Nothing To Chase? (3/2)

For the past WEEK, the National Weather Service had some "strong wording" about the "severe weather potential" associated with a strong low pressure system and front that was forecasted to affect the state of FL around March 2, 2009. A day before the "promising" event, SPC issues a slight risk, then the day of the "event", its DOWNGRADED to a "see text", then the "event" turned out to be a 30 MPH wind gust and some moderate rain.

Of course, the SPC "storm reports" for March 2, shown to the right in the graphic below, says "No Reports Received" ... In fact, February 2010 goes down in history as the first month with no reported tornadoes anywhere in the USA since the 1950's! This certainly is NOT encouraging.



The other two images above to the left and middle show the grim effects of the 2009-2010 "El Niño", with some of the coldest weather (for Southern Florida) in a very long time. And, to add more to the lack-of-storms and shivering frustration ... The 10-15 foot high northeast swells THAT NORMALLY accompany strong cold fronts in FL also NEVER happened. Flat surf, too cold for the beach, yes - Even surfers in FL are probably more frustrated than storm chasers! My SeaDoo watercraft sits in the storage - too "cold" to even take that out to enjoy on the water or the lake, which is choked with water weed and dead fish because of the "killer" cold weather since January!

This cold pattern, persisting into March, is not normal. Normally, El Niño causes MORE storms in FL, but this one is very different. This will also result in cooler water temperatures and probably hurt the potential hurricane / storm chase seasons in 2010 - I am not ready to repeat 2009.

Lost Job / Blessing In Disguise? (2/26)

Longevity at ANY employment in my line of work (IT) is simply an idea and / or expression and never something I can (or ever will) experience. Quite suprisingly, I lost my job as my position at a firm in Miami as "Senior Programmer" was terminated this week.

I was the kind of person who stood by his work, was never late (always came into the office early) and rarely left before the quitting time of 5:30 PM. Even worse, I foregone many opportunities for storm chasing in 2009, because of this job, trying to make a difference. My work was of the best quality and during the entire year of 2009, my attendance was next to impeccable.

So what was the results of all this hard work and such? In the end result, basically I was "canned" ... Used for my services, and thrown right out into the street (quite literally). The corporate world sure can be a very hostile place.

Exactly six months before my termination date - I mean right to the EXACT day - I was written up for the stress, as well as trying to be a "hero" and do someone elses job.

The stress of this past job has taken a MAJOR toll on both my health and my sanity. The same week I was terminated, I found out that I had the start of a bleeding stomach ulcer. Not good. This and on top of seeing all that "stuff" I MISSED in mid June 2009 in Nebraska!

Now out of a job, I am collecting unemployment, and drawing on some money I saved for such "rainy days" ... In retrospect, not really so "rainy" after all. The unemployment should pay the rent. My car is paid off. My ulcer should quickly heal ... And if anything happens in the central US in this coming spring for chasing, I just GO ... No haggling with time off.

Maybe this time off ain't so bad after all?

South FL Severe Storms (2/24)

Finally some interesting weather rolls through South and Central Florida on Wednesday, February 24, 2010. Some of the thunderstorms contained brief / shallow mesocyclones and some areas (near West Palm Beach) reported golfball sized hail.



This is a nice change to have a warm and moist air mass (ahead of a strong cold front) with strong and severe thunderstorms ... Hopefully chasing will be good as we head into March 2010 in the south.

Snow In EVERY State? (2/15)

The image below, courtesy of the National Weather Service and the US Air Force, shows the snow cover over the continental United States on February 13, 2010 (6z). The scale is in inches. Not suprising is the amount of snow cover over the northern states, however, check out the snow swath over the deep south, even into the panhandle of Florida! It is very unusual to see the entire 48 states having snow covering a portion of them.



Alaska, obviously has snow cover as well, and even Hawaii, but only on the peaks of the tallest mountains (Mona Loa and Mona Kea) on the big island. This means that at this point, the entire 50 states of the US have snow. You can check out anything about winter weather on a special page I have for it on this site in the WINTER section of my site by clicking the link provided for it below ...

http://www.sky-chaser.com/winter.htm

ChaserCon 2010 (2/14)

I attended the National Storm Chaser Convention (ChaserCon) in Denver, Colorado from Febuary 12-14, 2010. This event continues to be a "must-not-miss" event for storm chasers year after year. This year was a very impressive turnout and I have put together some pictures of the event in my STORM CHASING EVENTS area on this site.



