Category: Uncategorized

7/31/2006 4:00 AM – Today I got in 63 Minutes of bottom time diving with Dave. I brought the Shrimp with again and all the fish went insane. We must have had a thousand around us at one point. I found that if I take the tails off and then mash the meat up a little, they really go insane because even the little ones can get in on the scraps. One thing is for sure, the fish are no longer afraid of scuba divers. After the shrimp was gone they kept following us around. We did find the underwater dive platform in the lake so it was a good dive and the best part was that I did not even need to wear a wet suit. Just swimming trunks and a t-shirt along with the gear. The best part was that I really got some good bottom time in while feeding the fish. I found that I was not using my BCD when I should have to keep me at 12 feet and I was kicking a lot to hover which used up a lot of air. Next time I am going to just work on my BCD usage and learn to hover more. One thing was certain, after I got done I was worn out with breathing on the tank for an hour. I went home and fell asleep for 8 hours. But I have an early start to the day to finish up the latest project.

7/27/2006 10:30 PM – Today was another busy day. I was working on getting thing’s in order for the TV show pilot and then I went diving. I brought my camera with to practice working underwater. I also brought some freezer burned shrimp I had at home with to feed the fish. Oh wow, they went nuts. I must have had a thousand fish around me at one point in the lake. They were even coming up and eating out of my hand. It was fun.

Here are a couple of screen video caps.

Up close and personal saying FEED ME.

7/26/2006 11:30 PM – I went diving today at a new place that is actually right by home. The dive shop had a fun dive get together at Lac Lavon lake in Burnsville. The visibility was great and the fish were very friendly. I am planning to go back there soon with the video camera and film the fish as there were hundreds of them all around us. Here is my dive profile from the dive computer from tonight.

7/25/2006 3:00 AM – Yeah, I tried getting on a normal schedule but as fate would have it, no dice tonight… I was running out to drop off some videos to blockbuster when I saw a lightning storm to my south by maybe 10 miles. I had my camera gear with and laptop so I said hmmm, lets check it out. I got down just south of Farmington and the lightning was lame and I checked SwiftWX Radar and I saw a storm right by my home and thought I messed up so I went home. On my way home, I saw smoke and I saw fire. I got on a massive pole barn fire that was a four alarm fire in Lakeville, MN.

The fire was started by the lightning from all the reports I was hearing and the lightning was pretty intense in that area for a few minutes. And the owners said it was a machine shed where they stored hay and equipment. There was no power hooked up so everyone is thinking it was the storm. And there was no animals in the barn but the barn was 100 feet by 200 feet so it was huge. Now it is time to get some sleep after I take a shower and wash off all the smoke smell.

Here is the lightning footage that I shot before the fire.

7/24/2006 4:30 PM – Sweet, with gas at $3.10 a gallon, I got really lucky as the storms are coming to me today and I can just work from home. I shot this photo about 45 minutes ago from my living room deck. I love storm chasing on foot!!! That cell fired up and burned out over Minneapolis but it was fun to watch it go up and I got some bad ass time lapse footage of it. Click on the image below to see the full size image.

7/24/2006 6:00 AM – After getting 12 hour’s of sleep, I am back on a normal sleep schedule for now but I know that will not last long… Looking at the NHC forecasts and the computer models, there is still something brewing down in the Gulf Of Mexico that may hit Texas and there is still Hurricane Daniel and Tropical Storm Emilia. Hurricane Daniel looks like it may head towards Hawaii but as a tropical storm. I might go if it looks like it will come in as a Hurricane or strong tropical storm. Right now it looks to be slowing down some in it’s forward track so it is just a waiting game. Tropical storm Emilia is just going to be off the Baja coast and not going to be making landfall anywhere so I’m not planning on that chase. I know the the hurricane hype from last year has everyone in the media going nuts but I had a talk with an old friend that retired out of the media business and he always clears the confusion. He said, just wait because it is still early in the season. Ok, time to get some coffee and make breakfast and do my forecasting for the day. It may be a chase day but right now it looks to be in Wisconsin. Hill’s And Tree’s… Or as I like to call it, stay home and play video games because you can see the forest for the tree’s but you can’t see through the forest. Oh yeah, look’s like I picked a good time to sleep for 12 hour’s because SEC is reporting that the CME that blew off the sun last week never hit earth so there were no auroras last night.

