I won yet another bag of crap from Woot here during the last woot off on April 24th. The box came yesterday and had at least a useful item in it this time.

Items included this time include:

• Flu & Germ protection supplies (useful for a germaphobe like me!)
• Bags of Texas Air
• 2 Snap Straws for drinking Soda/Pop out of a can
• Paper Mousepad daily planner
• Herrington Teddy Bears Cow with Bears stuffed animal
• Womens XL Cake or Death shirt
• Logitech Playgear pocket skin kit
• Black bag

I just got done with a 4 day stretch of amazing chasing starting Friday in Kansas where I intercepted a brief tornado near Council Grove, KS. While that chase was a let down, the following three days more than made up for it.

It has been a busy 2 week period as severe weather season kicks into high gear! It started on the 2nd with a nice storm just after dark up near Gage, OK and continued on the 9th with some nice tornadoes near Woodward. Unfortunately I didn't make it up in time for those, but the week was capped off by an active Friday and Saturday including a tornado through the city of Norman, OK on Friday which nearly hit my apartment!

It's Friday the 13th, and the 12Z NAM is painting an ominous picture for Oklahoma and Kansas today and tomorrow. The target today seems to be southwest of Oklahoma City in the Lawton to Chickasha area where instability is forecast to be the highest. Forecast hodographs are huge from Oklahoma City and southwest.

I've uploaded a couple videos from yesterday including one of the tornado going through a wind farm on the Wichita Mountains. Click the thumbnails below to view.

It's Sunday morning here in Oklahoma after the time change, and that isn't the only thing that's changed. The winds changed direction and started sucking moisture up from the gulf yesterday, with strong southerly winds. Upper 50 and low 60 dewpoints are now into north Texas and southern Oklahoma with Pauls Valley, OK reporting 61 at 10 am CST this morning. You can see the moisture return in the graphic below, with the data coming from current observations.

First chapter up is already a bittersweet chapter for me, considering I pretty much blew this day badly - April 22, 2010. Adam is chasing with Danny and I think his friend Mike, and they witness at least 5 if not 6 tornadoes documented. A few of them are brief, but Tornado #2 is very solid for a good while.

As has been pretty customary lately, I scored yet another Bag of Crap on the site woot.com. If you don't know what a bag of crap is, go ahead and read this.

So, without further adieu, this Bag of Crap contained the following:

Contents:

• Orange Bag with Flower on it
• Chargeblock case for iPhone 4

We've had a quiet fall for the most part so far, with only a couple systems producing supercells anywhere nearby. Summer ended with a bang, providing me 2 awesome tornadoes near Wakita, Oklahoma on September 17th. Since then, however, I managed to get in one chase in the Texas Panhandle on October 7th which provided me nothing more than some lightning.

As dry as it has been all year, the Texas Panhandle has been no mans land in terms of storms. October 7th marked the first Tornado Watch of 2011 in the Texas Panhandle. A staggering statistic in this crazy dry year.

Not a whole lot else going on around here. I've been working on the back end of the website and server. I'm looking forward to a trip to Michigan next week including a visit to Cedar Point the weekend before Halloween.

I also created this compilation of my tornado video, which is about 3 1/2 minutes long and contains video from all my tornadoes that I've recorded.

One more anniversary coming up - Tomorrow is the 4th anniversary of my first chase - October 18, 2007. While I did not witness a tornado that day, I did witness a funnel in Fulton and Cass County Indiana.

I intercepted 3 amazing tornadoes near Wakita, Oklahoma on Saturday. The first tornado was a brief spin up, followed by a beautiful elephant trunk and then an amazing rope tornado at the same time as the elephant trunk. Wakita is the town featured in the 1996 Hollywood Movie "Twister" which was home to Aunt Meg.

September 17 Chase Recap - Photo Gallery

My 2011 DVD has been officially put on sale. I sent off to the duplicators last week (apparently a week too soon!) and should have the finished product by the end of this week or early next week. Orders will begin shipping next week. Here is the trailer:

You can order by clicking on my DVD Order Page!