You can also jump right to the area for storm chasing events in 2010, including the storm chaser convention, by clicking the link provided for it below ...

http://www.sky-chaser.com/picnic10.htm

Skydiving / L-39 Jet Fighter (1/30)

The last week in January is the weekend for the annual "Boogie Over The Everglades" event at Air Adventures Skydiving in Clewiston, Florida. This weekend is full of great skydives, great people, and great aircraft.



In the image above, I am aboard an L-39 fighter jet pulling near 7 G's and travelling near 500-MPH! This event keeps getting better and better each year. Read more about it (as well as more updates) at the SKYDIVING section of this web site.



In the additional images above, we see some of the activities at the onece-a-year Everglades Boogie. Althouth the weather was bad for almost half the event, we all still had a great time and made up for it the best we could, with one jump from nearly 23,000 feet!

You can also check out the FLYING section of this site, with more details on the L-39 jet by clicking the link provided for it below...

http://www.sky-chaser.com/flying.htm

For more information on skydiving and boogies (events) such as this one, be sure to check out my section on skydiving below via the link...

http://www.sky-chaser.com/skydive.htm

You want to see what its like to RIDE ABOARD a jet fighter? Glad you asked ... Check out the video link (to YouTube) provided for it below...

www.sky-chaser.com/l39vid.htm

A Bullying Subject (1/24)

Ever wonder where your kids are, or what might be happening to them? School yard violence and bullying is no laughing matter, as a matter of fact, it can turn deadly. Read about this report (including personal experiences and important advice) regarding bullying and how a parent (and child) can properly deal with it before its too late in my AMERICA section of this site.



You can jump right to the section on AMERICA and school "bullying" by clicking the link provided for it below...

http://www.sky-chaser.com/america.htm

Frost In South FL (1/11)

In the images below, taken a day or so later, with temperatures still near freezing - even in Miami, Florida - Frost covers the vehicles in the morning and the ice needed to be scraped from the windshields! This was one time I regretted throwing away my ice scraper I used every day a couple of years back when working in Chicago in the winter ... This would have come in handy as it is not easy to scrape off ice using my fingernails!



Hopefully storm chasing will take a turn for the better (for me at least) in 2010 (hopefully putting 2009 behind us, right?) ... My chase logs for 2009 are on-line and can be viewed in the STORM-CHASING section of this web site. You can also jump right to this area by clicking the link provided for it below...

http://www.sky-chaser.com/stlog.htm

Cold Southern New Year (1/9)

The first couple of weeks of the new year of 2010 have been plagued with bitterly cold weather over much of the US. Folks coming south to the tropics to escape the cold have to travel WELL into the tropics, as some of this Canadian air has penetrated as far south as Central America! In the images below, taken on January 9, 2010 in Deerfield Beach, Florida ... Something appears very strange with the Atlantic Ocean.



Steam fog is rising from the water, which is about 75 degrees F, in chilly air that is hovering just above 40 degrees F! A temperature differential of nearly 40 degrees causes the relatively warmer ocean water to "steam". This is in South Florida in the afternoon, and the beach normally packed with tourists is completely deserted. Cold spells lasting this long (over a week) are unusual. Snow flurries were even reported farther north in the state!

Digital Conversion (1/7)

Is going digital totally worth it? If you have the time and make the effort, the short answer is YES ... In the images above, over 220 audio tapes containing music, diary, chase logs, and sentimental memories were painstakingly digitized and re-mastered over 4 months time to 221 separate 64 Kbps MP3 files, totalling about 6.5 GB in hard-drive space. The pile of 220+ tapes can be seen surrounding a tiny 8 GB thumb drive (USB drive).



All the tapes, once digitized, can be stored entirely on the 8 GB drive, with much room (over 1 GB) to spare! To the right is the thumb drive in front of the old analog recorder (barely working) and a newer digital voice recorder to it's right (tapeless recorder that saves MP3 files in stereo). The tapes and old analog equipment can be scrapped, and the digital media used instead. The digital media can also be easily copied, backed up, burned to CD / DVD, with no need to search, rewind, cue, etc.

