Its been quiet weather-wise across Colorado since the first, albeit weak snowfall.  With that, the quietness has spilled over to my site as well.  Updates have been few, and while the weather has been the main contributor to that factor, my personal life has also taken away a lot of time.  Regardless, I have had a couple days to catch up on a few things, process some videos (two of which I uploaded within the last hour), and at least get a list together of what’s upcoming..

LUBACCA 2010 – Twistentacious (DVD & possibly blu-ray)

A lot of chaser DVDs have gone out, and normally I would be adding to that overwhelming market.  However due to wedding planning, work, and a barrage of other items, I have barely had a chance to do more than organize out my chapters and do some basic storyboarding.  I have a couple big things I want to bring to this year’s production to keep on par with what I think is a good annual production that stands at the top of the quality among chaser DVDs.  Unfortunately that requires a lot of time which I don’t have right now.

However, with the big details of my wedding hashed out and a relaxed work schedule coming into play, I hope that expands my free time enough to allow for the editing.  I just purchased via Ebay the Adobe Production Premium CS4 suite which will allow me seemless editing of my AVCHD files between my various software applications where last year I had to convert in Premiere CS4 to allow for use in my CS3 suite.  That should make my editing quicker.  I am also awaiting a shipment of music from DJ Dani Garza who has created a host of new tracks to rock out my DVD.

While the DVD remains very much unstarted, I do have a list of tornado days that will be featured..

May 10
May 18
May 22
May 24
Jun 11
Jun 13
Aug 16

The May 22 and May 24 chapters will obviously carry the production with May 22 including the entire visible lifecycle of the Bowdle tornado, raw and uncut with the dashboard camera audio running over the entire chapter.  Not only does this give you the full look at Bowdle from me as a participant in M3 with TWISTEX, but the uncut audio will allow you to learn a bit about how we as TWISTEX operates around a tornado on what turned out to be a HUGE deployment for our group.  You will not see this type of stuff on the Discovery Channel.  The video I am featuring is a mix between my dash camera and what I shot handheld.

The May 24 chapter, featured in episode 7 of “Storm Chasers” will include a lot of the video you saw on the show plus more on what turned out to be quite the tornado day.  The dash footage I shot that day was some of the best quality tornado footage I have ever shot and made for an amazing day.

I also plan to feature that various hailstorms I documented throughout the season, but as opposed to giving them their own chapter, I am going to combine the various footage and set it to music.  I have completed the feature music video that will show pieces of footage from every chase I logged this year (where I took video).  The big addition to this year I will keep under wraps until I know for sure it will be included as I hope.  But stay tuned… as far as I know, if I do this and it works, I will be the first in the chasing community to have this on a DVD.

My hope was to release pre-Christmas, but I don’t think there is a way I can do that without sacrificing a lot of what I have in mind for this year’s production.  I also want to leave open the chance of doing a blu-ray which will be my first dabble in that arena.  With all that on the table and basically a near-zero start, its more realistic to think my DVD will be on the market after the New Years.

With a friend of mine and I going in together for a table at ChaserCon 2011, my goal is to have my DVD and potential blu-ray on that table for the National Storm Chaser Convention along with my 4 other previous releases and the weather jewelery she will be peddling.  With that said, my target release date is February 18, 2011.  Hopefully it’ll be sooner, but I have a high bar for my DVDs and I want to make sure I continue to push out quality that keeps everyone coming back.

“Storm Chasers” Season 4 – Discovery Channel

The season finale airs tomorrow night which will wrap up the series for the year.  At this time, its unknown whether a season 5 will be in the works and how/if TWISTEX will be part of it.  I am mixed on the turn-out of the series and feel as if a lot of good material was left on the cutting room floor.  TWISTEX’s lack of drama probably lead to a decrease in airtime, but I feel as if that lack of airtime spared us from receiving a lot of association from the un-needed drama shown for the other teams.  My hope is next year, should we return, that we are continued to be shown in the professional manner we try hard to portray in all aspects of our research, both on and off camera.  I appreciate very much the backing that we as TWISTEX have gained over the last two seasons and hope that your continued support will again give us the opportunity to share with you chasing as we in TWISTEX know it.

