Excuse me while I depart from the normal storm-, jazz-, and saxophone-related material on Stormhorn.com long enough to let off some steam. Sorry, but I’ve had it up to here with email spam, and I feel a profound need to vent if not outright vomit.

I have deleted, I have blocked, I have blacklisted, I have steadily added keywords to my spam filter, and still the unwanted sales messages pour in daily, relentlessly. They are tasteless. They are offensive. They are irritating as hell. And, at least where I’m concerned, they are worse than ineffective–that is, unless the goal of the unscrupulous marketers who send them is to infuriate me. In that, they’re succeeding. As for getting me to buy their products, never in a million years are they going to see a solitary farthing from me for their…

* Cheap Swiss Watches. Hey there, Spammer, why not just stand on a street corner in a rain coat with big interior pockets filled with your trashy fake Rolexes and hawk them to passers-by? That’s the time-honored way.

* Sex Products. Pardon my bluntness, Spammer, but you’re a lot more concerned about the size of my penis than I am, and if I felt otherwise, I wouldn’t come to you for help.  As for “sex pills,” what kind of vast quantities do you think I consume? Judging by the volume of email you send me daily, a dump truck ought to be pulling up to my place once a week and restocking my supply of your cheap Viagra through a coal chute. But if you want the truth, I’m not using your products at all, and I never will.

So stop calling me “User Bob” in your subject lines, because I’m not a user. And while you’re at it, “Friend Bob” doesn’t work with me either. I know you think that using my name and calling me “friend” is the Marketing Magic Button, but here’s a tip: Disingenuousness is never good marketing. I’m not your friend and you’re not my friend. You’re a sleazy, greedy, unprincipled, disrespectful purveyor of sham products that you’re marketing illegally, and if I knew of a way to shut you down, I’d do it in a heartbeat.

* College Degrees and Diplomas. Let me get this straight: I “deserve” a master’s or doctor’s degree and you’re the folks who are going to help me get one in just 6 weeks. Gosh, what a great idea. I’ll consider your offer of a cheap and easy graduate education once you learn how to write and spell on at least a 3rd-grade level.

* Cheap Software. Guess what? I can find my own cheap, not to mention free, software online without your help. I don’t need your cheap software. I don’t trust your cheap software. I don’t want your cheap software. And I’m not going to buy your cheap software. Take your cheap software and stick it in dark, sunless posterior accommodations.

I suppose it goes without saying (though I’m going to say it anyway) that I delete all such messages without opening them as soon as I see them. What amazes me is the sheer audacity of the folks who send them. We’re talking about an entire spam marketing industry that is premised on violating people’s communication boundaries, an industry that is all about peppering their unwilling database with an endless supply of unwanted sales messages. It’s the good old shotgun approach: If you shoot enough pellets, a few are bound to find their mark, and hang whoever else they hit.

The approach must work; otherwise, such an industry wouldn’t exist. But of course, spamming is illegal, and I marvel at the willful dehumanization that lies behind it. Spam filters are the modern counterpart of a “No Solicitors” sign to a vacuum cleaner salesman. In developing technology that enables them to slide over, under, and around those filters, spammers are saying, in effect, “Nuts to your sign, nuts to your closed door, and nuts to you. I’m coming in anyway!”

A Hoover salesman who tried to sneak in through a side window would deserve to have a shotgun stuffed in his face. Unfortunately, no virtual shotgun presently exists that can inspire spammers with a sudden ethical awakening.

Wouldn’t it be nice, though, if one did? Wouldn’t it be extraordinarily cool if someone would develop a spam filter that not only deleted the most sophisticated forms of spam, but that could also, at the user’s discretion, trace its way back to the sender and wipe out their entire database? Just a thought.

Hmmm…

Hey, there, Scouts, if one of you is looking for a project for your Hacking Merit Badge, have I got a fantastic idea for you!

It’s July 4, Independence Day. Happy Birthday, America! For all the problems that face you, you’re still the best in so many, many ways. One of those ways, which may seem trite to anyone but a storm chaser, is your spring weather, which draws chasers like a powerful lodestone not only from the all over the country, but also from the four corners of the world.

This has been an incredible spring stormwise, but its zenith appears to have finally passed for everywhere but the northern plains. And right now, even those don’t look particularly promising. That’s okay. I think that even the most hardcore chasers have gotten their fill this year and are pleased to set aside their laptops and break out their barbecue grills.

