Chasing Hans

3/10/2010 Chase

2010-03-10T18:21:00.002-06:00

Steve and I headed out today around noon even though everything looked worse as the day went on. After heading up to Bartlesville, meeting up with Aaron, and waiting around for a while, we headed West to the storm by Perry and got some good shots/footage of a shelf cloud as it passed by. It was definitely cold core as we nearly froze our asses off when it passed by. The wind picked up and it dropped nearly 20 degrees down to 42 F. After it passed, we headed West again and saw the ground and houses covered with pea to dime size hail. On the way back to OKC Steve and I stopped just North of Stillwater as a smaller cell passed over. Some more cold wind and small hail later and we were on our way again. Overall not a bad day for a first outing.

Emerging from hibernation

2010-03-10T00:17:00.002-06:00

Today likely will mark my first chase of the season. I'm kicking myself for not getting out on Monday, as I missed a great photogenic tornado close to home. Aside from recovering from the stomach flu, there was no good reason I shouldn't have been. We'll be heading for NE OK to SE KS, I pick Miami specifically, though the models keep moving the action to the East as time passes. I'll be keeping an eye on the low moving through tomorrow and although I'm not as excited as I was yesterday evening, I still feel there is a good chance of some descent storms later today. I just keep telling myself the models, especially the composite products, don't do as well with these early season cold systems. More in the morning.

Texas bound

2009-05-05T15:17:00.000-05:00

Here's steve checking data as we near the OK Texas border. Watch us live at www.chasertv.com

Chase Day Today

2009-04-25T00:32:00.003-05:00

Yeah... Don't you hate when work gets in the way. All the best laid plans fell by the wayside due to a heavy workload. Life goes on.
Tomorrow looks like the first classic setup of the season. I'll be heading out with Steve Miller and Aaron Tuttle - should be a fun time. I still think NAM has the front a little farther south than it will end up. Head too far south and the lower level helicity won't be as good, nor will LCLs. My target for tomorrow - Vici, OK. Best time frame - 7 pm to dark. After dark will still be favorable, but storms will likely be HP, so no fun to chase. We will probably head west on I-40 around 1 pm or so. Sorry for the poor torn graphic... It's late and I'm using a touchpad. :)

Another note, I have been on 4 chases so far this year, my apologies for not posting chase accounts. I'll reiterate them in the coming week.

Content Hijacking

2009-01-30T22:08:00.002-06:00

For the next month or two I will be posting about rebuilding my 98 Eclipse GST, with some standard content sprinkled in. I had a rod bearing spin back in 2005 and parked it. I decided late last year it was time to fix it and sell it, so I put a new rod bearing in and crossed my fingers. No luck, as with most spun bearings, it did it again, which means replacing the rod and machining the crank. I figure if I'm going to pull the engine, I might as well do it right and go for a complete rebuild. Now I figure if I'm going to do that, I might as well keep it and put a few mods in along the way. My current debate is whether to go with a 6 bolt block (used, a bit stronger) or stick with my 7 bolt. The 7 bolt is good up to 350 HP, so I'm inclined to stick with it, at least for now. Much more to come.

Second Topic: ChaserTV.com This is a project I'm excited to see come out this year. The features are the best I've seen yet, and this looks to be much less of a hassle than what we played with last year for streaming video. For anyone interested, go to ChaserTV.com and read for more info. They're even talking about a test tomorrow in prep for their launch.

Third topic: I'm really ready for the trip to Denver for the National Storm Chaser Convention. It's like a hit for a junkie to tide me over till Spring.

Mental Break

2009-01-09T10:18:00.003-06:00

Long time, no blog... The end to the trip to Cali was a pain in the ass, and I will not be flying United again unless I absolutely have to. The gallery is having some technical issues I haven't had time to work out yet (catching up on Linux, and getting Imagemagick to work properly), but will be finished soon. Speaking of technical notes, I've played with phpBB 3.0 this week and love the new features. I installed it for the work intranet, and the ldap (active directory) integration works nicely.
Upcoming events; looking forward to the trip to the National Storm Chaser Convention in Denver. I've made more attempts to social network this year, and am getting excited to put more faces to names in addition to the technical aspects of the convention.
Miller's Redneck New Years celebration was a blast, literally, as it always is. Apparently I continue to boggle minds with the speed at which I can process alcohol. I will say that the party is a lot more fun when you're only buzzed.
I'm also determined to get back in shape. I hit 195, and 200 is my freak out limit. So I've started working out every morning, alternating jogging and weight training. With my and Becky's busy schedules the only time to go is in the morning before work, which means I've also committed to going to bed at a decent time (10 or 11).
Yeah, I'm sure everyone wanted to know all that, but I'm just getting caught up - so deal.

