Palm Bay Florida Homes Hit Hard By Wildfies

I was out covering the central Florida wildfires on Tuesday. I first started off the morning touring the hard hit area’s of southern Palm Bay, FL, where a firestorm moved through residential homes along Babcock Road on Monday. I filmed several homes completely leveled by the fires, and spoke to some residents that gave the scary stories of the day before. The homes and neighborhood were still smoldering, with the remains of once beautiful homes. The scene reminded me of when I covered the St Lucie West wildfires way back I believe in 1998 or so. Dozens of homes, vehicles and business burned to the ground from a fast moving fire just like the one on Monday in Palm Bay.

Fire Moves East Then Back West Across I-95

Meanwhile, the wildfire that produced all the damage, was still ongoing, and now beginning to turn more southerly as the winds that were strong on Monday from the west, were now turning out of the northeast. So, I opted to chase the fire, and setup on a two land overpass road that went over I-95 named Micco Road. This placed me high and in a excellent view of the fire and where it was expected to cross back over the interstate. It was weird to see the interstate car less, and only the occasional Florida State Trooper blasting by below. After several hours, the wildfire reached the interstate and my location just to the north. I was over taken with very heavy thick smoke and hot ash, and large fire flare ups could be seen up the road.

Firefighting Helicopters Working Hard On The Fire Below

Florida Department of Forestry began flying water helicopters, and they would scoop up water into buckets at a nearby lake, and drop it over the fire line along the interstate, and a line of power lines. Soon the fire was closing in, and myself, along with several other Brevard County Deputies had to turn and head east as the fire was about to cross our location. I then broke off that fire and did a large loop back around to Babcock Rd, where I found a dirt road leading to a farm that was under the gun with the fire approaches from the east.

Close Call For A Farmer With A Lot Of Animals

At the farm location just east of Babcock, and just north of Micco Rd , was my last stop of the day, and I stood outside the farm gate watching the fire line slowly approach and watched as cows ran away from the smoke and fire. Here I ran into a fellow Photographer from Scripts, and a local farmer who had a home a ranch just to the north with over 100 animals. The farmer was very concerned and was watching the helicopters drop water on the fire, and the fire crews dig ditches along the property lines. After several hours of intense smoke and nearby flames, I’m happy to report the helicopters were able to keep the fire down and save this mans farm.

So, overall, a very busy, smoked filled and hot day covering the Central Florida wildfires of 2008. It was hard to see that so many that suffered property damage from the fires, and all the emotions that come along with such a loss. It was very sobering speaking with them and watching them pick through the remains of everything they had. Unfortunately, the very dry weather is expected to continue through the week, and the wildfires will likely be in the forecast as well. I’ll be monitoring the fire situation this week and will update more if need be on the fires.

I knew it wouldn’t take long before the Florida wildfire threat would increased, as it’s been extremely dry now for weeks. The last 3-4 days have been very windy, dry, and hot, with record temperatures in the lower to mid 90’s. Last night a weak cold front moved through, only helping to lower the temps some and dry the atmosphere out even more. The last few days the strong winds have been from the west, but expected to become northerly today behind this front, so a lot of the smoke from the Brevard County wildfires near Palm Bay and Melbourne might make it into metro South Florida today.

Out Shooting Today In Hard Hit Area’s Of Central Florida

Yesterday, several homes were lost to out of control wildfires in Central east Florida. Interstate I-95 was closed. These fires continue this morning, and might flare up again once the winds return by afternoon. I’ll be up in Central Florida today covering the wildfires and some of the aftermath from yesterday firestorm that went through the residential Melbourne region.

There are other ongoing wildfires across Florida as well that need to be watched, and I’ll be monitoring these today too. I’ll have an update with video and pictures of the Florida wildfires 2008 throughout the week.

