My Chicago Garden

Miles Traveled: 146 

Forecast and radar data says time to go if I want to catch the first storm in Ripley County, IN. I have about a 60 minute drive to where I want to be (Red Dot on Map) The atmosphere wasn't right for a tornado or anything more than soggy wet and high wind but I was going to go postal at work (long story) if I didn't leave for a half day. So what better to take your mind off of work than to try and keep yourself from getting killed by mother nature!
I arrived in Ripley county just as they activated their spotter net with the storm about 5 minutes from crossing the county line. They were begging for mobile spotters so I checked in and told them I figured South Ripley was my best bet. Net Control agreed and off I went. Like I thought. Visibility down to 10 feet at times. 30+ mph winds. Heavy rain and dime size hail. Nothing that meets reporting criteria. Oh well. Still was fun. I did a little driving around to see about reporting any damage but only spotted VERY minor flooding and decided to not report. It's always great spotting in Ripley county because their Net Control will call out constant storm activity so you don't have to be worried (as much) of having a storm crawl up your backside while you drool at the one in front of you. Sorry about the bad pictures. I was fighting with the camera all day trying to get the auto-focus to turn off. Of course the manual was at home.
Hey!!! It's a McDonalds. Just in time for lunch. While stopped for lunch I hear Ripley net control call out that a storm to south of the county was tracking directly for Burlington, KY and it was much larger than the one Ripley had earlier. Figures! Burlington is my home town. Luckily the whole region saw nothing but high winds, rain and small hail. Some power outages across the river in Ohio but nothing major. This chase sorta makes up for the total bust a few days before.

 Miles Traveled: 15

I hadn't planned on chasing today as the forecast didn't look good in the morning. That'll teach me to only look at the forecast and data once! Anyway, I happened to bring up my radar software towards the end of the afternoon while working on something else and I notice a Tornado Watch for the county west of me! What the heck?!?!?!

A quick kiss to the wife and a respond of "You owe me big if you go!!" and I was out the door.

An absolute and total bust. Over the past several days I had noticed something wierd going on with the power distribution in my car. Ham radio would flicker on and off, etc. I didn't have time to fix anything. I had taken enough time to figure out it was something with my wiring.

Well wouldn't you know it! 15 miles into the chase and the entire system shuts down. No power to the GPS, no power to the Laptop, no power to the radios, nothing. I pulled off the road to try and "hotwire" at least my radio in but even that failed.

Given the fact that my wife wasn't too thrilled with me chasing today I decided to turn around and go home.

At home I unplugged everything, ran a voltage meter over every connection and finally found the problem. Bad connection to the car battery. ARGH!!!

Makes me sick to my stomach to think I missed the last chase opportunity (probabily) of this horrible chase season to a bad battery connection. I think Im going to cry.