Chase Day

2008-12-09T14:20:00.004-06:00

It figures it's a decent chase day and I'm stuck clear across the country in Cali. Who am I kidding, I probably wouldn't be chasing today, especially since we are without a chase vehicle (see here). Who likes chasing that far East anyway? Congrats Steve on the new truck, looks very nice! Not sure if I'm sorry I missed the first nasty weather for OK and am here in the 70s / sunny weather. I kind of enjoy nasty weather. There wasn't much else to post about yesterday, other than the casualty count grew to 3. Sorry if this post seems choppy, but lunch is almost over and I'm back to training.

Interesting Day

2008-12-08T18:30:00.003-06:00

I will blog later this evening about most of the day, but here's some breaking news: a FA-18 fighter plane crashed in a neighborhood less than a mile South of our hotel. It happened while we were at training a couple miles North, but I snapped a few pics on the way home. The pic above isn't much, but you can see the work lights just to the right of the center of the pic. Authorities of course had the neighborhood closed off. The fighter was trying to land at Miramar air force base, and crashed in a residential community just to the West of the base. Scary stuff. So far, there are 2 civilian casualties, with 2 more still missing. It destroyed two houses. The pilot ejected prior to the crash, and is fine.

San Diego and Gallery

2008-12-08T00:24:00.003-06:00

Enjoyed the trip to Co Springs last week, got home just fine. I got plenty of pics on the way home, including The Garden of the Gods, as well as the southern Rockies and a volcano in New Mexico (took the south route home).
I should have pics online before too long. I just got a server up and running at home to handle my new galleries: gallery.chasinghans.com and gallery.schroeder5.com (not up yet). Shouldn't be too long (this week hopefully) before both are fully operational and have some pics up. BTW, some apps can be a PITA when getting a Linux server up and going (been a while since I've had to deal with source code).
This week I am in San Diego for some training for work. Scott (fellow Net guy) and I arrived this eve. It was an interesting trip over. We nearly missed our OKC departing flight, as we showed up 5 mins after they were supposed to start boarding. They had closed the doors and "un-checked" us. We got on ok, but had to re-check in at Denver. Luckily it didn't affect our luggage, as it was waiting for us in S.D. Also, lucky for us, we got new seats in Denver for the 2nd flight, as the flight was nearly full. Once in San Diego, we used Priceline to grab a Sebring for $20/day, not bad, since the cheapest we found on the rental sites was $40/day. Embassy Suites Hotel San Diego-La Jolla‎ has been great so far, aside from the $17/day parking and $25/3 days internet access. It's a very nice hotel though, across the street from the UTC-Westfield Shoppingtown‎ mall.

Here's home for the next week:

Colorado Springs and Black Friday

2008-11-28T09:41:00.002-06:00

Up in Colorado Springs, arrived Wed eve, no snow on the ground, and as you can see Pike Peak was even mostly clear. On Thanksgiving, we had a few flurries, and last night we got enough to cover the ground and roads with a couple inches. The girls are happy! It made getting out for the black Friday deals fun though. Surprisingly Wal-Mart was packed; no parking spaces. Once I got in there was two 50 people lines for the electronics dept. Good thing my brother Dirk, who was shopping online at his house, found the same deal (items intentionally left out) online with free shipping at Circuit City. So I headed over to Office Depot to grab the other items I was looking for (2 4GB CF cards and a 16GB mem stick), but they were sold out. I then decided to head to one of the other Office Depots in Colorado Springs, and, luckily, they had mislabeled the prices, so I got everything I needed! Yay! More pics later hopefully - heading to the Garden of the Gods.

