Back to School

"Good times in Muncie again, its Muncie!" If you haven't yet seen the Hastily Made Cleveland Tourism Videos, I highly suggest you watch them, unless of course you are from Cleveland. Nevertheless, they are entertaining even through the 10th viewing.

Anywho, it's that time of the year again for most anyone receiving an education. Yes, it is time again to hit the books and attend your classes for the first time. Time, again, for writing multiple pages of an essay on a subject that will most definitely not help or affect you later in life, such as "Global Warming," and if you know me, it is one of my favorite theories to debate about it's own legitimacy. I already wrote a 2 page essay on "What do you think the biggest problem in the world is, what causes the problem, and how will you fix it when you get out of college?" The professor gave us this assignment on syllabus day, with 10 minutes left of class. I thought it would be a take home assignment, however, we had to finish it before we left. When someone asked about the limited remaining time, she replied without hesitation, "I have no problem with staying after." She also said that the reason for the essay, which is completely unrelated to the class, is to allow her to "read" our personalities, and to see if she is wasting her breath on us, and whether she thinks we will be much of a contribution to society. I'm not sure if that is legal or not, but I'll just do my best to succeed academically, and whether she thinks I will succeed or not is her own business.

My other classes are just how I expected them to be for the most part, lectures, notes and homework. This semester in general is going to be relatively boring as far as academics are concerned. I'm taking two Geography classes, a Phys Ed Aerobic Swimming class, which it turns out we don't technically swim, a Religious Studies class, a History course, from the 1850's to present day, and last but not least, my "favorite" subject, Mathematics. None deal directly with meteorology, but the two geography classes do count towards my major. I also picked up my books yesterday, and found them to be almost half the price of last years books, so I was rather pleased.

Brennen, my roommate, and myself are running for the Social Chair position on Elliott Hall's Executive board. Apparently everyone believes we are a social pair, so we'll see how that goes. I do have some interesting ideas, and hopefully with a little bit of funding through the hall, we can pull them off and get everybody involved in having a good time this year. Some of these ideas include some kind of a "camp-out" before it gets too chilly, and we could make smores or something out back, and also some kind of a tailgating extravaganza at the football games, where we get some funds for hot dogs or people chip in and we grill out before the games. Just some ideas, I'll keep the others a secret. Of course I have been playing volleyball almost every day since I have been up here, minus the first opening week, because its hard to play with the limited amount of people on just the Opening Committee. OC went smoothly for the most part, and I had my doubts on how many people would be showing up for the programs that we were going to put on, such as Frisbee discus, Water Balloon shot put, and the first ever Frank-a-thon. But quite a reasonable amount of people showed up, and for the most part I do believe they all enjoyed themselves.

As a whole, Ball State is going good so far. I am meeting new people again every day, which is always interesting and fun, the food is still pretty good, and still pretty horrible, depending on the location and the day, but for the most part it is delicious. I have gotten hired on at the Tally Dining location, right across the road from me. I'm not being too optimistic about it, because the whole hiring process has been kind of fishy to say the least. The hired on a first come first serve basis, rather than experience, which i found to be ineffective for the most part. I thought I originally got hired on at the brand new Taco Bell, and found out yesterday at my orientation that I was stocking shelves and assisting in the dining room instead, which is a crock, because it isn't what I was told I was doing when I got hired. So I might be hunting another job down soon is shelf re-stocking isn't all it is cracked up to be. I will also be auditioning for a position with Cardinal Vision 57, the local BSU operated TV station, as a meteorologist. That will probably eat my remaining free time, and for some reason if that doesn't work out, I plan to audition instead for the Charlie Cardinal position whenever the invites for that come out, just because I think that would be a really exciting and interesting job. Unfortunately, the latter two auditions/jobs are unpaid, but the TV job would be good experience for a future career in broadcast meteorology.

The last thing that I really found interesting enough to go into detail about was my recent 20th birthday. So after 20 years here on Planet Earth, I have come to a few conclusions. Although you might be older, you can still act 5 years under your age to have a good time, and there's nothing wrong with that, 10 years however, is pushing it. I have been a Cincinnati sports fan my whole life, and it has been a tough twenty years. I'm hoping the Reds and the Bengals can pull together though and win a few championships in the coming twenty seasons. With $500 worth of college books, I could have rather purchased about 8 new Xbox games, 30 DVDs, 41 new T-shirts, and roughly 561 White Castle Hamburgers, all of which would have been more useful or edible than the textbooks themselves. I have come to the conclusion that girls are difficult not only to understand, but difficult to get along with, satisfy, and counsel. Lastly, I have come to the conclusion in my first twenty years that life is much like Mother Nature. Life is both exciting and relaxing, but most of all, it is nearly unpredicatable. You really just have to go with the flow, and do your part, no matter how small you feel it is, to make the world a better place.

"At least we're not Detroit!................... We're not Detroit!"

The Good, The Bad, and The Boring

It has been quite a while since I have posted a blog, almost a month and a half or so to be exact. Life has had its moments, to say the least. Some of those moments were great, and unfortunately, some have not been so fantastic. Anywho, this blog is way overdue.

THE GOOD

Since returning from my storm chasing trip early in June, I have been involved in many random things. I was very happy to receive the opportunity to interview for an internship in the meteorology department at Channel 12, or WKRC-Cincinnati. Since my other "summer-help" position at Duke Energy didn't pan out like my father and I expected to, due to the economy or whatever else you would like to blame it on, might as well blame global warming as too, I was going to be unemployed, and less importantly, bored out of my mind. Fortunately, WKRC took me under their wing so to say, and hired me as "Brad the Intern."

