disclaimer: "The meteorological
views/forecast
thinking expressed are those solely of the author of this blog
and do not necessarily represent those of official National Weather Service forecast products,
therefore read and enjoy at your own risk and edification!"
and do not necessarily represent those of official National Weather Service forecast products,
therefore read and enjoy at your own risk and edification!"
April 4, 2010
April 3, 2010
2010 Storm Chase Season Commences Soon!
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:
March 19, 2010
Southern Plains Winter Storm 2010 March 20 [post 3]
It’s a No-Go for a snow/blizzard chase. I have decided at the last minute to cancel this chase. It isn’t so much that I don’t think there will be a substantial snow event somewhere in OK, it’s just that I am seeing conflicting signals in the models, and I am afraid the mid level cyclogenesis will occur too late and too far east… thus limiting the very excessive snowfall (> 12″ and perhaps up to 18″) potential for much of northern Oklahoma. I would like to see 700mb cyclogenesis occur sooner during the day Saturday instead of Saturday Night into Sunday when by that time the storm will be entering Arkansas. This is just too far east, and this will really limit blizzard potential. A major event requires significant southeast to northwest flow in the 500-700mb layer for Great Plains blizzards… and this will likely set up too late for my liking… as the storm enters the far eastern Plains/Ozarks. I’d rather experience a nice wind-driven drier snow vs. wind driven wet snow like this system will have, too. Non-meteorological factors are at work here too, such as the fact that I have been living out of a suitcase every 5 to 7 days it seems since late January… I want to relax and enjoy some March Madness this weekend… and I have some things to get done around the house on my 3-day weekend. So therefore, I have decided to pass on this storm. I will still blog about it occasionally tomorrow and Sunday.
Southern Plains Winter Storm 2010 March 20 [post 2]
Target is north-central OK. 70% GO! The 06z off-hour runs of the GFS and NAM are coming into better focus, looking more like the ECMWF in the kinematic fields at most levels of the troposphere… so I have a little more confidence in the resulting QPF fields. It looks like north-central OK is going to be the sweet spot for this storm…extending into southeast KS. At this time, for the best daytime action, I am thinking Enid to Perry for a target. I’d leave right after work and head to either one of these towns. I’ve pretty much got everything packed and ready to go for a two-nights stay. I have a high enough confidence that a foot of snow will fall in this area (or very near this area) to take a stab at this, and it’s right at the edge of my ~ 3 hour domain I was limiting myself to. Winds during the day Saturday in this region will be 25 to 35 mph, so this should be very interesting… wind driven wet snow! This will make photography a real challenge. I will be busy at work today forecasting for Southwest Kansas, so I will not update this blog until about 4pm or so with just a brief one or two liner “Go/No Go!” and my final target town.
In the graphic below, my target area is in the dashed red oval:
March 18, 2010
Southern Plains Winter Storm 2010 March 20 [post 1]
Interesting snow and wind event on target for much of Oklahoma for Saturday, March 20. In a cold season fraught with southern Great Plains snowstorms, yet another one is on track for the southern plains. I will blog this particular event since it will be close to Dodge City and has some possible blizzard implications at the height of the storm for some locations. The global spectral model solutions (GFS, UKMET, ECMWF, Canadian GEM) all show strong mid level (500-700mb) cyclogenesis occurring during the day Saturday as the storm tracks across southern Oklahoma. This would put much of Oklahoma in the sweet spot of this storm for heavy snow. A large 1034mb surface high across Wyoming combined with the deepening surface low from north Texas into southeast Oklahoma will support strong north winds with the snow… on the order of 25 to 35 mph during the storm’s height. There may be some frequent gusts above 40 mph for at least a few hours as well, especially across western Oklahoma on Saturday. I think this is the best location for blizzard conditions to develop with this storm. As such, I may be heading down there after I get off work tomorrow afternoon. The ECMWF shows the most aggressive deepening of the cyclone and stronger low level winds with some 50-60 knots at 850mb on Saturday! If > 8″ of snow combined with these kind of winds still appears like a decent probability within 3 or 4 hours of Dodge City during the daylight hours Saturday, I will likely make this chase — which would be the second blizzard chase of the season. Below is the GFS model valid 21z (4pm CDT) Saturday from Thursday’s 18z run:
February 25, 2010
2010 Feb 5-6 Great Sand Dunes Nat’l Park shoot [29 images]