It’s been a very active weekend across the nation weather-wise, with deadly tornadoes over the mid South, and record high temperatures in Florida. I have been unable to cover the latest weather events this past weekend due to server problems and growing pains. StormVideographer has become pretty popular on the web, and when things get active like they have been the last few weeks across the nation, and even internationally with the deadly Cyclone, the site gets slammed. Well, this weekend turned out to become a big headache for me trying to keep the site in working order. Not only am I stressed from the current situation, but some of my advertisers are as well…not good.

Growing To Big For My Current Server

The current small business web hosting I have is no longer working for the amount of traffic and request for video files from the site. The server is continuously getting worked over and it’s time to upgrade. Over the next few days (about 36-48 hours), I’ll be upgrading to not only a large server with power, but a new host since the current one I have is not playing nice with their service plans and fee’s for moving. I have been with them for 3 years and I have been treated pretty poorly from their customer service department this week. That’s a whole other post for another time.

So Much To Move, Where Did It All Come From?

So, I’ll be moving nearly 600 blog post articles, over 6000 files, and tons of video streams over to a new server host. This will likely not be seamless, so the site might be up and down for the next few days until I get settled into my new server home. The name server change with take a day or two to propagate the internet. Don’t fear, the StormVideographer Blog is not disappearing, just adjusting to some major growing pains and needing a more mature backbone server for it to continue.

Thanks and So Much To Come This Summer

Thanks to all my resident readers for understanding the possible down time the next few days, and those new to the blog, this is just a hiccup and things should be back to normal very soon.

Thanks - Jeff Gammons

Finally! It rained on Thursday, and I mean it rained! We had a outstanding strong pulse thunderstorm develop on the east coast and lake breeze boundaries and track northeast over much of the Lake Okeechobee region. I was actually already out shooting for another project, when I began to notice the developing towering Cumulus field. It was very hot, with temperatures in the lower 90’s. You could feel that the low-level moisture had increased, and with the 93F temps, and some good forcing, something had to give.

Sure enough, by late afternoon, thunderstorms began to break out along the western side of Lake Okeechobee, and strengthened as they moved northeastward. I dropped what I was doing and started to think about where I would intercept the cell. By 6 pm, the storm had a warning on it, and was heading for some remote locations on the east-northeast region of the lake, so that’s where I headed. I was greeted with blowing white sand and dust in the inflow winds of the approaching storm once I got to the beach area of the lake. The storm had some decent organized structure, but was begging to look mostly outflow dominant, which is pretty much the case with Florida late spring storms.

Is It A Tropical Storm Or What?

Soon, the core reached my location, and the temperature dropped from the lower 90s to the upper 70s within 10 minutes as some strong microburst straight-line winds blasted me with heavy rains and cooler downdraft air. The car was rocking, and the palm tree’s looked as if I were filming a minimal tropical storm. There were a few tree’s I saw that were knocked over from the winds. I was not only enjoying the strong winds and some storm structure, but also the very heavy pounding rains. It’s been 19 days since it last rained here, and it was lovely to smell and hear the rains.

Defiantly Too Busy To Be Bored

I have been extremely busy this week, and working on several projects that have me running like mad. I had nothing too important to blog about this week, so I took a few days off from this blog. If we can get through this ridging and kick in our wet season, I’ll have a little more to post about weather-wise. I’m trying to get things in place for the hurricane season, and this will all pay off later this summer. Anyways, have a great weekend and I hope to have some more storm scenes from the weekend to share next week.

Hard to believe the weekend is already over. It was very hot and smokey here much of the weekend, and very stagnant. Sea breeze circulations each day helped to stir things around some and make it less hazy, but it remained hot. Both Saturday and Sunday reached to 90F here at my home, but humidity levels were low, so it didn’t feel like the normal Florida 90s. Those lower humidity levels and the continuation of very dry ground conditions make for prime brush fire weather and sure enough there was several over the weekend.

Even as I type this pre-dawn post, the smell of smoke is getting into the AC unit, and when walking out side, it’s very still, with hazy smoke hanging over the area trapped below the strong inversion. A lot of flashbacks from the 2007 spring wildfire season last year, and I sure hope this is only in the short-term, but the extended forecast looks grim for a break in this ridge and any rain possibilities.