Tornados On The Tube

2008-11-20T23:56:00.003-06:00

Tonight I watched the latest installment of Discovery's Storm Chasers. I think it's a great series that shows a realistic viewpoint of the frustration chasers face most seasons. That being said, this episode went a little overboard with the drama. At one point the narrator states Reed is getting pelted by 100 mph winds while filming outside his vehicle. There were quite a few other times during this episode I found myself chuckling at comments made. Don't get me wrong, I've said a few stupid things while the camera is rolling, and I don't fault any of what the chasers said while out there, but what the narrator says after editing / production is another story. Reed and team do show how to get it done though!
Another thing that caught my attention... Seriously, the DOW team has no one technical enough to troubleshoot a faulty monitor cable out in the field??? I realize I'm a computer geek, but com'on. With all the people that travel with them, surely one should be a tech, especially given the technical difficulties they seem to run into. If I didn't want to catch more tornadoes I'd offer to tag along... ;)
On another note, My Name Is Earl had a tornado theme tonight too... That was only good for some great laughs.

11/5/2008 Chase

2008-11-07T21:23:00.002-06:00

Things shaped up nicely for a chase on Wednesday. Steve Miller OK and I met up with Aaron for what was to be a mud slinging good time. We started out by heading to Morrison, where we met Aaron, then headed towards I-35 and up N of Perry to catch a cell developing there. At this point it was still early, so not much rotation yet. We then decided to head down I-35 towards Guthrie to catch the monster cell headed there from El Reno. We intercepted it just N of Edmond, and followed it from there, the whole time watching cyclic wall clouds. This led to the mudding adventure through back roads S of Langston, S of HW 105. After Steve got over his white knuckles (the Dodge is rear wheel drive : ), we jetted E on 105 to catch up to it again (didn't take much - these storms we slow moving for Nov). Staying on it as it had more lowerings, up to Cushing and E on 33, it never did produce any funnels. Finally we called it in Drumright as it was past sunset.

All in all, a fun day, nice to be in the weather again. It's also good to know Steve can be forgiving when I keep saying "The road ahead should be paved", as road conditions worsen. I have video of a stern faced Steve for $30 / sec if anyone is interested. j/k :)

Nice Fall Possibility

2008-11-04T20:52:00.002-06:00

As I draw myself away from politics, I'm not so sure about tomorrow's potential for storms. It's been windy as hell here in central Oklahoma, but the moisture won't flow as far north as was previously projected. This is actually good for me, as I won't have to go far to chase tomorrow. Just for nostalgia's sake, I'm targeting my old stomping ground: Payne county.

The details

2008-10-11T23:30:00.003-05:00

OSU just screwed up all Missouri's stats during the game. Right from the start, OSU stopped Missouri from a scoring initial drive, which they have done all season, and forced them to go for the field goal. Shortly after that, OSU lead the game for a good amount of time, and Missouri had only been in that position for, I believe, 17 seconds against Illinois at the start of their year. They were in the trailing position for most of the game. Then, the Cowboys forced the Tigers to go 3 and out for the first time all season, and the Tigers only made 2 out of 9 3rd down conversions all game. Daniel, the Tiger's QB, had only had one interception all year... 3 this game. Our defense has really come out in the past 2 games, and I really don't see it being ranked anywhere near as low as it was previously, we'll see. If they can keep it up, I honestly see us having not only a good year, but a "where did they come from?" year. I'm a happy man, especially since my wife just brought home some leftover filet from Mahogany Steakhouse. Mmmmmmmm... Go Cowboys!

Elation

2008-10-11T22:40:00.003-05:00

I just finished watching the OSU v Missouri Game. One of the best games I have ever watched. The heart is pumping, I have been yelling and cheering, and the kids now bleed pure orange. A majority of the guys at work are Sooner fans, and sorry to say, they didn't fair so well today. This means the office is going to be an awkward place on Monday. I know at least 2 are going to be in a VERY foul mood, which means making sure I don't smile toooo much. ;) After today, I truly believe we can be OU at the end of the season, and, dare I say it, could there be a national championship game in our future? I think I'm getting a bit ahead of myself, but wow, it's a possibility. All I know is that some people will be eating crow for giving me crap about saying OSU was going to beat Missouri today. Truly though, I wish OU had pulled through, it would have made for a much more festive day, and me shoveling a lot more crow.

