Ben Holcomb

Amazing Tornadoes in Oklahoma Yesterday

Ben.Holcomb — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 17:39:15 +0000

The pictures and videos that came in from the tornadoes yesterday in Western Oklahoma are nothing short of amazing. Congrats to everyone that scored.

The most amazing video came from Andy Gabrielson who got close to the tornado as it went through Hammon, OK. You can see structures being destroyed, and lots of debris flying through the air. I have a feeling we'll be seeing more of this video in shows for years to come.

I went through GEMPAK, and pulled a model sounding for Hammon, OK at about the same time as the tornado yesterday:

There is absolutely no way I could have chased yesterday, even if I was in Oklahoma. I have been sick this past weekend and into today, and have been slowly trying to get better. I was way too sick to spend any amount of time in a car chasing tornadoes yesterday. I am still insanely jealous, and wish I could have been there, but overall any disappointment falls on the fact that I sat at home sick than anything else.

The NAM is painting a possible chase potential on Thursday in Illinois. It figures that the first possible chase day of the year for me would fall on a day I've scheduled a dentist appointment. I may end up rescheduling if it looks promising tomorrow, and if I start feeling better!

As usual, my stream will be on ChaserTV if I am out.

2010 National Storm Chaser Convention

Ben.Holcomb — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 04:52:05 +0000

I know this is a week late, but it has taken about that long to recover from the huge party that was the Chaser Convention in Denver, Colorado. I am also in the middle of moving, so I haven't had a chance to update the blog with the pictures from Denver.

We (Andrew Glenn and I) started our journey off from Lansing on Thursday the 11th. Our flights were out of Chicago-Midway, which is about 200 miles away. We had originally planned on parking in Adam Lucios neighborhood, but ended up just parking in the economy lots due to all of the snow and crazy Chicago people with their parking spots. Our flight to Denver was eventless, and David Drummond was waiting in Denver to pick us up when we landed.

Once we got to the hotel, we hung out with Steve, Kendra, Hans, Bob, Adam, Danny, Jessica and everyone else. It was nice meeting Kendra and Jessica, who I hadn't previously met. Eventually David, Andrew and I went to a Mexican restaurant across the street and had a delicious dinner. Eventually we all made our way down town to meet up with some other chasers at Old Chicago.

Once we got back to the hotel, it was well after midnight. I ended up going to bed to be woken up by Scott when he came back. There was a room party going on, and I went and hung out there until security broke us up around 5 am.

Friday we took the day and went into the mountains. David Drummond, myself, Sarah Glenn, Danny Neal, Adam Lucio and Andrew Glenn all piled into David Drummonds van and west on I-70 we went to Idaho Springs, CO. We had delicious famous Beaujos pizza, which was majorly good. The 6 of us had a great lunch and great time talking about storm chasing and everything else.

We decided to head further west through the Eisenhower tunnel. The snow was heavy, and we made it as far as Dillon before turning around and heading back. On our way back we came up on an auto accident that had just happened, and got some decent video of it. I've posted David Drummonds video from Friday below.

We stopped off at the Red Rocks before getting back to Denver. Friday evening was the mixer. It was interesting, but we did most of our 'mixing' on Thursday night. After the mixer on Friday, we all headed out to Famous Daves for some excellent BBQ.

Jon Davies presentation was the first on Saturday Morning. He talked about June 7, 2009 and why it didn't produce compared to say June 5, 2009. I learned a little bit and am glad he took the time to analyze everything. I'll still take the monster structure and the hail any day, but it's at least good to have an idea of why things didn't go as planned that day.

After Jon Davies was done, I caught breakfast with Kris Hair. The hotel breakfast buffet left a bit to be desired, but I was hungry and it was convenient. It was a little pricey, in the $15 range. Oh well, I was on vacation.

After breakfast it was time to hit the shower and get ready for my Weather Channel interview. They were in town interviewing a bunch of chasers for a special that is supposedly going to air the first week of April. We'll see what happens with that.

Once I finally got done with The Weather Channel, it was time for lunch and L.B. LaForce, Bill LaForce, Andrew and I all piled in to Bill's rental car and we took off to Chick-Fil-A in the mall in Aurora. Chick-Fil-A was good as always.

After lunch I came back and had a few minutes to talk to Eric Treece who is as cool in real life as I thought he would be. He was one of the few people I was really looking forward to meeting, and was glad he could make it.

