Recent News and Chases

This year I had the extraordinary opportunity to ride along with the ROTATE team and chase with a team of scientists who are trying to collect data on supercells and tornadoes. My chase partner this year was my good friend Danny Cheresnick, as we teamed up in the "Scout" vehicle and pushed the vehicle to its limits by chasing everywhere from Wyoming to Texas and Arkansas. It was a remarkable experience, and I think we did an excellent job during an active, but difficult, 2008 chase season. There were a bunch of good chase days, but no "easy chases," as many days featured fast moving storms and difficult chase terrain. Despite these difficulties we still managed to have several successful intercepts near tornadic supercells and high quality data are being collected and investigated, and I'm confident that lots of important research will come from the season which definitely satisfies me!



Anyways, no updates to the website during this chase season; sorry! I was focused on trying to achieve our scientific goals this season, so I was unable to do much personal documenting with pictures/videos. I also was under contract with the Discovery Channel this year, as a camera crew followed us around and documented almost every second of our adventure, so by contract I couldn't put any pics/video up on the site... The good news is that lots of other people were doing the videotaping for me, so I'm excited to watch "Storm Chasers" this year to see what I never had time to videotape myself! I think I'll be on the show a decent amount, despite not being one of the "star" characters. It should definitely be fun/interesting/embarassing to watch, so be sure to tune in to the Discovery Channel and enjoy!

In other news I did manage to go on my first hurricane chase this year. I teamed up with TVN and chased Gustav in southern Louisiana. Thankfully for the residents of LA the storm weakened more than expected, but it was still a lot more fun and exciting than I had anticipated. Experiencing sustained hurricane force winds firsthand is definitely breathtaking, and I certainly now have the hunger to do some more 'cane chasing in the future. Video from our chase can be found here: Hurricane Gustav Chase

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

April 23, 2007:
An incredible supercell with two sustained mesocyclones
and several strong tornadoes are observed near Wallace, KS



Click here for the April 23 chase summary!

-------------

April 21, 2007:
Multiple tornadoes, some large, are
documented in areas around Dumas, TX



Click here for the April 21 chase summary!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

2007 Chases

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

2006 Chases

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

2005 Chases and Earlier

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------