Author: Doug

To start out with, I have been chasing like crazy here to the point were Neva has been wondering when I am going to finish moving.  I was up by Canada the other day and then chasing in Northern Iowa the next day.  The storms up north of Grand Forks were pretty sweet but damn it is a Fn haul to get up there.  It’s like driving from Minneapolis, MN to Kansas City, MO, it will take a while.  But it was worth it.  I just wish I would have got up their sooner.  The area is still way up north but when there is nothing else happening, it was worth the experience chasing tornadic storms why up north.

Okay, now onto other news about the chaser community.  I really did not want to touch this one with a 100 foot pole but I will address it here and now.

A couple week’s ago, a tornado was reported in Valentine Nebraska.  Video of what was thought to be the tornado was fed out to all the news media of the event.  And then all the other chasers saw it on viral video feeds and the network feeds and AP online feed.

Then that is when a few of us started saying wow, that sure is a cool looking speed up video feed to make it look faster.  But wait, that looks like the Rock Kansas tornado from June 12, 2004 which was same day as the Mulvane Kansas tornado day that must have been documented by several hundred chasers. 

Here is what KSTP, the station I freelance for in Minneapolis, this is what they had on their website.

http://kstp.com/article/stories/S506179.shtml
Created on: 07/11/2008 01:45:50 AM
By DAVID BAUDER
Tornado videographer denies doctoring footage
(AP) NEW YORK – A storm chaser accused of doctoring old tornado video and selling it under the pretense that it was taken last week in Nebraska denied wrongdoing Thursday, suggesting that professional jealousy was behind the allegation.

The Associated Press and video services operated by CBS, NBC and Fox pulled the video late Tuesday after determining that there was enough evidence to question its authenticity.

Andy Fabel agreed to sell the footage for $295 to The Associated Press, and also made it available to the other news organizations. The AP has purchased tornado video from Fabel on three previous occasions.

A fellow storm chaser, Dan Robinson of Appalachian Skies Media, contacted the AP to say he believed Fabel’s video was a doctored version of images taken of another twister that touched down four years ago in Rock, Kansas.

Fabel told the AP on Thursday that he legitimately filmed the Nebraska storm. He said fellow storm chasers are “jealous of you if you got a tornado that they wanted. They’ll pack it up and try to crucify you. “Robinson said the image was “flipped” to make it seem the tornado was pointed in another direction, and the action sped up.

The supposed Nebraska footage includes power lines not seen in the Kansas storm; it also is minus trees shown in the Kansas images. Robinson said he was familiar with the Kansas storm because he, too, had filmed it from a similar angle. He said at least four other storm chasers who had witnessed the Kansas storm agreed on an Internet forum that the video was from Kansas.

The AP had sent Fabel’s video Sunday to nearly 2,000 Web sites that subscribe to the company’s Online Video Network, and more than 60 large digital customers that buy AP’s online content individually. Upon seeing the evidence, the AP eliminated the video from OVN and contacted its other customers to urge them not to use it, said Kevin Roach, the AP’s acting head of domestic broadcast news operations.
“We never want to mislead people,” Roach said. “Based on evidence provided to us, we believe that the video was not authentic. “Roach said the AP looked at the two video streams side-by-side, and examined individual frames of the footage in making its determination. He also asked for opinions from a photo editor and third storm chaser, Roach said. “It was rather definitive for us,” he said.

The NBC, CBS and Fox services provide video to the networks’ affiliates. They had agreed to buy Fabel’s video and distributed it, then took it off their servers on Tuesday after suspicions were raised, representatives for the networks said.”There was enough evidence for us to make it suspect, ” said Sharon Houston, an executive producer with NBC News Channel. John Stack, vice president of news gathering for Fox News Channel, said Fabel has been one of the top storm chasers relied upon by media for tornado pictures. Now he said Fabel’s work is suspect. “The concern is whether he’s an actual news gatherer or Cecil B. DeMille,” Stack said.

(Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

And then there is this one from the Chicago Tribune.

It has the frame grabs from the two videos to prove it was a fake. 

This was a bad thing to do and to ruin everything and hurt the industry for $295?  What an idiot.

Chased up north today with Neva and got screwed by the trees.  We were on several great storms but lost them in the trees and then on one of the better storms that had a tornado warning on it, and was heading towards Brainerd MN, we were totally on it and then we were totally blocked by Camp Ripley.  Ugh, I remember why I never chase up north of St. Cloud and north of I94. You can’t see anything except for forests.

We headed south and chased down highway 10 towards Anoka when Neva got this shot. Here is the point and shoot photo that Neva took as we were driving through Elk River on the south side of town.

grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr  ugh, I have been trying for a decade to get a shot of lightning and a rainbow together and she just points the little Canon Powershot out the window and said “That was pretty easy”.

I woke up today to the National Weather Service weather radio screaming with an alarm of severe thunder storm watch for my area.   I checked the web and thought maybe I should go out to chase but after looking at the data, I thought to myself that I needed to stay put and stay home.

I was right because I was able to film some hurricane force wind gusts just off my bedroom deck.  Below is the video that I shot of the storm and the damage around Burnsville.

Wow, it seems kind of strange but I’m back home in Burnsville tonight, er this morning.  I’m getting caught up on all the paperwork from the last two months that has been stacking up here at home.  And now I get to take care of it and then get everything ready for the big move to St. Cloud at the end of the month. 

