Snow Drifts, F5 Data, and Spring Weather Dreamin’

And so we head back into winter, or winter heads back into us. Yesterday, temperatures hit the forty-five degree mark, the streets ran with water, and the whole landscape appeared to be in meltdown. Yet today, as the snow flies outside, the notion that storm chasing season lies just around the corner seems almost absurd. Nothing outside my window offers so much as a hint of spring weather on the way. The borders of the parking lot at my apartment are demarcated with tall piles of snow, and I”m sure that by tomorrow morning, the plow will have plenty more material to work with.

This afternoon, after a sushi lunch at the Tokyo Grill, I saw my close friend Kimberly off at the airport. She came out for an all-too-brief but very nice visit for my birthday, which is today. We had a great time, which included dinner yesterday with my mother and sister; and on the day before, Saturday, a drive along the Lake Michigan coastline. The ice formations are spectacular this year, and Kimberly, who lives in California, had never seen them. They were quite beautiful, with thin clouds of wind-driven snow spray dusting across them, driven by a chill west wind and lit by the evening sun.

As I write, Kimber is homeward bound, and I can hear the wind whooshing through the trees outside (my gosh, is it really blowing steadily at twenty-four miles an hour?), sounding every bit as cold as the eighteen degrees that the airport METAR indicates.

Yet the sun rose at 7:36 this morning and set at 6:15 here in Caledonia, Michigan. And my online sunrise-sunset calendar shows that between today and the end of this leap-year February, we will gain another thirty-one minutes. I like that thought. Winter really isn”t here to stay. It may seem like that”s the case right now, but in just a matter of weeks, those springtime lows will come swinging like giant wrecking balls out of the Pacific Northwest down into the plains, deepening as they travel, sucking in moisture from the Gulf of Mexico, and making life a lot more interesting for storm chasers.

I”m particularly excited about one of the tools I”ll have in my chase kit this spring. For quite a while now, Andrew Revering has been hard at work on a major upgrade of his fabulous F5 Data forecasting software. Besides an extensive graphical overhaul, the new version will include the addition of GFS to the suite of forecast models. I used F5 Data quite heavily last year and loved it. The upgrade is due to be released any day, now, and I”ve been looking forward to it with the eagerness of a kid on…well, on his birthday. With two chases already under my belt between January 7 and February 5, I anticipate that my F5 subscription will get a lot of use this year.

So let the snows fly. Not long from now, those wintry blasts will weaken into emphysemic frailty, and gasp their last as the Gulf of Mexico reopens for business. I”m ready. Can you tell?

February 18, 2008 by
Filed Under: Life, Storm Chasing, Weather

Michael Brecker on Practicing

Oh, man! Gold mine! Check out this video of Michael Brecker talking about his practice regimen.

I find two things particularly noteworthy:

1. As phenomenal a saxophonist as Michael Brecker was, he never considered himself to have arrived. He continued to practice voraciously, experiencing the same ebbs and floes in his woodshedding and musical growth as anyone else.

2. Michael was always reaching for new ideas. But it took him a long time and hard work to master those ideas. In his own words, he was a slow learner.

Huh? Brecker–slow? Gee, I guess the guy actually had to pay real dues to become as good as he was.

One aspect of inspiration is encouragement. I find it encouraging to think that Brecker was actually human. He didn”t just come out of the womb playing the saxophone that brilliantly. He sweated over his instrument.

Of course I already knew that. Still, listening to those recordings of Michael, I lose track of the fact that he wasn”t superhuman. Gifted he was, most definitely, but he still had to do what any of us have to do in order attain proficiency on our instrument: practice. Hearing someone who played at such a high level talk so openly and humbly about his personal challenges in continuing to grow musically…well, it just helps, that”s all. I mean, for all the time I”ve spent working on my horn, I sometimes get discouraged thinking how much I have yet to learn, and how long it has taken me just to get to where I”m at.

So I appreciate a guy like Michael Brecker sharing so transparently. His doing so helps me realize I”m no dummy. I”m just normal. And I”m in pretty good company.

Kudos, by the way, to Jazz-Sax.com, where I found the above YouTube clip. It”s a site you”ll definitely want to check out and add to your bookmarks.

