Must-See Storm Chasing Videos

The old adage, “One picture is worth a thousand words,” is quadruply true when it comes to video. So if you wonder why I work up such a lather over storm chasing, just check out the clips on Robert Prentice”s Atmospheric Images on YouTube.

In particular, you definitely want to watch Prentice”s video segment on the history-making 1999 Moore-Bridge Creek, Oklahoma, tornado. This was the last tornado to be rated an F-5 under the old Fujita Scale (updated last February and renamed the Enhanced Fujita Scale), and it sent that rating system out with the highest winds ever recorded–over 300 miles per hour.

My own videos are not, to date, of a quality I care to make public, though they are improving. Thankfully, seasoned chasers such as Prentice have produced a huge volume of top-quality storm videos, and Prentice has very generously made much of his material public. If you’re at all interested in storm chasing or severe weather, Prentice”s clips are a must-see.

January 16, 2008 by
Filed Under: Entertainment, Life, Music, Recording, Storm Chasing, Video, Weather

Storm Season 2008: Priming the Pump

After all those ruminations about Sonny Stitt and bebop, it’s high time for another storm chasing post. Got just the thing for you: education. That’s right, education. After all, you can’t intercept storms successfully without knowing a thing or two about them.

Last year was the year when I felt I finally had learned a few things about severe weather. Not that I was clueless before–2006 was a great chase year for me, and 2005 wasn’t too shabby, either–but last year I racked up a good 14,000 miles or more chasing storms everywhere from the Texas/Oklahoma panhandles, to South Dakota, to Wisconsin, to Indiana, to–dare I say it?–Michigan, and a few other states in between. Saw a few tornadoes for the trouble, too, not to mention some great storm structure. I witnessed my first tornado last year in late February just east of Kansas City, Missouri, and I bagged my last supercell in Indiana during a regional outbreak on October 18. That event produced a number of tornadoes, a couple of which did EF-3 damage.

This year has gotten off to an even earlier start with the big January 7 Midwest tornado outbreak. So I’m hoping this will be my best chase year yet. My buddies and I are bulking up for it with a forecasting inservice tomorrow at the National Weather Service office out by the airport. I’m really excited about this–it’ll be a great way to prime the pump for 2008.

The guy who will be conducting the inservice is quite enthused about it, too. John is a young fella who has immersed himself in studying severe weather, particularly tornado climatology and tornadogenesis (i.e. how tornadoes form). He’s passionate about his topic and eager to share his knowledge. Tomorrow evening, he will be giving me and my chase buddies, Bill Oosterbaan, Tom Oosterbaan, and Kurt Hulst, his presentation on synoptic (large-scale) setups that are responsible for the bulk of significant tornadoes in our area. This will include his analysis of the 1980 Kalamazoo tornado. From there, we’ll get John’s input on how to make maximum use of the SPC’s mesoanalysis tools, and how to use other forecast models and parameters that are available on the Internet.

It’s amazing just how many weather tools you can access for absolutely free these days on the Web. We’re talking about some truly superb tools, too–professional-quality stuff designed by and used daily by NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) and the SPC (Storm Prediction Center). This is one area where you can get real bang for your tax bucks. From Doppler radar, to satellite images, to soundings, to numerical models, the challenge is no longer finding powerful resources for storm chasing; it’s sifting through the bewildering array of options to find the right tools, and learning how to use them effectively.

There’s no end to the learning. That is one of the daunting things about storm chasing–and one of the wonderful things. Whether you”re sitting in front of a computer pondering a 500 millibar vorticity chart, or watching a dry slot wrap around a mesocyclone two miles away, there is always, always, always something new to discover. I can”t wait to see what this year has in store!

January 16, 2008 by
Filed Under: Life, Storm Chasing

Foundations in Bebop

Bebop is to jazz what Baroque harmony is to classical music. Both became the “common practice” of their genre, foundations on which the entire body of music that was to follow would stand. Even seemingly unrelated musical expressions, such as Schoenberg’s atonalism or Miles’s modalism, were creative attempts to break free from what had gone before, and as such are vitally linked to the common practice of their genre.

