Midwest Chasing

Currently in Wichita, KS right now. We busted horribly yesterday; all the action was in northern Oklahoma and we ended up in Nebraska with jack shit. Thursday we got 5 tornadoes but they were barely photogenic but we did get some.

Friday was another bleh day. We got on a number of cells that didn’t produce when we were there, but as soon as we left they started dropping tubes. We were on the cell that ended up producing the Quntier, KS EF4 but left it too early.

Today we ended up back in Western Kansas and it was a SSDD day. Got on tornadic cells that didn’t produce and missed great tornadoes elsewhere. Iowa got blasted hard as did parts of northern Kansas.

KWES in Texas is reporting that Brian Barnes from Silver Lining Tours was arrested and charged for “obstruction of a highway or other passage way”. The article states that he was on a road side park and multiple witnesses said that he wasn’t blocking traffic at all.

The deputy in question sounds like a real winner too. Here are some quotes from the article:

“His first words to me were, ‘are you a blankety-blank idiot?’ He told me if I didn’t leave, I was going to jail, flat out.”

“He jumped out and put me in handcuffs. I turned around and I remember him slamming me up against his vehicle, and then it all got kind of scary.”

http://www.kwes.com/global/story.asp?s=8286980

Looks like the site is back up. Apparently on April 18th, someone exploited a vulnerability in Coppermine and gained access to PHP files on the server. That enabled him to put in some code that would redirect people to a malware site. I found this out tonight and stripped down all of the offending code that I could find. Coppermine’s been upgraded as well.

Well the TRV900 went back to the seller; he never bothered to mention the massive water damage to the camera that prevented it from recording audio via both an internal and external microphone. Back to eBay for more searching.

I purchased a TRV900 off eBay; everything about it rules except that it will not record sound. I’m going to take it to Royal Camera to have it repaired. I still got a bargain on it paying only $300.

April is next week and severe weather looks possible on Monday. The SPC Day 3 outlook has me under a risk for severe weather.

The Weather Channel’s performance during last night’s Atlanta tornado was abysmal. You would think that they would have live coverage since the tornado hit their city, but nope. They were doing replays of Storm Stories and mountain biking in Utah. At one point, the OCM was reading a list of counties under a warning and got cut off to go to a commercial break.

This is pretty much the lowest point in TWC’s history in my opinion. They’ve gone on a steady decline in recent years with coverage being more and more pathetic.

For shame, TWC. For shame.

Christmas is soon approaching and 2007 will end soon which means the chase season is slowly approaching. I’ve been looking at purchasing a better video camera because the one I currently have, a Panasonic PV-GS39 is terrible at low light and I do not like that the only way you can focus is through the joystick. Furthermore, you cannot focus to infinity like you can on some other cameras, like my old Digital8 Sony TRV230.

I’ve been  looking around eBay for a used Sony VX2000 or TRV900 after reading the reviews and seeing how they both are great at low light recording.

Also, I bought a copy of Storms of 2007; to see a preview of it check out this post on Dick McGowan’s blog.

Today’s another dreary day in Illinois with temps hovering in the 30s.

My father decided to put up the Christmas decorations on the house and I went to help him set everything up. I decided to bring the dogs along to enjoy the weather in their new coats.  As I’m writing this it’s starting to sleet.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!