I'm in Colorado...
I have loved tornadoes since I was a kid long, long ago and saw the tornado in the Wizard of Oz.
I started chasing storms back in the 80's. I didn't have a ham radio, back then no cell phones or a laptops with radar to help me find storms. I had a 10 channel scanner from radio shack with which I had the NOAA weather channels on. I had a CB I bought there too, thinking that if I was out in the country and there wasn't a phone, if a storm happened I could get a trucker passing by to contact the police. And I had a roll of dimes in case there was a pay phone nearby.
The next year I called the NWS and a friendly worker there told me the name of the guy who was on the Denver chase team and I called him and he graciously gave me frequencies that I could put in my scanner to listen to the chasers on ham radio. It changed my chasing life.
I soon learned to be where they were. I never approached any of them, to this day I haven't. But I learned, I learned to look at what they were looking at. I learned to pay attention to when they were on with NWS and to see in the sky what NWS was seeing on radar. I got books from the library, back then, no computer...I learned about clouds, about shear, convection, meso, lift, dry lines, disturbances, rotation, DBZ's , all the elements that might make a cell a supercell, anvils, wall clouds.
Along the way I learned about BBQ point and why it was called that. I became familiar with Taco Chris, who I swear could make it from Denver to Sterling in what seemed like 15 minutes if he was off after a storm. I learned about the "NET" and the criteria of it. Total respect for the "NET", it could and has saved lives.
I learned to be on the right side of the storm. I have not however learned to be in Strasburg, CO and not get pummeled by hail...ack!
I've taken a dog with me starting with my Old English Sheepdog, Duncan, and then my Great Danes Jake and Eli, and then my most precious Irish Setter, Kineely, who started off with me chasing when he was a puppy, he'd just nap in the back seat. Now it's my English Cocker, Obi, and none of my dogs have ever been afraid of thunder or hail, or a tornado.
Now I still chase with my Radio Shack scanner, and a FM transistor that allows the sound of the scanner to go through my car stereo, so I can hear it when I'm in Strasburg being pummeled by hail. I have an antenna on my car, a flashing yellow light, and my SKYWARN emblems on my car, police let me go fast and get through now. And I have a cell phone with speed dial to the NWS in Boulder to report what I see. And I'm good at the sky, I'm good at reading a storm, I need a better camera though, and a netbook someday.
My idea of a great vacation would be to chase in May when all the chasers are in tornado alley, and I will. This my 29th year of chasing.
So this is my little blog about the storms I do get to see, most days it's waiting and chasing, and nothing, but I've learned to be a little more patient. I don't always follow the chasers cause I'm better at going off after what "I" think might be a storm that does something, and more often then not now, I'm right.
But I still have my chasing heros here, people I see all the time out there, ones I respect greatly and ones from way back when I started, that I never met, but am grateful for their kindness to me when I called, or needed help, among them all, not in any order...
Dave
Rich
Ian
Taco Chris
Verne Carlson
Tony Laubach
Tim Samaras
Roger Hill
Reed Timmer, and countless others...thank you guys!
So I'll post my chase experiences here, put up some pictures, some video here and there, and hope I get better equipment, but mostly better at taking pictures and video.
Welcome to Colorado, and a "beer budget-ers" storm chasing journal.
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Some days you're just home, all the storms are firing late and they're all up in Wyoming, so you stay home and take pictures of clouds. I've learned to love all sorts of clouds, and I had got my new camera, cheap, on ebay, and I hate it, I have to get a better camera, it doesn't focus well on zooms and it's slow, but I shoot tons of pics just to get a few that work. 
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