Weather, Storms & Hurricane Blog

Looking For Some Real Weather, Head To The Plains?

Well, I’m about over  all this nice, stable weather here in Florida. This ridging, and abundance of dry air, sinking motion, and lack of anything is beginning to take it’s toll on me. Early April had me out everyday shooting storm video, and now all I’m left with is rain free forecasts. Hoping for a pattern change as we get ready to close out the month of April. The extended look into the forecast computer models is not very promising over the Southeast and Florida for rain. The next possible decent shot looks to be around Monday / Tuesday, with the passage of a moderate cool front. Then next week looks like we might be in another blocking pattern into the extended forecast if you were to believe the GFS. Ugh!

Getting Out On The Trails, Good For The Heart and Mind

All this nice weather has allowed me to get out and Mountain Bike some trails, and over the last two days I’ve biked about 23 miles of trails. Brought along a small Mini-DV camera that I mounted to the bike incase I came across anything worth shooting video of, which last night was the sunset. The amount of wildlife you can come across while well off-road is quite impressive. I’ve seen about 5 snakes in the last few days, two of them being Rattlesnakes. I’m sure a lot of animals are moving around a bit in search of food and water since it’s been so dry lately.

Tornadoes and Supercells Active On The Plains

It’s nice to see fellow Storm Chasers out on the Plains already intercepting and capturing beautiful tornado video scenes out over the open rolling High Plains. CNN playing the heck out of some tornado video from West Texas Supercells yesterday. Congrats to all out chasing yesterday, and looks like there is more to come this afternoon with a moderate risk of severe storms and tornadoes in Southern Nebraska and a large portion of Kansas. The Central Plains states look to be the main severe weather action for today. I’ll be monitoring the situation out there via internet while sitting under this outstanding high pressure ridge with all this subsidence. [grin]

(2 votes, average: 4 out of 5)

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Getting Outside Today For Earth Day 2008

Starting the day off with a little fog and smoke from some brushfires well south in the Everglades, but this should clear out once the breeze circulations get going. Today is expected to be another fine, warm and dry day, which makes a good day to get out and plant a tree here on Earth Day 2008. I plan to get out and plant a small tree in the yard this afternoon (likely a coconut palm / my favorite ). After that, I plan to get out and enjoy some of the day outside maybe shooting some wildlife video or landscape time lapse scenes. I can’t be spending Earth Day sitting at the computer today.

I hope that you can squeeze in maybe a hour between work, school and errands, to get out and enjoy your world a little today. Time to power down and get outside. Have a great day!

(2 votes, average: 5 out of 5)

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Slow Weather Pattern Continues and Driving Me Mad

A uneventful weekend weather-wise, and this trend looks to continue through much of this week. Unfortunately, a large mid and upper-level stacked low, will slowly drift over North Carolina and then offshore into the Western Atlantic. This will place much of the Southeast and Florida in a northwest flow and subsidence, keeping things pretty dry. We’ve been dealing with dry weather now for about 10 days, and we had a small shot on Sunday to see maybe a decent shower, and the most we saw was a 10 minute sprinkle with the passage of the old weakening frontal boundary.

Becoming Dry Once Again After A Wet Early April

Late March and the first half of April turned out to be a very wet period, with above seasonal rainfall, and some summer-type sea breeze storm patterns for about a week or so. It greatly helped with our normally dry season, and brought Lake Okeechobee up almost a foot., but now, things are very dry again, and with the higher sun angles this time of year, and getting stronger each day, things will continue to dry out. We have been lucky this year so far with wildfires. Only a few small fires have broken out this spring over Florida, and never lasted more than a day. With things drying out once again and moisture levels somewhat low, I won’t be surprised to see some wildfires in the next week.

Finishing Up Projects While The Weather Remains Non-active.

The rest of this week looks to have minimum rain chances, and my bored weather pattern will continue, so I will likely continue with several projects that I’m working on here before the Hurricane Season gets cranked up later this summer. First, I’m trying to wrap up a A/V Script for a upcoming documentary film that I‘m producing and plan to release sometime during the hurricane season. I have to finishing writing the last scene and the ending, and then finish up the last of the pre-production. Next week I plan to begin some of my interviews with NOAA National Weather Service staff at two Florida offices, and shoot some self interviews in Miami Beach.

The other project is nothing related to weather, storm chasing, filmmaking or stock video. Kersten and I have been doing some major spring cleaning around the house the last few days, and plan to work on it through the remainder of this week. Over the weekend we did some major clothes condensing in the closets, and donated a bunch of stuff we never wear anymore to Goodwill. We have been in this house for just over 3 years, and I can’t believe the junk and clutter that can add up. It feels good to clean out stuff we never use and get ride of some boxes. Also plan to pressure clean the house and patio decks before the rainy season begins.

So, no weather to really blog about or chase, which is depressing to me, but a lot of other daily projects keeping me busy. I’ll keep you posted on my progress and weather mental status with all this boring weather locked in this week. Have a great week!

(2 votes, average: 3.5 out of 5)

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Typhoon Neoguri Heading For China

Looking around the world at the current active tropical weather, there is Typhoon Neoguri, a once more organized typhoon, but still remains a dangerous cyclone. The storm first moved over the Paracel Island and is now brushing the large island of Hainan off the coast of China. Strong winds and surge are already being felt on the island. As you can see in this satellite tracking map and imagery of Typhoon Neoguri, the storm look less organized, but still holding a well developed circulation and convection.