I worked with meteorologist John Gumm, but I simply called him John, or if I felt the need, Mr. Gumm. Sometimes I found this awkward, because it reminded me of Bubba Gump, the whole shrimp company in the movie Forrest Gump. So I generally tended to refer to him just as John. He is a great guy, and grew up as a Cincinnati local. He graduated from Glen Este H.S. in Ohio, and then went on to get his degree from Valparaiso in Indiana. His broadcasting jobs have been in Rock Island, IL, New Bern, NC and WWL-TV in New Orleans, LA, before he came back to Cincinnati to work at WKRC. John can be described as his commercials say, "a Pro," which we had numerous times making good fun of in the wee hours of the morning, but most of all a family man. My last week, he was stuck at home on furlough, or unpaid leave to save money, and he was doing home projects such as replacing a ceiling fan and painting. What people fail to realize sometimes is that people on television are no different than themselves, just that they have a different occupation. Although I had limited experience with my meteorological skills, he took me in and taught me the tools of the trade that I will be taking back to Ball State, to hopefully complete a successful audition for Cardinal Vision 57 to do the weather. Anyway, the only bad thing about the whole gig is that John Gumm works the morning news shift.

If you thought your mornings were bad, you probably are more lucky than you think. My schedule, compared to theirs, was an easy one. My Monday mornings were the worst, because I would have to go to bed somewhere around 6pm on Sunday, to get enough sleep to wake up at 2am the following morning to get properly clothed to look good when I started just north of downtown Cincinnati bright and early at 4am, when all of the anchors and other staff arrive. I will be the first to tell you that it wasn't easy, but I eventually adapted to it. Every other day between Tuesday and Friday was slightly easier, with a 4am wake up and a 6am start time.

Each day I would make graphics for John, or whomever was filling in for him, such as the precisioncast, and every once and a while an "explainer" graphic, such as the "Why is it such a cool July," or the "Reds Game Day Forecast." On top of that, I would forecast very similar to the way the meteorologists at Channel 12 would, with an hour-by-hour, a weekly planning forecast, etc. This was something I had really not yet had to experience through Ball State, and this was not the only thing I have learned through the experience.

On top of all of these things, I eventually began to create my own "show," which is every slide with a graphic or information that a broadcast meteorologist would use to tell the weather story on a "green screen" or chroma key to the public during a broadcast. After a while, I even began to tape myself doing the weather on the chroma key. I will be honest, I was no good to begin with. The tapes themselves may never surface, at least not of the first day ha. But, like riding a bicycle, things got progressively better as I got more comfortable with myself, and knowing that the upstairs Engineering Dept., news room, and whoever else was in the station that wanted to, was watching me. At random times, I found myself walking through the news room to grab a cup of coffee, or use the facilities after drinking the said coffee, and I was stopped by a random employee or even the well known names and faces, and complimented on my work, and eventually on my progress. This helped me to progress even quicker in the final weeks, and I must say, the last tape will probably be on my Facebook when I get it, even though it too, was not all that great, but it was an improvement nevertheless.

When I had a small bit of free time, which was sometimes hard to come by, I would venture into the news room, or the studio, and try to talk to and meet new people. It was a great time, but the one person's office that I enjoyed visiting the most was the office that belonged to morning news anchor, John Lomax.

John has been with WKRC "...since the early days of dirt,..." he told me the first time I came knocking on his door. His office is littered with small picture frames, numerous miscellaneous bobble heads, and other belongings. Not only does he do a great job of providing you with up to date news stories, and delivers them to you with a sense of style and comfort a lot of people around here have grown up with, but if you didn't know, I'll be the first to tell you that Mr. Lomax is a very intelligent and trustworthy man. He had no idea who I was on day 1 of my job, but he still offered up conversation and treated me like he had known me for years. When sitting in his "guest chair," in the undersized office he calls his own, we conversed about things such as current events of the country and the world, the television business, and life in general. In return for his endless wisdom, I could only return the favor with the "Squirrel Launcher" and "Hastily made Cleveland Tourism Videos," all of which are on YouTube, and quite hilarious if I do say so myself. He also complained the night I posted pictures of my internship and told me he was mad because I had taken 19 pictures of myself and John Gumm, and left him out to dry so to say. So I took it upon myself to bring the camera back the next morning, which was my last "morning" at WKRC, and we had someone take a picture of us behind the weather desk to John's satisfaction. He was even nice enough to leave me this comment on our picture that I posted on my Facebook, "Brad, stay focused. In spite of the hard times in the business today, by the time you graduate, the broadcast world should be your oyster. Be prepared. There's no substitute for competence." I have not yet come to fully understand this, but I feel as though by the time I graduate with a meteorology degree from Ball State, that I will be able to comprehend and be fully aware and even be able to relate to the message and to the meaning. There aren't good enough words to thank him for his entertainment and advice.

I also got a few small opportunities to work with the Chief Meteorologist at WKRC, Tim Hedrick, who bribed me with food to say that he was my favorite meteorologist on live TV, sorry John. Anywho, the whole cast on the evening news, even the majority of the camera crew, is 6 ft. and taller, Tim stands at about 6'3" or so. He told me a lot about the business in our short time spent together, and I suppose he liked me enough to invite me back whenever I could to visit the weather office, and to intern again in the future. He also took a sampling of my weather tapes and said he had a hard time nit-picking away at my work. He said his biggest pet peeve was a persons voice, but that he really liked mine. Things to work on were of course all things that would just take time, such as my hand work, and weather-story telling skills, and just transitioning better. But for the most part, he liked what he saw, and he didn't even see my last day of recording.

Anyway, I recently finished my 150 hours of interning at WKRC, this past Friday the 24th to be exact. It was a great experience, and the knowledge and skills I learned will go a long way to helping me down the road, not only in school but when I eventually try to get into a broadcast meteorology career. Thank you again, John Gumm and WKRC for making that possible this summer.

Moving on, I have made just a bit of money this summer doing other random jobs. I worked the 4th of July weekend with Rozzi's Famous Fireworks of Loveland, Ohio. We shot a show in Troy, Ohio, one of their largest. It was a great time, but honestly, for all the work that goes into a 15 to 20 minute show, it almost doesn't seem worth it. Nevertheless, it was still fun to blow some stuff up, and to get out of the house, something I should really do more often.

I also helped out one night at the Lawrenceburg Speedway, working the "Turn 2 Grill" with my Uncle Greg. That was a good time, although at times, hot, loud and dirty. It was a quick and easy buck or two, and it gave me food and gas money for a few weeks.

