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Been a while since my project Freq Modif has been active; but that sleeping beast awakes. Right now there is a Facebook page and a Soundcloud page. I have 25+ tracks ready to go online; I’m going to add them a few at a time–much like a glacier melts–so does the Freq Modif archive to create a constant stream…
And the patch above was my dad’s; he was a Radarman in the Navy. I love the patch and it hangs in the studio with all the electronics equipment!
Had a great chase with Adam Boggs today, went to the Nebraska panhandle for a slight risk. Nothing was materializing so we decided to go after this discrete supercell well behind the front line of storms. Was able to get about 60 minutes of video shown here.
The music is my band Freq Modif with a track appropriately named Mesocyclone which I’ve been wanting to release for a while.
Just finished watching this video from 2004. Yeah, better late than never! This is a great video that I got on loan from the Jefferson County library system because Douglas County didn’t have it. The DVD shows the mining for Rhodochrosite crystals in an old Silver mine near Alma in Park County.
I’ve read about mining before but I didn’t really “get it”. This video definitely filled in the gaps. They showed what the veins looked like, how they mined and all the terminology associated with mining. They showed extraction of the Rhodochrosite crystals. They showed where the probability of vugs was the greatest. One of my favorite parts was how they showed some of the chemistry to vector into the highest probability sections of the mine. Pretty neat how they learned about the Geology and put the puzzle pieces together in the 13 years that they mined the Sweet Alma mine.
Anyone into minerals or mining should defnintely check this video out, it is great!
Here’s one of the pieces shown in the movie (and the current price direct from the miner)! If you haven’t seen the Rhodochrosite exhibit in the Denver Mueseum of Nature and Science, that was also featured in this movie and it is simply spectacular! Rhodochrosite is the Colorado state mineral. Oh, and the movie was narrated by Karl Mecklenberg too!
Here are some music videos for my bands.
Multicast – Calisto (Solar Sailor)
Multicast – Hall of the Inverted Mushrooms
This was a great night from my little perch east of Larkspur. This storm had great structure from my location and I set up the camera on tripod taken open exposure shots of the storm. Meanwhile, I was enjoying the show to my South East (much more lightning but much further away).
Kristy (my sister) said that was probably the most intense lightning storm she can remembr in Denver. As I got a lot of open exposure shots from the tripod, I decided to do another experiment with time lapse.
Click here to see the slide show.
I have been playing with keeping the still camera taking long exposure shots and then animating those sequentually. This day I recorded clouds/lightning about 1/2 way between Burlington and Wray on 385 on June 1, 2009. The cloud color was outstanding as the sun went down for the evening. The storm was moving north straight towards me so I ended up getting overrun from the storm and had to put the camera away.
View the Lightning Open Exposure Time Lapse Experiment.
Was just sitting at home when the sky started to light up to our west. The lightning was numerous and appeared to be getting close so I set up the tripod on the front porch. The images were all over-exposed so I had to mess with the aperature until I could get some not-too-bright photos.
The storm shifted north so I put up the tripod in the back door…no way was I going outside with this storm!
What a great day. Here is a chase log for the tornadic supercell that started in Larkspur! Saw two tornadoes and followed the storm into Western Kansas.
Read the June 15, 2009 Elbert County Chase Log
Watch it in HD on YouTube.
Day #9. June 15, 2005. West Central Kansas.
Video (2nd part of the storm video):
This was a down day for most chasers, but our guides strutted their stuff
today by forecasting west central Kansas as a target. The mid level had a
lot of moisture coming up from Amarillo into West Central Kansas and there was a
lot of dry desert air coming up over Colorado forming a dry line with nice
instability once you got into Kansas. We drove from Kearney Nebraska and
arrived at Colby Kansas at noon. We hung out there until 5:00 when we saw
the first storm of the day blow up, and boy did it in a hurry.
We had to drive east to catch up with the storm and experienced some minor
hail on I-70 along the way. After going south right where the Trego Center
tornado was on Day 3 (June 9th) we knew that area was in for another intense
storm. We actually drove by where the tornado was and saw much destruction
to trees and even flipped over flatbed trucks. We parked along a small
country road and watched this beautiful mothership supercell evolve. I
have always wanted to see a mothership and was blessed with a super high quality
storm structure today. We hung out with two farmers who were really cool
and calm as this beast passed over their homes.
Eventually this put down a very weak tornado right before it was overwhelmed
with a squall line that had developed over eastern Colorado–very similar to the
supercell from Day 1 in South Dakota. Then all hell broke loose and we had
to run for our lives (well, not really, but there was large hail and intense
winds that would have wrecked havoc on our van). The storm quickly
swallowed us up and we narrowly escaped it after almost 2 hours of being very
closely chased. I’m positive this storm complex had to produce large
tornadoes and devastating hail storms; we’ll wait to see what the NWS report
says.