This is why I’ve concentrated quite a bit on developing my bebop capabilities–not that I’ve by any means mastered bop, but I get around in it fairly well, well enough to hold my own in most settings. My philosophy has been that a good foundation in the common practice of jazz, bebop, will equip me to handle a broad range of other music besides. The premise is simple: metaphorically speaking, if I own a car that can top out at one hundred thirty miles an hour, I know it will handle seventy, no sweat.

The harmonic sophistication and technical demands of bop lead to the development of a respectable musical toolkit. The melodic language is nearly as universal as the blues; a lot of it is in fact dipped in the blues, and works with reasonable success in blues bands.

There is one challenge I face, though, that stems from saturating myself in a particular style. It’s hard to break out of the box and think in a different mode. I have to remind myself to lay back, take it easy, and not default to frenetic double-timing when I’m playing some up-tempo piece with the Grand River Blue Cats. That approach doesn”t fit, or rather, it fits when used sparingly. Ditto with smooth jazz. I am not a smooth jazz player–not that I can”t handle it, but it’s not my area of concentration. Smooth jazz is a highly nuanced music. A lot of it isn”t particularly challenging technically, but that doesn”t mean it’s simple stuff. You have to think in a smooth idiom, and in order to do that, you have to listen to a lot of the stuff. And to be honest, when I”m getting set to plunk down my fifteen bucks for a CD, I naturally gravitate to something a little more hardball. Jackie McLean. Mike Brecker. Cannonball. Eric Marienthal. That’s just my musical instinct, and maybe I need to broaden it.

But that being said, while I”m no music educator, I’ve heard it said more than once that a lot of young players are sidestepping the roots. That”s too bad. Bebop may not be what everyone listens to these days, but it remains the foundation, the source of much contemporary musical language. Studying it–really getting inside it and working at it–pays off. The best players know that”s true.

January 15, 2008 by
Filed Under: Jazz, Music, Saxophone, Uncategorized

Sonny Stitt

My earliest encounter with Sonny Stitt was through a live performance album that featured Sonny on alto, Miles on trumpet, and Stan Getz on tenor. That was back in my college days, and at the time, I couldn”t detect a difference between Stitt and Bird. Both had a blazing technique, and both had a phenomenal command of bebop.

Today, of course, the differences are instantly discernible. Bird was simply nonpareil. His rhythmic approach was considerably more sophisticated than Stitt”s; his vocabulary was broader; his technique, more facile; his overall conception, more inventive.

But that is hardly to diminish Stitt. I am, after all, comparing him to Charlie Parker, and if Stitt stands in the shadow of Bird, he nevertheless stands dauntingly tall. Sonny Stitt was a monster of bebop, and when I listen to him today, my admiration for his playing remains as strong as ever.

Lately, I’ve been listening to a CD called Sonny Stitt: Just In Case Your Forgot How Bad He Really Was. The title is an apt one. The venue is once again a live performance, or possibly a couple live performances, featuring such other sax notables as Richie Cole and John Handy. Stitt plays both alto and tenor, and he shines on each.

Sonny’s quicksilver technique allowed him to execute the fastest passages with precision and conviction. He loved to play in double-time, and he typically outshone most other sax players at it. On this CD, the opening tune, a blues, spotlights Sonny’s penchant for high velocity playing. Following a riff-style blues head, Stitt, the sole horn man, charges into his solo with the aggressiveness of a heavyweight boxer on meth. The mode is double-time from the get-go–inventive, impeccable, a bebop tour de force a la Stitt. You just can”t ask for better.

