Loaded Gun Chasing Blog

2010-03-20T17:20:00.000-07:00

I have moved my blog back to my old site. You can find it at http://loadedgunchasing.com/blog1/ or just google loaded gun chasing blog and my website and blog will come up

2010-03-09T14:59:00.000-08:00

Well it looks like I might get my first chase in tomorrow. I have done very little forecasting, but I haven't been impressed with what I've seen so far. The setup is going to be close to home though and storms have a way of doing weird things near surface lows so I'll probably give it a try and chase.
I think I might be moving my blog location back to my website and shutting this one down. I have to go mess with it and I'll find out then. I'll post a forecast tonight or in the morning.

2009-09-29T18:49:00.000-07:00

Well I'm not chasing tomorrow, but I would if LCL heights were a little lower over northwest Kansas and I was sure the cap would break. They very well may get a tornado or two tomorrow. The wind shear is really good. As mentioned before LCL heights are a bit high and the cap may hold until after dark, which is usually a problem with the day before the day chases. The best area for tornadoes will be over northwest Kansas. I would target the dryline right along I70 and get on any storm firing in that area.

Thursday looks like a good severe weather outbreak, but I am questioning the tornado potential. It is rare to get a good tornado on days when there is poor directional shear and that will be the case on Thursday. The speed shear is pretty good and this combined with CAPE around 1000J/kg will create an environment favorable for severe storms. The tornado potential will be seriously inhibited by veering low level winds. Surface winds are slightly more backed over parts of Oklahoma and as a result it will have the best tornado potential on Thursday. I would target any storm firing just a little bit north of Oklahoma City. I think any storm tracking over the area northeast of OKC has the best shot of putting down a tornado. LCL heights will be pretty low, so I think there is a reasonable chance of a couple tornadoes. I don't think it will be anything major, but anything can happen when you get these days with strong speed shear and poor directional shear. Occasionally they do produce decent tornadoes so I will probably be out chasing. I'm kind of repeating myself here, but again I don't think it is that good of a tornado day. My best guess is you'll get a couple tornado warned storms that may be able to produce a couple weak tornadoes and the best area for this will be the northeast quadrant of Oklahoma.

2009-09-26T22:18:00.000-07:00

The 00Z run of the GFS doesn't look so pretty. The speed shear still looks really good, but the directional shear isn't so great. 850mb winds are veering real bad which is damning for tornado potential (although I still think you'd get some tornadoes with this setup) and with strong wind speeds (and poor directional shear) storm motions would be very fast. Hopefully the gfs will trend more back towards the 12Z where the trough isn't so negatively tilted that it veers low level wind fields.

2009-09-26T18:57:00.001-07:00

It looks like there might be a decent chase day this coming Thursday across parts of southern Kansas and northern Oklahoma. It is still a long ways out so I'm sure a lot will change. This is also the first time I've looked at this setup on the GFS, so I have no idea how consistent the GFS has been with the evolution of this trough. Right now instability isn't that great due to somewhat low temperatures, but moisture and wind shear both look really good. It is definitely something to keep an eye on.

2009-09-12T11:39:00.000-07:00

According to this mornings' gfs we have a whole lot of nothing to look forward to in the way of severe weather. Over the next 7 days the gfs shows us transitioning to high pressure aloft with a trough over the west coast and then the upper level jet flattens out to a zonal flow pattern with the jet stream over the Canada border area. I haven't looked at the hurricane potential hardly at all, but there doesn't appear to be much to get excited about in that regard either over the next week.
I'm going to stick to working on the website and watching college football. We still have a little ways to go before we get into the fall tornado season, so I guess we'll just have to be patient and hope for the best. We haven't really had a fall tornado season the last couple years so maybe this is our year.

Potential Storms Next Friday

2009-09-06T18:30:00.000-07:00

It looks like we could potentially be in for some decent storms next Friday as a closed upper level low drops into the central plains. It is a very goofy nontypical setup, so it's hard to gauge the tornado potential if any, but with good moisture in place and adequate deep layer shear severe weather looks like a good possibility. I only spent like five minutes forecasting and the GFS has been jumping around a lot with this trough, so I will wait until tomorrow's run to get into more detail. Right now it looks like central and southern into southeast Kansas hold the best potential as far as the plains are concerned.