February 15, 2008 by
Filed Under: Band, Christian Music, Jazz, Music, Saxophone, Video

Art Pepper: Sweet, Sad, and Soulful

I love Art Pepper”s playing! What a refreshing departure from the balls-to-the-walls bebop of the forties and fifties. An icon of what came to be known as the “West Coast style” of jazz, Pepper had a unique sound and improvisational approach that identify him instantly whenever you hear one of his recordings.

Tonally, Art Pepper was cut from a cloth similar to Paul Desmond. But the similarity doesn”t go very far. Pepper had the same silky, creamy texture as Desmond, but with a brittle, somewhat hard edge to it. Part fruitiness, part sigh.

Art”s improvisations are beautifully lyrical, liberally punctuated with a very personal sense of space. He delivers his ideas in crystalline clauses separated by semicolons and emdashes of breathing room. The overall effect is one I find completely captivating. No one else I”m aware of has ever duplicated it, and no one needs to. One Art Pepper is sufficient. I”m simply glad he was here, and that he left us such a lovely legacy in the way of musical expression.

nCheck out this recording of Art Pepper playing “Besame Mucho.” You”ll easily notice Art”s trademark sound and use of space. You”ll also pick up on the fact that the guy had a wonderful technique, one which served him well, not to mention those of us who admire his playing.

When you want a taste of something a little different–a blend of prettiness, sadness, and soul–listen to Art. He had a hard life, but his playing is tender and sweet.

February 13, 2008 by
Filed Under: Band, Entertainment, Jazz, Life, Music, Recording, Saxophone

Of Foxes and Saxophones

In my last post, I established that cows make a great jazz audience. Given their rapt enthusiasm for my saxophone playing, I might even opt for a roomful of them over people, provided they pay at the door, order a few drinks, and tip the waitress. Then again, cows are notorious for hygienic indiscretion, so I guess I”ll go with people after all, at least until the day when Depends for cows hits the market.

So much for cows. On to foxes.

Early one morning on my way to work, driving through the countryside near the airport, I pulled my car onto the shoulder by a broad meadow. With half an hour to kill, I assembled my horn, figuring I”d get in a little sax practice to start the day off right.

As I stood there serenading the sunrise, I noticed a riffling motion in the weeds a hundred feet off to my right. Out of the tall grass emerged a red fox. It edged closer…closer…to within maybe sixty feet from me. Then it sat, its head cocked, watching intently as I played. After a minute, apparently deciding I was safe, the fox moved closer still, then sat again and listened. From the studious look on its face, I figured it was analyzing my licks, absorbing them for possible use in its own playing.

Hard to say how long the little guy sat there–maybe five minutes, maybe even longer. Eventually he got up and, casting a couple backward glances, trotted off.

What a gift! As much as I love the countryside and as much time as I”ve spent in it, I nevertheless have seen foxes only a handful of times. They”re retiring creatures which prefer not to be seen. But like many other animals, they seem to have a fascination for music. That one would allow its curiosity to overcome its natural fear of man in such a way, for what strikes me as a pretty lengthy amount of time, is something I consider remarkable–or at least, very, very cool.

On a fishing trip in Ontario several years ago, I packed in my soprano sax. In the evening, after a full day of fishing, I would sit on the rocky shore of the wilderness island where my buddies and I were camped, playing my horn and listening to the loons call back from across the waters. The antiphony was haunting and beautiful. Those were magical twilights, filled with loon song, the scent of white pine, and the voices and laughter of friends.

What a rich creation God has given us! And what an incredible treasure is music, connecting humans with the wild things of the earth and giving us glimpses of how things were meant to be–and how they once were long, long ago, back in the Garden.

February 13, 2008 by
Filed Under: Band, Christian Music, Humor, Jazz, Life, Music, Nature

Playing Sax Till the Cows Come Home

I play for cows.

Seriously.

At the western edge of my small hometown of Caledonia, bordering the parking lot of a Catholic church, there sits a large cow pasture. During the warm months, I periodically park my car out there on the far edge of the church lot and practice my saxophone.

The results are always rewarding. It’s an amazing thing to watch scores of cows come drifting in to check me out. Evidently, cows love a good concert.

