Errands completed and hitting the road in just a minute for eastern NM. SPC has issued a Severe Thunderstorm watch for all of Eastern NM east of the Rockie Mountains, and a couple of counties in to western TX. Supercells expected, and couple of tornadoes possible. Convention has already begun with storms underway just east of the mountains.

I will be heading west toward Lovington, NM and possibly on to Roswell. Not giving up the option to drop south. CAPEs are a little higher down that way, I’ll play it by ear and make adjustments as needed.

I’ll be running solo, so not sure how often I can update the blog today during the chase. LIVE ChaseCam will be active here shortly. I haven’t chased in eastern NM in a couple of years, so I am not sure how good my data coverage out that way will be. Last time I was out that was, there was none. Coverage has improved greatly, so hopefully I will be surprised. Availability of the LIVE ChaseCam of course will hinge on the ability to get that data connection out in the wild. Hopefully things have improved.

As the regular readers already know, last Sunday I launched the new LIVE ChaseCAM.  Sunday and Monday chases in Oklahoma were the final test days for something I have been looking forward to doing for a long time.   I am happy to report the testing was a huge success and the camera will now be on during every chase.  Be sure and subscribe to the blog so you will get updates and now when I am chasing so you can watch for the storms!

As always, I love to hear feedback on how the ChaseCAM is working out for viewers and also love to hear about anything in particular that you thought was cool that you saw on the ChaseCAM!  Feel free to comment on it!

Right on the heels of our Severe Weather Awareness day, an early season chase presented itself in the central north Texas area on up through Oklahoma. I played the more southern end due to the aggressive cold front further north, not wanting to get undercut right away by the cold air. Turns out the only thing that wanted to spin today was stuff that crossed the front itself, for brief time. A few chasers caught a tornado up in Oklahoma like that.

I sat in that location above for quite a while, watching a storm north of me and one to the south of me that was all alone and I had higher hopes for, but it never made it. All in all, not much to write about but it was nice to get out and sit in that peaceful place. Not another car passed the whole time. I did get a nice pic of the northern one as it started to cross the front and get more organized.

It’s been an incredible busy last couple of weeks, what with getting vehicles ready, equipment upgraded, paying work. I haven’t had time take a breath hardly. As such I have neglected posting here a little. I am finally started to wrap up on some things. Most of the work on the chase vehicles is competed, minus a few minor things. I am wrapping up one paid website project tonight hopefully. That leaves the big one I have been working on for months remaining that I am going to try and hammer and get completed. It turned out to be epic, over 800 pages!

Noting the poll I started on the website about a year ago to see if anyone was interested in seeing video logs, or vlogs as they are known on YouTube. While not a really large number of people have voted, it’s been a landslide that there is interest there, so I am hopefully going to be starting that VERY soon, through a channel on YouTube. I of course will post that here as well when it gets started. Turns out they might also get cross posted on the TV station website as well.

I also tested Friday on a 200 mile trip a streaming webcam, which looks like is going to be very feasible. This was mostly for live coverage by the TV station, however I may post it to the website, especially on days I don’t chase locally for the station. At least until I can figure out if the server I am posting it to can handle multiple requests. They have to come first.

Overall, a lot has been accomplished, more work to do. Maybe as soon as I get the large website paying project finished I can get back to putting the old chase accounts on this website. I do have a couple more potential paying jobs in the pipeline however. Guess I can’t complain. I have to admit, it feels pretty good to get so much off my to-do lists the last couple weeks!

This month has been the worst month of the year in so many ways. The biggest was being sick for nearly 4 weeks, which had a domino affect on getting anything done, which put me even farther behind than I was on just about EVERYTHING. So if you emailed me something or whatever, and didn’t get a reply, it’s just that I am so far behind responding to stuff. I have been trying to get caught up on emails the last couple of days. I hope I didn’t miss anyone. I wasn’t ignoring anyone. The short winter days are depressing and it’s been colder than normal here lately.

I always like the day after Christmas. The New Year’s Holiday really hasn’t been that much of a holiday for me since my old days of partying have long since passed. So the day after Christmas for all intents and purposes is the last of “the holiday period” for me, when I can start getting back and focused on things. It’s really my own new year.

With that in mind, it’s time to renew focus and clear some projects off the board, and start preparing for the 2008 storm chase season, which begins officially for me March 1st (doesn’t it ever really end?). Just 2 months from now. I can’t wait! Santa brought me a new digital SLR camera, a Canon Rebel XTI. This is a major piece of chase equipment upgrade! I am very excited to get this as I can now start taking some very high resolution images that I can use for other things, like prints and calendars, that plain old video grabs just don’t work for, and neither did my old 5 megapixal point and shoot. It will also open up the doors for me for some good lightning pics. Now THIS I am excited about! I haven’t seriously shot stills since I sold my old Canon AE1 film camera years ago. I love the flexibility of digital. Hopefully with some learned skill and some luck, I will have some really cool images to share soon.

With that in mind, I absolutely have to get the rest of the website finished in the next two months. This has been delayed due to paying website projects, and paying jobs always come first. But my stuff has to be done before March 1st. I also recently picked up a new HP laptop to upgrade the older one. I haven’t decided, but the other one might stay in service in the chase vehicle as well. I am still trying to decide if I want to use the Windows Vista that came on the new one, or set it back to Windows XP. Thanks to my chase partner Graham also for the new scanner to upgrade one of the ones in the chase vehicle. Looking forward to getting that installed. We have an identical one to put in his vehicle was well. We try to standardize equipment across the vehicles where possible, so we are very comfortable with the equipment in either vehicle.