I hadn’t listened to Sonny for quite a while, so it’s nice to return for a reminder of “how bad he really was.” He was the baddest! He was also accessible. He”s fun to play along with, and to absorb as best I can. Not that I”ll ever sound like Sonny–not that I would ever want to; I want my own language. But when it comes to a mentor in bebop, Sonny is hard to beat and well worth emulating. The man knew a huge number of tunes, and he knew them well. He also knew his horn inside out, and he had a solid command of the building blocks of music. To listen to him analytically is to sit at the feet of a true jazz master. If you at all aspire to excellence on the saxophone, don’t–do NOT–pass him up. Listen, be amazed, learn, and grow.

January 14, 2008 by
Filed Under: Entertainment, Jazz, Music, Saxophone, Uncategorized

Church Music

I’ve been a follower of Jesus for nearly thirty years now, and from day one, I”ve played my saxophone as one of the means God has given me to worship him. I love doing so. However, I”m afraid the word worship is fraught with preconceptions and bad theology among Christians, and over the years, I’ve concluded I can’t live up to some of the expectations that arise as a result.

What do I mean? The best way I can explain myself is to consider a common saying among Christians in regard to the role of church musicians. To hear it told, my job is to “usher people into the presence of God.” I used to believe that, but today, I don’t think it’s possible. I can”t conjure up God’s presence, and I can’t cause people to experience it. The best I can do is simply worship God myself with earnestness and passion, whether with my instrument, or my voice, or simply in listening and silence. The rest is up to God and individual hearts.

Worship is an organic, intimate experience, and it deviates from person to person. One person may be filled with joy, and exuberant praise comes naturally to him; another may be struggling with a broken heart, and tears are the truest expression of her connection with God. A few seats down sits a couple who got into a nasty argument before church, and who are too pissed off at each other to feel very good about being in church at all right now. And those examples are just for starters.

In the midst of all the variables in even a small gathering, I’m supposed to “usher people into God”s presence”? Sorry, but I”m a musician, not a magician. I can”t usher anyone anywhere. Worship is part heart attitude and part divine action. It isn”t about selecting the right tunes, or about getting everyone to clap, or raise their hands, or dance, or any of that. Worship is a condition of the heart, and nothing I do can produce it in others. The best I can do is cultivate it in myself, and express it in ways that hopefully will free up others to follow me. Beyond that, I enter into spiritual manipulation, and I”m not willing to go there. I”ve seen too much of it, and it never bears good fruit.

Do I believe the Holy Spirit shows up in the midst of worship? Absolutely. But I can’t make him do so, nor can I determine how he will do so. I do think too many churches are so preoccupied with seamless musical productions they call “praise and worship” that they don’t give the Lord much opportunity to get a word in edgewise. I wonder how differently we would approach the act of corporate worship if we actually expected God to show up–if we really believed that he might have something to communicate or accomplish that placed the focus on his performance, not ours. Perhaps we”d be less concerned with smooth segues from one tune to the next, and more concerned with listening for his voice.

On the day of Pentecost, no mention is made of a well-rehearsed praise band facilitating the event which transpired in that upper room. As a church musician, I find this thought humbling, reassuring, and freeing. It allows me to keep things simple, and not make more of myself than I am. Because it’s not about me, it’s about Jesus. I’m just a man who plays the saxophone, and who loves God, and who has been given the gift of music as a language to express my love to my Lord. Hopefully, in what I and my fellow praise team members play, you will find something that frees and inspires you to find your own voice, be it song, or laughter, or tears, or whatever it is that most genuinely expresses your connection with God in the moment.

If you’ve prepared your heart through prayer, you’ll encounter God on your own, and if not, God may choose to initiate contact anyway, just because he loves you. Worship musicians can enhance an atmosphere for such a connection, but that’s about it. The rest is up to you and God.

It’s a matter of the heart.

January 13, 2008 by
Filed Under: Band, Christian Music, Church Worship, Entertainment, Jazz, Life, Music, Saxophone, Uncategorized

Of Jazz and Whirlwinds

Last Saturday I played a big band gig in Bay City, Michigan.