They’re particularly responsive to high notes. Musically speaking, there’s nothing a cow appreciates so much as a good, screaming altissimo. Work your horn a little bit in that top register and watch those cattle come prancing in to stare at you with intense curiosity. It’ so gratifying. I promise you, you’ll never find a more attentive audience, or a more appreciative one. Cows are good for a musician’s ego.

And responsive? Hoo-wee! Cows are moved* by jazz. Inhibition to the wind, baby, that’s a cow crowd for you. One cow will think nothing of mounting another cow whenever the mood seizes it, and gender evidently isn’t much of a concern. When those cow hormones are running hot, all it takes is a little jazz sax to inspire some hot young heifer to attempt things she wasn’t designed for. Cows are the original Woodstock generation.

If your practice routine has settled into the doldrums and you’d like to shake it up with something a little different, I highly recommend cows. Head to the nearest pasture for your next session, start blowing, and watch what happens. It is truly a weird sight to see a hundred bovine lined up along the fence, watching you intently and all but snapping their hooves to the music.

Give it a try. You may even get fan letters, though I wouldn’t answer them if I were you.

_______________

* Being a man of taste, I have avoided the obvious pun. I refuse to say mooooved in any of my writings about cows, and have carefully avoided doing so here.**

** But not here. Mooooved.

February 12, 2008 by
Filed Under: Band, Christian Music, Entertainment, Humor, Jazz, Life, Music, Saxophone Tagged With: , ,

2008 Super Tuesday Tornado Outbreak

February 5 was a milestone in the 2008 presidential primaries, but politics got eclipsed by the day”s deadly weather. By now, the whole nation knows of the disaster that rumbled through the South on Super Tuesday. As my chase partner, Bill, and I sat in his Suburban in Corydon, Indiana, watching the line of storms along the cold front move in, we never suspected the magnitude of the tragedy playing out to our south. And the storms were far from over. They would continue through the night to our east, through Kentucky and Ohio.

As I write, the death toll from Tuesday”s outbreak stands at sixty, and the SPC (Storm Prediction Center) Storm Reports for February 5 shows a tally of 103 tornadoes. The stories and the photos in the news are heartbreaking. The looks on people”s faces…the shock, the grief, the unbelief…it”s hard to grasp the enormous human impact of this event. All of us find ourselves in circumstances at one time or another where loss strikes, and we ask ourselves, “Now what do I do?” But to survey the remains of your home scattered across acres of field and twisted through ragged treetops…to think of the loved one you”ve lost whose smile dances in your mind and whose voice still rings in your ears…I can”t begin to imagine what that is like.

And it”s only early February. Severe weather visitations aren”t uncommon in the South this time of year, in the region known as the Dixie Alley, but a disaster of this proportion is another thing altogether.

After Bill and I had checked into our hotel rooms in Corydon, a few miles west of Louisville, Kentucky, we grabbed a steak and brew at a nearby restaurant. At that point, the storms were still a ways off, but by the time we had finished eating, a light rain was falling and lightning flickered through the sky. We headed back to the hotel, with the idea of calling it a night and watching the weather play out on TV and on my laptop radar. But a glance at GR3 showed a developing supercell making a beeline for the area just east of us, so we decided to head back out and intercept it.

Due to problems connecting with the Internet in the car, I couldn”t access GR3 for a good fifteen minutes. As we drove blindly into the storm, with the wind and rain intensifying, I felt a mixture of concern and extreme irritation. I”m a fairly placid personality, and my feathers don”t ruffle all that easily, but difficulty with radar connection during a chase is one thing that can cause me to pop blood vessels in my eyeballs. Eventually, I got us hooked up with GR3, which revealed two things: 1) the storm had passed us, as we suspected; and 2) it would definitely have been worth pursuing, had we not been headed back west, had not the cell been moving at warp speed, and had not our road options been rotten. In the SPC storm reports, I could swear I read of a tornado incident in Milton, Kentucky, northeast of our intercept area. Looking again, I can”t find that record, but if a touchdown did in fact occur in that area, this was the storm that produced it.

With the main event seemingly over for the night, we headed back toward Corydon, and parked on a side road near our hotel to watch the squall line blow in. The line was not far from us–around ten miles, according to the radar, and closing in fast. A second, smaller line was also kicking up to our south along the outflow boundary, with a small, relatively isolated cell near its far end.