Now is the time for Great Lakes chasers to set their sights on the kind of weather our region specializes in, which is to say, pop-up thunderstorms and squall lines. The former are pretty and entertaining. The latter can be particularly dramatic when viewed from the eastern shore of Lake Michigan, sweeping in across the water like immense, dark frowns on the edge of a cold front. If you enjoy lightning photography, the lakeshore is a splendid place to get dramatic and unobstructed shots. Not that I can speak with great authority, since so far my own lightning pictures haven’t been all that spectacular. But that’s the fault of the photographer, not the storms.

The images on this page are from previous years. So far this year I’ve been occupied mainly with supercells and tornadoes, but I’m ready to make the shift to more garden variety storms, which may not pack the same adrenaline punch but lack for nothing in beauty and drama.

July 4th is a date that cold fronts seem to write into their planners. I’ve seen a good number of fireworks displays in West Michigan get trounced by a glowering arcus cloud moving in over the festivities. But tonight looks promising for Independence Day events. Storms are on the way, but they should hold off till well after the party’s over.  That means we’ll get two shows–the traditional pyrotechnics with all the boom, pop, and glittering, multicolored flowers filling the sky; and later, an electrical extravaganza, courtesy of a weak cold front. A Fourth of July double-header: what could be finer than that?

Holy cow.

What had all the indications of an impending cap bust turned into an unbelievable chase day in South Dakota. Highlights included a ferocious, Greensburg-style wedge that narrowly spared the town of Bowden, and some smaller, beautifully photogenic tornadoes and amazing storm structure. I’ll need some time to process the events of this storm chase, which began in earnest just east of the Missouri River as a tower broke the cap and went absolutely crazy in an environment with CAPES approaching 5,000 J/kg. Right now, I’m chilling in a hotel in Aberdeen, and I probably won’t post in earnest for a couple of days. There’s just too much to write about, and I need to step back from it all for a bit. I’d share some photos if I had my photo processing apps installed on my laptop. As it stands, I’ll just say that I got some great shots, and I’ll be sharing some of them along with a more in-depth writeup in a future post, or perhaps several posts.

Tomorrow looks like another good shot at tornadoes once again in South Dakota. Since we’re already here, we may stick around for round two, provided that Mike, whose vehicle we came in, is up for it. If so, I’m game. If not, I’ll be more than happy with yesterday’s experience. I can’t imagine a storm chase getting any better than that–or any worse and emerging from it intact.

An outbreak of severe thunderstorms spun off a series of damaging tornadoes in the Southeast earlier this evening. The SPC’s preliminary count shows eight tornado reports, seven in North Carolina and one in Florida.

Two trailer parks in Davidson County, North Carolina, sustained damage, with multiple injuries, and for Guilford County came this report:

GUILFORD COUNTY EMERGENCY MANAGER CONFIRMED 20 STURDY HOMES DAMAGED NORTH OF HIGH POINT. (RAH)

In all, this evening has been an active one weatherwise, with low-topped supercells rumbling across the hills and flatlands from Florida on up to Virginia. As I write, three tornado warnings are in effect, though at this point they’re all Doppler warned and I think the storms are done producing for the night.

Of course I’ve done my share of armchair chasing. Here are a couple radar grabs of two North Carolina supercells. The first image, taken at 9:30, shows base reflectivity, and the second, captured 24 minutes earlier at 9:06, shows storm relative velocity. Don’t ask me to explain the lag time, because I can’t–I didn’t realize so much time had elapsed between image grabs until I looked at the file details a while later. No biggie, though–this isn’t a research paper, and you get a good idea of the progression of the storms.

They weren’t big storms, but they sure packed a punch. For me, this spring thus far has been a demonstration of how you don’t need 60s dewpoints and much CAPE at all in order to get tornadoes. Cold mid-level temps conspiring with  massive shear and hulking 1 km helicities can do a lot with dewpoints 55 degrees and even lower. Today’s 6 km shear has been in the order of 90 knots in places, with low-level helicities exceeding 400. That’ll get the job done, and evidently it did this evening.

Sea surface temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico remain cooler than normal, but with the GFS consistently wanting to bring in decent moisture–finally–into the Plains, and now with the NAM painting a similar picture, what could prove to be a very active tornado season may at last be stirring to life. Tonight may prove to have been a warning shot fired across the bow. Storm chasers, got your Rain-X ready?

Which version of snowfall totals do you prefer–the NAM on the right, or the GFS, shown below? (Click images to enlarge.)

If you live out east, the question is purely academic. I doubt that you much care which forecast model is the more accurate, because either way, you’re going to be sitting under a ton of snow by tomorrow. That much is no secret. While the forecast models shown here are for 00Z Saturday night, the show has already started.