Monday I intercepted a tornadic thunderstorm in Columbia, Missouri.

Those two pursuits–jazz music and storm chasing–may seem miles apart, but the passion that drives them is the same. And I have to think, as a person in whom both interests dwell with equal intensity, that they are related in other ways as well.

Each is, at heart, a search for beauty.

Each is a compelling and richly satisfying adventure, one that revels in exploration, challenge, intensity, wildness, and something within me that is bigger than myself.

Each unites knowledge and an endless thirst to learn with intuition and an unquenchable desire to experience something sublime.

In jazz, I prepare myself through countless practice sessions that culminate in the joy of a well-crafted improvisation. In storm chasing, my preparation lies in honing my forecasting skills, and the payoff is standing on a Kansas roadside, watching a tornado dance across the prairie a mile away.

In both pursuits, the discipline required is rewarding in its own right. Yet that adult quality of discipline leads ultimately to being caught up in the moment in a way that lets the child in me run wild and free.

In a jazz, solo, I’m swept up in the swirl of the music, the rush of ideas that tumble from my imagination into my fingers and out the bell of my horn. At the edge of a storm, I”m caught up in the environment; I feel the inbounds racing around me toward the updraft base, watch twirling filaments reach earthward from a rapidly morphing wall cloud, and yell in exuberance at the wildness of it all.

Both in playing jazz and chasing storms, in different ways, I encounter my heavenly Father. I experience his magnificent creativity, his awesome power, his childlike playfulness, and his tremendous worth. In jazz, I participate in God’s creative nature, and in so doing, I reflect it back to him as worship. In storm chasing, I stand apart from an act of creativity far too immense and uncontrollable for me to ever participate in. I can only admire it “in awesome wonder”–and see in it the face of the great Creator, and feel his extravagant, untamed pleasure.

One of my life goals is to get a decent video clip of myself playing my saxophone out on the Great Plains as a huge honking wedge tornado churns in the background a mile away. Crazy? Damn right. I like being crazy that way. It’s how God wired me. It’s a part of who I am–and the reason why this website is named Stormhorn.com.

January 10, 2008 by
Filed Under: Church Worship, Entertainment, Jazz, Life, Music, Storm Chasing

Storm Chase Dreaming

The latest storm system has moved through Michigan, leaving behind it a couple inches of fresh snow here in Caledonia. The National Weather Service office in Grand Rapids is calling for lake effect snow this afternoon, but the bulk of that should be off to my west. Right now, as the clock approaches noon this New Year”s Day, the sun is filtering through a high cirrus film, casting a creamy light onto trees frosted with a confectionery coating. Snow is drifting out of the sky in particles almost too fine to even be considered a proper snowfall: more like a snow drizzle–the kind that turns so easily from a gentle precipitate into a wind-driven spray that plasters your face and kicks up off the fields into wind-driven whiteouts. Right now it appears to be behaving itself–but whoops! there goes a gust kicking an eddy of white off the side of my balcony. The forecast calls for blustery conditions as the day progresses. This is a good day to stay inside, as are most January days, unless you”re a winter outdoors buff, which I am not.

What we have here is a classic Michigan winter scene. Yet, strange to say, I”m contemplating the possibility of a storm chase early next week. Oh, believe me, I know I”m dreaming, but one does that this time of year. And the GFS (Global Forecasting System) has been pretty consistent these past few days I”ve followed it in predicting a vigorous low drawing sixty to sixty-five degree dewpoints and around fifteen-hundred j/kg CAPE up into south central and eastern Oklahoma and northeast Texas.

Next Monday”s BUFKIT reading for Fort Worth indicates a long, skinny CAPE–not terribly impressive, and taken with other borderline severe weather parameters, it”s nothing to die for. But it”s not bad, either, and as I said, I”m dreaming. This many days out from the event, that”s all I can do, and it”s particularly nice to be doing it in January. Besides, I”ve gotta love that tight dewpoint spread, suggestive of nice, low cloud bases.