2009-09-06T12:56:00.000-07:00

Well I went to the KU game yesterday. That was awesome. I was late getting up there so my drinking time was limited, but I did get a couple cocktails in me before kickoff. I was extremely impressed with there play considering we lost our D line and our offense was missing Briscoe, which really hurt our throwing game. We still stomped a mud hole in them.
I'm fixin to forecast and I'll post in a bit. I'm going to try to start posting regularly again since we are getting back into the fall season and the peak of hurricane season.

Tropical Storm Danny

2009-08-26T22:16:00.000-07:00

Tropical Storm Danny has formed and will once again stay east of the US possible brushing the northeastern US coast, but nothing major. Here is a link to high resolution satellite images of the storm http://rammb.cira.colostate.edu/products/tc_realtime/storm.asp?storm_identifier=AL052009

Here is a NHC link to the current track and a lot of other information on the storm http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/graphics_at5.shtml?5-daynl#contents

Tropical Storm Bill

2009-08-16T08:31:00.000-07:00

I'm a little late getting a post up, but Bill and Ana continue to move WNW across the Atlantic. Ana is forecast to move down a Peurto Rico to Cuba line before emerging over the gulf. The track could obviously swing one way or another. Just the other day Ana was forecast to hit Florida on a more northerly track, so who knows what will happen. It doesn't look like Ana will become very strong within 120 hours if it does take this track. I'm sure land interaction would cause some significant problems if this current track does in fact verify. Once Ana enters the gulf (assuming it does) west of Cuba I don't know what will happen. I need to work on my forecasting to get any idea of what to expect in that time frame.
Bill on the other hand looks like it will become a major hurricane within the next 120 hours, but the models have it swinging north over the atlantic where hurricanes die. I hope that's not the case, but it is looking more and more likely that it will be.
Behind Bill there was a wave over Africa that looked promising a day or two ago, but I haven't forecasted since then. I will be looking at that today and see what it looks like. I will probably post later today on that and any chance of a US landfalling Ana.
I'm not good at hurricane forecasting btw. In fact I kind of suck at it, so don't listen to much of what I say. I don't put a lot of time and effort into my forecasting like I do with tornadoes. I don't think it's really neccessary since it's not hard to put yourself in front of a hurricane lol. There's not much skill involved. The only skill in hurricane chasing is knowing what to take, how to be prepared and knowing how to get through it safely. That is a lot tougher than you might think, but it's pretty easy if you take it seriously and plan ahead. Enough rambling. I will post again later.

Hurricane Next Week

2009-08-14T09:15:00.000-07:00

It is looking very likely that the low pressure system over the eastern atlantic will become a hurricane in the next few days. The GFS has been very consistent in strengthening this hurricane right before it makes landfall with the windward islands or Peurto Rico. I have done literally no forecasting yet aside from looking at the GFS, so I may be out to lunch on this deal. I am going to forecast as soon as I get home from work this afternoon though so I will post later on this. If if does become a strong hurricane and is going to hit the US I will do everything I can to make sure I'm there. I could really go for a good hurricane after several slow years in a row. My Xterra is currently in the shop getting the hail damage fixed from when I got pounded in Oregon, Missouri, but it is supposed to be done the beginning of the week so I should be back in action just in time if we do get a strong hurricane. I will post again in a few hours.

Hurricane Season

2009-07-24T10:07:00.000-07:00

I haven't studied up on hurricanes in several years so I virtually know little to nothing about them. I don't have much information on them, so maybe I'll read that material tonight just to help me out a bit. I think I have a few books with chapters dedicated to tropical cyclones.

Regardless of my ignorance on the subject, I'll post about any upcoming tropical waves and hurricane potential. I will probably post ever couple of days until we actually get something worth posting about.

