I’m been a bit absent from the blog and some of the other social media sites here recently.  It’s that time of year I start getting geared up for chase season, which “officially” starts for me on March 1st, just 3 short weeks away, as I have media contracts that begin then.  Of course I am up for a chase any time!  All of this has of course taken up a great deal of my time.

One of the major projects that I am working on is the future of Dryline Media.  For those that don’t know, this is my dba business name I handle all my video licensing under.  Things are in progress to take Dryline Media to a whole new level.  I can’t give the details just yet because all the ducks aren’t completely in a row, but I am hoping to make a HUGE announcement about Dryline Media at the beginning of March or shortly thereafter. This will be big for a number of other chasers as well!  That’s all I can say right now!

In other news, I have discontinued my association with TornadoVideos.net effective February 1st this year.  This will allow me to do what I am hinting at above.

That said, I have joined up with ChaserTV.com to stream my LIVE ChaseCam for this year, so that will continue to be available! Be sure to follow me on Facebook and Twitter so you can get all the latest updates on chasing plans!

More to come…

The first winter storm for the southern plains this year is now in progress in West Texas and Oklahoma.  Some interesting weather at my location this morning as I was awakened at sunrise by house rattling thunder and heavy rain.  This changed over to heavy sleet pretty quickly and now we are going back and forth between sleet and heavy snow.  I am located in the pink band in the NWS graphic above.

Many many accidents reported across the South Plains and Texas Panhandle, and some cities already without power.   Roads are very dangerous today. Do not travel unless you have to.  Many schools are closing early across the area today.

I have set up a stationary live camera here in Brownfield, which is about 35 miles southwest of Lubbock, TX.  I’ll also be providing updates throughout the day on Twitter.

Some helpful links to help you get through your day.

Area closings:

http://www.kcbd.com/global/Story.asp?s=1641829

Road Conditions:

http://www.srh.noaa.gov/lub/?n=roadconditions

A couple of photos of the lunar halo over west Texas tonight.  Was this visible from your location?  Did you get any pics of it?

From the event I was covering for you in my blog and twitter on Wednesday, at least 8 tornadoes have been confirmed after damage surveys from Wednesday’s mini tornado outbreak in Northeast Texas.

The NWS has issued the preliminary survey results with 8 tornadoes, one as strong as EF3 that was on the ground over 15 miles!

Read the full recap on my website here.

Awesome viewer photo sent in to ABC33/44 of  a tornado in Huntsville, Alabama today.  Unknown photographer but an awesome shot!

Specific damage reports unknown at this time.  I’ll update as available.

Viewer photo from KSLA of Waskom, Texas tornado on I20:

BREAKING NEWS!

Severe weather is in full force in NE Texas today with two tornadoes already confirmed along I20.  One near Canton, TX where I20 is reported blocked with a report of at least one home flattened! Debris is reported on I20.

A second storm further to the east has produced a tornado at mile marker 829 on I20 in Texas  just west of the Louisiana state line.

Live updates on Twitter as I get them:

http://twitter.com/drylinemedia

UPDATES:

6:14 pm CST I20 closed by DPS in the Canton, TX area.

6:14 pm CST I20 and Hwy 80 blocked by debris in the Waskom, Texas area

6:38 pm CST Damage/possible tornado now reported in SE Henderson, County TX

6:44 pm CST Damage/possible tornado south of Sulfur Springs, TX on Hwy 19

6:52 pm CST Related to report in SE Henderson County, TX Emergency management reporting tornado hit a house on CR2855

7:04 pm CST Canton, TX  Businesses reported damaged: Days Inn, Circle K, McDonalds

7:33 pm CST Waskom, TX Eyewitness description of house damage sounds like EF3 damage.  Many pine trees snapped in half widespread, accidents on I20 and lots of debris on I20 and Hwy 80.  Possible injuries in the area

7:45 pm CST Harrison County, TX (Waskom)  Sheriff has called in Shreveport police to help with rescue efforts. Shreveport is sending 3 search dogs and 6 handlers to assist in search and rescue.

7:50 pm CST KTBS is reporting authorities state no injuries reported in Waskom at this time.

7:50 pm CST KTBS viewer photo of damage in Waskom

7:57 pm CST Belated reports from Sulfur Springs, TX

• Tractor trailers turned over on I30
• FM1870 chimney blown over, power lines down, trampoline in power lines
• powerlines and trees down on SE side per Emergency Management
• north side of town: roof caved in, truck overturned, debris in road
• power pole and tree damage at 154 and 19

8:23 pm CST New viewer photo surfaces of Waskom Tornado from KTBS

• Photo removed. Seems a viewer sent in a storm chase photo take by Roger Edwards and Rich Thompson from 1999.

8:29 pm CDT Ore City, Texas (belated) Roof blown off bank and grocery store.

9:05 pm CDT  Some of the photos surfacing of the damage in Waskom, TX are suggestive of EF3 tornado damage in my opinion.  We won’t know for sure until the NWS can get out tomorrow and survey the area.

9:25pm CDT Van Zandt County, Texas Sheriff is reporting they have widespread damage to homes reported in rural areas  of the county they are having difficulty getting to because of trees blocking the roads.

UPDATES FINAL AS OF NOW 10 pm CDT.  Will do a recap in the next 48 hours.

2010 is of course well upon us now, and as usual with a new year, many of us look back at the events of the previous year, and forward to the year to come, and I am no different in that regard.  While I refuse to make New Year’s Resolutions, I do like to make a few goals, and see how I did on past year’s goals.

In things related to storm chasing, the year would have been poor for me, with a mostly unactive season in the local area, and even long distance chases proved to be difficult for many storm chasers to capture that elusive tornado.  I say would have been poor for me except for the one exceptional intercept in Floyd County, Texas on April 29th, when we intercepted at close range, not one but TWO tornadoes.  That event made my whole chase year!  If you haven’t seen it, here it is:

By the time June rolled around I had mostly written off storm chasing except for anything I needed to cover for KCBD.  I was burnt out and needed a break from weather.  So one day, on a day I wasn’t expecting to chase, a relatively decent supercell popped up just to my south and I got on it for the station.  Turned out to be a prolific hail producer and slow mover dropping copious amounts of hail for longer than an hour in the same location.  I thought that was pretty cool, but little did I know what was to come.

Later that night as the storm was dying and I had called off the chase, the storm gave one last punch of lighting which struck a tank battery and ignited a fire on the south side of Lamesa, TX.  The subsequent explosion that I capture on tape of course has now been seen all over the world and kept me busy for quite a while dealing with media stuff surrounding it.  It also of course was the end of my chase vehicle, and I ended up with a new one.  If you haven’t seen that incredible video yet, here it is :

**ADULT LANGUAGE ON VIDEO**

For the rest of the year, I took a big break from the storm chasing/weather stuff, and did a ton of work around my property that had been on my to-do list, including building 100′ of fence, a new storage shed, tearing down an old garage, and building an addition to the house!  At the beginning of 2009 I said I would be happy to get one of those things done.  It was a major accomplishment to get them all done!

I also like to take stock of my financial situation this time of year.  As some of you know, I have been working towards a debt free life.  I’m not quite where I could have been, only because I did do all that work, but it was productive nonetheless and improved life around here, so it’s ok with me.  Last year at this time I had planned to be completely debt free by now.  While I am much closer than I was, I didn’t make it, a big part is adding the new vehicle to replace the one damaged in the explosion.  However looking forward, I see no reason I shouldn’t be debt free by the end of 2010.  I can’t tell you how great it feels to get some of that paid off!

I also start looking ahead toward storm chasing season.  To-do lists have been written and many things need to be done by March 1st, my “official” start date to storm chasing season.  Hard to believe only a month and a half away.  Looks like I’ll also be working with KCBD again this year.  This will be the 6th year chasing for them.  Wow has time flown!

I’m also determined to get all the past chase accounts on the website.  This has been my yearly failed project for the last few years and I am determined to get that done! I am kicking myself for not keeping up with it, because as time passes, memory and details fade.  Any of you younger chasers reading this, this is some of the best advise I can give you: write logs for all your storm chases, promptly after the event!  One day you will be happy you did.

The other major storm chasing related project is to get my entire video library over the years archived digitally.  I recently purchased two 1TB hard drives for this purpose.  This will be major and tedious work, but I need to get it done.  A by product of that is that I am going to be posting all the good stuff on my YouTube channel for you to watch!  Maybe even a DVD or two in the future!

But first, I absolutely must get the Explosion DVD produced.  This has been put off too long and many people are waiting on it, so that is now top priority!

Of course mother nature knows this and seems to be working up a huge trof in the western US which may bring some severe weather to Texas by the end of this week.  More on that later…

How is your New Year starting out?

Within the first 4 hours of 2010, I was already working and out shooting a full blow house fire.  Fortunately the people were gone when the fire broke out.  A neighbor stated that he noticed the fire, and made entry into the house after breaking out some windows to make sure no one was inside.  He found the gas kitchen stove on and turned it off, but the fire was already too big and house filed with smoke. He was having to crawl around.

I know it get’s cold folks, but PLEASE don’t leave those stoves and space heaters on while unattended!

These firefighters are all volunteer except for 2 or 3, and came out in the 24F weather on New Year’s Day morning when everyone else was wrapping up their parties to try and save these people’s life and property.  Yes, they do this for FREE for their community and neighbors! Chances are you have some volunteer firefighters near you unless you live in a big city. Be sure and support them any way you can!

I wonder if this is a sign of things to come for my videography this year?

In what has become known to most as year that has had anything but typical weather, 2009 rounds out the year with nearly 2/3 of the U.S. covered in snow!

We seem to be in between two major storm systems, but that didn’t stop a shortwave trough from returning brisk cold air and a snow for the 3rd time in a week to the Southern Plains.  While the northeast is feeling the last of a departing storm system and the northwest is starting to feel the effects of the next one, things on the whole are rather tranquil in what has largely been an uneventful year weatherwise in the U.S.

From a storm chasing perspective, this was probably the worst year since 1988 for chasing tornadoes, it still provided a few events for those that were dedicated enough to stick it out and salvage something.  The highlight of the convective season was of course the tornado event in eastern Wyoming that was featured in the season finale of the Storm Chasers show on Discovery Channel.

While that was a nice tornado over open land that lasted a while, it was rather unnewsworthy as far as tornadoes go, except for the fact that it was surrounded by more photographers, meteorologists, probes, instruments and live cameras that any other tornado in history.  It was even sampled directly by both Sean Casey’s Tornado Intercept Vehicle and Reed Timmer’s Dominator, both instrumented vehicles.   The amount of data that had to be gathered on that tornado and storm is unprecedented! This, in my opinion, makes this the single biggest storm chasing day of the year.

There was also the Hurricane Season.  Rather the lack of a Hurricane Season.  While we had a few strong storms develop, they all stayed out to sea and the U.S. remained hurricane free this year except for a couple of minor tropical events.

But as we rolled into the winter months now, El Nino, perhaps one of the strongest in history, is really getting things cranked up, and storm systems, as typical in El Nino years, are starting to slam through the southern U.S. with regular frequency.  This is one of the wetter winters we have had in quite some time on the western edge of the Southern Plains.  The last couple of years at this time, we were fighting high winds and wildfires!

Just today, we had some minor snow, courtesy of a strong cold front and a short wave moving overhead.

Of course, as we often do in winter, storm chasers now start speculating on the coming season, and gaze into the crystal forecast ball looking for any clues on what we can expect for severe weather.

I’m going out on a limb here with my long range “forecast” and say that the southeast states will soon start seeing repeated severe weather events and tornadoes on a higher frequency than they often do in the late winter months.  As we approach, and move into March, I think things will light up early and last well into June for Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas.  I mostly base this forecast crystal ball-cast on two elements.  The El Nino, which may or may not be staring to wane as we move into spring, but otherwise should still be affecting our weather, and two, the moisture we already have had.

Typically it seems that on years we have very dry winter seasons in Texas and Oklahoma, especially in west Texas, the less active severe weather is west of the I35 corridor.  Mostly this is due to only shallow moisture being able to make it up from the Gulf of Mexico over parched land in drought conditions that likes to leech all it can get from the atmosphere, and the end result is a dryline that races east, leaving everything practically west of I35 in the dry air, and thus no thunderstorms.

This winter has been the complete opposite of that.  Instead of drought and fires we are decently wet right now.  El Nino should continue to provide the upper storm systems to kick off the rain/snow and eventually thunderstorms when things start warming up.  It’s all up to the mesoscale fine details at that point.

I got a little more in depth than I intended to their in my post to end out the year, so I’ll leave it at that and we’ll talk more about it a little later!

I hope everyone got accomplished what they wanted to in 2009, and get more accomplished in 2010!

With snow still on the ground across the Southern Plains,  Mother Nature is about to hit us with round two less than a week from the epic Christmas Blizzard we had less than a week ago!

Yet another storm system over Northern Mexico is getting it’s act together and has it’s sites set firmly on the Southern Plains.   The eastern half of New Mexico and West Texas will be the first to take the hit, although this time it doesn’t look to be anything like the system a few days ago.

Snowfall totals should be quiet a bit less overall, but there could be some 4-6″ amounts to the northwest of Lubbock and in to the Texas Panhandle.  3″ or less should be more common elsewhere. Winter Weather Advisories have already been issued across the area for nearly all day on Tuesday the 29th.  By late in the day, travel should become impacted as roads become packed with snow across the area.  The system will then move on off into Oklahoma and Kansas.

Again, this doesn’t look to be anything like what we experienced a few days ago, but given we haven’t really warmed up much since that event, we are in for more COLD, that’s for sure!

I’m expecting to be streaming the snowstorm live on the LIVE ChaseCam at the very least on and off during the day from my house and possibly getting out mobile as things get more interesting later in the day.

There also doesn’t really appear to be any severe weather threat associated with this system, unlike the last one that produced tornadoes in East Texas!

You can get the latest on delays and closings at KCBD.com

The latest road conditions can be found on the TXDOT website or by calling 1-800-452-9292

For New Mexico Road Conditions or call 1-800-432-4269