Endless Weather Is Scott's Blog

Target: Huron, SD
Miles Driven: About 300 (I drove to Sioux Falls, Marcus drove the rest)
Chasers In The Car: Marcus Hicks, Joe Miller, Greg Rardin
Tornadoes: 2
Almost Tornadoes: 2

The storm that was infamous for the record setting hailstone made the news but the Tornado was in the storm just to it’s south!

Started the day off not really thinking I would chase, to the point I did not take anything to wear to work as I had been up most of the night fixing a dead server.   I was in chat with Marcus Hicks and we had talked many times about chasing together and it just had not worked out, he offered to drive so I took of out of Omaha around Noon for Sioux Falls.   Met up with everyone at Marcus’s house and I made a decision…  I am not taking my laptop.

This is rare for me, I want to make decisions and learn as much as I can with other chasers based on all the info I can get my hands on.  A few days earlier I had chased in the dark in MO, although it produced some night time Tornadoes it had been a VERY frustrating experience.   I was ready to just take some pictures and some video, this was just what I needed.

We had all agreed that a line from Huron to Piere was our target so we headed west on 90.   The storm around Vivian was becoming a monster and there were some reports of a rain wrapped tornado inside, we really had no choice other than to core the storm.    I really have no idea how we missed the insane massive hail, we did get some what I would guess to be golf balls as they did a little number to Marcus’s car.

From 072310

As we got to the western side of the storm we went to cut South, people were huddled under the overpass to the point of blocking traffic.   At this time we had no idea the storm had 8in hail in it!

In the clear… the storm coming out of Nebraska was looking real interesting so we decided to focus on it.   This is about when we lost our data.  The Verizon phone they were using to tether was not working that well and neither was my Sprint Evo.    It was visual time.

We played around with the inflow of the Vivian storm for a while which produced some really cool photos, the overshooting anvil and a old barn made for a real cool shot.

From 072310

From 072310

As we waited for that Nebraska cell to get here it kept producing some nice rotation and funnels for us to look at, but no Tornado.

From 072310

Then there was this AMAZING stroke of luck, turns out Greg is color blind.   I had no idea then again this was the first time I had met him
Greg shouts TORNADO!   Sure enough there it was.  The contrast was just right for him to see it.

From 072310

At first we pulled over on a side road where we saw the only other chaser that day, from Frontier County, NE (from his plate) I have no idea who it was.
The view was less than spectacular and I think this was the only decision I made that day… we need to get closer!

We found a great spot on a E/W road where I took the majority of my pictures, these were so much better than the other vantage point.  Although we did not get any “Lifecycle” shots they did the trick.
This is one of those Tornadoes that makes a chasers season, the needle in the haystack.   As far as I know 7 chasers saw that tornado, only 3 of us have video.  No offense to Andy but he was not there with his 100ft from the Tornado video, it was just us & the storm.   A wonderful experience I can’t describe in a blog.

Since we were sitting between the Vivian storm and this southern one we had to get out of there before getting cored again, when the storms merged it became completely outflow and provided some great “Whales Mouth” photo ops.   I have really been focusing on trying to get good shots of other chasers doing what they do, here is one of our group.

From 072310

From 072310

From 072310

At the end of the chase we were closer to my house than Sioux Falls so it made for a long drive home but who cares? IT WAS A FRIDAY!
Here is my video from the day, some is in time lapse where noted so look for the txt.

Ahh the blankie, we all had one at one time and what it’s like when they are not close at hand.
You can see Dani here with her beloved “Taggie” last fall.  (And Nick with the Boy version)

Last week (as in a week ago today) Taggie was left behind by accident at the Hampton Inn Lakewood in Denver.  The missing taggie was realized just a couple hours after checkout and my wife frantically called to see if it was there.   Nobody knew at the hotel and asked her to call back the next day, Wednesday.    Dani obviously was not really liking this and from what I hear the nightmare ride home was not fun.   Then again she was not happy when she got here either.   Now I realize this is our fault.

Ok so Wednesday my wife calls first thing and they did find Taggie, they would return it if we paid the shipping.   Ok I get it, kinda lame and petty being a “Upper Tier” hotel and a Hilton brand but fine.  I’m sure people leave important stuff in their rooms and want it back all the time, sure they have a procedure for this.    The item is obviously important, and as a father I know to me I am more worried about where that taggie is than trying to find my wedding ring.