7/21/2006 Working on the site today and I did get a lot of coding stuff done. I should have some more catalogs done. I In other news, Spaceweather.com is reporting a possible aurora chase in tomorrow. Look’s like a CME was hurled off the sun the other day and may be heading for earth. If the sky is clear, I may head up north to try and view it but the smoke from all the wild fires may be too much for it.

7/20/2006 Recovering after a long day of storm chasing yesterday.

7/19/2006 Having this mobile hard drive with me to edit and update the site in the field is sweet. Right now I am driving home from a great night of storm chasing. The day sucked since the cap held and even with the tornado watch in Iowa, it was a total bust.

As I was driving home the storms fired. Oh boy did they fire up. I have a ton of lightning footage to look through and even got some video style I have been wanting for years and finally got it using my .05 fish eye lens. The .05 is for the underwater housing and when used out of the water it really distorts the image since it is so wide. Well, I did not care for this since I pointed the camera to the sky and got the crawlers. 

Also ended up almost getting cooked a couple times when the storms first started out since the lightning was so intense. Here is one of the images from tonight. I have a bunch of images to go through from tonight. If I recall correctly, this is the first time I have shot lightning with my Nikon D70s. Man has this years storm season sucked!!!

Here is the video from this chase

7/19/2006 4am (still damn early) Ok, just been up all night long working on the web site. Now that I got the damn images in order, I can actually get some work done on it. I got some more catalogs up.

About to get some sleep before today’s chase but I looked at the latest NHC forecast on Tropical Storm Beryl. This thing is going to be a fish storm!!! Fish storm as in it will only annoy the fish and not be that big of an impact on the north east coast line. The storm is not forecasted to become a hurricane and it is not forecasted to make land until New Foundland. It will be a big news in the media on a slow news week but that is about it. I also just looked at the latest GFDL forecast and it has the storm being a non storm as it get’s sucked up by the front pushing into the east coast today and tomorrow.

7/19/2006 Very Early Morning (2am).  Just woke up and saw that Tropical Storm Beryl is not doing much and looks to be moving off shore more then it will be much of a factor to the east coast. But it could change and I could be wrong. Right now NHC does not even show the track making landfall. Now the big story for today is the severe storms. Today there is a mod risk for much of southern Minnesota. I will be out storm chasing today. Could be a chance of seeing a tornado today so right now, Tropical Storm Beryl is really a non factor for me today but that could change.

7/16/2006 Did not even leave the house today to go shoot some lightning video.  I shot this footage from the deck as a small storm put on a light show.

7/5/2006 Working from home today and shot a pretty cool time lapse sunset video from the deck.  The footage speed is 4000 times faster then normal to show the setting sun and the twilight after the sunset.

7/3/2006 I’m back in Minneapolis now. Ah, home sweet home and I did not get bent on this trip. After looking at my dive log I was a little freaked out about flying home today but the flight was 25 hours from my last dive. The area of the wreck were I was diving was 110 feet max but Brian brought me over to a part of the wreck where I got down to 114 feet and the dive computer freaked out on me. I went past my 110 foot dive limit and we got caught in a bait ball on the way up so the ascent rate started to get out of control until I dumped the BC.

The bait ball is a large group of fish swimming around like a tornado in the water with a large Jew Fish in the middle using the small fish as bait to eat the larger fish that try to eat the smaller fish. The small fish swarm around the Jew Fish for safety but they saw Brian and I must have thought we were Jew Fish and blinded us by swimming around us. The Jew Fish in the bait ball looked at us and was like hey what are you doing in my bait ball.

I’m home now and my dive computer said I was good to go. Now I am actually planning my next trip to go back diving and shooting video after the next hurricane. I want to see what the effect of a hurricane would be on the dive sites.  Below is a screen cap from my dive computer showing the depth of the last time on the wreck.