Farther down the page, you can see a level 2 radar grab from Sterling, VA, taken shortly after 10 p.m. It’s much prettier to look at than the picture that is unfolding over the nation’s capitol as I write in the form of heavy snow, freezing fog, mist, freezing rain, blustery winds, blizzard conditions–just about every kind of winter weather you can throw at one area in the space of a few miles as temperatures drift from below to above freezing.

The current Baltimore forecast for tonight and tomorrow reads as follows:

Tonight: Snow and areas of blowing snow. The snow could be heavy at times. Low around 29. Breezy, with a east wind between 16 and 23 mph, with gusts as high as 37 mph. Chance of precipitation is 100%. Total nighttime snow accumulation of 15 to 21 inches possible.

Saturday: Snow and areas of blowing snow. High near 29. Blustery, with a north wind between 18 and 22 mph, with gusts as high as 37 mph. Chance of precipitation is 100%. New snow accumulation of 4 to 8 inches possible.

Ugh! For once I’ll take a Michigan winter forecast over what’s being served up elsewhere. Right now my friend Kathy out there in Greenbelt, MD, is getting her clock cleaned. It’s a good night for her and her boyfriend to eschew the Washington nightlife and hunker down inside. For that matter, I doubt there’s much happening in the way of a Washington nightlife on a night like tonight.

Meanwhile, down in the warm sector, much of eastern North Carolina is under a tornado watch. The radar shows a pretty grungy-looking, non-severe, low-topped squall line that doesn’t show much likelihood of putting out anything tornadic, but it nevertheless adds to the East Coast’s overall weather ambience.

Have fun out there, kiddies, those of you who live out east. As for me, I’m going to pour me a mugful of Bell’s Amber Ale and, for once, enjoy watching the snow not fall outside my window. Gloating over such things is permissible for lifelong natives of the Great Lakes.

Lately I’ve been trying to bring my posts closer to a daily frequency, but let me tell you, back pain can hang up pretty much any activity, even writing.

It doesn’t take much to catapult a person into agony. In fact, sometimes it doesn’t seem to take anything at all. Monday, feeling not even a minor, lurking discomfort to suggest that anything was amiss, I arose from my La-Z-Boy reclining couch and suddenly felt an all-too-familiar, electric tweak in my lower back muscles. It was the kind of sensation that doesn’t instantly cripple you, but you know, if you’ve had prior experience with it, that it’s just the beginning. The tweak is going to skyrocket over the next few minutes to a zenith of intense and thoroughly debilitating misery before slowly subsiding over the ensuing week. You will not be running any marathons during that time.You will not even be bending over, and you will have to take a creative new approach to putting on your underwear.

The long and short of it is, I’ve been flat on my back these past couple of days, popping aspirin, taking hot baths, lying on my heating pad, and gradually regaining functionality. Fortunately, the problem has been muscular in nature, not a slipped disk. And it has almost been worth the pain to be so beautifully looked after by my sweetheart, Lisa. But my mind hasn’t been able to wrap itself around blogging. I’ve spent a lot of time just lying here on the floor with my head propped up on pillows and a heating pad tucked under my back, watching the birds at the feeder.

I thought I’d drop y’all a quick note just to stay in touch. I’ll be writing more about saxophone- and weather-related stuff once I’m in the mood. Right now, I have a copywriting project I absolutely have to get to. Yack at you in a day or two.

Bob

Here it is, January 24, and are we residents of Michigan up to our waists in snow, fighting off polar bears and periodically detaching eight-inch snotsicles from our noses? Nooooo! We are staring out the window at a mostly snowless landscape drenched in rain as 45-degree temperatures and 40-degree dewpoints surge into the area in response to the low that’s presently centered just across Lake Michigan. KGRR even mentions the possibility of isolated thunderstorms south of I-96, and farther south, the SPC shows a 5 percent tornado outlook across parts of Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, and Florida. The squall line that is presently moving through Alabama looks pretty robust, and Dixie Alley may be poised for another visitation.

As for my fellow Michiganians, if you prefer warmth and rain to cold and ice, then these present conditions are pure January bliss. But if you’re a snow person, don’t worry, you’ll get your way. This relatively warm stretch of weather we’ve been enjoying for the last week or so is about to come to an end. Snow is in the forecast for tonight, and from here on we begin our plunge back into the twenties. Who knows when we’ll reemerge?

