Underthemeso.com/Mike Umscheid Photography will be hitting the road for two storm chase/photography vacations in 2010. I am doing something new this season… taking two separate vacation times during the chase season for chasing/photography. Trip #1 will be from April 24 through May 4 and trip #2 June 17 through 27. Like usual, I am purposely taking my storm chasing vacation time outside of the climatological tornado chasing max of late May/early June. For those of you that know me, you know the reasons why. For those that don’t, well, it’s simple. I would describe myself as a High Plains storm photographer, not a tornado chaser, and given the fact that the large percentage of the storm chasing community sets their target for the greatest opportunity to film tornadoes, I set my target for the best opportunity to photograph High Plains severe storms — whether they produce tornadoes or not. With this mindset, the best time of year for me is mid to late June, typically, when a majority of storm chasers are winding down their seasons. Many of the “chasecations” that many take are centered around the last two weeks of May and the first 10 or so days of June. I do not like crowds, and I am out there to photograph storms that many other photographers will not see. To achieve unique images, you must venture away “from the norm”… which is a risky move, but comes with its share of very rewarding opportunities. I have established a wonderful collection of images of storms that very few other storm chasers/photographers have seen or chased.
New/updated equipment for this season. As far as photography equipment goes, there is nothing new this year. I will be equipped once again with the Nikon D3 as my primary DSLR body with the D200 as my backup/secondary camera. I did not purchase any new lenses this season either, so I will be out there with the Nikkor 14-24mm f/2.8 as my main lens of choice for ultra-wide angle on the D3.
In January, I purchased a new 2008 Jeep Grand Cherokee (maroon), after I wrecked my former 2003 Jeep Liberty in a winter storm back on Christmas Day 2009. I have just installed a new Jotto Desk and a new 400W power inverter last week, so that is all ready to go. I reformatted the hard drive on my laptop computer, so I had to reinstall a bunch of software back in January as well. I have a new data card with Verizon — the USB760. So far, I am pleased with the performance of this data card (it’s a USB stick, actually), and will likely be even more happy once I get the Wilson external adapter next week. Regarding the underthemeso.com website, I will still have “Chase Mode” page as my go-to point for the latest updates/images on the road. I am a beta-tester for StormLab 4.1, which will be released soon, so this will continue to be my primary software for uploading real-time radar screen grabs with my GPS location onto my website. I will also be launching a small Google maps thumbnail that will have my SpotterNetwork position icon integrated so that you can see exactly what crappy roads I am driving on! I hope to have this launched in a week or so. I plan to have this displayed on my front page as well as my Chase Mode page using some PHP scripting.
Unidata Integrated Data Viewer (IDV). I have recently started playing around with IDV, and I love it!! Finally, a step closer to having AWIPS at home! Now I can pull up and overlay any fields from any NCEP model I wish… including NAM12 model and GFS 40km model… which has 3-hourly data! This is a far better solution for model interrogation versus website “packaged” graphics. Below are a couple of examples of some of the graphics one can create with IDV. I have loaded it on my laptop, so this will be very nice for on the road… and the netcdf/grib2 model fields are available in a very timely fashion from Unidata’s “Motherlode” server, which is very nice!
51hr GFS 40km valid 21z April 5th:
75hr GFS 40km valid 21z April 6th:
