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I’m in the mood to play with photos, since I’m anticipating my upcoming storm-chasing safari. While I await a better weather pattern, I’m keeping occupied with photo opps at home in Florida, like this pretty sunset Sunday amid dying storms over the St. Johns River. We desperately need any rain we can get, and I’m hoping Monday will be more productive.

But since it was beautiful for most of Sunday, we went to a local car show with friends. Vintage Kulture’s event in Cocoa Village was a feast for the eyes and imagination. I love shooting the retro-futuristic lines of these cars and giving them even more vintage flavor in processing.

I’ve chased storms every year, to some degree, since 1997. By chasing storms, I mean I’ve headed to Tornado Alley to chase the big storms, the grand, rotating supercells that draw me out there year after year. But I’ve always come from the East Coast, and that’s where the challenge lies when scheduling a storm chase.

A few people have the freedom and money to fly out to chase whenever a system looks really good. Or they already live in Tornado Alley; several years ago, I looked into moving to Oklahoma from Maryland, but I never really found the perfect job and ended up moving to Florida’s Lightning Alley instead. At least we have some picturesque storms here, and some spectacular lightning, albeit not as frequent as a photographer would like.

So I’m still having to plan my chasecations, as we outlanders call them. At least I don’t have a strict job-regimented schedule now, but I am working as a freelancer, so I still have to schedule work and think about the long-term costs of a chase trip. And that meant I couldn’t go to the Plains for the April 14 outbreak. What all these dreary details boil down to is that I set May aside for my chasecation, but now, the pattern stinks for storms.

Oh, yes, there will be storms. There might even be a few astounding ones, and a few tornadoes, in these first couple of weeks of May. But the outlook for the next couple of weeks doesn’t promise a great deal of severe weather, especially not in the Southern Plains, which is ideal chasing territory. So I’ve put off my chasecation until the pattern improves, in hopes that the jet stream will dip down to where it’s supposed to be in spring.

Waiting is actually a horrible gamble, because some years, the pattern shuts off storms completely. You get the summer “death ridge” or equivalent, and you might as well just stay home. So I’m hoping my gamble pays off as I sit at home, watching storms develop here and there, and watching the computer models evolve. I’m ready for the chase, but the atmosphere isn’t ready for me.

“Chasing Reality” visited Muskogee, Oklahoma, without me last weekend, during the Bare Bones International Film & Music Festival. Last fall it won best documentary at the Melbourne Independent Filmmakers Festival here on Florida’s Space Coast. Now that it’s traveled a bit, I’ve posted it on YouTube (below).

I made this film in one day, or over several years, depending on your perspective. I used some of my archival footage of storms and tornadoes, but I also interviewed a group of friends and chasers during a typical marginal chase day that took us from Kansas into southern Nebraska. I wanted to show how much driving, bad food and waiting around were involved in getting those few seconds of amazing footage – and that not every chase is awesome or extreme. But I still think every chase is awe-inspiring, in its way, because I love the freedom of following the weather and exploring the beautiful Great Plains.

Here’s the movie. It’s just over 14 minutes. Don’t forget to check the quality setting – the gear symbol in the lower right of the movie window – and choose 720p HD if your connection allows it.

I’m getting ready to go storm chasing in May … and will be going a bit mad over the next few days during an expected outbreak of severe weather in Tornado Alley. (Do you have your weather radio yet?) So as therapy – and as part of a flurry of updates of my storm-chasing-focused sister site SkyDiary.com – I’ve put together a little video from an interesting chase on May 18, 2010, in the Texas Panhandle. Near Dumas, I saw one tornado. I also saw a huge, rotating wall cloud that was dragging its butt on the ground, but from my perspective, I couldn’t confirm a tornado. This storm was a perfect example of one that can inspire all kinds of specious tornado reports, thanks to all the dangling scud clouds, yet definitely warranted tornado warnings.

May is a month away – and for me, that means my annual Tornado Alley trip is about that far away, too. I’ll likely head out with the first good system, but it will be after May 1, when I am speaking to the Camera Club of Brevard about photographing storms and storm chasing.

Saturday was a good warmup. That’s when Jim Leonard played host to a storm chaser gathering in Boynton Beach, Florida. There was good food, lots of good storm video, and lots of tale-telling, of course. Enhancing the experience were some pretty little storms that rolled through.

There are a lot of storm chasers tearing their hair out tonight on Facebook as they see media coverage of the San Antonio tornado – and all the other tornadoes that have struck in the past couple of days. This is even worse than the “There was no warning!” cliche that showed up on ABC after a recent outbreak, when there was lots of warning, relatively speaking. In this case, as noted by chaser Scott McPartland, a TV station in San Antonio was telling people to send in their tornado photos in the middle of the event, when its audience was in imminent danger, instead of telling people in the path of the storm to seek shelter.

