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I can finally post a blog about a project I helped out with that I had to keep under wraps until now.  A while back I was contacted by a production company in Los Angeles, CA about helping out with a new project they were working on for Mitsubishi Cars called “Ride The Storm”.

They needed some professional winter weather B-roll footage that showed some pretty intense driving conditions in winter storms and blizzards.  I was honored that they picked my footage for this project.  

They made two different versions of the project, one for television and one for the web commercials.

https://vimeo.com/43059950

Here is the extended copy of the internet commercial.

After the latest round of thunderstorm and early season tornadoes in Alabama, a lot of people on Facebook are freaking out about someone in the media that read a script on a prompter saying “Tornadoes Hit Without Warning”.  Really, you freak out on a talking head in front of a camera that reads a news script like Obama reads a speech but you don’t stop and look at a some of the chasers blowing it calling it a tornado without seeing a tornado.  What I’m talking about is the power flashes.

For the non weather geek readers of my blog, a power flash is simply a electrical line, transformer on a power pole or the fuse on the power line to the transformer shorting out.  Think of when you hook up jumper cables to your cars battery and you touch the two ends together and it sparks.  Same concept on a much larger scale.

The first video below is footage I shot during hurricane Rita back in 2005.  If you fast forward to the 1:25 mark in the video you will see prime examples of a power flash that are up close and personal.  This footage is some of the best power flashes ever caught on camera.  There were lots of power flashes but I was not in a tornado.

Now back to what my point is.  One thing that has kind of annoyed me with watching several video’s of the latest severe weather event is the linking of a power flash to equal that a tornado is on the ground and doing damage.  If you can not see the tornado back lit by lightning or city lights on a storm that is moving at 50 to 60+ miles per hour that the storm motion alone is guarantied straight line winds, can you really say it’s a tornado?

If there is a power flash, is there a tornado?  In the video below, fast forward and watch the footage from the two minute mark to about the two minute and twenty seconds and look for the power flashes.

Did you see the power flashes?  Was that a tornado on the ground?  No and most power flashes during a storm are caused by lightning hitting the power lines and blowing fuses at the transformers and straight line winds knocking down tree branches.  If I said every power flash was a tornado, I could add a few dozen more tornadoes to my count. Oh wait, I don’t keep a tornado count. Now I’m not going to call anyone out directly and name people but keep in mind next time you see a power flash, its not a tornado but the storm is doing damage. 

It could be a tornado, it could be lightning, it could be lightning hitting a tree and a branch falling on power lines, it could be a branch or other debris tossed into power-lines, unless you see the tornado can you say its a tornado with the speed those storms were moving?

Here is a prime example of power flashes but where is the tornado? There was none, straight line winds blew debris onto the power lines.

Of course there are a exceptions to this and that is if you are in the clear under a storm but you have good city lights at night to light up the rain free cloud base and you see a black wall of rain wrapped meso moving at you with major rotation under the rain free area, yes there might be a tornado in there if the storm is moving at 20 to 30 miles per hour. 

If the system is moving at speeds that are already considered above severe thunderstorm wind speeds, the power flashes could be from straight line debris or lightning.  Just know what you are looking at if you are going to call in a tornado report.

Last week when I updated my blog it was record warm temps and now its back to normal for winter in Minnesota.  Ahhh, I knew it would not last but we still have had one heck of a great winter with little snow cover and warm temps.  It is time to get back to normal before the spring storm chasing season starts up and were back to the chase.

Tonight Neva and I were out doing some photos at our spot up north of town where the light pollution is not bad.  I wanted to play around with the new camera setup some more now that the were entering into a new moon phase and get some cool star trails.

The photograph below is about an hour long exposure pointed towards the north star in the top center of the frame.  Still need to work on a few things but my goal is to do a 8 hour photo.  I just need to get up north and do this where the light pollution is zero.

Click on the image to see the larger image size.