7/2/2006 I’m back on dry land. Wow what a great vacation. It was only about a decade over due!!! No cell phone, no internet, nothing but relaxing and scuba diving. Back at the hotel in Fort Myers relaxing for the night to decompress after diving the Baja California ship wreck at 110 feet under water. Below is a vid cap of some of the footage I shot. Brian shot a lot of great stuff while I was still trying to get familiar with the under water video equipment.

The underwater video housing for my PD-170 is freaking like trying to move a 55 gallon drum under water. The best part of the trip was that we found some bottles and glass dishes to take home from the Baja wreck that was sunk in WWII by a German U Boat. I’ll upload video when I get a chance but now I just want to rest.

Oh yeah, this is going to be a brutal hurricane season. The average temp around the Dry Tortugas at 85 feet under water was 85F. The crew said that the normal temps for that depth where we were diving should have been in the lower 70s that deep. The photo below shows at 84 feet it was 85 degrees.

6/29/2006 Back in Florida today, again. Not for any hurricanes but for a underwater scuba video project for the upcoming TV project. Brian is going to help out with some of the camera work for this but I’ll be out diving the wrecks and stuff with him on the Ultimate Getaway out of Fort Myers. We have a 12 hour boat ride to get started on and I’ll finally have some time to get back to working on the web page with NO Cell Phone, Email, or anything else to interrupt me while I’m working. Wow, that will be a vacation.

6/28/2006 I got the call I have been waiting on for the last week. I got the go ahead to start production on my own Weather Paparazzi Television project. I can’t say much about it now but it is set to start production ASAP!!! Kind of a Discovery Channel Survivor Man meets Storm Chasing / Storm Stories on TWC meets Jack Ass… If I’m producing the video, it’s going to be hella cool!!! This is going to be pretty cool because I get to write, direct, shoot and produce it.

6/27/2006 Shot some time lapse footage today of the setting today.

6/26/2006 Edited the rain foot video from the other day.

6/25/2006 Where have I been? Well been busy working on the site, the new video biz that I will talk about later, storm chasing the local storms and scuba diving. I got several new dives in last week and I got the official permission from the City of Minneapolis Park Board to scuba dive without a permit. Last week a Minneapolis Motorcycle cop came up to me and told me I was breaking the law by Scuba Diving without a permit. Turn’s out there is no such permit and he was an idiot. I also talked to the Park Police who said that Minneapolis Police don’t have jurisdiction on the water. It is DNR, County Water Patrol and Park Police for stuff in the water. Today we went diving in Calhoun and the vis sucked. We dove too late in the day so everything was green but we still got in two dives. Here are some vid caps from 6/24/06 dives.

After I went diving I then went storm chasing. I got into some big hail near Elko and south of Cannon Falls MN.

6/23/2006 Went storm chasing today in SW Minnesota. I saw a sweet rain foot and some cool storms

6/16/2006 Back home and back into a great storm. Today I got some jumping man hole covers.

6/15/2006 Early this morning I left Tallahassee Florida for Atlanta to fly home. On the way to the airport I stopped by The Weather Channel to say hi to all the people who I get to talk to all the time on the phone but don’t get to see since my I live in Minneapolis. It was cool to see how they redid all the studio’s and added the new studio for Weekend View. Now I’m back home in the Twin Cities reviewing all the footage we shot during Tropical Storm Alberto.

6/14/2006 Recovering in Tallahassee from the chase and being up for so long.  I’m posting all the info on the chase to the dedicated blog page

6/13/2006 Today the storm shifted back to the North East at the last chance and the eye went over Steinhatchee FL.

6/13/2006 In Tallahassee for Tropical Storm Alberto video, or maybe it will be Hurricane Alberto Video. I’m not sure yet. The eye of the storm is about 30 miles due south of me and is moving north.

6/10/2006 Sorry, been crazy busy working on 5 different projects at once and have not had time to update the blog but I’m still around and still alive. I am busting ass to get home to get ready for the possible hurricane chase next week. Where have I been and what have I been up to? For the past three days I have been out storm chasing.

I just needed to get out and clear my head and just do what I do best, Severe Storms Photojournalism. So why most chasers have been banging their head against the wall trying to see anything, I went out for three days and saw everything I wanted to see.