Other random things I would like to note before we move into the feared "Bad" category, would include Relay For Life of Dearborn and Ohio counties, and St. Martin's Festival. First off Relay for Life was a scorcher this year. Well, it wasn't unbearable, but it was enough to leave me searching for any available water at some times, and you would often find me with sweat on my brow. But it was a lot of fun, I got to emcee a bit, and enjoy myself for the 24 hours. SIDE NOTE: Sorry, I ran out of pictures for the rest of this blog that fit the story....

St. Martin's festival was filled with good people, good food, and fun. I did work both Saturday and Sunday, but I also snuck away a few times to grab a bite to eat, or to talk to some of the parishioners, some of whom I haven't seen since the previous year's festival. All in all, it wasn't as busy as some would have liked it to be, but the weather was great, and the people that did come out seemed to enjoy themselves. If you haven't ever been out, on Saturday evening, they have an out-of-this-world prime rib dinner, served with a salad bar, baked potato, other sides, fruit, a roll and dessert. It is well worth the money, as a lot of people leave with a to go box, somewhat of a rarity at a church festival. Luckily, since I am broke, I got a free meal for working and helping out. I look forward to it all year round, as it never fails to disappoint and draw a respectable crowd of hungry, and soon after, happy people. Sunday is home to Yorkville's best fried chicken, turtle soup, and fun. I personally like all of the above. I helped out my father at the Big Six wheel. He has been doing it forever it seems now, and it is always a good time. I always tell the kids that show up to "Come on over here so I can take all your Quarters..," and most of the time, to their dismay, I do. I have been working and enjoying myself at this festival for as long as I can remember, from the times where the family, including my Grandma and Grandpa Ritzi, both of whom have passed now, used to sit behind the big oak tree behind the church, and they would give me a few dollars to go and get them some Bars and Bells peelers, and if they were generous, they even let me peel a few and keep the winnings. I have had quite a few good memories from St. Martins and it's festival, memories that won't soon go away.

THE BAD

Unfortunately, not everything this summer has been great. Of course, I didn't come into it at all thinking it would be either. I didn't know I wasn't going to have any source of income, I didn't know the shifter knob on the Red Ranger was going to pop off, and I also had no prior knowledge that this year at Ball State was going to be overshadowed by a dark cloud, the secret of which I'll tell you about in a bit... WARNING: Some language might go beyond the limits of the Pg-13 that I try to keep this blog at, so yea, just a heads up. Oh and if this sounds like complaining, it probably is, so you don't really have to read it, but feel free. I just felt like venting, and punching 4 holes in my wall didn't seem like a good idea. These are my opinions, and if you can respect them as they are, I would appreciate that.

First off, I thought that I would have a job with a decent amount of money making potential at Duke Energy in Cincinnati this summer. Unfortunately, due to the economy, or whatever asshole decided to cut back on summer help and move it to a lottery and not a seniority based system, which God only knows how unlucky I am to begin with, I found myself unemployed in this summer of 2009. Yes, I know a lot of people have found themselves in the same situation, so I made the best of it with my internship, which will help me in the future a hell of a lot more than Duke ever will, but I'm still broke as hell. It's sad really, because I'm not the kind of person that doesn't mind borrowing money consistently, without ever knowing when I will be able to pay them back. In fact, it bothers me. But for what it's worth, I almost wish I had gotten the job at Duke this summer, so I could afford books this coming fall, or even money to go out with my friends, which on numerous times I have had to decline because of my money crunch. Yes, I could have gotten a job for a few months at a fast-food chain perhaps, but would that have helped me in the long run? No, probably not, so I will continue to complain about my lack of money.

I also found myself driving down Indiana 48 on my way to WKRC one morning, when to my surprise and disgust, the shifting knob on my red Ford Ranger, aka THE RED RANGER, decided to pop off and fall to the floorboard as I rounded a curve. So I realized that super-gluing it for a second time would yield no satisfactory results, I used some of my limited summer income to purchase a new shifting knob from Auto Zone in Aurora. It just one of those things that you need to spend the money on to fix, but you would have rather not had to fix in the first place.

Ok, for the moment you have all been trying to avoid... Yesterday morning, I woke up to my mother in my room, I suppose doing my laundry. It started off with a "Good Morning," and then went sharply down hill, off a cliff, and into an bottomless abyss with "Me and Dad have been talking,..." Now I have had a few girlfriends in my time, and I figured if it was anything like their line, "We need to talk..." it wasn't going to be good. Well certainly enough, it wasn't good, it was a slap in the goddamn face to say the least. For as much hard work I have put into my dream of becoming a meteorologist and being a successful child, and growing up to be a well rounded citizen, it really did hurt to hear what she had to say next. "Well we have been thinking about some things, and well we really want to get in on this cash for clunkers program, and its such a great deal, we were thinking about getting a new car or truck, but we cannot afford both the new car or truck and your education, so well, we decided that we are going to get the new car/truck and have you pay your own way this year." I thought perhaps for a minute that I was still sleeping, and upon going to the bathroom, brushing my teeth, and slapping myself 3 times, I realized that I was indeed wide awake. I'm sorry, but have they really made a good decision here? They drive two vehicles daily, and they work just fine. My education, going well, passed the first and toughest year, and I'm already broke as hell. And you pick the new car/truck over my future? What the hell is that! As Will Ferrell would say in a deleted scene from the movie Step Brothers, "God fuckin' damnit, do I deserve that?" Well if that doesn't sum it up well enough I don't know what does. She then added casually, just to throw salt in the wound, "Oh, and I have the loan information out there on the table." Ok, so I'm broke, you all know that. I have $5 left in my wallet right now, yea why not go $14K+ in the hole to start off my life as a post-teen. Yes, I know there are a lot of kids out there that pay there own way for college, I'm not denying that, but when your parents promised that if succeeded in school, they would continue to pay the way, and then wake you up one morning with that greedy decision, they might as well have kicked me out while they were at it to turn my room into storage or a new flower room or maybe even add on to it to park their new vehicle in there, why not.

