In The Vortex

Category: Extreme Weather

All things Extreme Weather!

  • 03/22/09 Chase Forecast

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    A potential sleepy surprise day in the Texas Panhandle I think.  A dryline will be taking shape in advance of a vigorous upper level system, and while it’s still barely sufficient moisture, wind profiles are more than sufficient to get anything that does go up to turn for us.  There are plenty of flies that could land in this soup and keep much from happening, hence the SPC only going with a mention of the possibilities.

    However, given tomorrow is a definite chase day (and a potentially big one, more on that tonight!) and going to the Panhandle puts me closer to the target for tomorrow, I am going to give it a shot today.  If nothing else, perhaps I can luck up on some lightning this evening!  Who knows, maybe I’ll luck out with something better!

    I’ll be streaming today (and tomorrow) on TVN.  You can find the direct link to the new imap (still in demo mode for right now) here:

    http://tornadovideos.net/full-screen-chaser-video.php

    In the future  will have something similar to this embeded on my LIVE ChaseCam page as well, but for now you can watch over there!  Probably be streaming the drive up to the Panhandle as well just for some more testing.  Yeah, boring stuff like that makes the fun stuff go smooth! LOL

  • 03/09/09 Storm Chase Recap

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    Ended up in southwestern Oklahoma.  Not much came from the day.  Thought we were going to have something there for about 15 minutes, with a nice wall cloud developing, but then it all just kinda went away.  No tornadoes reported whatsoever, so that tornado watch was blown!

    The above pic was taken at sunset west of the Wichita Mountains.  About the best image I got out of the day.  There was nearly zero lightning after dark.

    Streamed video on TVN with some good success in the EVDO networks out there.  I had some GPS issues though with Delorme.   The Delorme Serial Emulator just doesn’t not work properly on Vista, and they haven’t updated the thing in a long time.   As a result, I can only use the GPS on one application at a time.  So I went ahead and ordered a real GPS that should alleviate that issue.

    Also just a side note.  Found EVDO in some places I didn’t have it last year.  Most notably was Lawton, Oklahoma; Wichita Falls, TX and Seymour, TX (very surprised at that one!).  Also have continuous data from Wichita Falls to Lubbock.  There are no more data holes along US82 that entire route!