Chasing Today

2009-07-20T20:29:00.000-07:00

We ran out chasing at the last second today and got on the storm southeast of Kingman. I don't have any of my equipment hooked up or ready so the only thing I took was my blackberry, the weather radio and I grabbed the laptop and gps for mapping software and navigating.

I met up with Eric and his brother in Goddard and hit the road.

Somebody reported a tornado with the storm and I don't know the exact times, but I think it was literally minutes before we got on the storm. It was high based all afternoon and had a small updraft base. It was pretty skinny and the outflow was whipping the inflow. It wasn't the long horse show outflow wins kind of storm, but you could easily tell the outflow was getting the better part of that storm. There was a really good long lasting gustnado that I got a couple pics of, one of which is at the top of the page.

After that I knew the base was way too high and the storm was way too outlfow dominant for it to be able to tornado befored dark so we called it a day and headed home. Not bad for a get your pants pulled down last minute run out the dor chase. I didn't even know SPC had us in a slight risk today lol.

Starting to Post Again

2009-07-19T18:39:00.000-07:00

I know it's been a while since I posted, but I'm planning on getting it going again. We are coming up on hurricane season which is typically best in August and September in the Atlantic basin. I will try to get my hurricane page going on my website, which was actually pretty nice when it was working. It had all the information you needed at a glance for short term forecasting and information on any tropical cyclone in the Atlantic, but I haven't been able to work on my website for a couple months now.

My new home pc I got for video editing and storage is Vista 64 bit and isn't compatible with Yahoo sitbuilder software. My old laptop that I used to use for working on my website is doing much better. It is on its last leg and I really don't want to screw with it because right now it still works really well for a back up chasing computer because all the software, aircards, and gps units play nice on there and it works good in the field. I don't want to ruin it screwing around with my website because I absolutely have to have a back up computer on the road. Even when I did use that laptop for working on my laptop I still had problems and it would do crazy shit. That has vista 32 bit.

I'm hoping windows 7 may help or that some how I'll stumble across an answer to my problems. Right now I have plenty of other tasks to focus on.

Anyway, I will start posint on hurricane outlooks this week and updates on how our storm chasing tour business is coming along. It is really tough to try to start a buniness like that from scratch. I really need a private investor that would offerme some special terms, but the two words "storm" and "chasing" put together scare off insurance agnts, investors and everybody else that you need to create a functioning business. People are scared of what they don't understand and these people are so ignorant when it comes to these storms that you couldn't even exagerate it enough.
I took my car in for a claim for the softball hail we got into and the guy saw my storm chasing tours advertisements stickers on the car and went into his rant on how they weren't going to cover this. He was telling me how we "drive straight into storms" and get hit by hail all the time. I wanted to slap him and say, listen fucker, this is my 9nth season chasing and I've been hit by hail twice. Once on purpose and this one on accident. The other time I got hit it was small hail so I didn't care. A good chaser knows how to stay out of the hail. He kept going into the "storms can do anything speech to me". I got so tired of listening to him. I just wanted to get the hell out of there or again I would have said, who do you think knows better and more about these storms and how they behave, you, a guy that looks at cars with hail damage or me who hase gone out forecasted and watched the actual storms from up close for 9 years. Now shut your pie hole. I hate dealing with some insurance companies. That is what I get for using Geico. That is quickly changing and I'm going to use state farm where I have a local rep I can go in and talk to. You may pay a tad more, but you get way better coverage and they won't wiggle and shake trying to get out of paying for claims when something happens. No wonder Geico has so much mony for advertising.

Back to the topic at hand. If you care to read the blog check back. I will probably take a look at the models and the Atlantic tomorrow and post my first forecast. BTW I can't really forecast tropical cyclones so I kind of just rip everybody else's forecasts off and tweak them a bit lol. You'll see.

2009-07-03T13:05:00.000-07:00

I just briefly went over the forecast and would scoot south just a bit from where my previous target was. For tornado potential I like the area from Concordia over to Phillipsburg, Stockton and the Norton area. Basically right in that corridor north of I70. There is already a nice cu field going up out there. They could have issued a watch already for all I know. I'm just sitting on the computer drinking coffee. I slept in pretty late. I stayed up until almost 5am working on the computer so I didn't get up until 1. Now I got a bunch of stuff to do so I better jump in the shower and get going.
I think you have a decent shot at a tornado and if I didn't have all my equipment shut down or had one of my friends here to drive I'd probably be out there, but that isn't the case. The latest spring tornado I ever got before was on July 3rd also, so it feels like a lucky day to me. with the shear and CAPE setups I think we will see a couple weak tornadoes today. You might even get some good looking ones that make them appear stronger than they really are, which will really piss me off lol. Nah good luck to everybody going out.
If you need any nowcasting help I will help if I can, but I won't be home until later this afternoon. I'll have my blackberry with me though so I can always check things on there. Just email me if you need a little help mikey@loadedgunchasing.com

Forecast for 7/03/09

2009-07-03T01:16:00.000-07:00

I haven't spent a whole lot of time on this , but I think I have my initial target picked out and that would be in the neighborhood of Hebron Nebraska. I go back a long ways with Hebron and have very fond memories of the place. The is where I went when I got the Hallam storm, I went there when I got the Beatrice tornado, I went there when I got whatever that tornado was in central Nebraska was last year where everybody was split by the river. I'm sure there are a couple unsuccessful chases where I held up there too, but just the name of it makes me feel warm and cozy. In reality for a good target I prefer Beatrice just because it is a real city with people and gas stations.
To chase or not to chase, that is the question. I'm not working, but I've also turned off my XM and sent my aircard with my parents to the lake so I'll be rolling old school with the weather radio and use my blackberry to get a little radar. As long as I get up there early enough for a good wifi spot I think I'll be in good shape. That is what I used to so and it worked out OK. It was a little tougher, so I may be rusty, but I can get it done I think.

That is all based on the idea that I am going. The directional shear is great, speed shear isn't too bad either, and when combined you deep layer shear is more than adequate for supercells. The CAPE looked like crap on the maps you'd pull on rap, but then when you check forecast soundings the NAM shows 3000j/kg, which is good enough to ge tthe job done. The LCL's are up there pretty high, but I've seen higher LCL's produce and they drop off quickly as storms move north and east away from the thermal tounge.

Now I have a few concerns. One is that I do think storms will fire, but they should go first west of Hebron a ways where the low level wind field wraps in to what appears to be a surface low and that additional convergence should break the cap first. Maybe then storm will continue to fire down along the warm front (which seems to be what the NAM is showing), but the NAM is usually convection happy. Regardless, one way or another we'll get a storm. If storms do go along the front convective evolution is my second concern. Will there be adequate spacing to allow for storms to progress and grow unimpeded by its neigbor. If so and storms realize upper 60 dewpoints and backed lowlevel winds that are being forecast I think a couple tornadoes and a good possibility. In fact it looks good enough to(was going to swear there, but I know this is a family joint) to get me off the computer and out the door. I have a lits a mile long of thing that need to be done tomorrow though so I'm almost hoping something goes wrong with this setup so I can stay here and get everything done before the weekend. One other thing I forgot to mention was that the forecast sounding either at Hebron or some place near it had a surface inverions by 7pm. I don't know what in the hell that is all about. I guess it could be convective feedback or just somr sort of a mistake because surely any storms would be surface based.

I will update again in the morning.

2009-07-01T20:29:00.000-07:00

Well I have been paying no attention to the models, but I did check
SPC this morning and saw that we were highlighted in a slight risk area over the next couple of days.
I will work on my forecasting for the next two days and get something posted later tonight or early tomorrow morning.

