Slow motion lightning video

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

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

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

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

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

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...

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

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

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.

Domain change

BTW, anyone linking to this blog may want to change the URL, as it has switched to www.chasinghans.com/blog
I have enabled a 301 redirect, so it should come here automatically anyway, but it may not stay that way forever.