Hey, it could happen. It probably won”t, but it could. I could actually wind up heading out next week on my first storm chase of the year. Call me mad, say that Supercell Deficiency Syndrome has robbed me of my grip on reality–but keep in mind that I saw my first tornado last year in late February just east of Kansas City. Anything is possible.

My chase buddies, Bill and Tom, are game to go. They”re blocking out time, just in case. That”s the storm chaser”s mantra when you live in Michigan: “Just in case.” You live with a perennial combination of low expectations and high hopes. So, as I kick back here in my La-Z-Boy sofa watching the snow drizzle down out of the New Year”s Day grayness, I”ll sum up my outlook by saying that it”s never too early to dream. That”s not a bad principle to apply any time of year to anything you please.

January 1, 2008 by
Filed Under: Life, Storm Chasing

Happy New Year!

Had an early evening gig in Kalamazoo, but I”m at home for the turn of the clock at midnight, and glad not to be out and about. A winter storm is covering the roads with snow and ice, and driving–which wasn”t fun on the way home earlier–can only be getting more treacherous.

I”m keeping this post short. Ten minutes left of 2007; six hundred seconds till 2008.

Have a happy and blessed New Year!

–Storm

December 31, 2007 by
Filed Under: Entertainment, Event, Jazz, Life, Music, Saxophone, Storm Chasing, Weddings

Santa Baby

Christmas has come and gone, and some time has elapsed since my last post. I spent most of last week in Washington, D.C., visiting my friend Kathy. It was a great time–fun, relaxing, interesting, invigorating, and best of all, shared with someone close to me. Kathy teaches voice at Levine School of Music and has an extensive background as a vocalist and actress. She”s smart, talented, interesting, beautiful, classy, down to earth, wise, generous, tenderhearted, and overall, simply a flat-out wonderful person and dear friend. What a treat to get a taste of D.C. with her as my guide and companion! We took in a terrific production of Fiddler on the Roof, enjoyed dinner and a world-class Cuban jazz band at the Smithsonian, strolled through Annapolis, and spent plenty of time just chilling out, watching DVDs and talking. We both needed that down-time, time to simply be.

Around half a year ago, Kathy got into swing dancing, and it has really lit her fuse. If there”s one thing I love, it”s seeing another person discover something that makes her come alive, and dancing has done that for Kathy. I mean, the woman is into it. Besides being a whole lot of fun, dancing has provided Kathy with a safe, wholesome social outlet as a single woman. Being gregarious by nature, she meets plenty of people.

Recently, at the request of the host, Kathy sang “Santa Baby” at a dance party. A gentleman named Darrel, who plays keyboards for Chuck Berry, enjoyed her performance and invited her to sing at the blues club where he plays and where a lot of the folks in Kathy”s dance crowd like to do blues dancing. When Kathy mentioned I”d be visiting, Darrel said, “Tell him to bring his horn to the club.” So of course I did.

The thing about the blues is, it”s universal and crosses all genres. It”s the one thing all musicians who play in a popular vein understand. Jazz, country, folk, rock, R&B…it doesn”t matter what your bag is, blues is still blues. It may get dressed up in different stylistic and harmonic attire, but strip it down to the foundation and you”ve still got twelve bars, a I-IV-V chord progression, and the blues scale.

I had a blast sitting in with Darrel and his band, particularly since he played in jazz-friendly keys. We started off with “Night Train,” then kicked up the tempo with the next tune and kept things moving for the rest of the set. It”s so nice to be able to go to another city, sit in with a band, and immediately get on the same page with the other musicians. What a great feeling!

But the best part was when Darrel called Kathy to the microphone to sing “Santa Baby,” to the cheers of her dance crowd. Mind you, now, for all her flamboyance, Kathy is a modest lass–but she can do “sultry” in a way that left me envying old Saint Nick. What a shining star! And what was particularly nice was that, after knowing each other for a year, she and I finally got to make music together. For me, that was hands-down the highlight of the evening.

Playing music is a pleasure almost anytime. But when you can share the experience with a close friend, it becomes a form of communication, an added form of connection, a special link of mutual joy and satisfaction. It just doesn”t get much better than that.

December 28, 2007 by
Filed Under: Entertainment, Event, Jazz, Life, Music, Saxophone, Weddings

Thundersnow

The radar screen doesn’t lie, but I wish it did. That big swirl of blue and white over Michigan means business. And from what the National Weather Service here in Grand Rapids is saying, business is about to escalate to a fever pitch–or should I say, a blizzard pitch. We”re looking at the potential for a foot of snow and winds upwards of forty miles per hour, beginning soon and extending through tomorrow.

This is a huge winter storm system, affecting pretty much the whole Midwest. But southern Michigan, northern Indiana, and northern Ohio appear to be the epicenter. Batten down the hatches, gang. Winter is arriving with frozen claws and icy fangs.

If you”ve read my post on Supercell Deficiency Sydrome, you know how I feel about winter. I am not a fan. In fact, my enthusiasm for snow is so minute as to escape detection by the world”s most powerful microscopes. But some storm chasers dote on winter storms. For this group of lunati–er, hardy and resourceful weather lovers–a good snowfall is Utopia; a blizzard, transcendence; a whiteout, bliss.

And then there is thundersnow. Now, that is something I must admit is pretty darn cool. (The preceding pun was not intended, merely allowed.) Not cool enough that I”ll go looking for it, though, which is what separates me from the serious thundersnow aficionado. If you”re a chaser who falls into the snow-freak category, you will drive miles to experience thundersnow. Come on, now, you know it”s true! I”ve read the posts in Stormtrack. There are a lot of you out there.

I can”t arouse myself to that level of devotion; I”m perfectly content to let snow come to me, with or without thunder. It never fails to do so, in quantities I”ve always found to be more than sufficient. Still, I do love it when the occasional rumble comes rolling through the wintry gray. That doesn”t happen often here in West Michigan, but I understand the phenomenon is not all that uncommon in Ohio, where the lake effect snow bands come whipping off of Lake Erie.

As I understand it, thundersnow requires cloud tops to reach a certain height, somewhere in the order of 25,000 or 30,000 feet. At that point, they”re capable of discharging lightning, just like a regular summer thunderstorm–except, of course, for the obvious difference in precipitation type.

This opens up new possibilities for entertainment in the winter wonderland. Let”s say, for instance, that you”re out in the meadow with your significant other, building a snowman and pretending he is Parson Brown. You give him a nice, pleasant smiley face, and you plug in two lumps of charcoal for his eyes and one lump for a cute little button nose, and you wrap a scarf around his neck, and you stick a top hat on his head, and you stick an umbrella in his hand, and suddenly WHOOOOOOOM!!! the whole freaking world ignites before your eyes, and the next thing you know, you”re sitting on your butt twenty feet from where you had been, and Parson Brown has been replaced by a smoking crater surrounded by melted snow. His cute button nose falls out of the sky and beans you on the noggin. You should never have put that umbrella in his hands–it might just as well have been a lightning rod. What were you thinking! You forgot all about thundersnow, didn”t you? Let that be a lesson.

Anyway, while I”m by no means crazy about winter weather in general, I like the idea of thundersnow. It is my one ray of joy, my bluebird of happiness between now and the spring storm season. But I still say, bring on March, when the serious convective weather begins to roll in. That”s when blizzard chasers rejoin the ranks of the rest of us storm chasers who have been hunkered down for the winter. When moisture from the Gulf of Mexico starts pumping back into the Great Plains, we”ll all be out there once again in search of tornadoes. Thank heaven, sanity will return.

December 15, 2007 by
Filed Under: Humor, Life, Storm Chasing
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