Scott's blog

Indoor astrophotography

2011-01-20T23:24:00.010-06:00

It's a given that the coldest days of winter are going to have the clearest, most crisp night skies of the year. Typically those clear winter nights don't involve much wind - unfortunately tonight is a different story.

Thankfully, I have two large sliding doors in my apartment; one facing south and the other facing west. There is also a large cemetery which gives about a 100 yard buffer zone between my apartment and the nearest houses to the south, and about 300 yards to the west. I lucked out getting this apartment, not only does it have great vistas, but having the large, south-facing sliding door really helps warm the place up on sunny days.

Anyway, I thought I would share a few photos I took tonight from inside my apartment. Nothing signifies winter astro- nomically more than Orion, so I farted around with a few ideas of how I could portray that exact idea shooting from my deck. The second I opened the door and saw the shovel leaning against the siding, I knew exactly how I could compose my images. Needless to say, I am very happy with how the pictures turned out.

It's been a while since I have done much in the way of astrophotography (I believe since the Perseids), and after seeing some of the great images from friend Andrew Pritchard, I had to take advantage of the crisp winter skies.

ENJOY!

I'm back - 2010 Favorites

2010-12-20T18:44:00.009-06:00

I'm back! Instead of operating my website at TornadoFX.com, I have decided it would be easier to regularly update my blog and simply have the TornadoFX.com URL point to the blog. With that, I have a lot to catch up on!

I promise to eventually post an in-depth account from many of my 2010 storm chases, but until then, I'll simply post some of my favorite photos from the season. I'm a little disappointed that I took so few stills in 2010 compared to 2009 - however, the season as a whole was highly successful.

The first image is from May 21 north of Fort Laramie, WY. Earlier in the day I witnessed a thin, ropey tornado that lasted a couple of minutes; though I was happy to witness a tornado from the storm, the evolution of the storm from a piddly rain shower over the mountains to a tornadic supercell in a matter of 30 minutes was phenomenal to see!

Images 2-5 were taking on May 22 near Bowdle and Ipswich, SD. May 22 produced an absolute beast of a supercell over the plains of South Dakota; as supercell that would spit out a massive tornado which narrowly missed the town of Bowdle. I don't have any decent still photos of the Bowdle tornado as I was focusing on video, but my other photos from the day were definitely NOT disappointing:

And finally a couple of winter wonderland images:

December 22-24 Iowa Ice Storm

2009-12-28T14:23:00.008-06:00

I joined friend and fellow storm chaser Brandon Sullivan in Cedar Rapids, IA to cover the impending winter storm for local TV station KGAN.

I shot some video around the Eastern Iowa airport just outside of Cedar Rapids, but mainly focused on still photography. Unfortunately a stiff east wind made photographing trees at night a pain blurring the outer branches when doing any exposure over 1/2 second. Fortunately there were enough static objects to get good pictures of before the ice melted as temperatures rose into the mid-30s overnight on the 22nd/23rd. Here are a few of the better pictures...

Best of Storms 2009: Kirksville, Missouri

2009-11-25T13:21:00.017-06:00

In a general sense, 2009 was a pathetic year for good storms, especially during the climatological peak of severe weather season (mid-to-late May). Fortunately, June was a saving grace for many storm chasers who endured a slow, painful May and had given up hope for any significant tornado events in traditional chase alley. I'll be starting my new blog with a series of entries called "Best Storms of 2009" in which I'll highlight my best chases to the 2009 season.

My first chase of the year (and only May chase) was May 13th in northeast Missouri. Leading up to May 13, forecast models showed potential for significant severe weather in the southeast Iowa, northeast Missouri, and western Illinois region; and it looked like tornadoes would finally be on the menu. Knowing I had a final exam on the 14th, I was hedging my bets that May 13 would be a fantastic chase day as I likely wouldn't arrive back home until the early morning hours of the 14th given the location of the potential best storms that day. Needless to say, May 13 turned out to be a fantastic chase day with numerous tornadoes in the Kirskville, MO vicinity, two of which I was able to intercept west of Kirskville before debris and downed power lines prohibited me from chasing any further. The Kirksville chase day was one of near sensory overload. After a very close encounter with the tornado along Highway 6/149, I soon came upon a motorist who was unaware of the heavily rain-wrapped tornado and drove directly into it. After briefly stopping to make sure he was "ok", I came upon some fairly significant damage just west of Novinger where I was briefly blocked by downed power lines. The gentleman who had driven into the tornado was able to drive his vehicle out of the ditch where it had been blown, and I conducted a brief interview with him about the experience. The family of the damaged home pictured to the right was un-hurt, however, there were two fatalities closer to Kirksville when the tornado ravaged the northern part of that town.