Category: Uncategorized

dd

I was taking it easy, kicking back at home, watching the last of the season 5 dvds of the show 24 and got bored out of my skull. I turned on the scanner and found out that there was a major crash down the street from me.
When there is no weather to chase, you can always chase the police cleaning up stuff.

The national weather service has just issued the following
.SPOTTER INFORMATION STATEMENT…

SPOTTER ACTIVATION WILL NOT BE NEEDED. ANY SNOWFALL ACCUMULATIONS OR REPORTS OF SLEET WOULD BE APPRECIATED TONIGHT IN AREAS ALONG AND NORTH OF HIGHWAY 10 IN WESTERN AND CENTRAL WISCONSIN.

RAINFALL OBSERVERS ARE ASKED TO PROVIDE REPORTS THIS WEEKEND WITH THE EXPECTED RAIN. RAIN GAUGES MAY NEED TO BE DEPLOYED OUTSIDE AGAIN IF PREVIOUSLY BROUGHT IN FOR THE SEASON.

Nothing is going to happen, it is normal boring winter weather but I will bet you that all of the local media will have TEAM, FULL, EXPANDED, AREA WIDE, ANAL coverage of the traffic delays due to wet roads.

Here is a hint about the traffic delays. THEY BUILT A LITE RAIL TRAIN WITH MONEY THAT SHOULD HAVE GONE TO ROADS AND NOW THERE IS TWICE AS MANY PEOPLE LIVING IN THE METRO ON THE SAME ROADS AS 20 YEARS AGO!!!
Why I love working from home, my traffic jam, there is a stalled turkey sandwich in the kitchen, and a overturned dish in the sink… Watch out for the office, there is a backlog of work on the desk and 3 computers lined up waiting in the traffic jam.

Just channel surfing the evening news and oh my god, you would think a hurricane hit the Twin Cities Metro area. We had some rain and at best an inch of snow. The cities are not calling for a snow emergency, the airport is wide open, the roads are not that bad, the traffic messed up because we have a shit load of people here that did not grow up here and don’t know how to drive in snow, so what is the problem?

The problem is that there has not been any extreme weather in the last two months here and now everyone is freaking out because the snow plow drivers are sucking up any and all overtime money they can get. The weather geeks at all the stations are freaking because they have something to talk about.The snow fall is not a MAJOR STORM. I REPEAT, NOT A STORM, Denver had a storm.This is like calling the rain shower a hurricane!

I still have to review the hurricane photos but that is only for the best of section of the site but other then a few touch up jobs on some photos, the photo section edit that I have been working on for the last 3 months is Finished. Now I just have to create the script for the virtual pages and then it is on line for all the images.

How many images? Over 670 images are going online right now. I’m going to get some sleep now while they upload but by 9AM Central Time, they should all be up.
It will soon be hidden once the script files are created but until then, check them out the old fashion way!!!

Oh yeah, here is the last merge image I worked on. So now, funk it, I’m going to bed!!!

The photo editing project is coming to an end. I only have a few more things to do but for the most part, it is done!!! What is left? The photo merge directory where I have to stitch images together such as this one. This is from Feb. 2006 near Climax Mountain in Summit County Colorado.

While going through more of the images today, I got to the hurricane directory and almost done with all the images. These are from Hurricane Rita as I past through Huntsville TX.  

These are the huge gas lines at the one gas station that was open and everyone was in a state of panic to get the fuel they had.

I’m almost done with all the image editing. Here is one that I worked on this morning. I just can’t wait until I get all the images edited so I can finish the website.

Last night the aurora chase was a total bust. Clouds messed it up pretty bad and I ended up wasting my time. Tomorrow looks to be cloudy as well but I might be able to get out and see the auroras if they happen again. It will be a road trip if it happens.

Today I have been working from home and just got a call from another production company wanting to do a Katrina docu. This one sounds like it might be good but its another non profit one that wants stuff dirt cheap. Sorry folks, screen credits don’t pay the bills.

Just looked at the GFS, and there is nothing coming in the next 2 weeks for rain or snow to the Minnesota area. GFS forecast Precip The temp forecast is also pretty warm for this time of year. GFS Temp forecast So it looks like more of the same but it gives me time to finish up the website. I have almost all the photos edited.

Here is another lost image. This is May 4th, 2003 – Kansas Turnpike Tornado Photo.
I shot this with a throw away camera so the negs had some major scratches in them. But the image when cleaned up looks pretty sweet. That treeline is only 100 yards away from at best. Part of the problem with the photo is that I’m pretty much IN the debris field at this time and it was shot with a POS camera. It took the better part of last night and this morning to clean this up because I scanned it in at 12,000 dpi to get at the defects and the 12,000 dpi scan is over 1 gig in size. With the file being that huge, it takes a while for the computer to catch up to what I want it to do.