Wednesday, June 9, 2010 - 9:17PM CDT
Wednesday, June 9, 2010 - 9:17PM CDT |
6/9 New Baden, IL sunset
Lightning bugs are out in force:
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| Dan, Some what off subject but, is it true that WX-Worx/xm no longer lets the ground users use there Mariner packages? Instead they are only allowed to use the responder package? What have you been using? - Posted by kurt |
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| I'm still on the Master Mariner package (have been for the past 5 years or so) and I haven't heard anything from them about that. Hopefully it's just a rumor as I'd have to stop using it myself if I had to pay $100 a month. - Posted by Dan R. from New Baden, IL |
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Tuesday, June 8, 2010 - 11:58PM CDT |
6/8 Lightning chasing in MO/IL
HD CHASE VIDEO: Midwestern lightning - June 5 and 8
The video linked above contains three segments: 1.) anvil crawlers/tower lightning in St. Louis from June 8, 2.) CGs near Carlinville, IL on June 8, and 3.) some CGs from Hannibal on June 5.
Tuesday I left home at about 5:30PM, after finally talking myself into not ignoring the weak convection up along I-72 west of Springfield. From a tornado perspective, the storm was total junk - but lightning wise, it was a good catch. I parked north of Carlinville for about an hour to watch it drift past while shooting some video and photos. Storms like this at night/dusk (vivid, tall CG lightning) can yield epic results - but during the day, not so much. I did what I could with two-second exposures at F22 - which of course brought out all of my sensor dust spots (I'm sure you'll find a few that I missed with the healing tool).
I headed back to STL for another MCS rolling in from the west after dark. This complex ended up veering southward, only clipping the metro area with some electrified stratiform precip. Which of course, means upward tower lightning becomes the subject. Out of the more than 8 upward-lightning-capable towers in St. Louis, the KETC (PBS) tower off of Tesson Ferry road near Arnold (near the Meramac River) has the best/easiest/safest photography vantage points. So, that's the one I've been heading to in storms like these. The anvil crawler display tonight was high quality. However, only two upward strikes occured to the tower in the 90 minutes I was there. The first one happened literally in the first three seconds I had the video camera recording, immediately after I framed the shot (see the video above), so I missed getting the still.
Video frame grab of the first tower hit, with anvil crawlers and a positive CG in the background:
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Monday, June 7, 2010 - 3:23PM CDT |
New Baden, IL: renamed by 1896 tornado?
Since I moved to New Baden, Illinois in January, I've heard the account from many of my new neighbors about the way the village supposedly got its current name (after the topic of storms comes up in conversation, which it invariably does because it's part of the story behind why I'm here). On May 27, 1896, New Baden was struck by a large and violent F4 tornado - possibly Greensburg-caliber in its proportionate impacts - that destroyed most of the town. (The tornado was part of a large outbreak - considered by many as one of the worst in US history - that also devastated parts of St. Louis). As the legend goes, the village was called 'Baden' before the tornado, and after rebuilding was complete, 'New' was added to the name to signify the town's survival of the natural disaster that befell it. Think of if Greensburg, Kansas was renamed New Greensburg today, and you'd basically have the same concept.
I thought this was a remarkable coincidence since as a chaser, I didn't know this little bit of history before choosing to move here. However, I've done a little investigating and found that while the account of the tornado is factual and the town was originally called 'Baden', the village was actually incorporated and renamed 'New Baden' in 1884, twelve years before the May 1896 tornado.
This from the 1955 publication "New Baden Centennial - 1855-1955" (Thanks to the New Baden Village Hall for providing me with a copy):
"An election for trustees for the purpose of serving in the town seeking incorporation as the village of New Baden was held December 16, 1882. Up to the time of incorporation, the town was known as Baden. The village was officialy incorporated in 1884 and the Village Seal and Village Law were adopted."Furthermore, local newspaper articles written about the 1896 tornado immediately after it happened referred to the village as "New Baden". This from the Edwardsville Intelligencer (Edwardsville, IL 29 May 1896):
"Wednesday evening about 6 o'clock the village of New Baden, in the southwest part of Clinton county, came near being wiped out of existence. Ten persons were killed and sixteen seriously injured. It is a town of 800 inhabitants, on the Louisville, Evansville & St. Louis railroad, 40 miles west of St. Louis. It is a German settlement, beautifully [illegible] on a hill."(I'm not sure where this writer got the idea of a hill in New Baden!) Then there is this article from The Evening News (Lincoln, NE 29 May 1896):
"Nine Killed in New Baden, Ills.ST LOUIS, May 29, -- Specials from the various storm swept towns in Illinois and Missouri furnish the following list of dead: At New Baden, Ills: Peter Krause, Mrs. Krause, Pierce Meyer, Minnie Rust, Adam Peters, Ida Born, Nellie Born, John Ferguson, an unknown peddler, residence St. Louis . . ."
In a similar way that many US cities/states/regions came to possess the 'New' prefix (such as New York, New Mexico, New England, New Jersey, etc), New Baden was named after the area in which its first residents emigrated from - in this case, the historical German state of Baden (now Baden-Württemberg, Germany). There are several other villages and towns in the region similarly with the word 'New' in front of their name. New Memphis and New Minden are just a few miles away from New Baden, as well as New Douglas and New Athens, also on the rural Illinois side of the St. Louis metro area.