That is why I'm now no further enjoying my stay here in Guilford. I cannot believe that I tried my best and I'm now paying for my education anyway. Now my plans to rent or buy a house with my current roommate and or best friend Brennen, are now up in the air. I am getting a job as soon as possible, if I can find one, to help save for that and or so I can afford books in the spring semester. On top of it, my mom decides to basically tell me I'm a big waste of space at dinner tonight, because I have tried to make the best of my summer and have a bit of fun as well. So we aren't on speaking terms so to say, and I'm still not really happy with my dad either, and I felt the real urge for the first time when I walked out of O'Charleys to pack up and move in with a friend before school started, because honestly I don't really want to look at my parents right now. They really are good people, but when they go around and brag to everybody about how proud they are of me and make a big deal of how successful I am so far, and then tell me they chose a car/truck over me, it just seems like a big fucking joke/slap in the face. Again I apologize for the language.

THE BORING

So, anyway... phew. Now that I have that out of my system just a little bit, I feel slightly better, but I'm still not satisfied. I cannot wait to get back to school, which is something you would have not heard me say back in high school to save my life. I hope the next two weeks go by in a flash, and I find myself in Elliott Hall, having fun in Muncie, and living the dream once more. But for now I leave you with 18 days left of this, which has become a prison so it seems, here in somewhat unexciting, uneventful, un-entertaining, and most of all just boring Guilford. It just goes to show that life, although sometimes is good, really can be a bitch when it wants to be.

Living the Dream

Today, we woke up in Omaha, the largest city in the state of Nebraska. The plan was to head south and across state lines to Topeka and wait for the storms to form, and basically come to us. The indices this morning were amazing, and the risk level was at moderate, the first time we have seen that on this trip. Unfortunately, a moderate risk level for severe storms in a bad season for chasing also brings the chance of a mob of chasers flocking to developing supercells.

We left the hotel at half past ten, and headed straight to the capital of Kansas. We ate lunch at Wendy’s and waited for the storms to fire up, hopefully in our vicinity. We spent several hours in that Wendy’s, either tossing the football around and even sleeping in the vans, which were like saunas with the outside temperatures in the 90’s and nearing 100 and dewpoints being very uncomfortable and in the high 60’s and 70s. This reminded me of the muggy conditions I am accustomed to in a common Cincinnati summer.

Sure enough, the minute I got to sleeping in the middle seat of our van, I was awakened by some of the chasers shaking the van and telling us that the storms were beginning to explode just north of us, which actually meant that they were on the Nebraska, Kansas and Missouri border, nearly an hour and a half away. After refueling, we shot north towards Falls City, Nebraska. Two supercells were developing rapidly with CAPE values in the 4000’s, which is an extremely high amount and great for severe weather development.

As we approached, we noticed several chase vehicles and teams stationed all around on small turnoffs and gas stations, but that would only be a precursor to what we would see later. Our cell that we were chasing at first was small, but eventually swallowed the northern supercell and became one, massive cell near the four corners area. We got into a caravan of sorts and headed due east following the quickest storms we had chased this trip. Thirty-five miles per hour doesn’t sound that fast, but catching storms that don’t wait for anything is more difficult than it would at first seem. After our storm got tornado warned, things really started heating up.

We soon passed into our 10th state on this more than seven thousand mile journey trip, Missouri, at about 5 this afternoon, or 6pm in Indiana time. As we passed into the small town of Oregon, Mo, we noticed that we, along with other chasers, were quickly grabbing the attention of the locals. Whether they were watching us from their front porches, in the downtown areas or from their cars, we were clearly making them nervous. The town had just been hit head on by the supercell we were chasing, and on the eastern side of town, our second van stopped momentarily to collect hail samples that were 3 inches in diameter after being on the ground for 20 minutes, so it was safe to assume that it could have been close to grapefruit sized (4 inches) when it first made contact with the surface. This is not only dangerous to property, but livestock and your own life can be quickly ended if you were to be struck with this size of hail.

We kept moving east in pursuit of our supercell that was producing very dangerous conditions, not only to us, but for the residents of the towns that we were passing through. Traffic started picking up at this point, as several teams had pulled off to the side of the road to watch the storm develop and strengthen. Many others like ourselves continued on, fighting the local yahoos who unwisely decided to join in on the chase. There were honestly, hundreds of vehicles and chasers within a few miles on the particular road we were traveling on, including the National Severe Storms Laboratory (NSSL), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA), and even Reed Timmer from the Discovery Channel with his SIV that we saw earlier this trip, only this time in action:

We saw several wall clouds and maybe even a funnel at one point, but no tornadoes were visible. There was one report this evening of a tornado in Weatherby , MO that was rain wrapped, or nearly impossible to view from almost any angle. We were less than 5 miles from this tornado, if indeed it was a tornado, but of course we did not see it. We were in perfect position if it would have been visible, but as our luck has been for the entire trip, we saw only a rainbow.

Today was our last say for chasing on the Great Plains. Tomorrow morning, we are heading back to Indiana, but might not get back until late, especially if we decide to chase the storms that are predicted for tomorrow in Illinois and our home state. We have accomplished many things that we never thought we would do on this trip. We have been to 10 different states, from South Dakota to Texas, and from Colorado to Missouri. To accomplish this feat, we traveled over 7000 miles at last check this afternoon. Our furthest travel day was a heck of a haul, when we traveled from Kansas to Texas and booked over 700 miles. We had enough free time to sight see and saw things from the Grassy Knoll to Mt. Rushmore to the Geographic Center of the 48 Contiguous States. We did have our fair share of weather as well on this trip, and it has progressively gotten better as the trip went along. We have met a ton of unique and interesting individuals and groups out here on the plains, including Earth Man at the Colorado Rockies game who got numerous calls on his cell phone from the regulars who wanted beer deliveries from him, many friendly and interested locals, and another collegiate chase team, including some girls I ate dinner with tonight, whose professor Dr. Arnold initiated the Storm Chase Team and basically the whole meteorology department at Ball State before he moved on to a smaller college in Maryland. Meeting new people is always nice, and it is one of my favorite things to do. You can learn vast amounts of information and gain priceless stories and insights from people you would otherwise never have known. Moving on, we started off chasing “SEE TEXT” boxes from the Storm Prediction Center, to supercells the past few days. I have learned more information from this trip about meteorology than I have in my first year of college and possibly even in my life. If I ever get the chance to go storm chasing in the future, I now know how to do so safely and what to look for and how to even forecast my own chasing adventures. Even though we hadn’t seen what we planned to all along, we still saw a lot of great and amazing things, and overall, had a great time meeting and cooperating with one another out here on the Great Plains, chasing storms, and living the dream.