Ok, today just was perfect and one of the days where I love my job because I get to work out side to document the weather. This time of year I should be wearing snow pants, big heavy coats and living in cold weather survival gear.  Today, I was wearing shorts and a T-Shirt outside while getting footage in Minneapolis, MN of people out in the record warm temps that made it feel more like April then the heart of Winter.

I know this won’t last long but it sure was nice just to get out and enjoy being outside with the hot sun keeping me warm when I should be freezing my arse off.

We shot the video at the Stone Arch Bridge in the heart of Minneapolis, MN and over at Lake Harriet in South Minneapolis. While shooting the second part of the video, Neva spotted someone looking up at a bird in a tree. The bird turned out to be a Red-tailed Hawk which let us walk right up to stand almost under the branch it was perched on. Neva said it just ate a whole mouse. After it looked around for a minute, it let out a shriek at us from about 10 feet away and then flew off right above us and then circled back to give us a show to photograph.

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Every time I do photography near the Mississippi or when I lived in Burnsville of the Minnesota River, I always had the saying “One world, one soul, time pass, the river rolls” run through my head from a song.

Tonight I was working at the office and killing time while waiting for some footage to encode.  Yes I finally have private office space that I rent to keep the business out of the home and the work out of the home to try and have a somewhat normal life. 

Right behind the office is the Mississippi River and when I say right behind, I mean you walk about 50 yards down a dirt path and you are at the rivers edge.  I explored the path a few months back before the first snow fall and thought it would make a great walking path and photo opportunity one day.  Well that one day, or night was here and my editing computer told me it would take about 45 minutes for a video to render before I could start the upload to my agent and go home.  What to do for 45 minutes?  I could watch infomercials at two in the morning but I thought what could I do?  That is when I remembered it was a full moon out and I had the path down to the river right behind the studio.

After a short phone call to Neva to make sure she knew I would not be doing anything stupid like walking out into the middle of the river on thin ice to get a photograph, I was off to the rivers edge, to walk on so so ice that was only a couple of inches thick to get some great photographs. 

The scene was perfect along the river for the photo that I have pictured in my mind before walking down to the spot.  The moon was lighting up the area and the river was calm with a nice ledge of ice to walk on along the side of the river.

(Note, click on the image to see the larger image on all of these photographs)

I was using the new 10mm lens at F5 with a thirty second exposure at 400 ISO to get a ghostly like image with the stars out but looking like daylight out at the same time.

I used my red head lamp to fill the white sow to make the scene look blood red.  This is some old school burning and dodge while the camera was taking a 30 second exposure at F5 with a 10mm lens.  While taking this photograph, I could hear a bird on the other side of the river or on the island calling out.   It was pretty spooky because it sounded like an Eagle calling out in the middle of the night.

Below is the same shot but without me filling the scene with the red fill light. That is correct, the photo above is filled in during the photo, not after with Photoshop. 

The level in the camera said it was level but it is still higher on the right for some reason in the photo below.  This is also at F4, 10MM for Thirty Seconds at 400 ISO with the full moon just a little behind me over my head.

And the last photo is right at the rivers and ice edge looking out towards an island in the middle of the river.  The ice was a few inches thick here but the river was only a few inches deep here so it was safe to get this shot. 

Yesterday, Jan 4th, 2012, Earth passed through a stream of debris from shattered comet 2003 EH1 which is the source of the Quadrantid meteors.

While not feeling that great, I went out in the cold weather and hung out in the uber secret spot that I use when I need to be in almost total darkness just north of Saint Cloud.  I say almost total darkness as in no traffic, no street lights and no light pollution in the field of view.

Below is the only photo that I was able to get of a fireball.  The 3/4 full moon made it hard to see the fireballs and meteors as the light washed out the sky. 

Just below the north star is a fireball, the only one that I was able to document.  The Quadrantid Meteors was not what it was hyped up to be and that may be due to the fact of the bright moon.  It was not a total waste of time as it did make a great proof of concept for doing another project which is to do a 8 hour exposure of the stars in this spot to get a true star trails photograph.

Happy New Year Everyone.  One of my New Years resolutions is make sure I update my blog on a more timely basis.  It’s not my fault, it’s that freaking Facebook, it makes it too easy to just update a status and move on.