So each day Dani is waiting for the Fedex truck to arrive, Thursday, Friday, Saturday (fedex home delivers Saturdays), Monday (even if Fedex home does not deliver Mondays) and now today.   No Taggie.

I don’t get it, Fedex transit time is 2 days from Denver to Omaha for GROUND.   Where is the Taggie?

I’m sorry but I am betting against the Hampton at this point.

Personally if it was me and I worked at that hotel that blanket would have been in a overnight box and back in the hands of that little girl the next day.    I would not have used the excuse “Housekeeping has gone home for the day” in a brand such as Hilton you expect more.

Less than 1 pound overnight could have had that thing here on Wednesday.

Hampton Inn… you fail.

TAGGIEGATE UPDATE:  Well it did not show up again today so we called around 5:15pm.  The clerk was not sure if it had been sent TODAY but it had not been sent YESTERDAY!  Chris became agitated and demanded a call from someone to the whereabouts of Taggie.    We received a message on the home phone a little later, Taggie is on Overnight Fedex with tracking #, tracking # issued about 15min after Chris talked to them and picked up about 20 later.

I’m going to post my chase log and video from 5/22/10 in the near future and talk about all the great things that happened that day.   For now I am going to address the “Field Incident” and what prompted what we did.

Ben shared this photo with me tonight.   At first I wanted to be all macho storm chaser dude and say please don’t share it with anyone instead I wanted to share exactly what was going thru my mind at that moment.    Short of sitting on my couch back in Omaha with my family there is nothing else I would change about that intercept.    I am going to use a collection of photos from my “Chase Partners” that day Ben Holcomb, Danny Neal and Adam Lucio to tell this story.

We had been following our plan to “avoid the mob” all day by staying ahead of the storm and using unpaved roads as much as possible.    Adam and I both have SUV’s and typically have no problem using most roads, this was by far not the worst road we had traveled this season.    Our road was a legitimate road on paper (or screen) it was marked and short.    The “Need for an escape route” on a marked road less than 3 miles in length is kinda a crazy notion.

As you can see on this screen shot from Microsoft’s Bing Maps they think the road would continue on too, obviously with the aerial photo it makes it apparent there is not a road there.  Something we do not have the luxury of seeing from the comfort of a vehicle.

As we entered the road we found some other friends of ours who either took the road or waited with us while we watched to see what the storm was doing.  Many people are saying the storm had become outflow at this time which is simply not the case… Once on the 3 mile road we would see and document at least 4 additional tornadoes, most nobody except those in the field ever saw.

Once a we passed the first mud hole on the road, no problem for the SUV’s I immediately radioed another person who was preparing to follow us up the road.   They were in a Chevy Impala and in my opinion no match for the road.    I warned them of the mud hole and that the road was not a good route.    As we continued on the road we reached almost the point where it ended I started radioing people NOT to take the road as a broadcast message.   One of the vehicles in the lead said the road had become “Bad”  at this point we started to turn around and found the “Drill Bit”.  

This brought into question “How bad is the road?”    As we documented the Drill Bit tornado the other tornado formed also.   

At this time there was a tornado on both the North and South sides of the road.    As we got back in the vehicles the group in the impala were on the radio saying they were stuck in the road.   From this information and seeing the road previously going back the way we came in was no longer an option.

We proceeded up the road knowing that both Tornadoes were on our tail, this was the ONLY way out as driving towards the tornado was obviously stupid.   When we reached the field the instinct for self preservation took over.   There was no ditch, there was no shelter.   All we could do was run.    There were a few vehicles ahead of us I don’t remember entering as they proceeded into the field they made a distinct right turn.   Was it possible they knew of a route we did not?   Well anything was better than getting munched the Tornadoes were directly behind us now and south sounded like a pretty good idea.   We followed along the fence line until we hit a large body of water, more than likely flooding from the previous week.   Obviously going right was not an option, going forward was not an option so we went left.   As we crested the top of the hill there was another body of water.

As Adam put it so nicely “Game Over”.    My truck had become lodged in ruts caused by a tractor, I attempted for a couple min to free my vehicle but it was not coming out.

