Author: David Drummond

  • 2008 Chase Season Begins

    2008 First Chase

    Right on the heels of our Severe Weather Awareness day, an early season chase presented itself in the central north Texas area on up through Oklahoma. I played the more southern end due to the aggressive cold front further north, not wanting to get undercut right away by the cold air. Turns out the only thing that wanted to spin today was stuff that crossed the front itself, for brief time. A few chasers caught a tornado up in Oklahoma like that.

    I sat in that location above for quite a while, watching a storm north of me and one to the south of me that was all alone and I had higher hopes for, but it never made it. All in all, not much to write about but it was nice to get out and sit in that peaceful place. Not another car passed the whole time. I did get a nice pic of the northern one as it started to cross the front and get more organized.

    2008 First Chase Supercell

    It’s been an incredible busy last couple of weeks, what with getting vehicles ready, equipment upgraded, paying work. I haven’t had time take a breath hardly. As such I have neglected posting here a little. I am finally started to wrap up on some things. Most of the work on the chase vehicles is competed, minus a few minor things. I am wrapping up one paid website project tonight hopefully. That leaves the big one I have been working on for months remaining that I am going to try and hammer and get completed. It turned out to be epic, over 800 pages!

    Noting the poll I started on the website about a year ago to see if anyone was interested in seeing video logs, or vlogs as they are known on YouTube. While not a really large number of people have voted, it’s been a landslide that there is interest there, so I am hopefully going to be starting that VERY soon, through a channel on YouTube. I of course will post that here as well when it gets started. Turns out they might also get cross posted on the TV station website as well.

    I also tested Friday on a 200 mile trip a streaming webcam, which looks like is going to be very feasible. This was mostly for live coverage by the TV station, however I may post it to the website, especially on days I don’t chase locally for the station. At least until I can figure out if the server I am posting it to can handle multiple requests. They have to come first.

    Overall, a lot has been accomplished, more work to do. Maybe as soon as I get the large website paying project finished I can get back to putting the old chase accounts on this website. I do have a couple more potential paying jobs in the pipeline however. Guess I can’t complain. 😉 I have to admit, it feels pretty good to get so much off my to-do lists the last couple weeks!

  • Severe Weather Awareness Day 2008

    2008 Severe Weather Awareness Day

    This past Saturday KCBD along with the Texas Tech Student Chapter of the American Meteorological Society sponsored a Severe Weather Awareness Day at the Science Spectrum in Lubbock, TX to round out Severe Weather Awareness Week in Texas.

    We brought our chase vehicles out to represent the TV station since we chase for them giving everyone a chance to see the equipment up close and ask lots of questions. We had a great time!

    2008 Severe Weather Awareness Day

    There many exhibits demonstrating all sorts of weather phenomena including a crazy lightning machine that scared the heck out of me when it decided to finally spark! Steve Miller, who had come down to check things out, got quite a laugh out of me jumping about 5 feet from that! It was MUCH louder than I was expecting!  Now if I can just figure out how to make one of my own! Steve got to met many of the station folks, as well as the NWS guys. We are getting him integrated well in to west Texas weather culture! LO

    2008 Severe Weather Awareness Day

    All of the station mets were out for the day too and we ended the day with me taking Steve for a nickel tour of the TV station and he got to see a live newscast. We later grabbed Carey Allen after he was done and had some good steak at Golden Corral!

    Below our mets who I am pleased to work with when severe weather threatens our area, left to right in the black shirts are John Robison, Carey Allen, and Steve Divine.

    2008 Severe Weather Awareness Day

    I wrote a much more in depth article for the main website, if you want to read more and see lots more pics, you can find it here.