So, lets see what I have been up to since I last forgot to update my blog.  Well, not much.  The weather here in Minnesota has been pretty boring, ok, its beyond boring and there has not been much to write about.  Just been working on the behind the scenes stuff and finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel on massive archive project. The YouTube channel now has over 2,000 videos on it.

Other than some test photos I did with the ultra wide camera gear I picked up I have not even picked up the camera gear to shoot anything since there has nothing to photograph of video tape.  We just got the first real snow up in Minnesota this past week and even that was about an inch.  The forecast shows that should melt off this week with temps in the upper 40s this week. 

There is a bright spot to the lack of weather in Minnesota if that means I don’t have snow storms to document.  The heating bill will be lower, the number of cars in wrecks are way down this winter, and I’m able to focus at the new office on getting my work done and everything caught up. 

Here is a test image with the new lens the other day.  I can’t wait to get out and shoot some Texas sized super cells in the next few months.  The field of view is insane.  Right click on the image to view the larger image.

Oh there is the other thing, BNVN, Breaking News Video Network, Inc.  It was bought out by StormChasingVideo.Com last month.  2012 is going to be a good year.

While I have been busy working in the new office getting things ready for the web updates, I still  love to go out and see some weather even if it is winter weather.  Only one problem, there has only been two major storms of interesting the past month.  One I did cover and the other one was in southern, Minnesota well south of the metro area that I did not cover since it was a non story event.

Looking at the the NOAA snow cover analysis for the North America as of last night, almost half of Minnesota does not have any snow cover.  The eastern half of North Dakota does not have any snow cover and Fargo, ND has not even seen an inch of snow since the start of this winter.

What gives?  Is it Global Warming? Could it be Sun Spots? Maybe it is Harp?  Nope, it’s just the weather setup.  Tipton, TN has received more snow this fall than Fargo, North Dakota.

0730 AM     SNOW             ATOKA                   35.45N 89.77W
12/07/2011  M4.0 INCH        TIPTON             TN   TRAINED SPOTTER

            A TRAINED SPOTTER REPORTS THAT 4.0 INCHES OF SNOW HAS
            FALLEN IN ATOKA...TIPTON COUNTY TENNESSEE AS OF 730 AM
            CST.

The setup has pushed everything to the south so far this season.  Looking at the latest GFS forecast, southern Minnesota might be in for a decent winter setup later this week.  It will be decent but it won’t be anything like what we had just a year ago with the winter storm that caused the Metrodome to collapse after the 12/11/2010 storm.

Check out the video from one year ago that I shot 

Well I have been busy working on a ton of stuff behind the scenes for several tv shows and keeping out of trouble since the weather has been pretty lame, er scratch that, very lame for anything all fall.  We have had one winter storm and some decent Aurora Borealis photo ops but nothing extreme, nothing crazy, almost dare I say, boring.

Last Friday we did a video for the crazy shopping on Black Friday and even that was not too crazy. 

Here is the footage we shot around the Twin Cities of people in line for Black Friday sales.

Last night I was able to find a location for a Aurora Borealis shoot that I have been looking at least 7 years for.  I was looking to find an old windmill in the middle of a field that was near a road but not near any lights.  Well I found it and while it is a long way from home and it is worth the drive to just northwest of Fergus Falls, MN.

Here is the video from the Auroras last night and if I can get one decent Aurora event before the snow pack cuts the location off, it will make the long search for this location all worth it. The only down side is that the lights from the city of Fargo, ND are just over the horizon.

A winter storm hit the central Minnesota area of Stearns County with some areas receiving almost a foot of snow.

A narrow band of heavy snow hit the area this afternoon and caused hundreds of accidents.

The heavy snow and numerous accidents caused Interstate 94 west of Saint Cloud, MN to be closed for several hours this afternoon.

At one point the road conditions were so poor that in order to open up the interstate, a Minnesota State Trooper had to guide a Snow Plow through the traffic jam just to get to the major wreck the shut down the interstate.