Starting on 6/7/2006, I was in South Dakota and got on some hail producers and good lightning severe storms.

6/8/2009 I got on some major flash flooding. I was following a severe storm through the foot hills of Montana and found Briscoe Creek. Briscoe Creek which is part of the Tongue River is normally a little to nothing creek according to the locals, but today, it grew to 100 yards across in a massive flash flooding event. Brandenberg Montana is just north of Ashland Montana off of Highway 212 and Tongue River Road in Rosebud County. The large storms trained over the same area and created the flash flooding event that pretty much destroyed the farm next to the road. 

6/9/2006 I had a near perfect chase day. Started the chase off in Sheridan WY and watched some storms along the mountains then went over to Devils Tower to kill some time while I waited for the storms.

Then when I was ready to chase, I looked at the data on the laptop an saw that the storms were kicking up to my southwest. Knowing that the road network out there kind of blows for having lots of chase options, I was actually in pretty good position for this storm.

This is from the east looking back south west since there was only on road to chase on.

Some of the higher winds as I got into the storm. and below is a screen shot of the radar and my position using SwiftWX weather software. You can see I was right in the thick of things for the best storm of the day.

Here is the video from this chase.

My plan for the day was that if the storms sucked, I would go see Devils Tower then go see Mt. Rushmore. Well the storms did not suck and I got to do all three. The best part of this chase was not the storms, it was the Buffalo’s. I was in Custer National Park in the Black Hills of South Dakota to just check them out since I have never been there. Most storm chasers make stupid jokes about the movie twister and “We Got Cows” Well The Weather Paparazzi won’t settle for bull crap, I got a herd of Buffalo that were spooked by the weather stampeding across highway at the park entrance.

I setup my camera in between waves of Buffalo and was able to get some insane footage of them coming right up to the video camera as I was back in the Jeep. I talked to the park ranger at the entrance to find out if that is an everyday thing and she said she has never seen that happen since she started working there.

6/5/2006 Out storm chasing in Eastern South Dakota today. Got on the tornado warned storm then it died. Did not see much. All the action looked to be back in Minneapolis for lightning. Oh well, I did get some cute photos of some puppies.

I have a lot of catching up to do here on my personal site.  It was down while we were moving servers and got pretty much kept getting shoved to the back burner while my time has been pulled away helping with Laura and work in general. 

Yes, the site and my personal time have been pretty much off line and off the grid for months.  So let’s get you caught up.  Say Hello World to Laura

Laura was born in February and Neva and I are very lucky to have this happy and healthy bundle of joy that is now four months old. I never could imagine myself as a father before this and now I can’t imagine life without Laura in it.  She has my blue eyes and Neva’s good looks 🙂

But it has not all been a happy go lucky time.  Less then a week after Laura was born, Gustav left us due to his cancer.  I can say I miss the little fur-ball every day.  He had a unique personality.

But Gustav was able to make it to meet Laura before the cancer got the best of him.

So yes it has been an insanely stressful spring with the lack of sleep from the joys of being a new dad at the age of 45, losing Gustav and trying to run everything during one of the more intense spring seasons in years.  It’s had some ups and downs.  Now after taking some time away from focusing on StormChasingVideo.com earlier this spring to focus on the family.  Now I have everything settled and finally getting a few hours of sleep a day now that Laura is finally sleeping through the night and I have been able to double up my focus on StormChasingVideo.com and we have had a ton of exciting changes, upgrades and new partnerships. 

Right now is pretty much one of the more exciting time’s for me. 

5/29/2006 Was out on a local chase today and got in a hail storm in Goodhue County, MN.

5/29/2006 This morning I was out shooting video for TWC’s morning show. 

5/28/2006 Still working on the site and still Scuba Diving. Actually I have been getting in a lot of dives. I have more dives in the month of May then I have storm chases. This years chase season has really sucked but it is ok because I have a lot of other projects and the diving. It was pretty fun today and I got 2 dives in at Calhoun. The last dive I made it down to 44 Feet and the water temp was 46F. That was freaking cold considering that the air temp was 96F with record high temps in the Twin Cities today. Ahhhh, no storms to chase, oh well. There are lakes to dive!