The talk after lunch was on the Andarko, OK tornado of May 13, 2009 and I really didn't have much interest in it, so I took a nap where I ended up sleeping almost all afternoon. I missed out on Tim Samaras' presentation which I would have enjoyed. Otherwise, everyone said Erik Rasmussen went over their head, so I am OK with missing that talk.

After the previous awful banquet dinners, we decided to go to Texas de Brazil steakhouse, which was just down the road. The meal was a bit on the pricey side, but it was an all you can eat meat place and boy was it really good. It's highly recommended for anyone that wants to try it out, and we definitely ate much better than the folks back at the banquet.

After dinner, Kris Hair, Adam Lucio, Danny Neal and myself set off to go to downtown Denver and hop through some bars. We enjoyed ourselves pretty well, eventually closing out the night at the Cowboy Lounge.

We got back to the hotel around 2:30 and hung out in the lobby a bit before the party ended up back at mine and Scott Bennett's room. After a couple hours, everyone left and we headed to bed.

Sunday was pretty uneventful. I missed all the presentations in the morning as we slept in a bit, then packed up and checked out. David Drummond, Andrew Glenn, Sarah Glenn and myself all went to Jack in the Box for lunch then returned back to the hotel where we sat in the bar/lounge area for a few hours until heading out to the airport. Just before our departure to the airport, David held us up a bit by an emergency trip to the bathroom. This ended up delaying us a bit, and we got put on standby when we checked in. This worked out in our favor as Frontier put us in the exit row. Score one for David.

One thing I noticed on the flight home - I was watching Family Guy, and they had Chris going on a date with a down syndrome girl. When Chris asked a little about her, she said her dad did whatever and that her mom was the former governor of Alaska. That seemed to stir up a little bit of controversy, but was pretty darn funny.

We landed around 10:30PM Central Time at Chicago Midway, and by the time we got our luggage and got to the car, it was after 11:30. The long drive back to Lansing, and the loss of an hour due to time zones got us back in Lansing around 4am.

Overall I had a great time at Chaser Con 2010 and can't wait for next year!

This is why I'm leaving Oak Park of Lansing, MI

Ben.Holcomb — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 09:34:38 +0000

I have been working on seeking alternative housing here in Lansing for the past couple of months because the current apartment complex I live in, Oak Park, has been completely unwilling to work with me on my lease. I didn't want to sign a new 1 year lease because I am not sure I will be sticking around to the Lansing area, and their requirements to break the lease were completely archaic. They required 60 days notice, and if I read the lease correctly, almost 4 months worth of rent.

They told me "Well you can transfer it to any other AIMCO property" which is great, but they don't have any AIMCO properties in Oklahoma.

Month to month would have cost me somewhere near $1100 rent per month before utilities for my small ~800 square foot 1 bedroom townhouse. No thank you. The shortest lease I could have signed was either 6 or 9 months, and I'm pretty sure it was the latter.

I gave notice to sufficiently be out in time for the end of my lease, which is February 28th.

Fast forward to today, and I come home and find this 2 page (front and back) letter from the apartment complex. What a way to maintain a welcoming community.

Page 1
Page 2
Page 3
Page 4

I really have to say one thing - Thank goodness I am out of here in less than 3 weeks! Who would really want to live in a place like this?!

New Computer

Ben.Holcomb — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 09:15:00 +0000

So I finally took the plunge, after almost 4 years, and purchased a new PC tonight. This is the most I've ever spent on a computer, and I didn't even get a monitor or keyboard!

I've needed something better than my AMD Athlon 3200 to edit video on for awhile, so I invested in a pretty high-end CPU Intensive system. The specs are listed below:

Intel Core i5-750 Lynnfield 2.66GHz LGA 1156 95W Quad-Core Processor
ASUS P7P55D-E Pro LGA 1156 Intel P55 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard
GeForce 9500 GT 1GB 128-bit DDR2 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready Video Card
Antec BP550 Plus 550W Power Supply and a cheap case
4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)
Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 ST3500418AS 500GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive
LITE-ON SATA CD/DVD Burner
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit

All in all, I'm out over 800 bucks on it. It'll be well worth it, however. The speed I'll be able to edit video alone should be a major plus.

I'll be putting my current computer into the case I purchased, and will still have that computer. I'll do hand me downs to the rest of my computers and most likely shed the last one to a good home.

Thank goodness for tax season, and unexpected money. Without both, I wouldn't have been able to get such a sweet system.

The StormChaser Convention is in just a little over a week. I can't wait to see everyone in Denver!

Site Improvements and changes to my Chase Accounts

Ben.Holcomb — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 19:09:59 +0000

I have been working quite hard on my website for the past couple of months, but very much so in the last 2 weeks. I have worked hard on getting things ready for the new chase season, and going through and updating pages that hadn't been updated in a couple of years.

I also came up with a new template for my chase accounts. I think these are much better laid out than previous chase accounts were, which were essentially in a blog format.

I have all of my past chases listed on my Chase Accounts page. Feel free to give them a click, and let me know if you like my new chase account layout. Ultimately, I would like them to all be as cool as my June 5th Chase Account, but not every chase gets to be that awesome.

In other news, I have been enjoying my new Motorola Droid phone. I haven't found many downfalls yet, other than it's lack of being able to tether without rooting the phone. These are all features that consumers want, I wish Verizon would just listen and stop trying to Nickel and Dime their customers to death.

With that said, if anyone is interested in my HTC Touch Pro, I have listed it on Craigslist.

I absolutely cannot wait for storm season to get here. Working on all of these chase accounts has given me an extreme case of storm deprivation! 26 degrees outside here right now, which just doesn't cut it.

New phone

Ben.Holcomb — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 20:50:23 +0000

I am testing out my new Motorola Droid phone on Verizon Wireless. I have the capability now to update my blog directly from my phone. This will be good during chase season.

2010 Alamo Bowl

Ben.Holcomb — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 08:12:24 +0000

This is a bit of a delayed update (3 weeks) as I just haven't had a lot of motivation to post this blog post. I've also been busy with the actual layout, look and some technical aspects of the site including revamping the gallery. I am working hard to get my website ready and better for the 2010 chase season. One of the new features this year will be blog thumbnails/images.

During my visit to Texas and Oklahoma, I decided it would be a good time to go meet my friend Michael who lives in San Antonio. This was for two reasons - One it would be very warm in San Antonio and Two - Michigan State was playing Texas Tech in the Alamo Bowl. I hate Michigan State (even if I live in Lansing) and am a big Michigan fan, so this seemed like a great time for me and Michael (who is also a Michigan fan) to wear Michigan stuff to the stadium and have a good time.

The trip down was pretty uneventful and long. The drive from Moore, OK to San Antonio was around 7 hours. I left around 8 am with a temperature in the mid teens in Moore. (I believe it was +16F when I left Moore). Once I got into San Antonio, the temperature was in the upper 50's to around 60. It was the first time I had felt such nice weather since November when I was at the National Weather Festival in Norman.

Once in San Antonio, I checked into my Hotel (The Drury Inn San Antonio Northwest - Highly Recommended) and then met up with Michael and we headed to Chris Madrids, a great burger place. After we ate, we headed downtown. We parked across the street from the Alamo Bowl and then walked along the river to the Alamo, snapping pictures like a darn tourist.

The Alamo Bowl was a short hike from the Alamo, and we got into the stadium well before gametime. I made sure to haggle a couple State fans before finding our seats. As it turns out, we ended up sitting next to a couple State fans, one of which was actually from East Lansing. Our seats were very good for the $25 a seat I invested in tickets. The Alamo Bowl stadium is very nice. With the recent firing of Mike Leach, there were plenty of tshirts and signs with statements to be made.

The game itself turned out to be great, with Texas Tech winning in the end. It was one of the more exciting games this college bowl season, staying pretty close until the 4th quarter. It was well worth the trip down to San Antonio, and I had a great time with Michael as well.

The next morning I woke up at my hotel and decided to go across the street to Jack in the Box for breakfast before heading back north to Dallas/Fort Worth for the evening to appear on Shane Adam's Debris show. Something caught my eye while I was pulling in, and it was the sign and building for the company I work for biggest competitor, Rackspace. I had to drive by and take a picture.

Pictures from the 2010 Alamo Bowl

Happy New Year!