Website Updates

A lot of work remains on the website, and it’ll be a smattering of updates as I get them done.  My main focus is to get the content loaded, then presented in a clean way.  I am doing a lot of behind-the-scenes coding that will be tweaking various areas of the site to my liking.  A lot of the upcoming content is background stuff on my career.  Most importantly, the 2010 season will continued to be updated after the show airs its final episode tomorrow.

2011 Season, TWISTEX

All I know for 2011 is I will again be unrestricted to chase starting at the beginning of April and going through the end of June.  Fortunately, I found a supportive job of my chasing after leaving campus back in May and thus I will not lose regular season chasing I have been doing over the last few seasons.  I hope to again be a permanent part of TWISTEX for the coming season.  Beyond my time approval, there isn’t a lot else of certainty.  I have done some maintenance on “White Lightning” during the off-season which I hope buys her another season or 2.  I am also happy to brag that several of the more minor repairs were done by my own hands, which is not something I have ventured into often.

Facebook Fan Page (become a fan)

Yes, I made the sin and created a fan page for myself.  Given the exposure I have seen over the last couple of years, I wanted to separate my personal life and my professional life and thus created this page to accommodate that need.  If you haven’t already, become a fan to keep tabs of me.  This will become a very active page during chase season as I plan to make most of my updates here.  I have tied that page into my Twitter account, so the updates I post on Twitter will show up on this page.  This page will house a list of my page updates, new chase logs, new video posts, and of course, updates from the field.  And no, I have not stooped to the point of creating a fan page for my mini van.  This likely will not happen anytime in the future.  LOL

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I think that’s about it… obviously if we ever seen any weather of note here in Denver (or close by), I’ll update.  But unfortunately the pattern blasts the mountains and downslopes on the plains, keeping us dry and blustery.  That’s not really news worthy.  Right now, we are sitting officially at a whopping 1.5″ of snow for the season.  That sucks.  So long as that doesn’t make a dramatic increase between December 15-20 when I get married, I’ll be happy.  Otherwise, that number needs to go up in chunks, cause its been a boring start to the winter season here in Denver.

I heard via email on Monday that my acceptance letter was enroute, but wanted to wait til I had it in hands before making the announcement.  I applied to graduate school in a location very familiar to chasers and while I have not committed yet, it is my first choice in schools and you can say its location played a huge part.  I was accepted into the Communications graduate program at Fort Hays State University in good ol’ Hays, Kansas!

As I said, I have not committed myself yet as I am exploring some other options with finances being the biggest key in everything, but getting into the program was the first step.  I am also looking locally here in Denver at some options as I am in a position where I can shop around a bit with my interest in communications/multimedia.

Obviously the number one reason behind Ft. Hays was its location in Hays… I mean, duh!  My fiance and I also have a desire to relocate to a smaller town somewhere and Hays seems like a good fit for both of us.  I don’t think I really need to go into detail as to why I would go there, but Dania has some interest in the sustainability and agricultural aspects that the region has to offer and it would make a good fit for us, I think.  The graduate school route, should I pull the trigger, would allow us a chance to test out the waters of this new atmosphere and hopefully give us some direction as to where we want to settle ourselves.  We have moved almost annually to different locations across the Denver metro and neither of us want to settle here.  We’re both homebodies and while there are many aspects to Denver and the front range we’d miss, I think we’d make up for those losses well in an area where we can be involved.

There’s a lot of discussion and other things to work out before this is finalized (i.e. secure a job, find a place to live that accepts cats, etc).  With Dania graduating in December, I applied to start in the Spring semester of 2011, so any move would come in early January unless something ridiculous happens before then that would at least send me out ahead of time.  Either way, I wanted to pass along this news as the next step in life closes in.

