because your not going to see anything but hills and trees from this point forward.

When Surface, 850 and 500 mb winds are all going the same way and really fast, with temps and dew barely over the 75/55, your chances of seeing a tornado is slim and the storms are going to race off at light speed.

And when doing 5 over the speed limit, ALWAYS let the guys speeding by at 90+ pass you. While we were all driving north on 35 to the cell that just went up, a Lincoln blew past me like I was standing still. I was doing 75 and they had to be doing at least 90 to 100.

A few minutes later, a MN State Trooper came flying up behind me and I was thinking oh crap, this is not Texas, you can do 8-10 over up here before they get anal. I moved over and he blew past me like there was a tornado on the ground. So I thought there was and I was thinking oh crap, what is happening up here?

Until a few minutes later, the trooper had the Lincoln pulled over.

That and pea sized hail was the extent of the chase.

This is what we saw just east of Medford

Anyway (we can edit that out in post…) I’m up way the heck too early on a Sunday morning for not going to church.
Actually, I slept late yesterday while taking a nap after shooting the fog video for the weather channel and my sleep schedule is messed up again.
Today, the weather looks kind of messed up, not sure where to start with the forecast but I think I’m going to get a few hours sleep then look at it again around 10am then head out if its not in the land of hills and trees in Wisconsin or SW MN.
So why was I up so late? I finished the script voice over stuff.
It’s DONE!! All 24 pages of the script is done, fact checked, re checked, name checked, double checked and anal probed. Ok, no Cartman Anal Probe but I went to the point of looking a Google maps and zooming in on stuff in New Orleans with the satellite view just to make sure I remembered things correctly.

What is funny is I really don’t remember driving down a couple blocks from Canal and going over to Tulane and then driving over to interstate 10. But when I double checked everything, right down to the name of the business and buildings I was passing, I found some errors.
Nothing major, I was 2 blocks down over but it is major for me since this is now my two plus hour resume tape / DVD project.
But, since the script is done, all the stuff ready for voice overs, it should go pretty smooth now and honestly, I don’t want to chase today since I could nail this thing in a few takes. All 24 pages of it but still I could be done with it and finish up the final edits.
All the video is color corrected so that part is done. I just have to sync up the vo with the video and adjust the audio and then publish the first second drafts for everyone to review and that’s it.
Oh yeah, what else is going on.
Well the jeep is fixed, $2650 worth of repairs. Talk about a total pain in my wallet!!!
Then while on the break down subject, last night sucked balls but I was able to pull out of a tail spin nose dive and walk away from a major computer crash.
Huh? My dell started screwing up. I thought I was screeeewed for the chase today because the backlight in the laptop was not working.
I was in a panic since the chase was on today and now the computer was dead.
I was in a panic and looked on Ebay and what did I find? Someone was selling a motherboard on EBay for the same computer and they said they had additional parts. I emailed them and they got right back to me and within the hour, $300 was now paying for emergency computer parts.
I was pretty pissed that I just had to blow $300 on parts until I got home. He sold me his old laptop, minus the hard drive and power supply and everything worked.
And by everything, I mean everything!!! I replaced the LCD screen and computer monitor board with the parts I bought then just for kicks, replaced the processor with the new one. I was able to upgrade to a P4 Hyper Thread  was what loaded on the screen. He sold me a replacement laptop with a 2.8ghz P4 hyper threading processor. My machine is now um yeah, twice as fast as before with the old 2.8 ghz processor.
Not only did I fix the computer, I pretty much replaced and upgraded it into a new high powered machine that I was looking to buy.
Why did he sell it to me for so cheap? Was it hot? Was it a lemon? Nope! He sold it to me because he had the same problem I had with the Dell. The power supply will come loose in the machine and you just have to rip it apart and solder it back together. And his hard drive died so instead of fixing the computer which would have been maybe $100 for the new drive and a few hours of screwing around, he just bought a Mac.
So I take back what I said about the Mac users… I just got the hook up from a Mac user that was sick of his PC. Oh and about the Hyper Threading Processor, it works great with Adobe Pre Pro 2.0
Only too 2 minutes to encode a 4 minute file. I redid the file I edited for TWC and it blew through that like it was downloading email. Granted I hate blowing money these days since its been slow but this was by far the best $300 I have spent in months if not years on a repair.
Oh yeah, for the last time, if your not a BNVN stringer and don’t want to be, don’t call me asking how do I do what I do because you want to sell video to the weather channel too. Idiots! I swear the next person that does that I’m going to record the phone call and post it on line for the whole chaser world to see how stupid you are.