5/26/2006 Out playing Weather Channel photographer today. It’s hot in Minneapolis so it was time to hit the beach around Harriet. Working a lot on the web site updates. Lots of behind the scenes stuff on the HTML side of thing and making the ASP pages for the site.

5/25/2006 Got some sweet lightning last night at the Air Lake airport in Lakeville, MN as several Helicopters were waiting out the storm.  I was able to get some lightning flashes with the choppers on the ground and as they took off right over me.

5/17/2006 I was out shooting video for TWC today. 

5/14/2006 Back to working and getting stuff caught up and dropping bad habits. I guess it is fitting that today is a turning point in my life with leaving another bad habit as this is the anniversary of when I quit smoking. What is the other bad habit? Something else that has been stressing me out for the last few months… The good news, while waiting around in limbo, I have once again focused my energy on the web project. This week I will be finishing up site. I should have a good chunk of it done in the next coming days. Why have I not showed it off yet? Its huge and I want to release it all at the same time since I have a ton of other chasers copying everything I do. How can I say that? Simple, when my agents at Conus get phone calls from my competition asking how they can get on board with them, people are copying me, trying to duplicate what I do, how I do business and even the style of shots. So I have to keep the competition guessing but when the new site is released, it is going to make everyone say WTF, it’s huge!

5/12/2006 Out shooting rain video for The Weather Channel again today.

5/11/2006 Did some time lapse video yesterday. 

5/10/2006 Out shooting video for The Weather Channel today.

5/9/2006 Today we are suppose to get some more storms but I’m going to be working on code for the new site and taking care of a lot of stuff that is sitting on my desk to get done.

5/8/2006 Ok, spent the day editing and updating stuff while watching the weather. There were some pop up severe thunderstorms around Minneapolis but it was too hard to chase in and see anything worth shooting so I took a break and shot some stock footage. I did get all of the New Orleans aftermath photographs on line. All of the photographs are on the Hurricane Katrina Blog page. Click on the Nine Months Later link on that site.

5/7/2006 Back in Minneapolis.

5/6/2006 I went back out to the 9th Ward of New Orleans and Arabia area to document the devastation. I’m sorry but the east side of New Orleans is done. Nothing has changed since the storm. I will put the photos up when I get back to Minneapolis.

5/5/2006 Oh my god, the 9th Ward is gone. It is trashed. Gone. Houses in the road, houses on top of cars, houses on top of houses. It is all but dead with a few squatters living in some of the houses but it is dead. Here are some of the photos I took today. The photographs and new video are only one tenth of one percent of what is here to photograph of the aftermath. Damage is everywhere still and debris is just laying in the street. Some people have take the duty of stepping up to the plate and fixing stuff but a lot of it looks just as it did a month after Katrina I did go back to reshoot the Hellp Photo and shoot a lot of additional footage. All of the photos are now on my Hurricane Katrina Blog page. Go there to see all the aftermath photographs.

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5/4/2006 Yeah I know, it has been a while since I updated the blog but only because I have been busy. I’m in New Orleans, LA to do a bunch of Interviews and DVD promo stuff. I was out this afternoon shooting video for The Weather Channel on Canal Street and in the Quarter and this place still looks thrashed. Tomorrow I will be out shooting video in the 9th Ward.

4/29/06 I finished the uploading of all the video to the new server for the on line video catalog. Almost 400 videos going on line soon. Lots of work yet to be done but there going live in the next few weeks.

4/28/06 Out shooting video for The Weather Channel.

4/27/06 Out shooting video for The Weather Channel.

4/22/06 Working on the coding and I got the new toy today. I got my new PD-170 Underwater Camera setup. This thing is so cool but when it is fully loaded it weights over 40 Pounds. I guess it won’t blow around in the hurricanes. Now I’m just like a little kid the week before Christmas because I want to go scuba diving in the lakes but their still too cold for anyone that would want to go with me.

4/21/06 Today I’m working on the coding for the new site. Only a few more gigs left to sort out. I want to have everything working by next Thursday night / Friday morning.