I thank you for following me on this journey, as random or exciting as it might have been at times. If you feel the need to ask any questions or comment on the blog, feel free to contact me at btmaushart@bsu.edu. As always, thanks for reading.

False Alarm

We woke up yesterday in the panhandle of the Sooner State, bright and early. Our goal was to head for western Kansas and head into eastern Colorado at the furthest. We figured that with the highest chance of our trip yet for tornadoes, at 10%, that there would be many other chase groups, and of course yahoos. Yahoos, not the website, rather inexperienced and dangerous locals who roach, or follow experienced chasers towards storms, can be hazardous to not only us, but they can give us, the experienced or student chasers a bad rep.
As we left Oklahoma, we passed into Kansas and after eating lunch in Colby, near the northwestern corner, we stopped at a local motel and borrowed their wireless internet services. We sat there, hoping for storms to form to our west and come in our direction. The "cap" prevented this from happening. Unfortunately for us, storms did fire in Wyoming, and Vortex 2 spotted a decent tornado that lasted 24 minutes. The same cell was tracking east, and with little choices to make in Kansas, we decided to head north, after wasting a vast amount of precious time sitting in that motel parking lot. To intercept, we would have to travel over three hours and flirt with the time zone that separates the mountain and central zones. Coming up on 5 o'clock, we hadn’t seen a rain shaft, few clouds with little or no vertical development, and basically, nothing in favor of us chasing. The day looked like it was going to be a waste of gas, miles, and a huge bust. But, defying all odds against us, we tracked north to the supercells that had a history of producing tornadoes in hopes they might give us, as well as Vortex 2, a chance to see a tornado.
After crossing through 3 states and across the time zone boundary several times, we finally ended up near the southwestern Nebraska border, in Julesburg, CO. The cells were north and west of our position in Bridgeport, NE, moving slow to the east south east. For a day that looked to be the best day possibly of our trip, things were looking bleak. It was nearing 6 and we were just beginning the chase on a storm, for all that we knew could fizzle out and die as we approached from the south.

We decided that our best plan of action was to head for Oshkosh and wait for the storm to come to us, because the road network would limit us to just a few areas to intercept. WE headed down a hilly, and winding country road with the storm, also carrying with it a tornado warning, above and in front of us. The mammatus clouds were crazy compared to what we had seen earlier in the week, and the contrast on the horizon with the low level clouds was phenomenal. Just then, as we headed over some hills, both vans caught sight of an ominous wall cloud in the distance, against an orange sky. VIEW VIDEO:

Within seconds, the cloud appeared to drop a funnel, and the energy level in the van skyrocketed. It was hard to judge the ground level with the hills we were going through, but a cone shaped cloud dropped towards the ground only 15 miles to our north. I had been recording on the video camera the telecommunications department had loaned me, but I also quickly grabbed a hold of my other camera which had video capability and caught the reaction of the van I was in when the cloud appeared to stir up dust on the ground below it. I will take some of the blame for calling it a tornado, but the vast majority of us believed the same thing. There were also 2 other funnel shaped clouds nearby that were dropping out of the low cloud base. Could there be a tornado dropping, or even more than one? We rounded a corner and spotted another girl sitting in a gravel lot near a communications tower, and we parked near her, being it held a great viewpoint over Oshkosh and to where our funnel had just began to vanish, along with all of our hopes. After asking her if she had seen a tornado, she said, “No, but it definitely looked like a funnel perhaps.” It was slightly disheartening, but it was one step closer to our ultimate goal.

We snapped great photos and videos from our vantage point, and also caught a great lightning show. The Vortex group also drove by as well as numerous other chasing groups and individuals. When we finally left our storm, late last night, we passed it seemed, 100 other cars parked along the same road as us, just watching and hoping that the storm would produce, but it did not. We ate dinner at Subway, for the God knows what time this trip at a gas station off of I-80 at 11 last night. The Vortex team, a chase group from Texas Tech, and another DOW from NBC stopped to refuel and wind down at the same station. After dinner, we waited out for the remnants of our storm to move east and away from the highway, because at that time it was dropping softball sized hail. If we wouldn’t have waited, our trip would have been quickly ended with the destruction of our vans. We did not pull into our hotel until half past one this morning, and didn’t get to sleep until somewhere in the neighborhood of 2.

This morning we woke up a bit late, for obvious reasons, and headed out to Lincoln for lunch and now we are camped out at a Phillips 66 gas station waiting for storms to pop up in the area. Vincennes University and the National Severe Storms Laboratory are also here, as well as many other groups here in Nebraska City, just south and east of Lincoln near the border of Missouri and Iowa. I’m going to try to add more videos to this page and other earlier posts. I forgot that you could do this, so now you can enjoy some real storm chasing action. Comments are always appreciated, and you can contact me at btmaushart@bsu.edu. Thanks for reading.

The Disappointment That Comes With Success

Today started out a bit early, considering that I didn’t get done writing and adding photographs to my blog until 2 this morning. Basically, I ended up getting somewhere around 5 or 6 hours of sleep, which isn’t horrible, but chasing storms on the plains can take a lot out of you. Large amounts of mental and physical stress, fast food meals and multchuous amounts of frustration take up almost every bit of up to 15 hours of your day when you’re chasing on the plains. Days seem to bleed into one another, hours seem to sometimes pass quickly, while others drag on it seems, sometimes, endlessly. You swear you have just been through a town, because most smaller towns out here have usually just two, noticeable landmarks, a water tower and a large grain elevator. The scenery sometimes gets old very quickly, especially the last few days down here in the rural “stove pipe” region of Texas, which by the way to give you an idea on how big it really is down here, you can fit the entire state of Indiana in the stove pipe itself, honestly, just look at a map.