Ben.Holcomb — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 06:51:50 +0000

So I have been a little late in getting this blog entry back up. I have returned back to Michigan and spent the last 7 days working. I will have more about the trip later, including my trip down to San Antonio for the Alamo Bowl which featured the Texas Tech Red Raiders vs the Michigan State Spartans. I hate Michigan State, and wore some Michigan stuff and yelled Go Blue at a lot of State fans. It was good fun, and a great game.

The real reason for this entry is that I finally got around to dumping video off my video camera from midnight on New Years right at the start of 2010. The fireworks display was brought to you by Steve Miller, Bob Hall, Aaron Cunningham and yours truly and included 1409 explosions - 115 Roman Candles, 14 Bottle Rockets, 200 Saturn Missles, 25 mortars and a 20 shot cake.

Merry Christmas!

Ben.Holcomb — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 19:41:08 +0000

The intense low pressure system that brought record breaking snow to Oklahoma City yesterday is now centered over eastern Iowa, and is wrapping very cold air in behind it. We are currently a balmy 39 degrees here in Lansing at the Capital City Airport. This should all change in a bit as temperatures fall later tonight. Most of the snow has melted here by this morning, leading us to not have a white Christmas like most of the country.

Here is the current Surface and Temperature maps:

Pretty Soundings

Ben.Holcomb — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 19:02:00 +0000

A pretty crazy weather day today. Blizzard warnings are out in Oklahoma, North Dakota and South Dakota and even parts of Texas. There is almost a white out at the National Weather Center in Norman, OK. You can view their Live Cam here. Even in the past 15 minutes it's gone from being able to see the National Weather Center to almost a complete white out.

You can view all of the warnings/watches/advisories on one map at http://www.weather.gov/view/largemap.php.

Some interesting soundings this afternoon as well, one from New Orleans at 16Z and one from Jackson, MS at 17Z.

The SPC has outlined a Moderate Risk of severe thunderstorms in Louisiana and Mississippi and even parts of Alabama this evening.

Just about everywhere in the country is experiencing some sort of adverse weather. Here in Michigan hopefully we will luck out with nothing more than some rain for Christmas. There is a possibility of freezing rain, but luckily we're going to miss out on the blizzard!

Stay safe and Merry Christmas!

Tornadoes in East Texas

Ben.Holcomb — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 23:10:38 +0000

It appears the city of Longview, TX or just east had a tornado rip through this afternoon. What prompted me to blog about it, though, was the insane hook-echo on the Shreveport Radar at 2242 UTC as pictured below.

Hopefully everyone that was affected by this is alright!

Big snow storm set to miss Michigan... Again

Ben.Holcomb — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 02:51:57 +0000

The models have been showing a big snow storm affecting the mid section of the country again at the end of this week. Thankfully for those of you here in Michigan that dislike snow, it's been keeping it mostly away from us. Here's a pretty graphic, showing 144-hour snowfall totals.

As you can see, everything north of I-70 to the Canadian border is looking at anywhere between 1 and 2 feet of snow in the upcoming days. It also could mean a severe weather event down south in Eastern Texas and Western Louisiana. The SPC has outlined the area in the day 3 convective outlook as seen below:

The SPC has even used some interesting wording:

0-6 KM SHEAR VALUES IN THE 55 TO 70KT RANGE SHOULD EASILY BE SUFFICIENT FOR SUPERCELLS WITH TORNADOPOTENTIAL ESPECIALLY WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON AND EVENING ACROSS EAST TX AND WRN LA.

I won't be able to chase this event as I am obligated to work, plus the long drive on one of the shortest days of the year for daylight. I do start my trip to Texas and Oklahoma on the 29th, however, so maybe we can get another system together for that week. We will see!

This will also likely be my last blog entry until after Christmas, so I want to wish everyone that reads a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! And to all of my storm chaser friends, a tornado filled 2010.

First time playing with a DSLR

Ben.Holcomb — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 07:22:15 +0000

In August, Scott Bennett gave me his hand me down Pentax *ist DS digital SLR camera as a gift. I took it out and used it in Chicago, but I largely haven't taken it from home because I haven't learned how to use it.

I started using it tonight, trying to get comfortable with it since I want to use it next storm season. I've got the 18-55 lens on it, which seems to be fine for normal pictures. I thought I'd make my cat the subject of my pictures tonight.

Here is the first picture I shot in RAW and touched up in Adobe Lightroom.

I'm not a huge fan of how that picture turned out, so I tried again.

I like more of how this one turned out. And I must say, my cat looks very handsome in that picture.