Winter shooting and camping at Great Sand Dunes National Park. It was another one of my 3-day weekends off work the weekend of February 5-7, and I wanted to get a winter shoot in somewhere in northern New Mexico and/or southern Colorado since I was scheduled to be in Clayton, NM for a photography talk on Thursday, February 4th. It turned out that my scheduled talk in Clayton was put on hold due to a snowstorm, however the storm was expected to clear in time for the remainder of the weekend to be rather nice. A couple weeks prior, I invited my good friend Michelle Douglass, who lives in Aurora, CO, to join me on this short little trip. We decided to make a camping trip out of it, and since I had never done any cold weather camping before, I figured this would be a pretty cool (no pun intended) experience, since we both obviously love nature/outdoors and whatnot. I met up with Michelle around mid-afternoon Friday 5th and we were essentially the only people in the park outside of perhaps a couple other hikers. After setting up camp we did a late afternoon/evening shoot on the Medano creek bed as well as some landscape scenes from just a mile or so south of the park entrance. The following morning we awoke to a morning low of about 12°F. I was a little more prepared than she was for the cold, and the camping was Michelle’s idea 
At any rate, it was fun, and we had some decent light for sunrise, although it could have been a little better. After breaking camp, we hiked up the big 600 ft. dune, known as High Dune, near the main dune walk-in entrance area. I enjoyed the lenticular cloud formations on the peaks of the Sangre de Cristos to the northeast of the dunes. It was a very enjoyable couple of days with Michelle at the dunes! After the hike, we had lunch at an Italian/pizza place in Fort Garland and then parted ways. An album of images is below, enjoy!
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February 20, 2010
2010 Jan 30 Southwest Kansas Rime Ice Album [28 images]
Overnight freezing fog and very cold temperatures yielded amazing rime ice across Southwest Kansas on January 30th! I left Dumas, TX very early in the morning on the 30th after documenting and photographing the record snowstorm across the region just a couple days prior. My route home took me through Guymon, Liberal, Meade, and Minneola along Highway 54. Through this entire route, the rime ice collected on exposed objects was rather thick. I decided to stop and photograph some of this in the near-full moonlight at a rest area along Highway 54 northeast of Liberal. Morning twilight then grew as I drove through the Meade and Fowler areas, and the rime ice became much more evident. It was a rather amazing winter scene, so I was just hoping that it was still this good as I drove into Minneola. Sure enough it was. I spent a good 45 minutes to an hour driving around town photographing this amazing accumulation of rime ice, mainly on the trees.
Images 1-4: Moonlight landscape of the rime ice at a rest area along the Cimarron River a few miles northeast of Liberal
Images 5-7: Images taken in Minneola just before the first light from the rising sun hits the tree tops in town
Images 8-13: First sunlight hitting the trees with a wonderful warm pink and orange hue
Images 14-15: Zoom-in of the thick rime ice accumulation
Images 16-18: Looking down some of the residential streets in Minneola.
Images 19-22: Various other images of the rime ice in Minneola.
Images 23-27: I ended the shoot photographing some of the interesting frosted grass and this thin, golden vertical rod sticking out of the ground with rime ice accumulation. It was interesting to note that the accumulation was on the west facing side, instead of the traditional north or northeast that is usually seen with rime ice formation in Southwest Kansas given the typical wind direction associated with freezing fog events.
Image 28: Small tree on my lawn back in Dodge City frosted with rime ice.
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February 7, 2010
Mike Umscheid Photography to Appear at ChaserCon 2010!
Mike Umscheid Photography will be appearing at the 2010 National Storm Chaser Convention (dubbed “ChaserCon”) (February 12-14, Denver, Colorado). This will be my second public showing of a number of my images, including some fantastic new images from 2009. Once again, I am really looking forward to sharing my work with a number of other storm chasers and photographers. I will have the following available to show off and for potential customers to buy:
around 80 8×12 glossy prints, (print only) unsigned & not numbered, including new works from 2009 (~ $12)
around 45 8×12 metallic prints, (print only) signed, titled, numbered, including new works from 2009 (~ $30)
10 10×15 metallic prints double-matted white to 16×20, signed, titled, numbered, including the following new works from 2009: (~ $100)
3 16×20 metallic prints double-matted white and wood-framed to 20×24, signed, titled, numbered: (~ $375)
- One Tree Strike (2006)
- Dual Dust Jets (2009)
- Between The Ears (2009)
February 1, 2010
Dumas, TX Winter Storm Photo Album #2 [51 images]
“Day after” images shot in Dumas, TX after 13.5″ of snow fell. The morning after the Jan 28th significant snowfall in Dumas, TX, I ventured out on foot to photograph some of the scenes around the south part of town. I started out walking north along Hwy 287 about 3 or 4 blocks. I then walked one block west and through a small residential area before backtracking to Hwy 287 (Dumas Ave.) where I crossed the highway and did some more shooting in the residential area on the south-central part of town just a few blocks northwest of Pioneer Park. I then did some shooting in the park itself before heading back to Dumas Ave. and to my hotel. This was about an hour and a half walking shoot, and many of the images in the album below are from my walk.