So, the theme for me is, clear out some projects (and quit taking on so many free ones), get this site finished, and get ready for chase season. One major thing I plan on doing over the next year is clear out sources of major stress in my life. It’s just something I need to do to stop burning out all the time, and just be happier in general. Part of that is working really hard to pay off some things I owe and get debt free. Compared to many people, I really don’t have all that much dept, but over the next 18 months I expect to be in a debt free position. That is a goal I can’t wait for!

I have a feeling this is going to be a great 2008!

I know, it’s been a while since I have posted. Between being really busy with some paying projects, and a bunch of “stuff” going on over on StormTrack I just haven’t been able to get motivated to find a little extra time to post here. More on the StormTrack stuff in another post later.

We had a white Thanksgiving here for the first time since I can remember. A white Thanksgiving in West Texas is even more rare than a white Christmas. In fact, prior to this even Lubbock only had snow on the ground 9 times since 1911. All of those were only trace amounts except in 1934 which was 1″. In 1980 there was 7″ of snow on the ground from a previous snowfall that dumped 11 inches the day before. Here at my location southwest of Lubbock we had only the second day EVER on record of being below freezing. The previous only Thanksgiving day it remained below freezing was in 1952 where it reached only 28. I need to see what our high here where I live officially was, we may have set a new record. My weather station is wireless and the battery is run down, and only works when the sun is out until I can get a new battery (solar powered).

After the snow got going right around 9 a.m. (good call there NWS) , I got started cooking. Thanksgiving I usually cook most of the meal. I actually like to cook, but don’t do it all that often. I guess it’s pretty good, everyone eats it including the dogs! LOL I was quite busy most of the day yesterday cooking enough food to last us a week. We had the usual turkey and I mesquite smoked a ham as well. I’ll be eating plenty of sandwiches off that one! Let’s see, what else… dressing with giblet gravy of course, smoothest mashed potatoes you ever saw, green bean casserole (a Thanksgiving staple!), a broccoli/cheese casserole, my patented sweet potatoes, deviled eggs…the list goes on and on! Oh and the deserts! Pumkin pie, pecan pie, banana pudding. Ok, I am getting hungry again!

We ended up taking a couple of plates over to the manager and another employee next door working at Allsups. We know the manager pretty good. She doesn’t live here and was stuck working all day, so at least she didn’t have to eat “World Famous Allsups Burritos” TM for Thanksgiving! Watched a movie after that and played some Halo on Xbox with the kids til it was time to crash out. I hope everyone else got to pig out as much as I did for Thanksgiving!

Well, on the heels of our little snowstorm, looks like we are in for more, perhaps even more than we got this time.

I am in the blue heavy snow area, so I may be seeing as much as another 5 inches late tonight and tomorrow. I am quite enjoying all this snow! This is on the heels of a couple of weeks of temps in the upper 70s to low 80s. In fact, the day before Thanksgiving it was in the 80s! Welcome to west Texas weather! If you don’t like the weather here, just wait a minute! Not only is the snow great, when we have an active winter, my experience has been we usually have an active severe weather season in the spring.

UPDATE: Just after I initially posted this I saw we have now been put under a Winter Storm Watch!

SNOW IS EXPECTED TO BEGIN AROUND DAYBREAK SATURDAY AND CONTINUE
INTO SUNDAY MORNING. ACCUMULATIONS OF FOUR INCHES OR GREATER ARE
POSSIBLE.

Back to work for me now. I have a backlog of paying projects to get done. That’s a good thing, isn’t it?

Next up on the list is starting to get the old chase accounts back online. That announcement should make many visitors happy. I have saved that section for last, because it’s the most time consuming, and because after I get everything up through 2003 done, I have to go back and actually WRITE the chase accounts from 2004 through 2007.  This is not a task I will ever put off again.  If no other reason than details can fade from memory. I am hoping reviewing the video and maps from the chase days will bring everything back to me.

Anyway, that’s the update and the progress thus far. I am very happy to have made this much progress on the site.  So go and check out my old scrapbook images. Once everything else is done, I will go back and add some more newer stuff to that as well.

I have spend most of today getting all the storm chase vehicle pages back online again. Images had to be modified, content copied and rearranged, and general just a lot of work. The only thing lacking is adding my chase partners vehicle, which will most likely be done tomorrow (well later today, I see it’s already 3 am!) The current chase vehicle and my past ones back to about 2000 are there. I didn’t really take a lot of pictures of the ones before that and what I did have most were lost in a fire anyway.

There is some extra stuff in there if you go to the main page of the site and click on the link in the menu, that will show for you as well.

At any rate…enjoy!

So here we are!

If you were linking to the old blog location, please update your links to http://wx5tvs.com/blog/   same goes for bookmarks.  This location will not be changing again any time soon if ever.  Let me now if you linked so I can give you a link back!

Now on to more work…

Last few days I have been doing my annual OS install on my desktop. I usually back everything up, format the drives and do a fresh install of Windows about once a year. Keeps everything running top notch.  It’s a pain in the rear, but necessary to clean out the cobwebs of Windows.  Now that I have accomplished that, I can continue with work on the website, so new stuff coming shortly!