Getting caught up

2008-10-01T20:42:00.001-05:00

I fixed several links to images over the last year's worth of posts.
On a side note, I'm posting again to my philosophical / theological blog here.

Slow motion lightning video

2008-08-08T09:24:00.003-05:00

Wow, this has to be the best high speed / slow motion video I have ever seen of lightning. I originally found this on gizmodo.com, but have found it many times on youtube, and many of those trace it to many other sites that show the latest "cool" video. I'm looking to find the origin, to find who shot this video, as I would like to give them props. A few out there claim it may be fake, but it looks plenty genuine to me.

Punks

2008-07-15T15:28:00.004-05:00

Night before last my car was broken into. They managed to pry the window out just enough (no door frame) and unlock the door. They tore apart the console to rip out the $150 head unit. If anyone doesn't know, I drive a POS ford probe I bought for $250. It was great for when I used to commute and for storm chasing, as I don't care what happens to it, about the high milage, and it gets around 30 mpg. Why they thought it would have a decent stereo is beyond me. What is even more beyond me is that they missed the $2200 laptop with around $600 in accessories, the golf clubs, the $800 HD vid cam, and the $200 ODBII automobile computer scanner all lying in the back seat (granted all were in respective bags). Hell, I feel happy it turned out the way it did. If the punk(s) who did it ever read this, know you missed a treasure trove. Won't happen again though, now everything comes inside. Haha!

5/24 Chase

2008-05-25T17:47:00.005-05:00

I chased a single cell from Hennessey to Perry OK Saturday. I missed the first tornado from this cell that destroyed a large pig farm, but caught 4 more tornadoes, possibly 5, as it made it's way VERY slowly towards and past Perry. The first torn, between Hennessey and Marshal, was a small wedge white funnel against a dark background. The second, north of Marshal, was after the storm became very HP, and had bad contrast. This was the one KFOR was reporting as a mile wide. The wall cloud base was possibly a mile wide, and very low, so I could see how some might have called it that. Video I shot clearly shows a 1/4 mile wide multi-vortex violent tornado, but had poor contrast for most of the time it was visible. Finally about a few miles NW of Orlando, I caught one tornado dying out to the SW of me, while a new one formed just to my WNW. This was by far the most photogenic funnel of the day, with great contrast, and a long rope out at the end. This was my first catch with the new HD cam, and after looking at the vid, I'm ecstatic I decided to go with HD. You can see the wisps circulating around the funnel as it ropes out. I'll try to get a vid cap when I get the time, though it may be a while. Just south of Perry, there was another tornado reported, but I didn't get a visual on it. I had several great shots of the storm at this point, so it must have been embedded. Oh well. After that the storm began to fall apart, so I headed home. KOCO did buy a segment of the good footage, so gas is paid for this trip!

Storm chaser arrested

2008-05-08T15:12:00.006-05:00

Brian Barnes of Violent Skies Tours was arrested on May 6 for basically storm chasing. The official violation was obstruction of a highway or other passage way. He was parked at a rest stop, with plenty of room for other vehicles to get by.
Here are a few links to stories covering the incident:
News West 9 - has some good video of the arrest
CBS 7 - another account
ABC 33/40 - has Brian's original post to a weather list
Here is some edited commentary I posted on the same weather list I subscribe to:

An arresting officer has to have a valid reason for arresting someone, and not following his orders is not one of them. Here's a nice little wiki on false arrest:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_arrest
I don't know Texas arrest laws in detail, but some things are common in all 50 states. Miranda rights for one, if Brian was asked any questions, I wonder if Brian was read his? Also, Brian should have been told at the time of arrest why he was being arrested; the exact criminal offense. As the wiki article mentions, in the case of a misdemeanor, he should only have been detained long enough for identification and to issue a summons (ticket). If it actually took 5 hours for them to tell you what you were charged with, then this should be an easy false arrest case (imo).
(Whether the officer was) Untrained about the weather or not, unless the passengers of the van are being held against their will (they, in fact, wished to be there, or they would not be on a tour), he can't just arrest Brian because he refuses to move. He could barricade the entrance to the rest area, etc, but unless Brian was breaking the law, he can't force him to move. He could even issue him a citation to be fought in court later for a misdemeanor parking violation if he thinks he's parked wrong, but again, he can't arrest him for just not following his orders. If that were the case, police could use that to arrest anyone, anytime.
I can think of any number of ridiculous scenarios following that logic.