I woke up this morning, sometime a short bit before 8am, and struggled to roll off the stiff bed at our Best Western in Wichita Falls. Although my alarm was set for quarter till, I didn’t manage to begin showering until nearly quarter after 8, but that is alright, because we didn’t have or daily briefing until 9. The weather was looking bad from the get go. The main culprit inhibiting any kind of storm development today was a source of moisture. The dew points, or the point at which the moisture in air condenses and forms clouds and eventually, rain, were extremely low. The air temperature on the other hand was rather toasty for the majority of the Lone Star State. The closer the two numbers are to each other, the better your chances for clouds and possibly even storms, depending on a lot of other factors as well. For example, temperatures in the mid 80’s and a dew point in the mid 60’s would bring a good chance of thunderstorms. However, temperature in the mid 80’s with a dew point in the 40’s or even 50’s would not bring a great chance for organized or severe storm development. Today was appearing to be a bust at around noon when we rolled into the town of Plainview, or another town near there, I’m not positive. The dew points were in the 50’s and even into the 40’s I remember, and the temperature outside was very warm, in the mid to high 80’s, which as I have explained prior to be terrible conditions for storm chasing. Our decision, with limited options, was to just head to our original target location of Amarillo and make the call from there whether to continue or to end the chase early and head to our target are for tomorrow.

Right before we got to Amarillo, unfortunately not named armadillo, we monitored our radar and visible satellite on board Van 2, and spotted a small cell beginning to erupt a bit to the north and west of town. We entered chase mode at that point, because within a matter of just minutes, the storm was given a severe thunderstorm warning by the National Weather Service. We were making out way due north out of town, when we realized that we had not one route to the west to intercept the storm unless we would backtrack to Amarillo and catch one of the roads that headed west from there. That is indeed what we decided to do.

With the storm building into a large black mass in our rearview mirror, we got back to Amarillo and quickly began heading west towards New Mexico. The storm was producing 3 inch hail, as detected by Doppler radar, and even some shear. It had many characteristics of a high precipitation supercell, especially with the intense amounts of precipitation that were falling near the core. There were no other noticeable chasers in the area as we sped west down an old county road with the cell coming at us from the right, and or the north. We stopped in a field to monitor a lot of dust that was getting kicked up under a mesocyclone and our first wall cloud we spotted. The rain surprised us and hit us almost out of nowhere. The dust, we figured, was just caused by the gust front headed our way with intense straight line winds and heavy rain from the cell’s downdraft. We quickly sped west to avoid getting slammed by the core of the storm, which at the time was still capable of producing egg sized hail that could have easily destroyed our windshields. Unfortunately for us, we had no good southern routes to keep up with the storm for another 10 or 15 miles down the road. We took that route and witnessed our first clear view of a rear flank downdraft, which is an intense band of rain and hail forced downward one the back end of a severe thunderstorm. This is also common when you have a tornado nearby, but we didn’t have any visual of one.

The storm kept on course heading south, and we stopped on a country road to talk over plans. We did not have a good area to get back to the front of the storm to continue the chase, so after about twenty minutes or so, we decided we would head north for dinner and towards our destination for tomorrow. After stopping to eat in Canyon, Texas, we shot north into the skinny panhandle of Oklahoma, Guymon to be specific, and that is where I am writing this tonight. We have also had a bit of interesting news come our way tonight, via the Storm Prediction Center. Apparently, around 6:30 or so, a tornado touched down a mere 10 miles or so to our east, and we had no idea. We were picking up good radar signatures, but there was no safe way to approach, chase or view that part of the storm. When we learned that we had been just a stones throw away from our dreams of witnessing one of the most awe inspiring displays of mother nature’s fury, we were extremely disappointed. The mood went from success to extreme depression, but there was honestly nothing we could have done better.

In better news, however, we stopped in a gas station in Dumas, Texas and some of us got our attentions grabbed by the television that was on the Weather Channel inside. With a 10% chance of tornadoes bull’s-eye over western Kansas and eastern Colorado, the risk level could be the highest we have seen since leaving Muncie. Apparently, a big named man in the meteorology business, Greg Forbes, stated that we would be having a great chance for witnessing a tornado tomorrow in the plains, finally after weeks of no hope, and then progress, finally, we might be able to see the king of all land based weather events out here on the Great Plains. As for now, I will get a good night’s rest, because tomorrow is shaping up to be a very long and hopefully exciting day. As always, thank you for reading, comments are appreciated and can be sent to my email. (btmaushart@bsu.edu)

Everything just might be BIGGER in Texas

I haven't posted a new blog for days now, and again I apologize. The days are seeming to blend together the longer we are out here and the past few days, except for today, have been nothing short of exciting, long lasting, and full of firsts. Lets begin with Monday, as best as I can recall it. It has been a while.

This Monday, we began our day in Grand Island, NE, or so I think we did, like I said, it has been a long time, and a lot of good stuff has happened since then. We found that our great chase location was just to the south, and we went into Kansas to monitor building clouds and storms in Belleville. Just over the border to the south of Nebraska. We were only in the town itself for a short time because the storms rapidly exploded on radar, and of course in real life just over our heads. As they moved slightly north east, they picked up in intensity and thunderstorm warnings were placed for neighboring counties. We obligated to travel back north across the border and back into Nebraska, to somewhere around Beatrice to be specific, as we monitored the severe weather just outside of our windows. Of course, this would be the time that WIBC in Indianapolis called my cell phone asking for an interview. I couldn't refuse their offer, and I gave a short 5-10 minute interview with Steve Simpson about our journey and what we were up to. After finally being able to tell him we were chasing storms, he said several times that he wish he had a voice like mine and he thought broadcasting would be a great route for me to go out of college. That made me feel great after spending endless hours couped up in our chase vans.

