Storm Chasing Accounts Up- April Showers!

Hey guys! As promised I got the storm chase accounts up from my 3 days on the Plains last week. Check them out at the following links! -Northwest Kansas Low Precipitation Supercell- http://www.intotherfd.com/041212.html -Southwest Oklahoma Supercell/ Lightning- http://www.intotherfd.com/041312.html -Kansas Tornadoes/ High Risk- http://www.intotherfd.com/041412.html To help you decide if they are worth a look I figured I better include a couple more teaser images! I'll continue working on getting some other updates done and keep you guys updates... in addition I'll finally be adding some more images here so stay tuned! Thanks, Chris

Aurora What?!?

Hey everyone... in the middle of writing chase accounts to post from that 3 day sting of storm chases I talked about in my last post, some suprise auroras occured last night! It was probably one of the best displays I've seen so I figured I'd take a time out to make a quick blog post about it. I should have the 3 chase accounts ready to go tomorrow! A friend had called and asked me if I had checked the aurora plots at all and I answered that I hadn't he told me to take a look... I did and we talked about how the Earth's magnetic field had been stuck to the south most of the day (good sign for Northern Lights) and the KP index was increasing steadily. Another photographer in Ireland noted that he had a very good display and nearly everytime he has seen them we have too! Somehow... the storm lasted until dark. As twilight set in I decided to head to a wind farm to potentially timelapse the aurora over the windfarm. Before twilight was even gone a noticable auroral glow was already happening! Here is a shot: Once in finally got dark I had to jump into a couple shots while the first camera was time lapsing! Here is me being a dork with the aurora: This green arc was rather steady over the next couple of hours... as it started to head north I decided to switch locations to the river front near my house with the hopes it would come back. Finally around 1 am it did... and even though the surge was rather brief it was INCREDIBLE! Here is my favorite shot from the night: With 2 cameras and a nice aurora display... I made a pretty long timelapse. You can also find that here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVjbnW_wU-w Check it out and let me know what you think! Thanks again for your patience! Chris

Busy Weather='s A Busy Me

Hey everyone, You may have noticed a lack of updates both here and on my website. Between work and chasing storms I've been pretty darn busy. I chased 3 days in a row last week. The 12th, 13th, and 14th of April. I figured I would make a blog post with a preview of some images so you would know what to expect when I get the actual accounts up on my website. Once that is done I will finally be working on uploading more images to my galleries. Anyway... the first day on the 12th (Thursday) looked good for some storms over Western and Northwest Kansas. There were some concerns about the strength of the cap the further south you went, but also concerns about gulf moisture making it far enough north to create favorable conditions for storms. We started the day in Nebraska and drove to Garden City, Kansas. Making it around 2pm. Soon after a tornado watch was issued for much of Northwestern Kansas and parts of Colorado and Nebraska. We moved slightly north and sat near Tribune watching storm towers rise and fall. It became obvious that the cap was going to hold and we needed to head north... so we went for developing storms near Goodland, Kansas along interstate 70. Once we caught up to the storm the wind shear was so strong it was of the low precipitation variety. Which made the storm visually interesting but not very strong. Here is a preview! We stayed in Colby, Kansas for the night and awoke in the morning to a forecast that doubted whether we could get storms to form in Oklahoma before dark. But we decided to chance it. Storms fired very early (around noon) as we were just crossing the Oklahoma border. We finally reached a line of developing storms around 3pm. The cell we had targeted rapidly weakened as we approached near Chickasha, Oklahoma. As new storms developed to the southwest. We headed down interstate 44 towards Lawton, Oklahoma and then west. Reaching a high precipitation supercell near the Snyder, Oklahoma area in the Wichita Mountains area. Here is a quick preview from that storm! We stayed that night in Oklahoma City... and Saturday was supposed to be the big day. A rare 'high risk' of severe weather was issued by the Storm Prediction Center and they called for a tornado outbreak. We awoke early and crossed the Kansas border. Reaching the McPherson, Kansas area before heading west towards developing storms flying northeast across the state at 55mph. After being stuck in fog and low clouds on the early storms we elected to head to the south and west and get into clearer and more unstable air as more storms fired near Dodge City, Kansas and rapidly started to rotate. Here is a shot with a funnel cloud on the storm near Greensburg, Kansas! It ended up as a rather frustrating day as we would get in perfect positions on storms and they wouldn't produce. While the ones we had just left to the north had tornadoes on the ground, or another storm to the south would produce. Sometimes thats just the luck of chasing storms. Finally I'll sneak in one last photo from my trips to Badlands National Park (I'm working on an image account for this as well) Enjoy! Feel free to let me know what you think, and thanks for your patience as I complete all of these updates! Thanks again, Chris

Storm Chasing Accounts up now!

Hey everyone!

I got my storm chasing accounts up from the 28th and 29th of March! The first account is from Central Kansas. I drove down early in the day from Northern Nebraska and waited for a few hours for storms to fire. I was slightly out of position but still managed to catch a developing supercell at sunset, and then some incredible structure with lightning in the dark near Madison, Kansas. That account is here:



http://www.intotherfd.com/032812.html

After a late night I stayed with a friend in Lawrence, Kansas and then set up to chase along a warm front on the Kansas/Nebraska border the next day. There were a few occasions where I thought the storm would produce a tornado but it just couldn't quite get it done. However I still got to witness some incredible supercell structure before heading home. That account is here:



http://www.intotherfd.com/032912.html

Check them out and let me know what you think! I have a couple more website accounts to create and then I will get back to updating my galleries including dA! Thanks for your patience and support!

Chris