So, while the 1896 tornado was probably the most significant historical event to affect the town, it wasn't the source of the 'New' in New Baden.
Now you know the real story!
Footnote: New Baden was struck again by another significant tornado on December 12, 1982, an F3 with a 15-mile path.
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Saturday, June 5, 2010 - 11:59PM CDT |
6/5 Hannibal, MO lightning
I targeted Hannibal, Missouri today. I was concerned about ongoing cloud cover and precip fouling the primary risk area into Iowa and Illinois, but since some clearing was taking place, I didn't want to discount it. However, I was particularly interested in an outflow boundary in northern Missouri from the overnight complex of storms. This region was getting much more sunlight, and by 3PM, had 3000-4000 surface-based CAPE along and south of the boundary. Surface winds were southerly and 40+ knots of NW flow at 500mb were present overhead. Models showed convection in the vicinity of the boundary by late afternoon. Hannibal was the compromise between this and the area outlined by the SPC in Illinois. Storms happened in my target, but they were not tornadic as the ones farther northeast in Illinois. Apparently today was one of Illinois' worst tornado outbreaks in recent years, with the impact areas in the northern half of the state. I would not have been able to catch the Illinois supercells even if I had tried, so I wasn't too concerned about missing them.
The lightning show in Hannibal was spectacular after dark - unlike on Tuesday, this storm featured frequent, highly-visible cloud-to-ground flashes. Twice, a strike knocked out power to large chunks of the city with bright power flashes - wish I had been running the video camera.
Looking north over Hannibal at a 'scud bomb' under the shelf cloud with lightning behind it:
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| I have never come across the term 'scud bomb' before but I like it! You are very lucky to live in such a lightning active climate. Great photos. - Posted by Steven |
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Friday, June 4, 2010 - 10:17AM CDT |
Hurricane chasing in 2010?
If there was one aspect of storm chasing that life and practicality (and probably a little bit of the economy) has claimed from me, sadly it's been that of hurricanes and tropical systems. I have been in four US landfalling hurricanes (Isabel, Frances, Ivan and Rita) and two tropical storms (Ernesto and Gabrielle). From 2003 to 2007, my efforts to cover hurricane landfalls were partly for the chase experience, and partly for the archive footage.
All of my hurricane trips were a lot of fun and definitely adventurous, and I hope to someday work out being able to justify more in the future. But since I started my stock footage business in 2003, hurricanes and tropical storms - to this day - remain my all-time worst sellers. Not just the worst, but incredibly only two small sales over those years have involved hurricane video. On top of that, these days the ENG market for hurricane coverage by freelancers is at its worst ever. All that means that hurricane trips are completely out-of-pocket ventures right now. Since I have some higher-priority lightning goals for the Midwest this summer, and after an active spring tornado season has crunched chase operating funds, I have to make a choice to cut something from my annual travel agendas. Unfortunately now (as with the past few years), it has to be hurricanes.
Factoring into that choice is two main things. One, covering a hurricane is the riskiest type of chase endeavor, in terms of the threat of vehicle/equipment damage and the overall probability of any number of crisis situtations developing. I feel that I was blessed to escape all six of my career intercepts without major incidents that could have been very costly and/or high on the scale of inconvenience/suffering. Unlike a tornado chase trip, a hurricane expedition can inflict real damage to your vehicle, destroy camera equipment, involve unpleasant confrontations with law enforcement and/or strand you in an area devoid of power, food, water or shelter for days. The preparations for a hurricane trip are like planning for a self-sufficient venture into a war zone.
The second major strike against hurricanes is travel costs. From West Virginia, an Atlantic hurricane intercept was a fairly easy endeavor travel-cost wise - five hours to a 'base' in Raleigh, then another 2-3 hours or less to the coast. Now that I live in St. Louis, getting to either the Gulf or Atlantic coasts is a 12 to 15 hour trip one-way - and a mid-Florida target is over 1,000 miles and 18 hours away! While long drives have never been much of an obstacle for me in terms of the effort/endurance involved (I always love a good road trip), their cost is and always has been a formidable barrier. With no way to even partially recover costs on such a major venture - particularly when considering the risk to my equipment and my truck - a hurricane trip seems much less appealing to me these days.
So, hurricane chasing for me has become a thing of the past, at least temporarily. Unless I can find ways to minimize/manage the risks and costs of intercepts, this season I will be watching US tropical activity from here at home. One consolation is that hurricanes, once well inland, frequently pose a tornado threat. As a tropical system decays after landfall, dry air often wraps in and allows for sunlight to destabilize the low levels. That introduces instability in an environment of extreme wind shear - which has historically been a prolific tornado producer when it happens. So, a landfalling Gulf hurricane that makes its way toward the Midwest may provide something worthwhile to go after without the long, expensive drive and attendant risks.
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Thursday, June 3, 2010 - 3:03AM CDT |
June 2 St. Louis lightning
HD CHASE VIDEO: St. Louis overnight lightning
Another round of lightning over STL overnight. The best CG action was north of town, but a few nice discharges occured over downtown - the best one courtesy of an upward strike to a tower to the south (out of view to the left in the first image below).
I barely missed a still of the first CG in the video clip that struck dead center under the arch. Here is a frame grab from video:
Looking at the frame grab closely and comparing it with the still image, it appears that the bolt struck the antenna on top of whatever building that is in the far background. I'll have to confirm that later sometime - but here is a zoom comparison of the scene from the stills and the video:
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