I’m not counting on its being anytime soon. I haven’t looked at the GFS lately, but I don’t need to in order to get the picture. Snow, snow, and more snow. Cold, cold, and more cold. The Grand Rapids WFO calls for very winter-like temperatures in the 20s through Saturday, and I doubt that the days following will alter that picture much. So, Nanook, don’t put away your parka just yet. You’ll still have plenty of use for it between now and April.

There’s nothing like picking up my saxophone again after being away from it due to illness. This past week-and-a-half I was laid up with a nasty chest cold. It was so bad that for three days, I literally couldn’t speak, something that has never occurred before. I’m a sucker for bronchitis, but I’ve never had laryngitis that I can recall, up until last week.

Praise God, though, it’s now behind me, and this evening I put in a solid two hours practicing my sax. Oh, man, did it feel good! It’s amazing how quickly my technical dexterity can lose its edge, but a few more sessions with my horn ought to have me back in top flight. Tonight I spent time running patterns on the diminished scale, the diminished whole tone scale, and the augmented scale, and worked on re-memorizing Charles McPherson’s alto sax solo on “Lynn’s Grins.” It all felt a bit clunky, but that’s okay. And it’s amazing what memorizing a transcribed solo can do for freeing up both one’s chops and one’s ideas.

Speaking of solo transcriptions, keep your eyes open. I plan to post another one soon, featuring Cannonball Adderley blazing his way through Rhythm changes.

That’s all for now. Back soon with some musical goodies.

Happy New Year, everyone! Welcome to a brand new decade.

With multiple possibilities for my first blog post in the year 2010, I find myself contemplating a recent thread on Stormtrack, and, in the light of it, reminiscing about my own development as a storm chaser.

The thread started with a newbie chaser asking forum members’ opinions about what constitutes a “veteran chaser.” The guy took a bit of a bashing initially, but to me his question seemed innocent, reflecting honest curiosity rather than a preoccupation with labels or a need to earn some sort of merit badge, and it made for an interesting discussion.

And, as I’ve said, it got me to reflecting on my personal path. One by one, the chase seasons have connected to each other like boxcars on a train. It seems incredible to think that 2010 will mark my fourteenth year chasing storms. If years alone were what it took to make a person a veteran chaser, then I might qualify.

But years alone do not a veteran make–at least, not in my opinion. A veteran road warrior, yes; a veteran storm chaser, no. There are plenty of people who have been chasing a shorter time than me, but who have acquired far more skill and experience. As for me, I’m just a slow but happy learner who’s too low-key to mess with light bars.

However, the span of time I’ve been chasing has allowed me some formative experiences I probably wouldn’t have had if I had started more recently. Today, it seems like the average neophyte steps into the field equipped, if not with knowledge, at least with a laptop, GR3, GPS, and an aircard. He or she has a technological edge that didn’t exist, or that barely existed, back when I was getting started.

I now realize that the simplicity and constraints of those first, low-tech years have left me with a gift of memories. I treasure those thousands of miles I traveled–sometimes by myself, sometimes with Bill and/or Tom Oosterbaan–equipped with nothing more than a weather radio, a portable black-and-white TV set, high hopes, and an eye on the sky.

Radar? I stopped at local libraries and airports and got my fix. I had no idea how long a radar image would be good for, how much difference four-and-a-half minutes and a single scan could make. Today I just shake my head and think, no wonder I never saw any tornadoes. It’s a wonder I managed to see a stinkin’ cloud.

As for forecasting, that consisted of looking at SPC outlooks and then steering for the middle of a moderate or high risk area. At some point, though, I discovered my first link to a site for forecasting models, and an interesting–and daunting–new window opened up. Suddenly, here was a bewildering suite of data–surface dewpoints, BRN shear, CAPE, lifted indices, helicity, 300 mb winds…alchemy, pure alchemy, and in a variety of flavors at that. GFS. ETA. RUC. Hoo boy, talk about dumping a load on my head!

Around that same time, I attended my first severe weather conference at College of DuPage. As I recall, Chuck Doswell conducted a workshop on hand analysis and Eric Rasmussen shared some findings from the first Project Vortex. By then, I knew just enough acronyms and concepts to make sense out of some of what was getting thrown at me. Much of the value lay simply in being exposed to the actual stuff of operational forecasting and severe weather research. There’s something to be said for sheer exposure; even if a body grasps just a fraction of the concepts he encounters, what matters is, it’s a start. I left that conference, and the one that followed it a year or two later, equipped with a little more awareness and a little less ignorance than I had coming in.