I looked at another chasers blog and it looks like the whole chase scene knows that I’m on a TV show now. How they found out, well, don’t know, don’t really care because it is obvious that their are no secrets in storm chasing since it is a gossip fest. They know I’m in the show but the cool part is that only the crew and I know what really happened. I made sure I have given a lot of bullshit answers to everyone that has been asking me what happened. Hell I think there is a rumor out there that I got struck by lightning or smashed the truck into a tree or even rolled it down a ditch. What really happened? Tune in and watch!

Ok what else is up. Now that I’m back home for a few weeks to take care of my business before Hurricane Season goes into full blown action, I’m going to try and get the websites caught up.

On the chasing scene, I was chasing last night and yesterday. I followed the storms from St. Cloud to Northfield MN and shot some sweet lightning footage. The footage is listed below.

And on the personal side of things. Neva and I went up north to her family small town cabin area on Lake Osakis.

Well, that is pretty much it for now.  Been hella busy working on the show and working on other projects for BNVN so no time to update over the last month but I will be updating the blog when I can.

Until the next update.

After a month on the road, stopping home for a mater of minutes just to check the mail and wash clothes then head back on the road again, I’m happy to say, I’m coming home, or I’m going home folks to spend some time at home for once.

I wrapped up the first part of a huge gig a week ago and then had to drive all night home only to get a few hours of sleep and clean up and pack and head back out to the scuba trip with Brian that has been in the works for almost a year.  The scuba trip was great and I got in 13 dives with the deepest being on the Baja wreck at 110 feet.  Yes the PO2 alarm was going off on my dive computer at 1.4 PO2 and I thought about pushing it a few more feet to get to the bottom of the wreck.

Now, I’m just chilling out in Fort Myers for the night and going to do some more laundry on the road at the hotel and then get some sleep. 

Before I forget, here is some photos from the dive trip with the new under water HD setup. A few cool shots and one of Brian working the camera. 

Here is this dude we picked up in South Park Colorado. His name is Johnny and he was in a Fitz… He was asking for change so we gave him a ride…

Life on THE ROAD is rough, it’s not really a homeless dude but one of the guys I’m chasing with who is just beat from all the travel.

Just an FYI, I’m still out chasing but can’t say much other than some know whats up.  Here is a shot from The Road…

Just a quick update from home for once.  I’m home for a few days then I’m going back out to chase again after I rest up and clean up.

Yesterday we got on the tornado that hit the southwest side of Omaha during the over night hours.  We saw the power flashes just off to the south of us and then got hit with the RFD as we chased after the rain wrapped tornado at night.  It was pretty intense to say the lease but we were seeing more then most chasers.  After the storm passed, I went and documented the damage area.   It looked like a small but intense tornado. 

Ok, been pulling 4 hours of sleep for the last week and I now have 2 days off and I’m going to enjoy them sleeping.

Just a quick update to the blog.  It is 3am and were in Kansas City and dead to the world but I was on the storm that dropped a tornado near Pittsburg Kansas tonight.  The storm fired at sunset so it was hard to see the thing and I’m not sure how the video will look but we could visually see it just southwest of the town drop a funnel that was almost to the ground in the middle of some fields with a nice wall cloud for a few minutes.  We followed it through town and when it started to fall apart.  It was pretty nice for the visuals to see the setup with the twilight back lighting the storm and the faint lights of the city helping out at times.

As far as I know, no damage was done by this storm but it was a great learning experience for Phillip who is chasing with me to learn how the whole chasing and media thing comes together. 

Also we were on another storm that was a low topped super-cell that was trying to produce near Adair OK.  Yes, today was one of those crazy chase days were it was a low chance of seeing anything and we saw a lot of stuff.  And crazy because we drove from KS to OK to MO to KS to MO back to KS and then back to KC MO for the night.  Ugh, this chase is really going “to the break of dawn”…

Ok bad rap music quote.  I’m going to share a couple photos and a screen cap from the video camera before I call it a night.

Here is what I got near Adair OK.  It looked better before this but I was stuck on the turnpike and had to drive out of my way to get back to here I could actually see this.

Here is the storm that went through Pittsburg KS.  The first is the anvil from just north of town and the second is a vid-cap of what I was seeing.   It was so freaking hard to see this since the lightning was pretty much nil and the storm was not that strong but it was still doing it.

Video Cap from just south of Pittsburg KS.

Ok, off to bed, tomorrow is already here and I only have a few hours to sleep before I go back out on the chase.

Well that was fun… Another high risk day, another turbo charged day full of fun chasing. This morning, I woke up to a High Risk of severe weather on the Storm Prediction Center – Day One Outlook.  It looked like we were going to have a great setup until I saw the upper level winds and I knew the storms would be moving along at insane speeds.  So this morning we stopped off in Hays Kansas to pick up some JATO (Jet-Assisted Take Off) units for the truck. They were not even enough to help out to keep up with the storms.   Just kidding about the JATO unit.

Here was the day one forecast that showed the high risk for today.

Pretty much just played the line today in Kansas and got on several tornadic warned storms. Not a bad day, just not something I think should have be high risk. I did get some sweet lightning footage and some wicked time-lapse video of the storms.

But for the most part the storms were HP or High Precipitation and you could not see much.  When you could see the setup, they looked pretty sweet.

I did stop and grab a screen cap of the radar while we were waiting around for the storms to fire. I think the storms were moving a little fast today.