This turned out to be a great day for chasing as we spent every minute from about noon until the late afternoon. We saw our first bit of storm rotation, as spotted by yours truly, just overhead of the vans on Monday. It wasn't as scary as it was a great video taking opportunity. This eventually went to turn into a mesocyclone, or a precursor to a wall cloud and then a tornado, just to be blunt. There is much more involved, but I'd rather keep you awake to keep reading on. Anywho, seeing a mesocyclone for the first time on the trip was a great accomplishment compared to previous garbage weather we had been experiencing the previous days. Other than a lot of cloud to ground lightning, one bolt of which struck directly across the road from us and our first mesocyclone, we didn't see much in the way of photogenic weather phenomena. But it was a great afternoon nevertheless. After heading south and east to Topeka for dinner, we pushed on into darkness to Emporia, Kansas to sleep for the night, unknowing of the "super" day that would be coming in the morning.

We woke up in Emporia, most of us, before 6 am. This was early, since most of us hadn't gotten to sleep until 2 am that morning. It was my day, as well as another younger student's day to come up with a "game plan" so to say at our morning weather briefing. This was to include where we should shoot for, what we were to expect, the probabilities, etc. I don't think we could have done any better. My target zone, as crazy and impossible as it sounded on Tuesday morning, was somewhere between Childress and Wichita Falls, both of which are in Texas. Being two state lines away in south central Kansas, many of the students and even the faculty were hesitant of pressing that far south for storms which hadn't even show up on radar or visible satellite. But we headed south anyway, for better indices for severe weather and the hope for being able to chase it.

We soon crossed into Oklahoma for the first time, my 7th new state on this trip, via US 35 South. After looking again at the indices on our on board laptops, I still thought that Texas looked the best, although many other students were thinking storms would pop up in the panhandle of Oklahoma. So instead of taking the originally planned, fast exit lunch, someone insisted that we sit down and eat. And naturally, we did, and left Perry Oklahoma at around 1pm. This is when things started to get exciting.

We got back on US 35 South and planned to stop again in Oklahoma City to revamp our game plan, but just before we got there, two discrete cells popped up as light rain showers on our radar just east of Lubbock, Texas, over 350 miles away from where we were. So we kept our eyes on them, and soon enough, like I had predicted, they looked very much like the radar signature of a classic "supercell." They also contained vast amounts of moisture and shear, both of which are needed for tornadoes to form. The chase was on.

After speeding out of Oklahoma City, we headed south west on 44 towards Wichita Falls, TX. The supercellular structures were exploding off of the charts and it would be a race against time to reach them before they turned into rather unchaseable squall lines. We got passed by a three car caravan of storm chasers, but Dr. Call has a competitive side when it comes to chasing, and we followed them very closely for about 75 miles until they eventually had to turn off for gas, at which point he muttered, "Suckers...,"at which point our van erupted in laughter, because this side of Dr. Call comes out only so often. In the mid afternoon, we crossed into the "Lone Star State," my 8th new state since leaving on the 22nd, and speed towards the slow moving and ever growing cells, due east of Lubbock. A third cell had just started to form and grow extremely rapidly in the high levels of CAPE and favorable air. This was our new target, because the other two supercells had conjoined and created more of a high precipitation blob than a favorable, and slightly more predictable discrete cell. We were quickly losing track of time and distance, and we honestly didn't care, because at this point we were headed directly for our cell that was south and east of Abeline, TX. At about 100 miles out, we began to view the outflow of the storm, which consisted of a seemingly flat layer of stratus clouds, rounded and appeared as though to be a piece of paper suspended in the sky. This just went to show how intense the storm would be when we finally got within chasing distance.

I got lost in the back roads and small towns of Texas, but I do remember a lot of our chasing, video taping and photography was within a 20 mile radius of the small town of Comanche, TX. This was our first real taste of what the Great Plains had to offer us weather wise. I'll try to keep the summary short, because most of the afternoon and late evening was chaotic to say the least. This was because as close as we were, we had to avoid getting run over by the freight train of precipitation in the forms of heavy rain and hail that this cell was producing. One slip up and our vans windows could have been shattered and destroyed by 2 inch hail, or that similar to the size of an egg or lime that our cell was capable of producing. The great things we witnessed were many rotating clouds, or mesocyclones, good signs of shear on varying levels, great mammatus clouds, which were the sign of strong updrafts, and a lot of lightning. All these, and also the long lasting nature of the storm, allowed us to categorize it as a supercell. We did have one close run in after watching a rotating mesocyclone that I would like to tell you about. We were watching it from the side of a country road, near a cow farm. Just after we pulled off to get a better view, almost everyone saw a large cloud of dust start to kick up. Normally this would be very exciting, except for the fact that this could of dust, for all we know that could have been the base of a forming tornado, was only a mere 50 yards tops across a field from our vans. Most of us were very excited, but we all knew we had to get a move on very quickly. Fortunately we weren't harmed in any way, but there was also no tornado. Either way, it was very exciting. We made our last play on the south end of the storm, near Comanche, where shear had been picked up in a mesocyclone. This had lowered itself to a very respectable level, but of course, nothing ever came of it. We darted back through town just before the bulk of the storm moved through, prompting a flood warning in that county, as we were heading north, out of its path. We decided to call it a day, and booked a hotel outside of Ft. Worth, Texas. In just this one day, we set a record for traveling over 700 miles. If we would have traveled the same distance, only eastward, we could have made it back, with a few miles to spare, to Muncie.

We woke up this morning in Ft. Worth, after the cells we were chasing the previous day had expanded into a squall line and smashed into the area over night. Contrary to popular belief, it was actually a relaxing sound to sleep with. Our plans for today were to sleep in a bit and catch up on necessary sleep, as well as to get the oil changed in our vans, since we have booked 5000+ miles already, and to sight see in downtown Dallas.