This kind of coverage is wrong on a number of levels, but just for starters, it’s encouraging untrained people to risk their lives for a photo. The request for images, especially during the event, subtly minimizes the danger by implying that it’s perfectly OK to stand outside in a tornado and take photos. Storm chasers do this kind of thing all the time, but we have some idea of how the storm will behave, in what direction it’s moving, and when to get out of the way. When “news” people take the same path as sensationalistic reality shows, which tend to present chasing as an amusement-park ride, they are sending a message that somehow holding a camera will prevent you from getting killed.

There’s another side effect of this crowdsourcing of severe weather events: Photos of tornadoes from OTHER days and storms are being sent in and put on TV as part of the current event. This hoaxing is becoming widespread, and TV stations and other media outlets (print/online included), eager for free and dramatic content, are posting them without checking the facts. Not only are they treading on someone else’s copyright, like that of my friends at Cloud 9 Tours, but they are obfuscating the truth and making themselves look silly in the process.

I’m not into media-bashing. I still work for various media outlets as a freelancer. But news people have a job here, and it isn’t getting hot ratings. While many on-air meteorologists and journalists do a fantastic job of warning the public during severe weather, irresponsible coverage will only incur more criticism and damage journalists’ credibility. The first concern in a life-threatening situation should be to pass on warnings to the public, not get the “extreme” shot. And a little verification of all those nice, free reports from citizen journalists wouldn’t hurt. At some point, immediacy ceases to be an excuse.

Storm chasers get great footage, but some of the most dramatic and intense footage I’ve seen has been by people who shot tornadoes from their homes or backyards. It’s not just their proximity to the storm in question; the storms are coming to them, after all. It’s also the sense that their homes are in peril; that their nightmares are coming to life; that they’re envisioning the destruction and what will come after – or remembering a disaster that came before.

The character of Judy in my novel “Funnel Vision” has this feeling whenever she sees a tornado, and especially if a storm threatens her town in Kansas. It’s easy to put yourself in her shoes when you see videos like this one by Kevin Adkins from West Liberty, Kentucky, on March 2. I have dreams about wall clouds and tornadoes like this – massive and ominous, whose real-time rotation is so rapid it looks like a special effect. The fact that the tornado is grinding through the mountains makes this video even more surreal; like a horror-movie monster, its terrible form can’t be seen until it’s just about to consume you.

I had the pleasure of speaking with Court Lewis, host of American Variety Radio on select public-radio stations, about storm chasing and my novel “Funnel Vision” for a show that will air starting this week. Catch it at 8:30 p.m. this Thursday on WETS 89.5 FM (Tri-Cities, Tennessee); at 7:30 a.m. Sunday on WFIT 89.5 FM (Melbourne, Florida); at 4:30 p.m. Sunday on WMFE 90.7 FM (Orlando, Florida) and 9:30 a.m. Wednesday, Feb. 15, on WQCS 88.9 FM (Fort Pierce, Florida). Or you can always catch it in the archives online after it airs.

If you missed me on Nerdy@30 on Blog Talk Radio, listen here. That was a lot of fun, too. Host Marcus Kastler lives in Kansas, so he has firsthand knowledge of severe storms.

I had a great time today chatting with UCF students in online classes. Great questions. My madly typing fingers got a great workout. Does your group need a speaker, or would your book club like to discuss ‘Funnel Vision’? Let me know.

My paperback has joined the Kindle edition on Amazon… hooray! Want a copy of this storm-chasing adventure novel? Help Funnel Vision stir up a tornado in Amazon’s rankings on Tuesday by buying your copy then! The ebook is just $2.99; the paperback list price is $14.95. Don’t have a Kindle? The Kindle ebook reader app is free on multiple devices, including your iPhone, iPad and Android. Thanks and happy chasing!

WHERE TO BUY

On Amazon: Funnel Vision Kindle edition  | Funnel Vision paperback

Also on B&N Nook | Smashwords | Coming soon to iBooks/iTunes

Read more about the book …

And in case you missed the book trailer:

I was wondering if the giveaway of ‘Funnel Vision’ had gone live yet on Goodreads, and holy cow, has it ever! I’m grateful for the requests and look forward to sending the five books out when the giveaway period ends Jan. 30. The Goodreads gods determine the lucky winners in all giveaways.

Here’s more stormy fun. I’ve just uploaded to YouTube a video I did almost five years ago, featuring 10 years of storms packed into 10 minutes. There’s a smattering of hail, lightning, storm structure and tornadoes, including several time-lapse clips and music.