6/29/2006 Back in Florida today, again. Not for any hurricanes but for a underwater scuba video project for the upcoming TV project. Brian is going to help out with some of the camera work for this but I’ll be out diving the wrecks and stuff with him on the Ultimate Getaway out of Fort Myers. We have a 12 hour boat ride to get started on and I’ll finally have some time to get back to working on the web page with NO Cell Phone, Email, or anything else to interrupt me while I’m working. Wow, that will be a vacation.
6/28/2006 I got the call I have been waiting on for the last week. I got the go ahead to start production on my own Weather Paparazzi Television project. I can’t say much about it now but it is set to start production ASAP!!! Kind of a Discovery Channel Survivor Man meets Storm Chasing / Storm Stories on TWC meets Jack Ass… If I’m producing the video, it’s going to be hella cool!!! This is going to be pretty cool because I get to write, direct, shoot and produce it.
6/27/2006 Shot some time lapse footage today of the setting today.
6/26/2006 Edited the rain foot video from the other day.
6/25/2006 Where have I been? Well been busy working on the site, the new video biz that I will talk about later, storm chasing the local storms and scuba diving. I got several new dives in last week and I got the official permission from the City of Minneapolis Park Board to scuba dive without a permit. Last week a Minneapolis Motorcycle cop came up to me and told me I was breaking the law by Scuba Diving without a permit. Turn’s out there is no such permit and he was an idiot. I also talked to the Park Police who said that Minneapolis Police don’t have jurisdiction on the water. It is DNR, County Water Patrol and Park Police for stuff in the water. Today we went diving in Calhoun and the vis sucked. We dove too late in the day so everything was green but we still got in two dives. Here are some vid caps from 6/24/06 dives.
After I went diving I then went storm chasing. I got into some big hail near Elko and south of Cannon Falls MN.
6/23/2006 Went storm chasing today in SW Minnesota. I saw a sweet rain foot and some cool storms
6/16/2006 Back home and back into a great storm. Today I got some jumping man hole covers.
6/15/2006 Early this morning I left Tallahassee Florida for Atlanta to fly home. On the way to the airport I stopped by The Weather Channel to say hi to all the people who I get to talk to all the time on the phone but don’t get to see since my I live in Minneapolis. It was cool to see how they redid all the studio’s and added the new studio for Weekend View. Now I’m back home in the Twin Cities reviewing all the footage we shot during Tropical Storm Alberto.
6/14/2006 Recovering in Tallahassee from the chase and being up for so long. I’m posting all the info on the chase to the dedicated blog page
6/13/2006 Today the storm shifted back to the North East at the last chance and the eye went over Steinhatchee FL.
6/13/2006 In Tallahassee for Tropical Storm Alberto video, or maybe it will be Hurricane Alberto Video. I’m not sure yet. The eye of the storm is about 30 miles due south of me and is moving north.
6/10/2006 Sorry, been crazy busy working on 5 different projects at once and have not had time to update the blog but I’m still around and still alive. I am busting ass to get home to get ready for the possible hurricane chase next week. Where have I been and what have I been up to? For the past three days I have been out storm chasing.
I just needed to get out and clear my head and just do what I do best, Severe Storms Photojournalism. So why most chasers have been banging their head against the wall trying to see anything, I went out for three days and saw everything I wanted to see.
Starting on 6/7/2006, I was in South Dakota and got on some hail producers and good lightning severe storms.
6/8/2009 I got on some major flash flooding. I was following a severe storm through the foot hills of Montana and found Briscoe Creek. Briscoe Creek which is part of the Tongue River is normally a little to nothing creek according to the locals, but today, it grew to 100 yards across in a massive flash flooding event. Brandenberg Montana is just north of Ashland Montana off of Highway 212 and Tongue River Road in Rosebud County. The large storms trained over the same area and created the flash flooding event that pretty much destroyed the farm next to the road.
6/9/2006 I had a near perfect chase day. Started the chase off in Sheridan WY and watched some storms along the mountains then went over to Devils Tower to kill some time while I waited for the storms.
Then when I was ready to chase, I looked at the data on the laptop an saw that the storms were kicking up to my southwest. Knowing that the road network out there kind of blows for having lots of chase options, I was actually in pretty good position for this storm.
This is from the east looking back south west since there was only on road to chase on.
Some of the higher winds as I got into the storm. and below is a screen shot of the radar and my position using SwiftWX weather software. You can see I was right in the thick of things for the best storm of the day.
Here is the video from this chase.
My plan for the day was that if the storms sucked, I would go see Devils Tower then go see Mt. Rushmore. Well the storms did not suck and I got to do all three. The best part of this chase was not the storms, it was the Buffalo’s. I was in Custer National Park in the Black Hills of South Dakota to just check them out since I have never been there. Most storm chasers make stupid jokes about the movie twister and “We Got Cows” Well The Weather Paparazzi won’t settle for bull crap, I got a herd of Buffalo that were spooked by the weather stampeding across highway at the park entrance.
I setup my camera in between waves of Buffalo and was able to get some insane footage of them coming right up to the video camera as I was back in the Jeep. I talked to the park ranger at the entrance to find out if that is an everyday thing and she said she has never seen that happen since she started working there.
6/5/2006 Out storm chasing in Eastern South Dakota today. Got on the tornado warned storm then it died. Did not see much. All the action looked to be back in Minneapolis for lightning. Oh well, I did get some cute photos of some puppies.