In Ben’s photo many thoughts were going thru my head.    Either I was about to be severely hurt or I was going to die.   The thought of making it out of that without any bodily harm was not even in my mind.   I thought about my My Wife, My Kids and all of my family.   What had I done?    I did not make any mistakes that day other than not being home with them.    I did watch around outside for a bit but the last thing on my mind was picking up a camera.   There was nothing more I could do to save myself I could only pray for my survival.    I sat there with my cell phone clenched in my hand, do I txt her to tell her I love her?   I most certainly can’t call to tell her what is about to happen.

Many people are talking about how this can be a used as a lesson for others.   We simply did nothing I don’t think any of you would have done.    The lesson to be learned is unless you are prepared not to loose everything chasing is not for you.    I have made the comment I never take anything with me on a chase I am not prepared to loose and I failed to remember the most important thing I have with me… my life.   

In the end it was a very expensive endeavor.   I paid the Farmer for damage to his field in cash on the spot and still needed $600 in repairs to my vehicle… a small price to pay for what might have saved my life.   You need to be prepared for anything out there so don’t get in your car on your last $50.

I am still going to chase but I want everyone to think about this who is wanting to get into chasing.   I will not be out as much (trying to lower the odds of this happening again) and more than likely not till I find a chase partner locally as a second set of brains in the vehicle.   I have always chased safe, I still feel I made all the right decisions this day.   Finding Tornadoes takes a lot of luck, it can also bring bad luck at the same time.

I beg of everyone…
The storms are dangerous enough PLEASE stop driving like crazy people to get the storm.    The Sheriff was LIVID about what had happened on the roads in his county that day and was a direct reflection on US.    As I sat with one of the most seasoned chasers I have ever met and had a county Sheriff tell him how “Our Team” had behaved on the roads it broke my heart.    We can claim sides on friends and streaming or whatever but EVERYTHING we do out there reflects on the rest of US.   At no point that day did I operate my vehicle in a unsafe manner until I was sure I was about to die.    Everyone in that field that night is doing the right thing and paying the farmer thousands of dollars for the mess we made of his field.    Please don’t make a mess of their roads and run back home.

Ok lets talk about this crap… people seem to read my blog so hopefully some people can put the pitchforks away.

It’s a grey area, was that vehicle in the infamous video with CSWR on it V2?  No.
Do I think V2 has their own share of traffic blunders?  Yes.

The vehcile in the picture from what I hear was in fact a vehicle attached to the TIV.
I don’t know it’s purpose but that’s more than likely true.

I am betting that it did get a sanctioned CSWR sticker a few years ago before V2 and the craziness of today, there is a VERY long thread on Facebook with me arguing about the sticker.   The person who was “in the know” suggessted it could be someone who aquired the sticker improperly or made their own both senerios I see unlikely… not something you pickup online or at Chasercon.

So to make this 100% clear.   THE VEHICLE WAS  NOT V2…. technically

I strongly feel that TIV2 gets “advice” from people on V2, again this was said not to be true however again the vehicle was traveling outside of Kimball, NE with the V2 armada.

Yesterday there were at least a DOZEN vehicles in the V2 caravan with out of state plates and no V2 logos. Some with interesting things duct taped to the roofs of vehicles, these were not “Chasers”.   So it seems convienent to say the TIV crew is NOT officially part of V2 and their antics should not be attached to them when it’s obvious many non sanctioned V2 activities are taking place IN V2 the majority in a reasonable manner.

Now that we cleared the air on that…
Josh publicly bitched the chasers out and demaded we get out of the way.

Josh is right.
I know this will get some people really pissed but he is right… just a terrible person to tell us.
The work they are doing is important and I feel if they could do a little better job of talking to us we could see that.

I have met Josh in person a couple times and each time got the impression “Why the hell are you talking to me?”.    No I did not seek him out or ask him stupid questions just a “Hello” and he just short of does not even acknologe you are there.   To have this man as a face for V2 is a REALLY bad idea, people just don’t like him.    Every single time Josh gets a chance to rip on the chasers he takes it.

