Exhibiting Symptoms of SDS -Oh No It’s December!

( Above is the 2006 Weather Guide Calendar that I have received every year for the last 13 years from my Aunt and enjoy reading and viewing the awesome weather and storm photography. Get your 2007 copy today in your local bookstore or online. My good chase pale Amos Magliocco will have a featured tornado photo published in the 2007 edition. Can‘t wait for my new one this Christmas!)

Is it really December 1^st? Man, it was just the forth of July. Yeah were all moving into the last four weeks of the year and into the heart of the holiday season. December 1^st marks my SDS depression to become active once again. Ugh! Yeah (SDS) Supercell Deprivation Syndrome is knocking on the door, and I’m starting to exhibit the first symptoms. Now we move into the long winter months with little severe weather and no hurricanes. This time of year you race out on to the roads at the first signs of a weak storm along a squall line and hope to find it before it dissipates due to the lack of instability, and oh yeah, unidirectional vertical wind shear.

This is the time of year, storm chasers start to put away funds for the upcoming severe storm season, add and modify vehicle hardware, photography and videography gear. You try anything to keep your mind satisfied with the little weather preparations projects you create and still end up getting restless. Myself, like many other chasers, dig out all your Mini DV tapes and start watching all the raw footage you shot throughout the year, and past seasons. You laugh and enjoy all the funny scenes you over looked the first time you went through the tape of you hauling ass on some “Bob’s Road” as a monster wall cloud hangs over your vehicle and someone in the back seat says softly, “are we going to drive under that?”….LOL hell yeah we are! That’s what you shoot the video for in the first place, to re-live the moments of your chase season, not always just to use for stock video. Chasing first!

So, December is here and I do have some projects lined up for the winter, including some hurricane dvd script writing, some Florida severe storm chasing, if El Nino continues, and prepare for a wild spring 2007 chase season, possibly. I’m planning on splitting my annual chase expedition into two trips to the Great American Plains this coming year, with several weeks in May and two more in late June. So I’ll be working hard to make sure I’m ready come Plains chase season. I also have a lot of work to do on my several storm chasing websites and blogs to get them in order and add content that has been sitting on a DVD data disk waiting to be uploaded since…umm yeah last season.

I’ll hang in there just fine over the winter like I have the last decade of my storm chasing career. At least it won’t snow here…oh wait! It did in Orlando last week. Ha!

Dedicated chasers lurk when the rock hard convection is no where to be found, but when the first signs of moisture, convergence and decent vertical wind profiles….it’s on baby! Always coming back to the boundary to play with mother nature….Always!

Jeff Gammons