My first successful tornado intercept occurred in my first season as a chaser, in 1996, in my home state of Michigan. A wall cloud formed directly south of my workplace, and I left work early to chase it sixty miles to where it put down a beautiful tube out in the open countryside near St. Johns. The storm was a classic supercell, as nice as anything I’ve seen out on the Great Plains, though at the time I had no ground for comparison and knew nothing about storm modes or morphology.

It would be another ten years before I witnessed my next tornado in 2006, as Bill and I tracked the historic Six State Supercell from west of Columbia, Missouri, all the way back to Michigan. Prior to that, I had roamed my state and neighboring Indiana, and pounded the flatlands of Illinois, with just a handful of wall clouds and a growing awareness of storm structure to show for it. The year 2005 was my first excursion across the Mississippi and my first experience watching storms explode along the dryline in central Kansas.

But 2006 was the year when things finally started coming together for me, and I think that Bill–my consistent chase partner for all these years–would say the same, since our personal learning curves have been closely tied together. By then we were using Bill’s business laptop and had access to NOAA radar. I had just discovered the significance of velocity couplets, although, not yet understanding the benefit of using storm relative velocity over base level velocity, I was using the latter. Again, it was a start, and the base level gave us enough data to keep us from very likely getting blown off the road by the Springfield, Illinois, tornado as Bill and I chased the Six State Supercell.

A month later, we intercepted tornadoes in Iowa, including another large, night-time tornado that did F2 damage in Iowa City.

That same year, I acquired my own laptop, and the following spring I added GR3, and from there on, my learning and experience curve began to snowball. Today, as I look at where I started and where I’m now at, I realize that I’ve learned a few things. I’ve gained another great chasing partner in my buddy Kurt Hulst. I’m making my own forecasts with increasing knowledge and accuracy. I haven’t seen a lot of tornadoes, but I’ve seen my share, and I trust that, by God’s grace, I’ll see more, as well as endure more busts and make more idiotic choices that cost me storms I could have had.

So, getting back to the question of what makes a veteran chaser, I’m firsthand proof that there’s more to it than just the number of years a person has been chasing storms. In my opinion, there are actually three components to being a veteran storm chaser:

1. Really, really knowing what the heck you’re doing,

2. Many years of doing it, and

3. Lots of successes and lots of failures to show for it.

I probably fulfill the second criterion. As for the other two, well…I’ve got a ways to go, but I’m working on them. Give me another ten years and maybe the hat will fit. It really doesn’t matter, though. As a general rule, chasers who are worth their salt don’t give a flip about labels. They’re driven by storms, not status. Certain names are indeed revered–icons such as Tim Marshal, David Hoadley, Roger Edwards, and Gene Moore. As for the rest of us mortals, I think that those who’ve been at it a for a while respect others who have paid their dues. We know the names, if not the actual faces, and recognize the shared passion and personal investment behind those names. The countless miles traveled. The commitment to learning and growth.

Above all, the love for the storms that keeps us dreaming all through the winter, and that, in the spring, calls us once again toward the open skies, the tumbled clouds, and the hope and promise of the Plains.

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What do storm chasers do when there’s nothing to chase? Watch the “Storm Chasers” series on Discovery Channel.

Of course I don’t speak for all storm chasers. But a good number of you, like Tom, Bill, and me, have been parked in front of your televisions on Sunday nights, watching Reed dominate, Tim deploy turtles, and Sean wipe his face in frustration. Once a week, we all get to vicariously relive this year’s chase season–the storms we got, the storms we failed to get, the days we wished we had chased, the days we’re glad we didn’t.

Here are some photos of me droogs that I took during last night’s “Storm Chasers” session. Just a nice, pleasant evening of buddies, beer, pumpkin pie, and tornadoes. Bill supplied the pie and I brought the Golden Monkey, a Belgian trippel whose potency I had forgotten but swiftly recalled. It’s one of those beers where, once it gets a hold of you, the best thing you can say is as little as possible. Just shut up and enjoy the show. Last night’s was great. Next week’s, featuring the Aurora, Nebraska, tornado, looks to be awesome.

Once the series winds down, whatever shall we do? View old tornado DVDs and mutter a lot, I suppose. Think thoughts like, “Only 120 days till April.” Stay away from sharp objects. Or, if you’re like Mike Kovalchick who just looooooves winter, hope for a good blizzard so you can go chase thundersnow.

Mike is probably onto something. It beats sitting in a dark corner cutting out paper dolls with a blunt-nosed scissors. Or maybe not. I may give the doll thing a try once the snows roll in.