Yesterday was a great day to chase, not too many people out and they (V2) did not get their “zone” around the storm of the day… unless I missed something.     I was driving from Omaha and was a little late to the show, the storms were firing much like last year on June 5th, looked like crap on radar but they were there.   Ben Holcomb and I were discussing it wondering if it has something to do with the elevation I don’t know.

What I do know is when I got to Kimball the “Armada” was sitting at the interstate and SN icons of chasers were all over the storm.    To avoid this I went into town to get gas only to have the V2 armada not let me out of the gas station. I sat there  for 2 red light cycles.   Finally a local with Nebraska plates let me in.

V2 still does not own the roads, they need to give SOME courtosey.    Their work is VERY important but if they are that late getting to the target they can’t blame the chasers.    Who got the blame yesterday?

Obviously not a lot of time left to V2 but some suggestions how they can better work with all us damn chasers.

1. Get over yourselves!   Your not better than us, you are not above the law.
2. The middle of the road is NEVER a place to stop and do a scan, find something ANYTHING that is flat becides the side of the road.
3. Stage your exit from your campground so your not an Armada.
4. Give the chasers some credit.   Why not work with us rather than throw us under the bus?
5. Stop it with the “Where are you going? Answer: It’s a secret”  everyone learns where you camp out during the day, it’s all over Facebook from other chasers when they spot you.    Why not late afternoon say where you are?   Late enough people can’t drive and find you.   If you posted it at 3PM yesterday afternoon people from Denver would not have come running.  I would have got my gas somewhere else.
6. Pulling Over… I have no problem with this your tact of asking was obsurd. 

You have never even given an attempt to engage the chase community how did you think we would respond?

Well thats how I feel about that.   V2 is doing something important if we agree with it or not… I’m willing to cut them some slack if they can get off their high horse long enough to do it for us.

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Ok I can’t bite my tongue on it anymore!

We all want to chase, this road is my road.  This road is your road.

This road belongs to ME, YOU, REED, TWC, V2 whoever.
Oh we got stuck in traffic and did not get to the storm… SO DID THE PERSON BEHIND YOU!

TWC even made a tweet today about how bad all the chaser traffic was, well WTF were you doing?

It seems rather convenient lately for TWC to bash the chasers they get all this content from.
For the past 2 hours I hear chasers doing phoners, Connor McCorey, Lanny Dean and so on… you need them off the road so you can chase?  Well NO because you have stopped chasing for the night!   CBS makes a joke about calling Connor’s “Agent”… well they obviously did because THEY BOUGHT HIS VIDEO!

All this wonderful footage you see on Storm Stories, Storm Chasers, Tornado Road, your local and national news MOST of the time comes from chasers like Scott Weberpal, Andy Gabrielson and others like ME.    We are the ones who chase when you don’t.  

You want to hear me bitch about the roads???? 
WE are the ones on the roads you CAN’T drive on.   WE get the shots you don’t. Even when you DO chase you still end up buying OUR footage because you can’t drive your big ass satellite trucks YOU clog the road with.  At least Original Media hired chasers to drive some of their support vehicles this year, they know what they are doing.  Most of the time I chase with friends, 3-4 of us in a vehicle… when I don’t it’s me in my little obscure Mazda SUV.  

What makes you think you get special treatment? 

We are quick, we are nimble.  We know where we are going and can make split second decisions, we don’t have an armada of Chevy Tahoes or 20 decision makers.
We don’t have mechanics, medics, camera crews, legal and our chaser posse following us.

Most of us are not dropping probes or firing potatoes into storms and none of us are stopping in the middle of the road to scan them with our radar trucks… we just want to see them.   We sure as hell don’t want to get caught in a tornado, so stop acting like it happens all the time.

So if you want to avoid me and my friends just keep those helicopters in the air all the time and stay out of my way.
Don’t expect me to get out of the way for you because my eyes, my video and my reports are 10x more efficient than yours.

EDIT: Wanted to add this since I am getting a ton of traffic today…
My friend Steve Miller OK shot this video yesterday.

What a horrible day that ended in complete success!