Most of the associated deeper thunderstorms and convection are wrapped around on the northwestern quadrant of the storms, which is place the heaviest rains over the eastern Hainan locations. Typhoon Neoguri is forecast to continue moving northward and make landfall into the China mainland coast in about 24 hours. I’ll continue to monitor the cyclone and see if any reorganization resumes.

(3 votes, average: 4.33 out of 5)

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Surf’s Up Dude! Get Out There! Waves Crash At Inlet

There is currently a massive low pressure storm system over the western Atlantic Ocean off the Mid Atlantic coast and west-northwest of the Island of Bermuda. This has been a very slow moving storm system over the last few days, and it has become a large surf producer up and down the east coast of the United States. Here in Florida, the surf has been extremely elevated for days, with large pounding swells, with wind chop on top of it. I haven’t had the time to get down to the area beaches recently due to me working on editing video for a friend, but I know someone who has.

Good chaser and friend Chris Collura sent me these photos in the post of the swells yesterday off of Palm Beach County local beaches. I knew if I couldn’t make it down there, Chris would find his way. Chris is like me, whenever there is a Nor’easter or large northerly swell here in Florida, it’s defiantly worth getting down to the coast for the show. Chris and I both have a background in surfing in the past, especially myself with about 15 years of playing on the breaks.

Unfortunately, I can’t get away to go and hang out and watch the large waves roll in until maybe tomorrow, but they look to be peaking now or even yesterday. Other than that, no much in the weather department to chat about, just trying to get some work done here before the active severe weather returns. Thanks to Chris for sharing some of his images of the waves yesterday.

(2 votes, average: 4.5 out of 5)

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Resting The Weather Blogging Fingers

I’m back! It’s been a few days since my last post, as I took some time to relax and catch up with some family time over the weekend. After all the active Florida chasing a week ago, I was behind on things around here and needed to step away for a few days and get things back in order. I’m waking up this morning to unseasonable cold temperatures outside, with readings around 48F. Now this is just uncalled for! I thought we put a end to letting these flush cold fronts from moving into South Florida. Over the weekend it was nearly 90F here, and today we’ll be lucky to reach the mid 70s. Hopefully, this will be the last significant round of chilly weather this season for south Florida, and we can get back to that early summer-like storm pattern.

Interviewed For A Upcoming Book Over The Weekend

Over the weekend I met with a book author named Tom Jones, that is writing a book called “Risky Living”. He was referred to me by fellow Storm Chaser Dewdrop as he was in search of a Storm Chaser that made a living off of chasing, so he flew in from New York while on his interview tours for the book, and interviewed me on Sunday over Breakfast in West Palm Beach. It was a great experience and Tom was a very pleasant person to sit and talk hurricane and severe storms with, and my history with getting into weather and chasing. After breakfast, we sat around his hotel pool area under a umbrella table, and he asked away for about 1 ½ hours while tape recording the whole session.

Weather and My Health Life Working Together

It was one of my most interesting interviews that I have done, and most of my many interviews in the past have been TV ones, so I was excited that this was for a book. The only other print interviews I have done have been several News Papers around Florida, and the USAToday, and Boca Magazine. Another reason I was very happy to do the interview was, the book wasn’t about weather or storm chasing, it’s about people living risky, so I was able to open up some and talk about my health history and how it plays with my career of chasing weather and how “weather” keeps me motivated, positive and on track with living with some health issues. You’ll have to read the book next spring to get all the juice. HA!

Tom was a very nice guy, and I’m really looking forward to the book that is expected to be released sometime in the Spring of 2009. Of course, once I learn of any news with the book release date, I’ll pass it along on here.

Get Into Gear Dude

So, the long weekend for me is over, and it’s time to get back to my normal daily weather blogging. I’m going to get some warm coffee and dive into a ton of waiting unread emails since last Thursday, well most of them are unread. Sorry folks! The weather is quite nationwide with no severe weather the next few days, so this will allow me to get back into gear after my several days of laziness and neglect to the site. Have a good day!

(2 votes, average: 5 out of 5)

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Texas Seeing Damaging Tornadoes This Evening

I’m late getting in on the arm chasing of the current ongoing tornado event in Texas and Oklahoma. I’ve learned of a large damaging tornado that has produced damage in the town of Breckenridge, Texas, with injuries. Also Storm Chaser Verne Carlson, was reporting a possible large wedge tornado on the ground outside of Mineral Wells, Texas around 7:00pm CT. This is still uncomfirmed, and it could of been a large butt dragging wall cloud per Verne’s late evening update on StormTrack. There are still several impressive possible tornadic Supercell thunderstorms roaming over north Texas this evening.

Storm Chaser reports will likely filter in later tonight, as many of them are still in chase mode and chasing currently active severe cells. I’ll keep an eye on incoming news, tornado pictures and or video from today’s event, and post any updates here throughout the evening and tomorrow. Check back!

Update: Storm Chaser Chris Collura has been feeding in pictures from the hard hit area of Breckenridge Texas this morning. I’ll have another post up shortly. 

(3 votes, average: 4.33 out of 5)

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