Embedded supercells pulsed northward up the main line, like corpuscles through an artery, triggering a medley of shear markers and tornado vortex signatures as the whole system translated rapidly in our direction. But that lone wolf cell was what had my interest. As it neared Brandenburg, thirty miles south of us, it began to show distinct signs of rotation. The National Weather Service in Louisville indicates that this small but vigorous supercell did in fact put down an EF-1 tornado in Brandenburg.

As Bill and I approached the Michigan state line the following evening, the snow began to fly. The back end of the weather system was chuffing out a truly nasty winter storm, and the center of the low, poised just above the southern tip of Lake Michigan near Chicago, was wrapping in a truckload of wet snow for our driving amusement.

I arrived home around 9:30, flipped on my computer, logged onto Stormtrack, and checked out the chase reports and discussions. That”s when the severity of the previous day”s event really began to unfold for me.

As obsessed with the power and beauty of severe weather as storm chasers are, we”re nevertheless like anyone else when it comes to human impact. We never want storms to affect lives, and we”re horrified when they do. The 2008 Super Tuesday outbreak is one of the worst in the nation”s history. And, as I have already mentioned, this year”s storm season is still months away from its normal zenith in May.

I hope the rest of the 2008 chase season will be a good one, not a bad one. Not a tragic one, with more ugly surprises.

May God”s grace and comfort attend those whose lives have been devastated by last Tuesday”s terrible storms.

February 9, 2008 by
Filed Under: Life, Storm Chasing, Tornadoes, Weather

Okay, I Lied

I admit it: I”m guilty. After that last post, in which I made it plain that my mind was made up, I was going to stay put and not, nix, nada, no way chase storms, I went anyway. The RUC 13 prediction of usable CAPE working its way up into Indiana was eating at me–that, and too many past experiences of watching the action spread northeast of the weather watch areas. All it took was another phone call from Bill to tip me over the edge.

We hooked up in Nappanee, Indiana, then blasted south. The big storms fired up to the southwest, as expected, and are presently dropping tornadoes down in Tennessee and Mississippi, and presumably in Arkansas and Kentucky as well. But the daylight is long gone, and we”re heading for Louisville for the night. The storms will almost certainly catch up with us there sometime later tonight, and we could be in for a rough ride. My radar will be up and running, that much is certain.

So much for iron resolve in the face of a high risk day. Pffffttt! Ah, well…it”s better than staring at the radar screen in my apartment with fried-egg eyeballs, tearing my hair out by the handful and wishing I”d gone.

Plans now consist of the following:

1. Check into hotel

2. Go to a restaurant for a good steak and brew

3. Head back to the hotel, flip on GR2 and GR3, and watch the storms move in

That approach works for me.

February 5, 2008 by
Filed Under: Life, Storm Chasing, Weather

First High Risk Day of 2008

Aaaaah, nuts! I HATE missing a storm chase–and on the first high risk day of the year, no less. Problem is, the setup is more iffy for the area I can get to down in southern Indiana.

My chase partner, Bill, has a business meeting in northern Indiana, and we had talked about connecting in Nappanee afterwards. The guy who is with him would have used my car to get back home, and Bill and I would have taken off from there and overnighted in Louisville, Kentucky. But the big action is forecast to be well off to the southwest, down in Arkansas and the Missouri boot heel. Nothing in the forecast models has made me think there”s much hope for Indiana, at least during the daylight hours. Sketchy possibilities at best, and I have business to attend to and an appointment this afternoon. So I told Bill I needed to decline.

But now comes the latest RUC 13 run, which moves 500 CAPE farther north through Illinois and Indiana, not all that terribly far south of Indianapolis. Plus, the WRF radar simulation for later today shows a line of storms extending all along through that area–and forecast storm motions suggest that any storms which form, while clipping along at a decent rate, will still be chaseable, not fifty-mile-an-hour space shuttles. Moreover, I bear in mind that so often, these big systems have tended to propagate farther to the northeast than the Storm Prediction Center anticipated. All this to say, I can picture myself sitting at my computer later in the day, watching as vigorous supercells light up the radar south of Indianapolis and wishing like crazy I had gone.