The Saints win the Superbowl and thus end what I consider my second season.  I always joke that there are two seasons a year for me; storm chasing and football.  I get an overlap of the two in the fall, but typically a void during the time after the Superbowl that I consider my chasing preseason.

My chasing preseason usually consists of a majority of the gear buying, conventions and seminars, setting up, and the preseason chases that get in the mix.  The last few years have seen chasing kick off in February, but typically I consider April 1 to be the start of my real season even as I log a decent chunk of my annual mileage prior to that.

At this point, it doesn’t look too good to get out on the road on a real chase during this February, but its hard to rule anything out in the last week of the month.  But right now, at least in the GFS range, its not looking promising.  But I am curious to see how the plains fare during the early season thanks in part to all the moisture in the form of snow they’ve seen this year.  Another storm should push through midweek giving those areas some more.

I mention that cause Colorado saw a very active storm season last year which I believe was due in part to the abundant moisture left over from the snowstorms (and occasional day or two of rain) that came through in April and early May.  If I were to translate that over, I would venture a guess to say that March and April should be pretty active as the moisture should be hanging around in the ground.  Again, you could swing to either side of the fence with your thoughts on that particular subject.  But I am harboring a guess that there will be a few better-than-average chases in the panhandles, southern Kansas, and central Oklahoma from early to mid March through mid-April.

Speaking of snow, or lack-thereof, we did see some out of the system that moved through today, but only an inch or two.  It was pretty sad minus the short burst we saw mid-morning.  I don’t think anyone in the metro area saw more than a few inches, and that’s pretty evident by the lack of a snow totals link on the NWS page.  I didn’t have a lot of hope with this system being it was too far south for us to see much, but I was still hoping for a few more inches than what we saw.  While it may be wishful thinking, I’m hoping that this is all setting us up for a huge knockout blow in March in what I would hope to be a March 2003 repeat.  And no, I will NOT chase the warm sector if Denver looks to see a storm of that magnitude moving through.  Three feet of snow is rare enough to win out on those seldom occasions.

So that’s really about it… just wanted to mark the end of football season.  Once I wrap up the last of my Ebay business, I will post the trade outs from old equipment to new to show what I managed to accomplish in my purge this month.

Congrats again to the Saints!  Gutsy performance that earned them the Championship.

I’m not sure where this entry will end up.  Its 1:03am and I should be sleeping.  But given today being the first of four days in-a-row off, I find myself without a need to be up for anything in the morning, so I’m up a bit later than normal.

There’s a wide range of items upcoming in the next week, and oddly enough for a storm chaser and his storm chasing blog, none of them are really storm-chase specific.

First item of note is my Ebay fix lately.  I knew going into this season that I was going to be making a new camcorder purchase.  But I figured that was going to be out-of-pocket.  However I also realized that I had enough items lying around to where I could probably offset some if not most of the cost.  Turns out, I had a good start and after trading out the Sony HC7 (currently listed here) for the CX100, I will end up making a couple hundred on that trade which will put me well on my way to the purchase of the XR500v which I am hopeful to have ordered by Thursday.

The CX100 was an open-box item I purchased from a reputable seller on Ebay as I knew the camera was going to shortly be discontinued due to the new models (CX150) coming out in early February.  With the price good and less than what I was hoping to sell my HC7 for, it will primarily be my backup video camera.  Its very small size will make it portable and one I can carry with me just about anywhere.  It shoots AVCHD which is the same format as the XR500v, so editing between the two will be pretty seamless.  The only downside I’ve heard about the CX100 is its low light shooting, which given my experience with the XR500v, won’t be a huge issue for me.  I don’t know how steady it is and all that, but again, for the price and its size, its worth the trade-offs in those areas seeing as I’m investing in the much higher quality XR500v that I got to test drive for a year through TWISTEX last season.  Now if I can only get it for the price I saw last week.