I am still not very comfortable with the camera, but feel like I have an idea how to use the camera. I guess I need to get it outside and get some experience with outdoor shooting next.

Record Low Barometric pressure set at Grand Rapids

Ben.Holcomb — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 02:51:49 +0000

Grand Rapids set a record low barometric pressure with the passage of this low pressure system on Wednesday at 28.86inches. That isn't very far from the record on March 1, 1955. I wasn't able to find anything out about March 1, 1955, but that had to be a heck of a low pressure to pass overhead.

000
SXUS73 KGRR 100733 CCB
RERGRR

RECORD EVENT REPORT...CORRECTED
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE GRAND RAPIDS, MI
232 AM EST THU DEC 10 2009

...RECORD LOW BAROMETRIC PRESSURE FOR THE MONTH OF DECEMBER SET
YESTERDAY...

AT 901 AM EST ON WEDNESDAY DECEMBER 9TH... THE BAROMETRIC PRESSURE
AT GRAND RAPIDS WAS 28.86 INCHES. THIS EXCEEDS THE PREVIOUS RECORD
OF 28.92 INCHES SET ON DECEMBER 13TH 1965. THE LOWEST PRESSURE EVER
RECORDED IN GRAND RAPIDS WAS 28.72 INCHES ON MARCH 1ST IN 1955.

$$

WDM

Here in Lansing, we got a couple inches of snow tops. Most of the snow managed to stay to our west, and I am thankful for that. It still didn't stop a bunch of people from driving into the ditch or rolling their car over. On the way to work today, about 1/4 of a mile after I got onto I-96 there was a rollover. Someone had managed to take their car off dry pavement on the freeway and flip it over, landing almost 100 feet or more from the side of the freeway.

"Blizzard" blows through west michigan

Ben.Holcomb — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 03:15:32 +0000

Blizzard Warnings have been posted along the lakeshore and in Grand Rapids metro for the afternoon, starting at 1pm from an intense low pressure system that tracked across Grand Rapids. This is the current surface map from the Weather Channel earlier today:

That is one of the tightest isobar gradients I've ever seen around here on a Weather Channel map. If only this were May, and the low was centered about 100 miles northwest of Minneapolis/St. Paul.

This is going to be a long winter!

Big snow storm, blah blah blah

Ben.Holcomb — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 20:47:56 +0000

Much hoopla has been given to the upcoming 'snow storm', the latest models showing an intense center of low pressure (984mb) moving over Lake Michigan around 7am on Wednesday morning. This should keep Lansing hopefully pretty snow free, but I am not holding my breath.

I am not sure if 2009 was just terrible enough of a storm year that all the storm chasers are excited by this storm or what, but I really would like to continue staying snow free as long and as much as possible.

Count me in as someone who would like anything but a white Christmas :)

In other news, I took the cat to the vet office for a check up last Wednesday. Everything checked out fine - Caruso is a very healthy 8 1/2 year old cat.

** Update **

As I was writing this issue, a Winter Storm Watch was issued for the area.

MIZ051-052-056>059-064>067-071-072-080500-
/O.CON.KGRR.WS.A.0007.091209T0000Z-091210T1200Z/
MONTCALM-GRATIOT-OTTAWA-KENT-IONIA-CLINTON-ALLEGAN-BARRY-EATON-
INGHAM-VAN BUREN-KALAMAZOO-
INCLUDING THE CITIES OF...GREENVILLE...ALMA...JENISON...
GRAND RAPIDS...IONIA...ST. JOHNS...HOLLAND...HASTINGS...
CHARLOTTE...LANSING...SOUTH HAVEN...KALAMAZOO
347 PM EST MON DEC 7 2009

...WINTER STORM WATCH REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM TUESDAY EVENING
THROUGH THURSDAY MORNING...

A WINTER STORM IS EXPECTED TO BRING SNOW AND MIXED PRECIPITATION
WHICH COULD SERIOUSLY IMPACT TRAVEL BY TUESDAY EVENING. LAKE
EFFECT SNOW SHOWERS MAY ALSO CAUSE HAZARDOUS TRAVEL CONDITIONS
WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON INTO THURSDAY MORNING.

PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS...