We stopped in Ft. Worth for Wal-Mart and lunch, and then headed east to Dallas. Our first stop was the new Cowboys Stadium, in the community of Arlington, just between Dallas and Ft. Worth. The word to describe it is, well there is no real good word worthy of its description. The stadium itself if state of the art, like you would expect for a stadium that cost over $2.2 billion from what I had heard. It is just absolutely enormous, with a 60 yard long, HD replay screen, retractable roof and side walls, and loads of parking lots. One of our classmates also got interviewed by a Dallas news station about what he thought about the stadium. That segment was supposed to air sometime tonight in Dallas. After finally getting to beautiful downtown Dallas, or next stop was the "6th Floor Museum" in Daley Plaza. This was the site of the infamous JFK Assassination. We took an audio tour that lasted over an hour and a half, and took several pictures outside and I even met a man that claimed he was there, only a little boy at the time, that JFK was assassinated, and even had a picture of himself as the motorcade passed in front of him, exactly 24 seconds prior to the horrific event. After leaving the museum, we headed out of downtown and north towards our dinner and lodging city for the night, Wichita Falls. We ate at an amazing steakhouse, and I can honestly say I spent too much, but the food was well worth it. We might end up living on fast food for the next few days anyway, the way the weather is looking. This is where I am writing this now, from a Best Western in downtown Wichita Falls. Tomorrow's weather is looking good for another busy day of chasing, and our luck has been getting better and better every day, so I hope it continues into tomorrow. I better leave you for now, because its getting late, and we have an early morning ahead of us. I appriciate comments or suggestions, and you can contact me by email at btmaushart@bsu.edu and as always, thank you for keeping up with my travels and enjoy reading.

Smiles, Sighs and Surprises

This weekend has been full of smiles, sighs ans surprises. What started off as a huge bust day on Friday due to a lack of moisture over southern Nebraska, and then a travel day on Saturday to Sioux City, led us to chasing today over South Dakota and northern Nebraska, and now our stay for the night in Grand Island, Nebraska. Lets start out with Saturday.

After a big bust Friday, we ended up staying at a pretty nice establishment in Abilene, Kansas. They had their fair share of amenities including a pool, hot tub, and a nice courtyard for yet another BSU Chase Team pick-up football game. We decided to leave a bit late, because this would primarily be a travel day to position ourselves for Sunday's good weather outlooks. We went north on some state roads, going through many small towns until we eventually passed through the capital city, Lincoln, Nebraska. We decided that this would be a good opportunity to grab a bite to eat, so Dr. Call recommended a local favorite, Valentino's. For only $7.29 or so, we had as much of the salad bar, pizza bar, chicken fingers, bread sticks and desserts that we could eat. Some of us, unfortunately, decided to eat way too much and felt bad for the next several miles, but nothing horrible ever came of it. We then made for Sioux City, Iowa, but first we passed through the small city of Wahoo, just for the sake of it's name.

Then, after the fair majority of the team, including myself went to bed, time appeared to fly by, and within no time, we arrived in Sioux City. We unloaded the vans and almost everyone decided to get some of their dirty laundry out of the way. I decided that this would indeed be a good idea, so I got some of my own stuff together and headed to the laundromat. About two hours later, we had a late dinner and turned it in for the night, because Sunday would be one of our best chase days, if not the best, for our trip.

I woke up today, Sunday, at around 9 this morning to the news that our hotel had more storm chasers than just ourselves. When I first heard that Reed Timmer and his crew, along with their Storm Intercept Vehicle, or SIV were parked out front, I didn't believe it. It had to be too good to be true, but I walked outside in my PJ's and a storm chasing t-shirt, and sure enough, my dreams came true. We knew at that point that we must have put ourselves in a good position if the professionals were also in the same area, nevertheless the same hotel. There was also an "Extreme Tornado Tours" group that stayed at our hotel the same evening. Though there would be no luck in any "touch-downs" today, there would be many promising sights and adventures instead.

We headed out at around 10 this morning, with the goal of heading west, to watch storms develop, and then travel back east with them to intercept any severe weather phenomena. On our way out, we constantly monitored our "Threat-Net" system and our other online sources. We started to get very disappointed rather quickly with the lack of dew point temperatures and moisture made us think back to the bust situation we faced on Friday. Although some of us tried to remain optimistic, the clear blue skies as far as the eye could see were not helping us, but it was early.

Around noon or maybe a bit later, we spotted some cloud growth on the horizon as we headed due west towards Winner, South Dakota. We stopped to monitor readings online and observe the clouds to see if there was any rapid changes taking place. Sure enough, we were witnessing the start of a busy afternoon. The clouds were rising at a great pace and soon busted through the cap and eventually formed into the classic anvil shape. We moved south a bit to catch up with the developing thunderstorms to our west. We stopped again shortly after to reshape out plans for intercepting and recorded more photos and movies. We chased the same cell for a few more hours and finally, after it appeared to weaken, we decided to go eat in Broken Bow, and call it a night. After our meal at McDonald's, we pulled out onto the road and noticed that to the east there was a strong looking storm with a well defined inflow tail, a characteristic of a severe storm. We quickly pulled up Threat-Net and and the team was once again in full chase mode. As we moved east on the southern end of the storm, we noticed that the storm had quite a bit of lightning, and was developing signs of wind shear, necessary to form tornadoes. But with our luck, daylight was quickly running out. After going down a dirt and gravel road, not ever recommended by the way, we decided to call off the chase and stopped at the top of a deserted, dirt driveway to take lightning photos and video footage from the storm. This video is of the chase down the dirt road towards the storm:


Soon after, we headed back with cloud to cloud lightning surrounding or vans to where I type this now, in Grand Island, Nebraska. I'm not sure why they call it Grand Island, but I would assume they have some kind of splendid island here of some sort, just a guess. Tomorrow is not looking too splendid, and we may head south. If we do chase it will be in Iowa and northern Missouri. We heard from a local that another storm chasing team is nearby in another town. I'm sure neither of us will know what we are going to do tomorrow for sure until we are actually doing it. As always, I thank you for reading, and on some boring or uneventful days, or even if we get back exceptionally late to a hotel, I might not post a blog, but the next evening I will fill you in on all of my adventures. Comments and suggestions are appreciated.