4/20/06 Today I was out playing weather channel photographer again. The slow moving low that dumped over 6 feet of snow in parts of South Dakota is moving over the Minneapolis area and is popping up some showers and cold air funnels.

4/19/2006 Took a break this afternoon to play in the scuba diving pool up at Going Under dive shop. Just needed a break from all the work and when I get to go diving, I get away from the cell phone. It was pretty cool to float upside down and just relax in the pool.

4/18/06 While I thought it was going to be a nice day off and it was until 5pm. I was out walking around Lake Nokomis while the computers at home were on auto pilot. I noticed some towers going up off in the distance and turned off the music on my Pocket PC and looked at the radar. Wow, we got storms and we were not suppose to have any today. A little faster walk back to my Jeep and I was back out storm chasing. The storms were not that great but it was still cool to go out and see something very close to home with the gas prices so damn high.

4/16/2006 Happy Easter. Today was pretty mellow. I did start the review on the last of the video catalog from the footage over the winter. I am totally caught up again with all the tapes. I think I wore out my DV Cam Deck with all the tapes I have been reviewing. I did start the walks up that I have been planning to do. Minneapolis is the City of Lakes and now that the weather is nice out all the time, I’m spending more and more time at the lakes to walk around the lakes and just relax. Now if they can just warm up so I can go scuba diving!

4/15/2006 I skipped storm chasing this weekend to stay home and have a normal weekend off. The computers are still running on auto pilot to get ready for the new site. Man, this is just going to be huge.

4/13/2006 While the computers at home were working on autopilot feeding stuff up to my server, I took off to go chasing in Iowa. I got on the storms south east of Waterloo Iowa and got on the southern most cells in the better dew points. The storms really got going at sunset and produced a very large tornado in Iowa City, Iowa. While talking to the news desk, they told me that someone died in this storm. 2006 is off to a very tragic tornado season and it is not even the month of May. Here are some vid caps of the dash camera footage of the Iowa City, Iowa tornado video.

4/12/2006 Busy getting videos ready for the new site. It is all hurry up then wait.

4/10/2006 Out playing weather channel photographer today for the morning show. Wow, we went from winter to summer in Minneapolis in a couple of weeks. This afternoon it was 80F at my home on the south side of town.

4/8/2006 I was at Conus yesterday talking to my agent Chris and he has been sick with the Flu. Well, guess who started coming down with it… Taking the weekend off to rest to fight off the funk.

4/6/2006 Ok still alive. I have been very busy for the last two weeks. Between shooting video for The Weather Channel, storm chasing, and finishing up all the video’s for the site, it has been insane.

Today I was in Kansas and caught the Washington County – Hanover Kansas Tornado. The video is all over the cable news networks tonight and should be all over them tomorrow as well.

After I get some sleep, I will post the video. Just got home and just chased for 24 hours from Minneapolis to Kansas and back to Minneapolis, I need some sleep.

4/2/2006 – Out shooting for TWC this morning.

3/27/2006 Up early this morning shooting for TWC and the weather is pretty nice out.  The snow is almost gone here in Minneapolis, MN and I can’t wait to test out the new scuba gear.

3/26/2006 Out shooting for TWC today.  Been working on web stuff but back out in the mix today.  Today is nice and warm out so it’s nice to get out in the warm weather after a long winter.

3/17/2006 Yesterday was a winter storm, today it was pretty nice out. I was back out shooting for The Weather Channel again today.

Also while reviewing yesterdays video, I got some great footage of near mishap at the Minneapolis International Airport. A Northwest Airlines flight was trying to take off as an American Airlines flight was trying to land. Nothing serious happened but I got footage of the United Airlines flight having to do a go around. It is not every day you get to see a 757 at about 200 feet having to go full throttle and go around in the middle of a major snow storm.

3/16/2006 Today was another major snow event in the Twin Cities. I was out playing Weather Channel Photographer again today, even though I have been sick for a couple days. Not sure if it is a cold or allergies. But I got in a couple video packages for them of the people in the snow and people stuck in the ditch.

Today was a very busy day. I was out shooting for The Weather Channel this morning and this afternoon. We got hit with over a foot of snow at my place in Burnsville and the average area snowfall was about a foot, some more, some less.