Digital conversion can also involve scanning old photographs and cleaning them up, and / or converting video to tapeless format (such as VHS to DVD and such). This is the way to go to preserve un-reliable / old recording media and the memories cherished with it.

Winterfest Boat Parade (12/13)

Every year, in south Florida (Fort Lauderdale), there is the Winterfest festival (usually the second weekend in December). One of the major attractions to this tradition is the "boat parade", where boats and yachts are decorated with Christmas lights and cruise up and down the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway from Fort Lauderdale to Pompano Beach.



Be sure to check out my section on OUTDOORS on my main site for more amazing pictures of boating and outdoor / special events. You can also click on the link provided below to jump to that section ...

http://www.sky-chaser.com/outdoors.htm

Sunset At Over 42,000 Feet (12/4)

The images below were taken during a recent end-of-the week trip to Toronto in Ontario, Canada (not far from Buffalo, New York). Quite impressive is in the image to the left, taken in the gloaming twilight at an altitude of just above 42,000 feet aboard WestJet airlines. This is pretty much the service "ceiling" for such commercial aircraft (Boeing 737-700). The plane is this high to fly over an area of turbulence.



The inset shows the speed and altitude, and the curverature of the earth is clearly visible in the photo. To the right, is a shot of downtown Toronto just after sunset, with the 1,500 foot+ CN Tower rising high above the sky-scrapers into the night sky. Be sure to check out my section on FLYING for more amazing pictures of flying / arial views. You can also click on the link provided below to jump to that section ...

http://www.sky-chaser.com/flying.htm

A Slow Chase Year For Me (11/12)

For storm chasing, at least for me, 2009 was one of the slowest and one of the worst chase years ever encountered. Shear in the tropics, ridging in the plains, work, Murphy's Law? - Oh My!



What happened? A brief explanation on the why's and how's of such a bad chase year for many are outlined below.

1). El Niño ... This is a warming of the eastern tropical Pacific off South America near the equator. It's a 2 to 5 year cycle (ENSO) and causes a "trough-east and ridge-west" pattern over North America with the "dreaded" Hudson-Bay Vortex pattern in the late Spring. The ridging over the western US is very BAD for storm chasing prospects there, especially during prime chase season, from Mid May to Mid June. The same pattern also caused most low pressure systems entering the central USA to be generally weaker than normal. Forecast models also performed very bad this year, making a planned chase trip very difficult. A three-week-long "death ridge" also plagued the central US in May 2009, forcing me to cancel my 10 day chase trip there.

2). Unusually inactive Atlantic Basin hurricane season. Also due to the effects of El Niño, which ruined chase prospects for severe weather in the central USA, also ruined any hurricane chasing opportunities. The El Niño causes strong winds aloft, not over the central US, but over the tropics, due to the "tough-east" pattern. The upper-level shearing associated with such a pattern supresses development of tropical cyclones, along with dry air in the mid levels. Any tropical cyclones that did develop were short-lived, generally weak, or over unusual areas of the Atlantic Basin. In response, the Pacific basin, especially the western Pacific, was ABOVE normal in 2009.

3). Bad timing - This was the most serious problem in 2009. Anyone may disagree with me, especially seeing other chasers success, especially in Mid-Late June of 2009 (if you see Reed Timmer on "Storm Chasers", you'll know what I mean). Not everyone had a bad year in 2009. Fellow chaser Jim Edds even went to Guam for a while to take advantage of the ABOVE normal Pacific typhoon season in 2009. My situation was very bad timing, and work conflicing with available chase time. For example, the ONLY good week in the central US in 2009 was around June 17 ... But that week, with my boss on a funeral and me filling in for another on a cruise, that was the ONLY week I could NOT take off and chase.

With planning for next year (2010), hopefully this El Niño pattern will fade to a neutral ENSO or even a mild La Niña (it's opposite). The La Niña pattern is much better for central USA chasing in the spring, and a better tropical season in the Atlantic basin to follow. Good chase years, such as 1995, 2004, 2005, and 2008 were all La Niña years, with a "tough-west and ridge-east" pattern lacking the Hudson-Bay Vortex. In spring and summer 2010, I will also have a lot more time to take off, given I am still working at the time.