Adam Lucio, Danny Neal & Ben Holcomb spent the night at Hotel Bennett, we knew we would be chasing the next day but I was determined to get a 1/2 day of work in.    About mid morning someone in our Lincoln office got a virus on their machine so I had to run down there, figured we would be setup for my target of Beatrice/Falls City anyway.   Needless to say when everyone left my house the new target was Nebraska City so I backtracked up there and did some TLC to the Mazda while I waited for them to arrive.

We started to see the storms pop around Salina, KS (Where everyone and their grandmother’s sister was sitting) and heading our way so we ducked South to get them.

The cells were warned however were dying on the NE border, much like an earlier April chase… Almost like NO TORNADOES FOR NEBRASKA IN APRIL FOOLS!  We decided to press further east and catch a cell and core it because what else were we going to do today?    After coring the storm (With nothing in it) we noticed organization starting to the south so we headed back down there.    Inching and inching over the dirt roads (Ben was afraid the Mighty Mazda would get stuck HA!) we came upon the meso.   We could not have possibly had a better position on this storm, everyone was to the south and we luckily were on the north end.

The storm motion was NE, we were on the NW side but out of the rain.    We got all our tripods setup this was beauty in motion.   The rapidly rotating wall cloud passed over the N/S road into a field at the top of a hill.   It must have known the 5 very eager chasers and their camera’s aimed to get the catch of a lifetime, we could not have been a  mile from it.    Then there was the SPUT just a little uptick of dust that lasted for about 30 seconds, the area had rain so everything it was kicking up was mud making it very hard to condense.  

Ben dropped our report and we continued to watch the rapidly rotating storm pass no more than 1/2 mile to our east, then came the rain.    Danny and Adam had left their windows, doors heck might have had the sunroof open too and drenched all their gear.    Ben being Ben took off like a rocket to get on the other side, we decided to simply wait and follow it down the road from behind, unfortunately it disorganized and died as it…. get ready for it…. hit the Nebraska border.    With Danny and Adam’s equipment out of commission I let the chase as we intercepted a nice shelf cloud as the storm outflowed from the top of a hill, got some great shots.  

From 04/28/10 Washington, KS TORNADO

Then we tried to intercept the storm passing thru Fairbury once again giving up the chase as the Beatrice storm lit up, so once again we tried to catch it but they were moving too fast. 

At the end of the day we had the “Video of the day” and I could not have been happier, we stopped in Lincoln to eat and edit our stuff before heading back to my house in Elkhorn for the night.   Everyone uploaded their video to be sold to the networks and I uploaded mine to Youtube.

What a GREAT day and the 2nd time I have bagged a tor while working a 1/2 day so that makes me even more ecstatic.

In the morning I went to work and everyone else went to Iowa, I had my 7th tornado inside of a 8 days, I did not need to chase

On another cool note, NWS Topeka used my video and pics to confirm the tornado…
http://www.crh.noaa.gov/news/display_cmsstory.php?wfo=top&storyid=51678&source=2

What a SPECTACULAR chase!

Went to OKC to meet up with Steve Miller OK and Ben Holcomb on Wed night to setup for Thursday.
Hans Schroder picked up Steve and I and we headed out with a target of Childress, TX.   In the end we were near Goodnight, TX where we were tracking the storm that did produce all the tornadoes.   We were intreguied by the southern end of the storm however the tornado reports started coming from further north.

Hans getting out of my shot on the southern end of the storm.

 We decided to let this one go and head north to where the reports were coming in… in the end it was a ok choice, we missed the close up that Erik Burns had (We passed him) of the southern storm however did get to see the North before it roped out.   As we got setup to record the northern tornado Hans said “ANOTHER TORNADO!”   Yep the south had dropped a wonderful cone.

TORNADO #2!

Steve and I made a joke at one point it was sick leaving a tornado because we knew we had to keep up with what was going on up North.  We were not in a great spot to get shots of this (this was taken at 200mm) but we did decide to wait for it to rope out.

End of the line for Tornado #2

We went on ahead and booked north to I-40 I don’t know why I stopped using my camera at this point because for some reason I did not take pictures of the rest of the Tornadoes that day.    Once on I-40 we found a AWESOME spot to get all the multivortex action in the end of my video on top of a hill with a road that had no other purpose than to get us great video.   Great chase!

From 04/06/10 Grinnell

Waking up in St. Joseph in a NASTY Days Inn, not the worst MOTEL I had ever been in, but a new low for a named chain we went and grabbed some lunch.

