Merry Christmas, you no longer have a job.

That's what my boss called me up to tell me I missed at our meeting. My place of employment as of today, is no longer in business. I never saw this one coming ;-). So, now, I go look for a new job that will have flexibility that I need, and hopefully I get one before school starts. They told me I could claim unemployment or something, but I'm not the person that can do that. Plus, there are many jobs out there that are of equal level (pizza job!). I just thought it was funny they closed down, because I called it 9 months ago. They purposely ran it into the ground.

The Outlaw Chasers have a new show tomorrow night at 9 p.m. CDT called "Tornado Hunters" that will surely give the Big D a heart attack. Here is a preview:

Strong language!!! But great footage.




Lanny Dean and I have become pretty good friends since Greensburg, and my opinions of him changed once I got to know who he was. I haven't talked much to Randy Hicks, but Darin does, and he seems alright. There recently has been a thread about them which was locked, because of real Special people on Stormtrack, attacking their character.

If you want a good read, check out Steve Miller Texas' thoughts on the group that calls themselves "CFDG" as well as Steve Miller OK's blog about the subject. These two have seen this stuff go on for a long time, while I have only known about it for a few years (I'm a newb). I have this funny feeling, that in a couple of years, these same guys who banished others because of silly things, will suddenly become the focus of many parodies, that will be shared worldwide. As Darin's favorite boy band member once said in a song, "What goes around comes back around." Justin Timberlake was like SO right!

Lastly, inspired by Bill Doms' brilliant logo, Darin and I are starting the DuckChoz clothing line, featured by our new company YahooWear. It will feature shirts as these below. We're working on getting them printed, stay tuned! You'll want one of these for next year, it's the new chaser look of 2008!

Chiefs Game today

Section 106 Row 12 and seats right on the end. Two touchdowns happened 40 feet in front of us but we still lost. Oh well, it was my first regular season Chiefs game ever, and with my dad. We had a pretty good time, and even though we lost, at least the cheerleaders were right in front of us. Plus, I saw Vince Young in action, the first time ever, him and Tony Gonzalez look like absolute monsters up close.

Storms of 2007 Preview

Power is out, Storms of 2007 Charity DVD

Storms of 2007 Charity DVD has finally been released. After watching it for the 3rd time, it's easy to say this is my new favorite storm chasing DVD. Darin did an excellent job on the May 4th chapter. It was hard to fight back the tears reliving it all, and seeing the emotional pain on the victim's faces captured by Allen Detrich.

Every chapter is a great production, Bill Dom's is probably the most upbeat and intense. I liked every bit of it, it's worth every penny.

Battery is dying on the laptop (13 minutes left)and my connection on the internet will time out shortly..

Been processing photos I hadn't from this year and forgot about some pretty neat shots, that I will be posting in the next few days.

Plaza Ice Pics

Pretty exhausted, trees are starting to snap as surface temps are slightly dipping, and another band of FR is heading this way. Ice is accumulating big time now......


Pics from on the Plaza this morning...

Ice Pics

Heading out again, nothing like having half of them out of focus or rain drops on them, I will possibly get our webcam set up on our website in the morning when there is more light (and if I can figure out which fuse I blew in my POS car). Thinking of heading north a little ways to see something. Pretty tame here in Olathe as we speak.

Link here:

Live Ice Storm Cam

Ice Storm? The Big Bad "D"

Wow, Chuck Doswell's "open letter" has really dug himself a bigger hole. This letter he posted on Stormtrack only helped reinstate what many storm chasers have been suddenly accusing him of (or accusing him for many, many years). Job well done, Chuck. Also, if you haven't seen Roger Edwards' blog, it is also a tear jerker. I guess they never would have expected so many to publicly debate and criticize their actions. This is only a fraction of what is to be expected in the future, segregation and a collapse within the hierarchy. There is much more to reveal about certain individuals and groups if this keeps getting pushed back into the limelight.

Hey Chuck, if you are suggesting saying something to your face, just give me a date and time, and we'll have coffee or something, k?

It looks like, possibly, that the KC metro will not see as big of an ice storm as expected, based on the 12z runs, suggesting that the WAA will push further north than the previous runs. But it's anyone's guess of where the freezing line will be placed in the near future. I hope it goes further north, as I travel 3-400 miles per week for my job, school and my girlfriend's house and that would only complicate things for me!

Snow!

I think we got around an inch or two, not much, but the flakes, at times, were gigantic and there was virtually no wind at all.

A couple of GR3 grabs...It's nice to have all of the free ad-ons that Grlevelxstuff.com. If you haven't checked it out, they have got just about everything you can think of.

Gotta love the free Tiger roads street level maps!




There was even a hail marker at one point! 27.5 tops and 52.5 dbz! lol.



And a couple of quick snaps in the backyard...







And a pair of "contrast-enhanced" video captures of the Macksville tornado on May 5th as it crossed US 50. I have noticed in the video, that the condensation funnel lifts up for about a minute, before coming back down, I am guessing 1/2 mile or closer to our W/NW. It began to slowly rope out after this, a very beautiful rope out with that bent tail pipe look to it. (I just made that up lol.)