Hurricane "Ida" And Her Demise (11/9)

You have probably seen hurricane Ida during the early week of November 9, 2009. The question is that "Did I chase Ida"?



The short answer is "no". This was because although Ida was a hurricane for a while, it rapidly weakened during the day of November 9, 2009 and made landfall at night. The storm also tracked along an unseasonably straight path towards the northern Gulf of Mexico.

This is the worst track for an intercept, because this took the storm over cold waters and close to a jet stream (shear) on that path. With such a weak storm, barely tropical at landfall, coming in over Alabama, and during the NIGHT / early-morning Tuesday (11-10), any possible chase was abandoned / not worth the time and effort.

Normally, these storms take a path to the north, then northeast (into SW Florida) this time of the year, but not this one, in 2009 (ofcourse).

Autumn In Niagara Falls (10/24)

The end of 2009 is approaching fast as we enter the mid fall of 2009 (October to November). Not much to notice in terms of the change of seasons down here in South Florida (not even anything in the tropics intercepted during the entire season), but take a trip up to the Northern USA / Canada and you can catch the peak of the fall foliage colors as of late October 2009!



Be sure to check out my section on WINTER weather on my main web site for more amazing pictures of winter weather and such. You can also click on the link provided below to jump to that section ...

http://www.sky-chaser.com/winter.htm

Storm Chasing In Central USA (10/3)

A last-ditch effort chase trip to the central US was done during the week from Wednesday (9-30-2009) and Thursday (10-1-2009). I took advantage of both time available to take off as well as airline points and headed out to the Central US for a potential severe weather setup from late Tuesday (9-29) and retured the morning of Friday (10-2).

This is for the "second season", where severe weather sometimes occurs in the fall months. Besides hurricanes (which none were intercepted), this looked like a good chase opportunity of 2009.



Unfortuately, and quite typical of 2009, the forecast models over-estimated the setup, and the atmosphere over Kansas remained capped on 9-30 and only a squall line was the main event a day later on 10-1.

The chase log can be seen in the STORM CHASING section of this site, under "Central US chases of 2009", or you can click the link provided below to go right to it ...

http://www.sky-chaser.com/mwcl2009.htm

French TV Crew Storm Documentary (9/18)

On Thursday and Friday, September 17-18, myself and a French TV crew from Washington DC (for TFI) did some filming of my storm chase vehicle as well as interviews and equipment demonstrations.



The series aired in October 2009 and a clip of the production can be viewed at the link provided to it below ...

http://videos.tf1.fr/jt-20h/quand-le-climat-se-dechaine-4836630.html

Note: Link above may be "time sensitive" as it is not hosted on my site. The production is in French, but you can see myself and others in a VERY well-done segment!

High-Altitude Skydive (8/15/2009)

I was able to perform a HALO (High-Altitude / Low-Opening) skydive (from 22,000 to 24,000 feet on August 15, 2009 at Air Adventures Skydiving in Clewiston, Florida.



A video for this jump has been compiled and is available at the link below ...

http://www.sky-chaser.com/halovid1.htm

You can also check out more information anout high-altitude skydives, along with many other extreme sports, in my SKYDIVING section of this web site by clicking the link provided for it below ...

http://www.sky-chaser.com/skydive.htm

Southern Ontario In Canada (7/26)

With a business trip to Buffalo, New York for a couple of days and a free day afterwards, I made the trip to Canada to enjoy the natural beauty, diversity, and even the bizarre weather in southern Ontario in July 2009!



Be sure to check out my OUTDOORS section on my main web site for some outdoor beauty and various pictures from Canada and parts of the world. You can also jump right to my section for outdoors and natural beauty by clicking on the link provided below ...

http://www.sky-chaser.com/outdoors.htm

Northern California July 4th (7/8)

The weekend of July 4th, 2009 was spent with best friends of mine in Northern Calfornia as a point in my life when true friendship is to be honored and appreciated. I crammed as much as possible to do in a rather short (4 day trip) to the US West Coast but still had a blast and did things from Skydiving and hiking to celebrating July 4th on a yacht.



You can check out this trip, along with many others, in my OUTDOORS section of my main web site, or simply click on the link provided below ...

http://www.sky-chaser.com/outdoors.htm