I think all spirits were low this morning Ben Holcomb, Adam Lucio, L.B. Laforce and L.B.’s Dad (Bill) all stayed the night.
Looking over the forecast we need to be closer to Des Monies… this being the case I could have gone home and worked a 1/2 day to save some PTO and money so it’s making me sick. In addition the folks at the SPC have dropped the outlook from what was a 10% before we went to bed.

We ran over to a place called the Rib Crib for some lunch, GREAT PLACE to eat and would easily meet my $10 lunch rule with tip!   Tuesdays were all you can eat ribs for $9.99 so check them out!

We headed north up to Osceola, IA where we met the convergence and chilled for a while then headed to setup in South-South East IA, by about this time things were starting to go nuts up north of 80 but luckily we waited it out.   While everyone was playing in the storms dying out in N IA we had everything down south to ourselves.

The storm we ended up following was eventually what caused all the damage in Grinnell, IA strangely we had no clue until AFTER it happened.   Ben, Danny and Adam had pulled away from us earlier in the day, Joe Rusiwitz had met us somewhere (I can’t remember) and we ended up on 80 watching what was finally a rotating wall cloud.   After it passed we decided to eat at a Mexican place in Grinnell I knew of and took off that way.    We met the Danny, Adam and Ben at the rest area with $$$ in their eyes over the wreck video so we continued our trek to Grinnell.   Turns out the town got hit HARD with straight line winds, power was out everywhere however people were moving around.   There was no sense of urgency, no emergency vehicles moving around, much more like you got hit and the gut and trying to forget the pain.   I got a tip of a destroyed house where a tree had fallen on it so I went to shoot a package.    When we got to the house it was vacant and for rent, so nobody was in it.   The tree was rotted inside so no doubt it fell over, the house was just as crappy so I hate to say “No Loss” but more like some landlord in a college town needs to file some insurance, sure you get my drift there.

Unfortunately no Mexican food for me. I edited my package, uploaded it and headed for Newton, IA where I met Randy Cooper for dinner.

Not a bad chase, but would have rather seen some storms than just the aftermath… I hate that.

From 04/06/10 Grinnell

Hiawatha… The plains largest data hole exists between Sebetha, KS – Falls City, NE and St Joseph, MO.  (Ben Holcomb will disagree)  I hate chasing here but as usual we find ourselves sitting and waiting.   Data is so bad I typically hang out in Sebetha at the Mc Donalds but Chris Rice has Barron so we chilled here.    Met up with Steve Polley, Chris Rice, Marc Hicks, Joe Miller & Ryan McGinnis. This was a sunburn day, Solberg and JT took the day off to join me as everything looked good.   As we threw in the towel I and went back to IA the storms fired all dying on the front across the NE/KS state line.   In one photo I can be seen telling the storms what I thought of them standing in Mound City, MO and pointing at KS.  In the end I took Solberg and JT back to NE City and went back to St. Jo for the night and some NASTY Ihop.

From April 8th Kansas Bust Hiawatha, KS

What I think about KS today....

I am way behind on the blogs so I am going to get a bunch in here in a hurry.
Chase logs for my first 5 chases of the year will be up later tonight.

Winter this year was hard and long but some of it was my own doing.   We did some major updates to the code that drives ChaserTV many features we always wanted but did not have time to complete got done.   The website is almost entirely “Batch Driven” which is something I learned from the credit card days.   You want to process a ton of information and keep things stable you do it as a batch.     The new ChaserTV site builds all it’s content in batches every 1-5min depending, thus when someone visits the site the pages are basically stored in memory and don’t need to use other programs to work.   Why?   This helps keep the load off the server during extreme weather outbreaks such as 4/22/10 in the Texas Panhandle and 4/24/10 in MS.    I had a TON of help this time around Andrew Glenn and Henry Devito helped with most of the code and I acted more like a PM and designer.

We also added some new frills such as auotmatic up down, recording, new maps, new chaser pages, Twitter integration and Facebook.    We still have 2 new features we are working on, one of them technically works however is missing one part of the puzzle and the other is a integration with another weather product.   Hopefully we can get all of this done in the next week or so!