Sigh. Well, sometimes ya just have to make the hard calls. I have a copywriting business to attend to, and a website I”m trying to optimize. If Bill and I could get to the high risk area, then the choice would have been a no-brainer. Faced with a borderline scenario, though, and the likeliness that any real action for Indiana won”t ramp up till after dark, I need to attend to other priorities and content myself with chasing from the armchair later today.

I have a feeling, though, that I”m gonna be one frustrated camper around five o”clock.

February 5, 2008 by
Filed Under: Life, Storm Chasing, Weather

The Rhythm Comedians

I miss the Rhythm Comedians! Over two years have elapsed since our little unit disbanded. The time had come; it happens that way for many creative group efforts involving musicians. We cohere for a while, then move on to other interests, or simply move apart. So it was with the Comedians. Yet, looking back, I feel grateful for the time I spent with leader, composer, and drummer Ric Troll, bassist Dave DeVos, violinist Pat Foley, and guitarist Jeff Boughner.

Jeff passed on not many months after the band broke up. His death came as a complete shock. I had seen him not long before, on New Years Eve at a gig in downtown Grand Rapids. He looked fine then. But a few weeks later, poof. Cancer. Gone. Unbelievable. One can get another guitarist, but not another Jeff. With his creative spark and gentle, congenial personality gone, the rest of us who comprised the Rhythm Comedians are left with some wonderful memories, and, thankfully, Ric”s backlog of Rhythm Comedians jazz originals on his jukebox at his Tallmadge Mill website.

For me, the zenith of my time with the Comedians was our April Fool concert at the Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts (UICA). With the extraordinary Kurt Ellenberger joining us on piano, I consider that event the height of our playing. The nice turn-out of friends, family, and area jazz lovers made the evening all the more memorable. But concert aside, it was the music, the creativity, and the cameraderie that made the Rhythm Comedians one of my most rewarding musical experiences.

To all you guys–Ric, Dave, Pat, and yes, to you, Jeff–thanks.

February 4, 2008 by
Filed Under: Band, Entertainment, Jazz, Life, Music, Saxophone

Thunder in Dixie Alley

What is with this winter? Two January warm-ups with severe weather, followed by two major winter storms–and now, another warm-up poised for Monday and Tuesday, with some potentially significant activity in the South, possibly reaching as far north as Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio. My, life is interesting, at least if you”re a weather freak.

Without looking at the latest numerical models, just talking off the top of my head as I remember my last, quick glance at things last night, it looks like a vigorous trough will be swinging into the southern Great Plains, drawing up fifties dewpoints into northern Illinois and Indiana, with even better moisture in the Dixie alley. Nice, southerly surface winds veering to the southwest with height, respectable 0-6k vertical shear–there”s a weather event shapin” up, folks. I”m not a seasoned forecaster, but I can make sense out of the GFS and the WRF. And I see that the Storm Prediction Center (SPC) is seeing the same thing. They”ve got a nice, large area scoped out for Tuesday in their convective outlooks.

Chase weather? Mmm…maybe. I don”t like that the SPC is calling for a squall line. Evidently we”re looking at another vigorous cold front, same as last week, with large-scale, linear forcing. I can”t see making a lengthy road-trip for that kind of scenario. Still, the shear is good, and with enough low-level helicity, any storms that pop up ahead of the line could prove interesting. Of course, with decent backing winds, the potential will also exist for embedded supercells in the squall line, but we get our share of those in Michigan. I don”t much care for them. They”re hard to chase, and I”m sure not going to waste gas on them unless they come knocking on my back door–say, in Indiana.

We”ll see. Right now, I”m really just rambling. I”ll have a better idea of what”s going to happen come Monday evening. Meanwhile, the snow lies on the ground, more of it than anyone ever expected this winter. And winter is far from over, at least if Punxatawney Phil is a reliable prognosticator. Today is Groundhog Day, and ol” Phil didn”t see his shadow, so…we”re looking at still more snow following this next round of severe weather.

I did mention that life is interesting when you”re a weather freak, didn’t I?

February 2, 2008 by
Filed Under: Life, Storm Chasing, Weather
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