A WINTER STORM WATCH MEANS THERE IS A POTENTIAL FOR SIGNIFICANT
SNOW...SLEET...OR ICE ACCUMULATIONS THAT MAY IMPACT TRAVEL.
CONTINUE TO MONITOR THE LATEST FORECASTS.

&&

$$

OSTUNO

Second Tornado on June 5, 2009?

Ben.Holcomb — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 22:56:29 +0000

I have been keeping this in the back of my mind since June 5th, and it's something I've pondered. With the June 5th episode of Storm Chasers airing tonight, I thought today was as good of a time as any to blog about this.

Due to my stupidity (I left my phone on top of Scott Bennett's Bravada, we drove off, and had to go back to find my $559 HTC Touch Pro), we got behind the storm on June 5th. We spent most of the time the storm was moving to our north sitting at 41.44806 N, 103.88926W, which was about 8 miles east of the Nebraska/Wyoming border. We finally decided after maybe an hour or so to move with the storm and play some catch up. That's when I left the phone on the roof, and while Danny Neal and Adam Lucio kept going, we had to turn around to go find my phone. We found the phone, and everything was ok, but we were a good 30-45 minutes behind at that point.

Now for some catch up. I will admit we didn't go very fast, as I remember being somewhat in awe of the badlands and I was pretty convinced the storm was done for the day. We stopped at 41.58351 N 103.15697W for awhile and watched from way behind the storm before catching back up to it near Dalton, NE.

We took Road 50/State street east out of Dalton, NE where we encountered Wurman's Doppler on Wheels. Herb was standing outside and the Discovery camera guy was laying on the ground in the middle of the road filming him and the DOW spinning.

We stopped a little further up at 41.40997N 102.88003W and watched the clouds for a little while again. The only way I can describe what Scott and I witnessed was like the water behind a big ship. Clouds were going all sorts of crazy directions as if there was extreme turbulence in the clouds.

After about 3-5 minutes Scott and I continued on. It's then when we witnessed what we both think was a Tornado, albeit brief. I will let you judge for yourself in the video:

Please note that there is 2 different cameras on the same thing in this video. The first camera is the first half or so of the video, then it cuts to the second camera.

I was looking at Level II data today from KLNX, however, it appears that KLNX is scanning around 10-12kft at that location. The same thing is true for KCYS. Here are 3 SRV grabs from the radar data:

0208 UTC
0212 UTC
0217 UTC

Here is our zoomed in map from the day:

Zoomed in Map

Unfortunately, the data is pretty inconclusive at that height. I have heard rumors that Josh Wurman was tracking a embedded tornado at the time I took that video. I would be very interested to find out if that rumor was true, and what kind of data he took on it, if any.

At any rate, please tune into the Season Finale of Storm Chasers tonight at 9pm Eastern Time on the Discovery channel! The 2 hour finale will rock your socks off!!

Fun with laser pointers

Ben.Holcomb — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 05:52:59 +0000

I purchased a laser pointer to have fun with the cat. Mission accomplished:

New addition to the 'family'

Ben.Holcomb — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 21:10:20 +0000

This weekend I drove to Oklahoma City with Adam Lucio and Danny Neal, but came back with an extra member for my apartment. I brought back Steve Miller's cat Caruso.

Caruso is an 8 year old oci-cat with a great personality for a cat. He survived the 1000 mile trek without a problem, not getting angry with me until I was almost to Lansing. This is the first pet I have owned myself, so consider me a new pet owner. It's the first time I've ever really had a chance to take care of a cat.

On his adoption paperwork that Steve gave me, it says Caruso is a loud cat that likes to talk a lot. That is really true. He has been meowing at me a lot since I got him home.

I have to say, it's been nice to have him in the house. Oh, he also caught his first mouse ;)

2009 National Weather Festival

Ben.Holcomb — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 18:05:12 +0000

I will be leaving Thursday night and heading down to Moore, OK for the 2009 National Weather Festival which takes place on Saturday at the National Weather Center in Norman. I will be accompanied by my storm chaser friends Danny Neal and Adam Lucio.

For everyone that will be there, I look forward to seeing you. It should be a good gathering of chasers and weather enthusiasts alike. I will most likely be streaming the event live on ChaserTV and this web site.

I've also noticed a huge increase in web traffic ever since the October 18th premiere of the Discovery Channel's Storm Chasers series. This past episode featured the May 5, 2009 supercell near Breckenridge, TX. Here's my video from that day: