Home page for Douglas Kiesling

It looks like a chase day is coming together but it is coming together in the worst area to chase in, SE MN and Wisconsin. I will post more later

Heck yeah, mod risk tomorrow!!! This rocks, Chasing a mod risk in March less then an hour from home, IN MINNESOTA!   …CENTRAL MN EWD INTO THE CENTRAL GREAT LAKES…
ALTHOUGH CLOUDS/PCPN MAY BE IN THE REGION EARLY IN THE MORNING…
SUNSHINE IS EXPECTED TO BECOME PREVALENT BY MID/LATE MORNING
AS WARM FRONT LIFTS NWD INTO THE AREA AND LOW LEVEL WARM ADVECTION
SHIFTS INTO ONTARIO. SOUTH OF THE WARM FRONT…55 TO 60 DEGREE
DEWPOINTS SHOULD SPREAD NWD INTO AT LEAST THE SRN HALF OF THE SLIGHT
RISK AREA BY MID AFTERNOON. THIS INCREASE IN BOUNDARY LAYER MOISTURE
COMBINED WITH MID LEVEL DRYING/STEEPENING LAPSE RATES AND DIURNAL
HEATING ARE EXPECTED TO YIELD MLCAPES OF AT LEAST 1500 J/KG. STRONG
TROPOSPHERIC WINDS…INCLUDING LOW/MID LEVEL JETS AT 50-60 KT AND A
HIGH LEVEL JET AT 100 K…WITH STRONGLY VEERING PROFILES IN THE
LOWER 3 TO 6KM WILL BE VERY SUPPORTIVE OF SUPERCELLS. LARGE HAIL
WILL BE THE MAIN THREAT…THOUGH STRONGLY CURVED HODOGRAPHS AND
EFFECTIVE INFLOW LAYER SRH AROUND 300 M2/S2 WOULD ALSO FAVOR
TORNADOES…SOME POSSIBLE STRONG…ESPECIALLY ACROSS THE MODERATE
RISK AREA. AS THE SUPPER SYSTEM LIFTS NEWD INTO WI DURING THE
EVENING…THE WINDS ALOFT SHOULD BECOME MORE UNIDIRECTIONAL AND
SUPPORT THE DEVELOPMENT OF A LINEAR SYSTEM…WITH WIND DAMAGE
BECOMING MORE LIKELY AS THE STORMS MOVE EWD INTO ERN WI/WRN MI.   In English, I’m going storm chasing.

Yesterday sucked

Today was a little bumpy

But tonight was nice.

Relaxing in Florida where the temp is just nice. Going scuba diving for the next few days and will be shooting some bad ass underwater video with Brian.

YES, I just walked out to shoot the palm tree photo while wearing shorts and bare foot. To the storm chasers reading this stuck in the snow, sucks to be you eh? I will shed a tear… Nope, that will be just me clearing the water out of my scuba mask in 9 hours while I’m playing with the manatees.

Ok a lot of people in storm chasing have been bitching about SDS or Storm Deprivation Syndrome… Sorry, I don’t have SDS, and far from it. Winter is a time to work on other projects and get stuff in order for the next chase season so you don’t go crazy waiting for the next storm. I have just spent several hundred hours editing video, researching video, researching storm data, researching radar data and working my ass off doing voice overs that after 1500 takes, my voice sounds like shit.
But yet, I still hear people saying look at the GFS, look at the stupid GFS computer model next week.
EXCUSE ME, your trying for forecast a tornado forecast 10 days out when people can’t even get the stupid global warming forecast down after record breaking snow fall and cold in the nation this month, give me a break.
BUT THE GFS… GUESS FORECAST SETUP is what GFS stands for in my forecasting bag of tricks. Unless the storm is 24-48 hours out, it is a crap shoot at best.Because if I could predict the future, I sure as hell would not be scraping by trying to work this gig and would be picking stocks and bonds for a living making real money.BUT THE GFS, AND I WANT TO CHASE…Get freaking real people, it is still the middle of winter.The sun set is still barely after 6:00 at night.The storms hit down south in the area that is mostly swamps and areas that suck for chasing.
This time of year the storms hit mostly during the overnight hours anyway and they are always racing off at light speed.
It is NOT April, it is not even March and at best your not going to see shit.But go ahead, chase, what the hell do I know. I honestly hope this season is as bad as 2005 and 2006 just to weed out more of the fly by night chasers.
Oh and SDS vs SDDS. SDDS, Scuba Dive Deprivation Syndrome, yes I have it.The cure for SDS is review all the chase video you shot last year and the year before and see what you did wrong. After watching hours and hours of video you will say ewwww, I can go without until the real storms show up.

Playing with the manatees

Just playing with the manatees and I hear there is another winter storm on the way back home…

Now that the little detail items such as graphics and images are wrapped up and the script is laid down in a rough draft, the new project is rolling along fast.

I can’t wait to get this thing knocked out and done because when it is done, I just got my passport and I’m thinking Scuba Dive Mexico or Central America so my ass can relax where nobody can find me for a few weeks.

I just wanted to take this moment to say Script Writing Sucks, but it is still kind of fun. Working on the new project and just reviewing stuff for the script and having to watch and re watch and re review stuff is just annoying.

Not that the end result wont kick ass, it is all the little details to get into place to make it kick ass that kicks your ass. It’s a learning experience.

I did go grocery shopping tonight and paid in cash for everything and found a nice surprise from the cash register. $.50 off per gallon of fuel at Holiday Fuel. That’s $5.00 off the next fill up. That would be like $1.30 per gallon of gas!!!

Well back to watching a ton of more footage.

I bought another Fn Hard Drive tonight, er, um, last night. I did not feel comfortable having the project on several drives so I edited down the best cuts and put them on a monster sized 500Gig drive.

Transferring over 400 Gigs of video is taking some time but it will be worth it. I also got most of the scripting outline done. I do have to go through the time line again this morning and right up a ton more stuff but from conception to rough draft this is coming along really fast compared to some projects I have done.

Part of me wants to spill the beans on the project but then again, I just want to see the look on some peoples faces when they see the final project!

I bought another Fn Hard Drive tonight, er, um, last night. I did not feel comfortable having the project on several drives so I edited down the best cuts and put them on a monster sized 500Gig drive.

Transferring over 400 Gigs of video is taking some time but it will be worth it. I also got most of the scripting outline done. I do have to go through the time line again this morning and right up a ton more stuff but from conception to rough draft this is coming along really fast compared to some projects I have done.

Part of me wants to spill the beans on the project but then again, I just want to see the look on some peoples faces when they see the final project!

Ok, just a quick update, still alive but just crazy busy. I’m working on all the stuff for the new project. Getting graphics and research is a huge pain in the ass but it is coming along and I have just a few more graphics projects to put together and I will have everything I need, I hope.
Also I have got the rough outline of the script up done. I need to review the script and the video a few more times and rough it out to the point of story boards. All I can say is this project is really coming along fast but I was hoping to have it further along by now. It is the graphics side of things that is holding it up but it is kind of like building a puzzle, you need all the pieces before you can actually put it together. The script is the picture to use to build the puzzle but it is not a fixed picture.
I can’t go into details just yet but I will say a lot of people in chasing will love the video and hate the project because it is so freaking good. The Hurricane Charley DVD will look like a POS when this project is done.
I will have the rough edit done by this weekend if all goes a planned.
I need to book sound studio time for the voice overs next week. Since the new runway opened up I can’t do the voice overs from home anymore in the temp sound booth I made.