It looks like a chase day is coming together but it is coming together in the worst area to chase in, SE MN and Wisconsin. I will post more later

Heck yeah, mod risk tomorrow!!! This rocks, Chasing a mod risk in March less then an hour from home, IN MINNESOTA!   …CENTRAL MN EWD INTO THE CENTRAL GREAT LAKES…
ALTHOUGH CLOUDS/PCPN MAY BE IN THE REGION EARLY IN THE MORNING…
SUNSHINE IS EXPECTED TO BECOME PREVALENT BY MID/LATE MORNING
AS WARM FRONT LIFTS NWD INTO THE AREA AND LOW LEVEL WARM ADVECTION
SHIFTS INTO ONTARIO. SOUTH OF THE WARM FRONT…55 TO 60 DEGREE
DEWPOINTS SHOULD SPREAD NWD INTO AT LEAST THE SRN HALF OF THE SLIGHT
RISK AREA BY MID AFTERNOON. THIS INCREASE IN BOUNDARY LAYER MOISTURE
COMBINED WITH MID LEVEL DRYING/STEEPENING LAPSE RATES AND DIURNAL
HEATING ARE EXPECTED TO YIELD MLCAPES OF AT LEAST 1500 J/KG. STRONG
TROPOSPHERIC WINDS…INCLUDING LOW/MID LEVEL JETS AT 50-60 KT AND A
HIGH LEVEL JET AT 100 K…WITH STRONGLY VEERING PROFILES IN THE
LOWER 3 TO 6KM WILL BE VERY SUPPORTIVE OF SUPERCELLS. LARGE HAIL
WILL BE THE MAIN THREAT…THOUGH STRONGLY CURVED HODOGRAPHS AND
EFFECTIVE INFLOW LAYER SRH AROUND 300 M2/S2 WOULD ALSO FAVOR
TORNADOES…SOME POSSIBLE STRONG…ESPECIALLY ACROSS THE MODERATE
RISK AREA. AS THE SUPPER SYSTEM LIFTS NEWD INTO WI DURING THE
EVENING…THE WINDS ALOFT SHOULD BECOME MORE UNIDIRECTIONAL AND
SUPPORT THE DEVELOPMENT OF A LINEAR SYSTEM…WITH WIND DAMAGE
BECOMING MORE LIKELY AS THE STORMS MOVE EWD INTO ERN WI/WRN MI.   In English, I’m going storm chasing.

Yesterday sucked

Today was a little bumpy

But tonight was nice.

Relaxing in Florida where the temp is just nice. Going scuba diving for the next few days and will be shooting some bad ass underwater video with Brian.

YES, I just walked out to shoot the palm tree photo while wearing shorts and bare foot. To the storm chasers reading this stuck in the snow, sucks to be you eh? I will shed a tear… Nope, that will be just me clearing the water out of my scuba mask in 9 hours while I’m playing with the manatees.

Ok a lot of people in storm chasing have been bitching about SDS or Storm Deprivation Syndrome… Sorry, I don’t have SDS, and far from it. Winter is a time to work on other projects and get stuff in order for the next chase season so you don’t go crazy waiting for the next storm. I have just spent several hundred hours editing video, researching video, researching storm data, researching radar data and working my ass off doing voice overs that after 1500 takes, my voice sounds like shit.
But yet, I still hear people saying look at the GFS, look at the stupid GFS computer model next week.
EXCUSE ME, your trying for forecast a tornado forecast 10 days out when people can’t even get the stupid global warming forecast down after record breaking snow fall and cold in the nation this month, give me a break.
BUT THE GFS… GUESS FORECAST SETUP is what GFS stands for in my forecasting bag of tricks. Unless the storm is 24-48 hours out, it is a crap shoot at best.Because if I could predict the future, I sure as hell would not be scraping by trying to work this gig and would be picking stocks and bonds for a living making real money.BUT THE GFS, AND I WANT TO CHASE…Get freaking real people, it is still the middle of winter.The sun set is still barely after 6:00 at night.The storms hit down south in the area that is mostly swamps and areas that suck for chasing.
This time of year the storms hit mostly during the overnight hours anyway and they are always racing off at light speed.
It is NOT April, it is not even March and at best your not going to see shit.But go ahead, chase, what the hell do I know. I honestly hope this season is as bad as 2005 and 2006 just to weed out more of the fly by night chasers.
Oh and SDS vs SDDS. SDDS, Scuba Dive Deprivation Syndrome, yes I have it.The cure for SDS is review all the chase video you shot last year and the year before and see what you did wrong. After watching hours and hours of video you will say ewwww, I can go without until the real storms show up.

Playing with the manatees

Just playing with the manatees and I hear there is another winter storm on the way back home…

Now that the little detail items such as graphics and images are wrapped up and the script is laid down in a rough draft, the new project is rolling along fast.

I can’t wait to get this thing knocked out and done because when it is done, I just got my passport and I’m thinking Scuba Dive Mexico or Central America so my ass can relax where nobody can find me for a few weeks.

I just wanted to take this moment to say Script Writing Sucks, but it is still kind of fun. Working on the new project and just reviewing stuff for the script and having to watch and re watch and re review stuff is just annoying.

Not that the end result wont kick ass, it is all the little details to get into place to make it kick ass that kicks your ass. It’s a learning experience.

I did go grocery shopping tonight and paid in cash for everything and found a nice surprise from the cash register. $.50 off per gallon of fuel at Holiday Fuel. That’s $5.00 off the next fill up. That would be like $1.30 per gallon of gas!!!

Well back to watching a ton of more footage.