So tonight I used my newest video camera, a Garmin VIRB, to capture lightning over the city of Tucson. The camera did a better job than my older GoPros, but my iPhone 13 Pro still does a better job with the after sunset shots. I’m going to stick to the iPhone 13 Pro for the foreseeable future.
You should be able some of tonight’s shot on my pixelfed.social feed.
Tonight I revived my old Go Pro Hero 3+ and 4. I wanted to see how they’d do during a storm passing through, so at the first indication of lightning tonight I set the Hero 4 up in the driveway on the tripod.
The shots were good, but not great. Here’s an example.
After playing around with the tripod and settings in Photomator, I decided to get my iPhone 13 Pro setup on the tripod and see how that did for the second round of storms that passed through.
I much prefer the shot from the iPhone 13 Pro and will probably stick with that in the future. When mounted on a tripod it does a brilliant job of accomplishing what I’m looking to accomplish.
And that’s beautiful shots of Mother Nature at her best.
I watched this storm gather itself up, inch its way across the mountains, and make its way into the Tucson area. I admired the beauty of this effort for nearly 45 minutes until the rain finally let loose and chased me inside.
Watching and experience a storm is a life affirming experience for me. It makes me feel so alive and at the same time so part of this planetary experience. Mother Nature is a thing of utter beauty, and I’ve felt this energy around thunderstorms since I was a small kid in the bedroom of my folks’ 10×50 trailer (with 8×40 addition) when my sister was young enough to still be in a crib.
Mother Nature is awesome. It’s a privilege to witness her beauty up close.
Monsoon season has arrived. Mother Nature is a little feisty tonight.
Here’s some of the show over the city of Tucson.
One of the things I love about the storms here in the desert is the spectacular lightning display. There’s a lot of cloud to ground lightning in these storms, something I haven’t seen nearly as much when chasing storms in Tornado Alley.
Even though my birthday is over a month away, Jamie, Chris, and Mike gave me my birthday present. Mike kindly installed it yesterday. It’s a Tempest Weatherflow weather station.
I’ve had my eye on this weather station for a while. As I’ve mentioned many times, I’m fascinated by weather, and the guys thought it’d be best if I had my birthday present before Monsoon Season starts up later this month.
As a trained Weather Spotter for the National Weather Service, I’m excited about this piece of hardware installed on our roof. I’ve already given the family the weather stats for the hour several times today and I’ve been playing around with the incoming data and the like. I’ve also started contributing to Weather Underground. I was excited to see the number of weather stations in our neighborhood, and I’m happy to be contributing our data to the mix.
Mike was able to use an old DirecTV mount for the weather station so that made installation easy. It’s solar powered, so I don’t need to climb up there to change the batteries like the old days when we lived in Central New York. And this weather station has real-time data, so I’ll be able to see how high the wind gusts actually are as a storm is rolling through. Plus, this provides lightning detection with a roughly 40 km radius.
In addition to our station stats in Weather Underground, I’ll probably end up putting a widget somewhere on the page here to share our weather data. I love this stuff!
While outside of Panhandle, Texas yesterday I did a quick live video on Facebook. Here’s the video.
We’re getting close enough to my annual storm chasing trip to where I can start pinpointing the area of the country I’ll be visiting. It’s going to be an interesting trip this year; this is the first time I’m chasing in May instead of June. I knew this would result in being a little farther south than I was last year, but with the odd weather patterns as we move from La Niña to El Niño, and the jet stream doing some interesting things, it looks like I’m going to be very well acquainted with Texas and Oklahoma.
I have absolutely no issue with that.
I like exploring areas of the United States I haven’t been to before. Small towns are fascinating to me, and it makes me a little sad to see them become a little more generic or cookie cutter as corporations do their best to make each town look the same with their big box stores and chain restaurants.
Like previous trips, I plan on staying way from the Interstates as much as possible (unless it’ll get me to a storm faster), and I plan on eating at locally owned restaurants as much as I can. I’ll probably listen to local radio stations as well. Having worked in radio in a former life, radio is always fascinating to me. And with some radio stations I get a really different point of view than what I normally experience in my day to day life.
I’m looking forward to the experience. My plan is to direct my content to this blog instead of relying on social media to share my experiences.
My next storm chasing trip is just three weeks away. We’re starting to get into the zone where long range forecasts start to mean something. Nothing changes like the weather, but this far out one can start to see how things might shape up.
There’s several weather and storm chasing blogs and other outlets that I follow on a regular basis. Most are predicting a lively experience the week that I plan on being out there. I’m looking forward to seeing and experience some of Mother Nature’s feisty moments, in a safe manner of course. After all, I do need to return the rental car still intact. My brain chemistry won’t allow me to just destroy someone else’s property just because I have insurance.
It looks like I might be going a little farther east than I did last year. I’m also going a month earlier than I did last year, so theoretically I shouldn’t have to drive as far north as I did in 2022, but only time will tell. I’ll drive where I need to drive.
If the week turns out to be quiet, I still have plenty of towns and cities and the like to explore, and that can be just as fun for me, albeit in a very different way than riding out 60+ MPH winds, but still enjoyable.
I plan on being a little more active with sharing content from my adventures during this chase week in May. I’m still not sure how Twitter will figure into the mix, any foundation of stability and reliability with that platform is quickly eroding, but I will be sharing photos on Pixelfed, and unfortunately, Instagram. I’m not a fan of the Meta owned properties but I use them because so many folks I know are there.
I may also stream on YouTube, we’ll just have to see. I’m trying to decide if I need to build a new YouTube channel specifically for storm chasing and associated content. After all, the monsoon here in the desert can be lively as well, so I’d have plenty of opportunity to share videos and the such there. I think all the cool kids have a specific focus to their channels; I should probably do the same.
I’ll definitely be sharing my experiences here on Ye Ol’ Ancient Blog. Deciding to drive the entire trip, instead of flying to a starting point, has given me the opportunity to carry a little more in technology, so I should have plenty of horsepower at my disposal to make sharing a bit easier.
After decades of chasing storms, I finally went ahead and became an official SKYWARN spotter for the National Weather Service here in Tucson. Tonight’s class was very informative and enjoyable. I’m going to work on the advanced classes (which are presented online on an ad hoc basis) this weekend.
My storm chasing trip in 30 days away. I’ve been counting down to this trip since the first of the year and I’m really excited for the chase opportunities in May. I’m fortunate to be in a place and space that allows me to take this time off and do this sort of thing for a week. Hopefully Mother Nature will be a bit feisty and give me things to chase. Long range forecasts are looking promising, though I may have to go farther east than I did last year.
If Mother Nature decides to settle down a bit, there’s still plenty of exploring to do in the nation’s heartland. And I’m good with that too.
Just a guy with a husband. We’ve been together 28 years and he still makes me see fireworks on a daily basis. Hiker. Storm Chaser. Private Pilot. Tech Guy. Hackerish.
Weird? Eccentric!