Public Presentation This Evening On Hurricanes and Season 2008

I’ll be on the road much of the day today, and this evening I’ll be speaking at the Wellington Community Center in suburban West Palm Beach, FL. Tonight a pre-hurricane season 2008 meeting is taken place and I’m one of a few that will be presenting. I’ll be showing some past hurricanes videos scenes from 2004 - 2007, and showing some sneak peak previews of a Florida Weather documentary that I have been working on.

I know I have many South Florida readers out there that read the blog, so come on out this evening for some weather talk and video presentations. The meeting begins at 7:30PM Hope to see some of you there!

Thursday evening, a line of embedded Supercell thunderstorms tracked through the eastern parts of the central Plains states from central Oklahoma, much of eastern Kansas and northwest Iowa. Storm Chaser Jim Edds was on the tail-end line of storms in southeastern Kansas from the start to well after dark. I was nowcasting for Jim throughout the day and evening, giving radar, and warning reports. Jim first jumped on the developing possible tornadic Supercell near the town of Fredonia, KS, (see storm picture ) where he saw a short-lived funnel and wall cloud, with banding storm structure.

Chanute Kansas Under The Gun - Storm Chasers Film

Jim then shifted northeast with the storm that was cycling through several time before reaching up near Chanute, Kansas, where the storm wrapped up once again. As you can see in the above picture, people taking cover and hunkering down in the local Chanute

Fire department building. Women and children lined the hallway as tornado sirens blast outside. I was on the phone with Jim when he was shooting at this location, and everyone in the background was calm and listening to Jim’s updates. You could clearly hear the tornado sirens in the distance, letting you know something bad might be on the way.

Jim was not the only Chaser in the area, actually, there were dozens and dozens on this storm. My fellow chaser partner Chris Collura was also on this storm, although I was not in contact with him since Thursday morning. Chris overnight sent in some outstanding pictures of the Chanute, KS tornadic Supercell. You can view this photos to the left and here. I was impressed to see how many tornado reports there were up and down the eastern Plains for Thursday. There were 19 tornado reports as of 3:am today, and some of them were confirmed tornadoes on the ground, especially in Oklahoma.

Severe Weather Continues Today Further East

As for today, all the severe weather is shifting eastward, and another moderate risk for severe storms and tornadoes now is in place over much of the central Mississippi valley. I will be monitoring today’s storms, and chasers that might be in the target area.

Nowcasting for Jim Edds, who is currently on the Elk County, Kansas tornado warned cell. Jim has a nice little Supercell in view with nice banding per his last update. He is in Fredonia, KS.

 May Plains Storm Chase Season Opens - Moderate Risk Kansas

We open the month of May with a moderate risk of severe storms and possible tornadoes over parts of the central Plains States. Eastern Kansas is looking like the start of the main show later today, and Storm Chasers from around the nation are likely converging in this area for expected Supercell storms later this afternoon and evening. May 1^st normally really kicks off Plains chasing, especially for non- Plains resident chasers that fly or drive in for chase-vacation either for a week or for the entire month of May.

Nowcasting For Fellow Chasers In The Short-Term

Today, I’m nowcasting for two Florida chasers in Kansas this morning that are gearing up for storms. Jim Edds is in Wichita, Kansas, and will be moving into place as things organized by late afternoon. Chris Collura is in Lawrence, Kansas and doing the same. I have been on the phone with both of them several times already this morning, and they are pumped to be chasing on May 1^st. I’ll have updates later today as things get fired up in the target area.

Florida Breezy Dry Conditions - Fire Weather Risks

Back home here in Florida, were dealing with gusty winds and low moisture levels that have fire risk elevated today. Looking at the extended forecast models, Florida should remain dry through the remainder of the week, and one last weak front on Sunday. This should be the last front to penetrate Florida as the western Atlantic ridge becomes the new dominant featured for the summer season. One can hope! Looking for that wet season to kick soon.

More updates later today on the Guys chasing in Kansas…