My Chicago Garden

I’m heading out storm chasing today with Paul Sirvatka (meteorology department of CoD) and David Mayhew (professional photographer) .  Paul is having a heck of a time deciding where to go while David is pushing him to send us further west.  I’m just along for the ride and bring my geek toys.  We should be out until late Thursday night.  Paul is all jazzed about Thursday, but he changes his mind every 20 minutes.  Pretty funny to watch.

If you want to track us you can head over to the Spotter Network and look at the National Activity map and search for a little green car labeled "David Mayhew" or "KI4BUM" (my ham callsign). If we see anything good I’m going to try and fire up the live streaming camera for the first time.

Update @11:30PM

Two confirmed tornados and one maybe!

My first time in over a year I’ve been out on a real "chase".  Everything goes to Paul at CoD…I wouldn’t have gone that far by myself

First tornado only Paul saw..and it was more of a "dust whirl" than a tornado he says.  The second was obviously a tornado. But I was too busy looking at data and submitting the report that the only chance I had to snap a picture was when we were repositioning.  Dave/Paul got much better ones.  Dave’s pictures are here

Third one I never got a picture of as I switched to video since Dave and Paul were on their expensive cameras ;)….I think I got it but haven’t had time to check.  I was running data (of course) with my head down in the screen but happened to look up and scan behind the car (as I was trained by CoD) and yell’d "TORNADO" and everybody turned around and started snapping. Of course I’m throwing Spotter Network reports in while everybody else is shooting pictures ;)  That’s okay…that’s what I’m good at.

Also got a call from Omaha NWS (via Spotter Network) asking for ground truth.  Yeah! It works!

Figures…

As I posted in an earlier post I had invested in a battery isolator/combiner and some auxiliary battery capacity so I wouldn’t damage my vehicle electric system.  Well that system paid off in an unexpected way.  On my drive up to Chicago for my first day of work several weeks ago, my car lost all electrical systems. The dash went black and my car would not shift out of first gear (automatic).  After a few minutes I remembered I had the backup system that was intended to charge off the car and power my laptop system. It was never intended to power the car itself. But that’s what it did…perfectly.  I reached down and flipped the toggle switch and the car sprang back to life.  I was able to limp the car into my new place of work.

I was afraid that the car wouldn’t start when it came time to take it to the shop, but it did.  I played with it all the way to the shop, flipping the toggle off/on to make sure it was the car electric that was having problems. Sure enough. Without the backup system the car would simply not work.

Sometimes it does pay to be prepared!

My Subaru Outback has been having electrical problems of some kind over the last few weeks. Last week I took it into the shop and they replaced some parts and gave it it's 90,000 mile checkup. $1500 later and it purrs like a kitten.

I'm not going to take any chances though and have decided to upgrade the electrical distribution system and to protect the main battery from discharge.

I've invested in a Hellroaring battery isolater/combiner, an auxilary Optima Yellow Top battery and some Stinger power wiring and terminals. If something fails on the car..it wont be the electrical. I'll post pictures when I'm done. If it doesn't look like a hack job.

 Miles Traveled: ???

Picture Gallery

Total Bust. Just some random weather pictures while driving around…..again.

But this time my oldest girl (Sierra) went with me for her first storm chase! She had a blast…eventually.

A short video of she and I taking some video of a nice sunset after the storm had passed. [Download] 36Meg AVI

April 28 to May 8th, 2006

See the blog I kept while on the chase

Awsome trip! I plan on going again next year.