Home page for Douglas Kiesling

Okay this is a first. It is October 5th, I’m in Minnesota, and I have the Air Conditioner on.  Early this morning I got a call to wake up and go out and shoot some lightning video from the news desk in NYC and in town and got some pretty sweet footage for KSTP and ABC.  The video is up on KSTP’s site.  I’ll post it on line when I get some time this weekend.  I’m off to go back to bed and get some sleep now.

Ok, sorry for the delay but I have been busy catching up on sleep, work and working out. Wow, I feel good, down 20 so far 🙂

Now on to the photos from a couple days ago. I was out shooting flooding video again in Dodge County MN and it was amazing.

Here are the photos. Note to self… bring a change of clothes next time I decide to walk into flooding from farm fields with cow crap… Ewwwww. At least I can wash the scuba gear off but I did not even have that with. I did have an interesting time waking up a couple on County Road 7 and 540th street. I was following the surge of water down the river and when I got to the next major road, I looked at my GPS and saw that their was a home right next to the Zumbro River. The river was rising and they were still up waiting to see what happened but as soon as I showed up they took it pretty serious.

Lucky for them, the water stopped a few feet from their home when it crested.

Here are the video’s that I shot of this event.

Early this morning I went out chasing the local storm setup that hit the south side of town with heavy rain and a great light show.

I was able to get some decent photos and video from this event.

Ok, I was slacking today but I figured I better get the photos on line before I forget. I was out chasing the storms last night and it felt GOOD. I knew the storms were going to be some small hailer’s so I had on my hurricane gear to stand out it in while I shot some video down by Northfield and yes, the hail does hurt but not as bad with the gear on. KSTP used the footage as did CNN and ABC News so it was a good day.

Another long road home…

Well folks, I’m off to the gym now. Finally hit the 250 mark and need to keep on dropping the weight.

Ok, folks, here is what has been happening in my life in a nutshell for the last two weeks. Lots of Fn Weather!!! And I guess I’m kind of back working freelance for KSTP. Their calling me their storm tracker but as of right now, I’m still freelance working as a stringer. So what’s up with the videos? Before anyone says anything, yes I know there is a typo in one of them that is on the list of stuff to fix. But here is footage.

There was some small marble sized hail with this storm and I was caught out side standing in it with the camera.  Lucky for me I was wearing the thick coat with the rain hood and a hat.  That stuff hurt.

Man, I just looked at the clock and say that it is 5:30 AM, that’s five in the fn morning and I worked right through the night again. 

I am almost done with the database review and things are coming along just freaking great.  I am so psyched to get this finished since it is pretty much 3 years in the works. 

When this is done, it is going to set the chasing world on it’s head since I just found another 100 videos to add to the site as soon as the first 800 are on line this week.  As I speak the last of the video uploads are in the works and I have another day of uploading and double checking video and then it is all about the design work.

Oh yeah, I forgot about this video.  This was the last one that I shot the other day of the lightning.  I could not do any decent stills because of the light pollution on the bridge but the video was sweet. 

Ok, I was covering the Nikki Sixx autograph signing today. 

Here is the video, the guy is hella cool.

I went chasing, got on some funnel clouds by Hutchinson and followed the storm back to Minneapolis and got blocked in rush hour traffic. 

Ugh traffic…  But what I saw out by Hutchinson was pretty sweet.  It was not just rotating, it was on high speed blend in the sky.  Nothing ever got more then a nipple funnel but still, we are a month away from SNOW.

Well, I did not leave the house today, except to go to the hardware store to fix the sink. The weather looked like crap and the ceilings were way too low to chase. But there was a tornado warning in western Wisconsin. So my forecasts were dead on for the weather but it was not that good looking to chase after.

So when not fixing a broken sink drain today, I was working on the forecast for the next tropical setup and working on the database for the new website. I figure if I work on it without phone calls and distractions from people today (tomorrow) I should be able to get most of it done.What is taking so long? I have to load, watch and then enter every videos information into the database to make sure all the information is correct in the database. It is boring work for the most part but it MUST be done.

So, I’m calling it a night with another 50 videos in the database. I quit at 592 out of 800. The video is some pretty coral stuff Brian shot back in 2004, before the hurricanes messed up the Tortugas national park.