About a month and a half ago, I was contacted by a producer inquiring about using my dust devil video from March 31, 2000 for an upcoming show on the Weather Channel. I’ve been contacted in the past, but nothing…
May 25, 2011 – Moderate risk chase in central Illinois
It’s been a crazy year for storms except here in central Illinois. The amount of large cities virtually wiped off the map has been unbearable. The death toll is also really hard to grasp right now. Just this week alone…
Review: Andrew Pritchard’s PWX 2010 DVD
Before I get to the actual review, I wanted to point out a few general observations about Andrew Pritchard’s storm videos.
Storm chasing is expensive
Unless you’re lucky enough to have a cable network paying your way, then chasing is usually funded out of our own pockets. His DVD’s are inexpensive and a great value in my opinion.
He chases Illinois
Like myself, Andrew mainly chases Illinois. He gets away to the plains when he can, but most of his chases are right here in Illinois. There’s a gazillion chasers in Oklahoma, but a much smaller percentage in Illinois. It’s nice to see video from my home state especially on days that I am unable to chase.
October 26, 2010 – Late season chase in eastern Illinois
I haven’t chased in October in a long time, so I was very interested in today’s setup. All the forecast models were predicting a near record low pressure so it definitely was worth paying attention to. The SPC had issued a high risk east of here and we were right on the edge of the moderate risk. Unfortunately the timing of the system would bring the storms through in the early morning before there was any daylight. Nevertheless, I was anxious to chase one more time this year.
I woke up around 4:30 in the morning and a line of storms were moving across Illinois. I departed around 5:00am and headed west on Rt 10 just west of the Champaign/Piatt county line. I put my anemometer on the roof and was surprised that it still worked. 🙂 I was only getting winds in the 20-23mph range though so think it might have been on the low side. I waited and waited, but I didn’t get much to write home about. I decided before it completely passed me that I would head back to Champaign and wait it out. I went up to Parkland College and shot some video of trees and lights blowing in the wind. It was almost 7:00am and I was about to call the chase a bust.
August 4, 2010 – Wind, hail, and heavy rain in Champaign/Vermilion County IL
It was nice to wake up to a slight risk of severe weather here in central IL. Of course it’s August, so we were also under an extreme heat warning. Heat indices were hitting 110+ so conditions were definitely ripe for storms. I was anxious to go chasing so I could try out a new chase gadget. I recently picked up an iPad which I mainly bought to get me quickly on the road rather than wasting time hooking up a laptop. Since most of my chases this year have been without a laptop, I figured it would be a nice change to have a larger screen device for radar.
A severe thunderstorm watch was issued at 3:15pm for central IL. I finished up some things for work and then prepared to head out. There was a nice severe warned cell in western IL, but I didn’t really want to drive all the way over there and have it die out on me. I decided to focus on the storms in the northern part of Champaign county.