I would like to think I would have done the same thing had I been in Brian's shoes, but sometimes I'm too nice... Although in this situation, after seeing the video, I think I might have just done the same thing.

May 1st chase

2008-05-02T13:56:00.002-05:00

I wasn't going to chase yesterday, as I wasn't all that excited about the way things were setting up, and didn't think anything was going to go up anyway. As I was heading to my wife's dance studio in OKC to pick up our kids after work, I saw towers going up. A quick look at data and it was an easy decision to go chase.
I headed to Eastbound I-40 to try to intercept the cell that went up by Moore. The timing couldn't have been more perfect, as I intercepted it as it was just north of Tinker AFB. It had a nice lowering with decently rapid rotation and was putting down plenty of hail. During that time, I was also listening to radio rebroadcasts of a local TV met and station chaser who were going nuts about the storm. At one point they mentioned debris on the ground and then went on to assume it was a clear funnel / tornado, and called it a tornado on the ground. I was looking directly at the rotating base (yes it was rotating), but didn't even see a funnel. My guess is it was straight line RFD that managed to blow down a backyard shed, which is what they saw as debris. That's just my informed judgement. I followed the cell up to Chandler and the majority of the time it had lowerings / a wallcloud on it. As it travelled further Northeast, the cloud base got higher and higher, so when I got to Chandler, I broke off as daylight was fading.
Now onto the second part of my post. TV mets are getting worse and worse about going nuts over relatively non-dangerous situations. Don't get me wrong, they provide a great service to warn the public, as they are the most visible venue for storms. I just get irritated when I hear them screaming "Tornado on the ground!!!", when I can plainly see there isn't one, and if there was, it wouldn't do much damage to even a car, much less a house. I just wish they would tone it down a bit and present the facts as they are warranted. If I believed the radio broadcasts, every time we have a severe storm coming through the OKC metro, a strong tornado is always present... bleh. [off my rant box now] Also, some stations are worse about it than others.

Later this week

2008-04-26T10:42:00.002-05:00

Looks like the end of the week could turn into a multi-day chase, even relatively close to home. I don't set things in stone this far out, but I'll definitely keep things open. If it bleeds over into Sat, I may have a conflict, as the girls have competition, and I need to be available.
With a low coming through, plenty of moisture (although unknow exactly where it will be) coming up from the gulf, and several other factors coming together, I'm excited. Wednesday will likely depend on the cap / enough moisture, but I'm confident I'll be chasing at least 1 day later this week.

Bah...

2008-04-24T19:52:00.002-05:00

Nothing popping up around here, guess the cap is gonna hold. Looks like a few cells went up at the KS/NE/CO junction, with several having TVS's. Good luck to all who are up that way.

Looking better

2008-04-24T16:48:00.002-05:00

Looks like my forecast / target isn't too far off. SPC has a MD out for a bow N/S from Canadian county just to my W, and NWS OUN put this little graphic out depicting a similar area. If I believe the RUC, the best posibility of a torn today is just south of Payne County (Stillwater), and moisture convergence is occuring just N of me / OKC. I will be going out if ANYTHING fires around here.

Today's action

2008-04-24T16:11:00.002-05:00

It's been a while, but I've been actively chasing so far this season, just haven't had time to post it. I just finished up a rather large project at work, so hopefully the coming weeks will have more updates.
I''m currently trying to decide whether to go out today or not. The action was supposed to be up in Nebraska and Kansas, but things are looking quite a bit more impressive here in central / north central OK. In fact, the more I look at helicity, CAPE, the dryline bulge, etc, the more I think everyone up north is about to get screwed, and we are looking good down here.
Plus there's the fact that Steve (Miller OK) is on his cruise this week, which bodes well for chasing. :) Problem is I'm not sure if I trust my probe this year, as it's starting to show it's age and abuse.
I'm just concerned about the cap this far south. If I were to throw caution to the wind, I'd head up to Enid and sit.
I'll update more this eve, after I've decided.