The parting ways with my HC7 isn’t the only method of cashing up for these camera purchases.  During the last, oh 6 years, I have amassed a handful of laptops.  Three of which are being parted out on Ebay with a variety of issues that are preventing them from being functional.  Aside from the removal of the hard drives, each machine has some issue with it that I’ve listed in the ads.  I think all three with some replacement parts can be fully functional again, but none-the-less, they are going to bring in a fraction of the total cost of the XR500v.

A few other oddball items were thrown in to clear out some of my tech drawers here at home.  So on top of making some good cash from my closets, I’ve cleared out some clutter and will make a good trade out of it all when all ends on Wednesday.  Assuming fast payments from the winning bidders, I should be well off to order the XR500v by lunchtime on Thursday.

Weather-wise, there won’t be much to speak of locally for me.  The big story is the potential for another southern plains blizzard across parts of New Mexico, the Texas Panhandle, and central/southern Oklahoma.  GFS models hinting at over 2 inches of liquid from this storm with sub-freezing temperatures.  That brings the potential of a couple feet of snow for a few places starting Thursday.  Right now, the track of this storm looks to be too far south to do anything significant here in Denver, but we should drop temperatures enough for the post-frontal upslope precip to fall as snow.  Right now, I see a couple inches here, nothing mind-blowing.

A couple of conferences to mention, obviously one of them being the National Storm Chaser Convention.  The other is one I haven’t attended in a couple years.  I’ll be going to Dallas the weekend of March 13 for the TESSA convention.  I have always enjoyed this conference and look forward to seeing some old friends again.  Given the very free work schedule I have set myself up with, I have allowed myself the time to chase in the days surrounding the conference should a system move through at that time.  I am also considering what is my favorite conference which I have attended a couple times in the past and that’s the Severe Storms and Doppler Radar Conference in Iowa later in March.  This is a wonderful conference and I may opt into that one as well.  TWISTEX is presenting at that some of our findings from 2009, so its worth it for me in that all on its own.  That is still up in the air, but I’m keeping it on the front burner and will see how things shape up between now and then.

Congrats to the Colts and Saints for making it to the Superbowl.  I watched both Championship games today while fiddling with the website.  Given the Vikings crushing loss in overtime to the Saints, I’m going to find myself pulling for the Colts on this one.  The Vikings were my hope and it was mainly for Farve, but once again, he threw a terribly bad timed pick at the end of the game which ultimately sealed their fate.  And while that’s the lasting memory for most people watching that game with a Farve interest, the 4 turnovers previous to that didn’t help matters.  So while Farve made the last fatal mistake, it wasn’t all on him.  When the game ended, I found myself feeling really bad for him.  And my rooting against the Saints isn’t cause of that, its cause of how they won against my Redskins earlier in the season.  None-the-less, it oughta be a insanely fun Superbowl to watch.  One I can enjoy without the pressure, which is basically the losers way of dealing with his team not being in it.  I found myself wishing to know how it felt today… maybe after Shanahan gets settled, I’ll remember the feeling again.  It all lead me to search up this memory.. I was 6, and yes, I vaguely remember this through my Dad, enough to know to look for it this afternoon..

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I don’t think I have a lot to add… I’ve killed off 26 minutes penning all this out.  A few items I haven’t discussed that will probably make a cameo in the coming days/weeks.  One of which I can’t say just yet and the other I will hold off on with the exception of it being related to graduate school (multimedia) and awaiting a potential offer from a Tornado Alley-based school.  Beyond that, I’m just very much looking forward to getting back to a more free and flexible schedule after pulling nearly double my usual worktime over the last month.  I felt it at the end of this last week, and it probably quietly played the biggest role in why I didn’t jump in with Dann Cianca Friday night to chase a few CGs across eastern Colorado.  Believe me, I wanted to.  But, the season hasn’t even started yet… I’ll be out soon and this blog will again be fun to read!

With that, I’m ciao’d!  Goodnight from my kitty-covered couch here in Denver!