Images 1-4: Days Inn Hotel
Image 5-8: Along Hwy 287 (Dumas Ave.)
Images 9-11: Residential area and adjacent businesses just east of Dumas Ave. at 13th St.
Images 12-22: Residential area east of Dumas Ave between 11th and 14th St.
Images 23-27: Pioneer Park
Images 28-31: Residential area between Dumas Ave. and Pioneer Park
Images 32-40: More shots from the Days Inn Hotel, including 1) a Wyoming traveler cleaning off his pickup, 2) a Colorado traveler who managed to get his Jeep stuck pulling a U-Haul trailer, and 3) a picnic area succumbed by a large snow drift.
Images 41-43: A huge line of semis coming into town from the north on Hwy 287. Hwy 54 was closed west of Stratford about 35 miles north of town, so many of the truckers detoured south through Dumas to Amarillo.
Images 44-48: Farm field blow-off drifting adjacent a residential road on the north side of Dumas.
Images 49-50: Cool snow drift in front of the door to a church on the north side of Dumas.
Image 51: This photo was taken about 4:00am on my way back home to Dodge City. This is in Stratford, TX where Highway 54 was closed from this point west into New Mexico. Truckers were basically stranded here that did not want to detour south. This view is looking west-southwest at the west-bound shoulder. Trucks were lined up about 2 miles!
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January 30, 2010
Southern Plains Winter Storm 28 Jan 2010 [post 18]
Chase complete. Just pulled into the driveway. Since I did this winter storm chase right after midnigh shifts, my sleeping pattern was all out of whack.. and documenting the snowstorm didn’t help matters. I more or less slept in shifts the past few days. Much like yesterday. I slept from about 10:30pm to 2:30am, and was pretty much wide awake at that point, and since I was, decided just to pack up and head home right then and there. Hwy 287 from Dumas to Stratford was touch and go. There were stretches of dry pavement, but not long enough stretches to drive comfortably at 60 mph or higher since icy/snowpacked areas (mainly fairly bumpy snowpack) would come upon you quickly. Hwy 54 was still closed from Stratford west into New Mexico, but thankfully it was open east of Stratford. Almost the entire stretch from Stratford to Guymon, OK was snowpacked since the road orientation was southwest to northeast, parallel to the prevailing wind direction for the storm. I probably averaged 35mph during this stretch. I took some tripoded photos of the stranded truckers on Hwy 54 at Stratford as they awaited the re-opening of the highway west of town. They were lined up for a good couple miles along the shoulder of the west-bound lane! East of Guymon, it was pretty much smooth sailing from there, as the road was almost entirely dry from that point until I got home.
There was some dense freezing fog, apparently, last evening and overnight before I arrived along the Guymon to Liberal to Minneola stretch. Rime ice was pretty thick. Northeast of Liberal, I stopped briefly at a rest area and did a couple moonlit landscape photos of the rime ice. I think some of them turned out okay. Then, at sunrise, as I approached Minneola, the rime ice became much more evident to the eye with increasing light. Minneola was an amazing sight with tall trees in the neighborhoods coated with thick rime ice. The white landscape was amazing! I spent the better part of a half hour to 45 minutes photographing the scenes in Minneola before driving the final leg back home. I arrived home shortly after 9:00am, which was about a 6-hour trip home, counting all the times I stopped to photograph, so drive-time was probably just under 5 hours, for what would usually be a 3-hour drive. I have two more albums to upload: 1) the “day after” sequence of about 50 images shot in Dumas yesterday and 2) Rime ice photos from outside of Liberal in the moonlight and also at sunrise in Minneola. Look for these albums within the next couple days hopefully. In the meantime, here is what I missed back home… this is my driveway:
