Virginia storm chase book update

I've been slogging through the final checks for grammar, spelling, formatting, and several other "-ings" and am just about to declare the manuscript ready for uploading to the Blurb.com site. After I do so I will order one copy as a "proof" so I can find and fix any egregious errors before opening it up for public availability (not that I expect a rush of orders...). Once the final version is in the Blurb Bookstore I will probably pull the other 3 stormchase books off the site as the new one covers those time periods.

That said, the new book doesn't cover the five chasing trips to Tornado Alley (2002, 2004, 2006, 2008, and 2009) that are included in the older volumes. I will reserve the right to republish those in another volume at some later date. Meanwhile, readying this latest book for publication has kept me busy during the short days and long nights of this "non-winter".

Another mid-winter convective shower

Another "non-chase" but this afternoon was noteworthy in that these convective showers were popping up all over the area. This is one of them approaching from the northwest. I saw some more impressive tops south of here but didn't get any photos of them. There is hope for the SDS-afflicted soul!

Not really a chase...but it is January after all

This morning's cold frontal passage may have been more spectacular if it had been delayed 6 hours or so but it was still neat to see a spring-like air mass change in the middle of winter. Here are a couple of photos I snapped from the front stoop.


The high temperature this morning at Shannon airport was 68 degrees (F) at 8:55 a.m. with a dew point of 59. These values have already dropped significantly and will continue to do so throughout the day.
Not really a formal chase, but I'll take it!

Statewide tornado drill March 20th

It's never too early to start plugging this event, even if there is snow and ice on the ground!

Ten year chronology update

I'm still plowing through my previous storm chase accounts in the process of consolidating all of them into a new book for the period 2002-2011. I'm currently moving slowly through 2009 as I've had to basically write the narrative from scratch. The 2009 chase book I published using the Blurb.com software tools was mainly a photo volume with captions composed of excerpts from that year's blog posts. The result was okay for a photo book but lousy as a sustained narrative to match up with the rest of the accounts. Now the challenge is to match up this new narrative with the style of the older ones that were written over a period of several years.

What else is a storm chaser to do during the winter?