December 26th Storm Chase, Top Photos of 2008

Darin and I took advantage of a rare, late December storm chase this past Friday. We waited until about 9:30 p.m. before storms began to fire in response to an occluding surface low pressure, strong height falls and cool air aloft being brought in from a trof quickly ejecting out of California. The cap held strong until these cooler temps aloft arrived and a tornado watch was issued for most of Eastern Kansas and NW Missouri. Sufficient 0-3 km CAPE was present for tornadic supercells (according to SPC’s mesoanalysis), but the timing of the upper level low arrived too late for the better low-level shear to stay in place…resulting in fast-moving, elongated storms that quickly raced (in excess of 65 mph) over the instability axis (in the warm sector). Later on, as the cold front arrived, numerous storms quickly formed and numerous straight-line wind damage was reported in the Lawrence-Kansas City areas.

Below is a picture of a lucky lightning strike I shot within the few minutes we could actually attempt to document these fast moving storms at night. As a photographer, it was a tough decision compromising noise to capture the structure of the storms, or time (for exposures) to capture a lightning strike. I alternated every so often and was lucky to capture one of the very few there were.



And since it is New Year's Eve, that means time to post my top photos of 2008 that I've taken. Happy New Year's everyone, and here's to a great 2009! I may edit this post with more as I'm currently on my dialup connection via my phone!































My dream girl!: (Besides my girlfriend of course ;) )


Project Greensburg, Greg Stumpf presenting the check to Greensburg Greentown.

Tuesday's Snow Pictures

I lucked out and saw some turkeys feeding during my 1.5 hour venture back to Olathe from Lawrence. There is a very nice 4 lane highway that I very rarely ever take, I enjoy taking the back roads and seeing stuff I haven't before. The light snow transitioned over to freezing rain before quitting about an hour later.

A few pictures:

Arctic Blast, Snow, and Freezing Rain Expected for KC area

To whoever purchased a print of mine here, anonymously, THANK YOU. I have no idea of tracking who it was, sine Imagekind takes care of all of that. That was officially my first online photo sale and I thank you VERY much. I hope it comes out perfect (and should), since I uploaded the full resolution TIFF. I was talking to Reed Timmer last night, and he and Don Giuliano have very graciously offered to sell my photography through TVN as soon as I set things up. As soon as this happens, I'll post the link. I'll be doing this during the winter break as well as finishing up the DVD.

It's been awhile since I've updated this thing as I've been super busy with school and am working on my last final as we speak. On Sunday morning, here in Lawrence/Olathe, Kansas we went from a mild 57 degrees to a freezing 6 degrees and later that night, we got a dusting of snow. This morning when I woke up, there was about 2 inches on the ground and as I write this at 11:46 a.m. CDT, there is still a light, gentle snow falling despite any returns on radar. The main band that gave us the small accumulation, rapidly moved northeast and is slowly dissipating along the IA/MO borders.

I was checking surface observations and noticed this "treat" of arctic air, has pushed hard into South Texas and it's currently 39/38 in Brownsville, (the absolute southern tip, in which I was born) Texas which is reporting haze.







This can't be good for their citrus crop. I remember having a banana tree in my backyard and the thing died when we hit mid 40's back in the late 80's. I think it was back on Christmas day in 2005, that South Padre Island and the Rio Grande Valley woke up to snow that morning! My grandfather was up here for Thanksgiving and was complaining about mid 50's, I wonder how "freezing" he is now!

On Thursday, EAX suggests freezing rain, sleet and possibly more snow all depending on where the freezing line sets up. I'm headed out to take some snow pictures as I haven't taken jack in the past month really. I haven't had much time. I'll upload and post those here either tonight or tomorrow. Here's a picture I snapped last Wednesday on I-70...I had to pull over, it was truly amazing.

New Kitten Pictures

I've never been a fan of cats (I'm more of a dog guy) but when Devin adopted a 5 month old kitten back in August...Humphrey was different. I adore that cat...so we decided to get him a sister. Meet Brooks!