This storm was the most beautiful I’ve ever seen and produced the most wicked
lightening storm I’ve ever seen too. For over 2 hours it was black as
night (but it was daylight still) with zero visibility due to blowing rain
(gusts were around 50-60 mph). The lightening was intense in every
direction, probably 4-5 times per second. I tried to video it but I don’t
think it came out. You could see scary lowerings in the clouds through the
lightening at times. What a treat from our mother nature!
There are a lot of pictures here because I am in awe of the beauty of this
storm…I couldn’t decide on which to show so I chose many.
This is the Rear Flank Downdraft blowing dust in the distance. This is
an intense wind!
Lots and lots of rotation!
and finally a tornado. This is called a truncated cone because the
condensation funnel didn’t ever go from the cloud to the ground, but as you can
see there is a definite tornado as seen by the debris on the ground.
You can see the tip of the funnel in the center, it actually isn’t the funnel
looking thing on the left, but that was rotating too!
Because of the intensity of this storm complex, there actually could be a
chase day tomorrow as well do to the outflow boundary generated by this MCS.
We thought we’d be sitting around on day 10 but that may not be true anymore.
Gotta love how dynamic the weather is!
Here was our escape route. After leaving the tornado, we were right in
front of the golden box in the yellow. The tornado is the where the letter
F is in pink near the center of the radar. We had to navigate down the to
the right and down the green notch.
Day 6 – 06/12/2005. Texas Panhandle
Video (first half is a few days later in Kansas; second half is the Texas Twisters from 6/12):
Today was suggested to be a big day due to the instability and jet digging
in. We headed east and south from Plainview. There blew up two large
storms and we were positioned well between the two. The northern storm was
by far the largers storm and so we targeted it. It ended up dying and the
southern storm was exploding so we went south. This storm ended up being
on a squall line so we focused on the southern storm. Bill’s friends at
the Lubbock office called and told us the sheriff had reported a tornado with
the second to last storm and so we headed fast and furious to that storm.
We had to punch the tip of the core to get there and when the base of the storm
came into view we knew we’d be in for a treat. We watched as a large wedge
was formed and touch the ground. This beast became rain wrapped and we
moved to beat the hail wrapped core. We proceeded to see multiple vortex
and another cone and ended up with a roping out elephant trunk. In total,
we counted 5 tornados from this supercell.
There is a 1/2 mile wide tornado that is rain and dirt wrapped in there, don’t
be fooled…it was rotating VERY fast!
My still shots of this multiple vortex tornado (yes, one tornado with two-three
littler tornados in it…these tornados were rotating around each other).
This came out of a new mesocyclone base after the wedge dissapated (at least we
think, the wedge could still be rain wrapped behind and to the left…we got the
hell out of there so we’re not sure). I concentrated on video at this
point and don’t have captured images from that yet.
At this time we saw that the last storm in the squall line (one storm south)
was growing enormous and was swallowing this already huge storm. We drove
fast and furious and upon diving out from the forward flank downdraft we saw a
huge horseshoe shaped wall base with a wall cloud. This never really
shaped up to much so we ended up driving away and viewing this storm from a
distance. This was a HUGE storm that took up several counties. We
saw amazing anvil crawling lightening and beautiful striated mammatus.
The above two pictures are of a wall cloud under this monster. You can
see from the two pictures the downward motion of the wall cloud, we really
thought it was going to tornado. Behind it is the rear flank downdraft
(RFD) hole…you would not want to be right under this hole as you’d probably
experience 100 mph winds and softball hail. And yes, there was rapid
rotation in these clouds at this time.
Rapidly rotating funnel with tail cloud that was very active, but didn’t put
down any tornado. This beast was so huge and so efficient it didn’t have a
chance to make a tornado…there was just too much rain cooled air falling down
through the RFD and cooling the inflow too much.
This is a typical shot from the trip. The above radar shows this super
cell. It probably took up at least one whole county and a 1/3 of all the
counties surrounding it. Maybe 50 miles at the base?
These are called Puscular Rays. You are looking at blue sky with a
little bit of the anvil at the top of the photo. I haven’t quite learned
exactly what causes this, but it is like a rainbow effect, there is refraction
of light around the supercell forming a “inverted shadow” of sorts on the
horizon. That is the while triangle.
Picture from our ride away from this storm after sunset. Incredible
storm structure, but it would require a fish-eye lens to do the storm justice.
Notice the shelf cloud sucking in moisture from the lower level of the
atmosphere (950 mb). Then the inflow right above it sucking in mid-level
moisture (700 mb), then the anvil way above that. This middle inflow band
demonstrates the amount of rotation in this storm as it is bent around from
behind the storm. This was a very healthy storm that died about a couple
hours after sunset due to the loss of heating.
The first tornado was the largest of the trip, we figure 1/2 mile wide at the
base. We saw several trees fly up and also several power transformer
explosions. A couple of towns were in the wake of some serious hail
problems associated with this storm.