New Blog

2009-06-26T22:14:00.000-07:00

I've pretty much decided this is going to be the new place for the Loaded Gun Chasing Blog. The flormat is a lot better than all the others we've tried. You can do more, it looks better, you can add additional information so it's a bigger resource to our viewers, etc. It's all around a good deal and that is my whole reason for doing this. I didn't know anybody when I started storm chasing. I had to learn everything on my own and it sucked. I want to make sure I'm doing my part to help out the people who are getting started to be sucessful, so I'll share my forecast and reasoning openly. I get it wrong a lot too though lol so you may want to check out some other blogs. Nah, I was happy with my forecasting in a few ways this year, but this was by far the worst tornado year I could ever imagine and I bet you it will be the worst one of my life.

Anyways, we are going to begin working on this page and once it is complete we will shut down our other blog and redirect traffic over here.

By the way. I got extremely lucky and picked a sponsor who makes hands down the best amps and antennas out there. Wilson Electronics just took me on their team about a month ago and I couldn't be happier to work with them. There will be plenty of information about there products that apply to us as chasers to, because if you are going to chase any farther than twenty miles from home, you're going to need an amplipher and Wilson is hands down the best at it. I'm sure you think I'm saying thay because they sponsor me, but I actually have a Cyfre amp (long story) and Wilson easily out performed it and he even crazier thing is the Cyfre was a direct connect meaning it plugs right in to the phone or aircard you are using (it's supposed to give you a stronger signal vs. going with the wireless option like most of us do). I drove on the turnpike from Wichita to Topeka on my Verizon phone and aircard and maintained 4or5 bars the whole way. I did work on the internet the entire time and it was awesome. Believe it or not this is my first year having internet access in the car so I really do get pumped about this. I used to just use XM and then stop in towns and search for wifi, which cost you a lot of time and you'll miss several tornadoes because of it.

When you are getting into chasing here is kind of the list of equipment you ought to get ... weather radio, cellular phone, laptop computer, aircard or tether through your cell phone for internet access on your laptop. You'll find you will be confined to a very small area where you get service though. It takes a couple bars at least to get internet access, so without a doubt next on the list is an amp and Wilson is where to go for that. Contact me and tell me your situation and I will forward you on to the experts. And by the way I in no way get commissions for what I sell and I would never represent a company I didn't fully believe in. In storm chasing I can think of two companies I would rep right now and that's Wilson and Baron Mobile Threatnet. Any other company could offer me whatever and I'd tell them to pound sand. My integrity is not for sale.

Back to the topic at hand. The blog is moving here, which is primarily forecasting, but we are starting our first official year of chase tours this year after running a beta test this year so we may have to write the forecasts slightly different than we did before, like maybe dumb it down a little bit since the average person doesn't know all the acronymns used in meteorology. Other than that it will all be the same plus a lot of extras that will make it a great site, so please check back for updates

2009-03-29T21:19:00.001-07:00

This is a blog I set up when I was trying to find a new place to put my blog before storm season started. I am dabbling with the idea of making this a forecasting blog specifically for storms in Kansas and in and around the Wichita area. I wouldn't post nearly as much as I do on my regular storm chasing blog because it simply takes way too much time for forecast and manage all those things, but I would post regularly starting several days out before the storm was here.
I basically want to make this a cut through the crap cake forecast. You are going to get a water downed cover your ass forecast from all the media outlets. This blog/forecast will give you a more informative and accurate picture of what I expect to happen for the area I'm covering. I will try it a few times and see if I can get any interest going for it. I will likely not keep it up for long since I am getting tons of hits on my other blog and I haven't been keeping up with that one as much as I should. This would be a good blog for the off season or winter storm season though. I could always combine everything into the one blog I already have at loaded gun chasing, but I can't dumb down the terminology over there since it is an actual forecast directed towards chasers. We'll see. If you have any ideas or advice email me at mikey@loadedgunchasing.com

2009-02-12T22:15:00.000-08:00

This is just a sample post to see if I can get pictures to work on here. kkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk

New Blog

2009-02-08T16:52:00.000-08:00

I started this blog because the other one I had wasn't working out so well. This will be the 3rd blog I've had in the past year, but hopefully it will be the last. I like the look of this one a lot better and I can add pictures to it. I will start making my forecast posts on March 1st.