So I have been a little late in getting this blog entry back up. I have returned back to Michigan and spent the last 7 days working. I will have more about the trip later, including my trip down to San Antonio for the Alamo Bowl which featured the Texas Tech Red Raiders vs the Michigan State Spartans. I hate Michigan State, and wore some Michigan stuff and yelled Go Blue at a lot of State fans. It was good fun, and a great game.

The real reason for this entry is that I finally got around to dumping video off my video camera from midnight on New Years right at the start of 2010. The fireworks display was brought to you by Steve Miller, Bob Hall, Aaron Cunningham and yours truly and included 1409 explosions - 115 Roman Candles, 14 Bottle Rockets, 200 Saturn Missles, 25 mortars and a 20 shot cake.

This weekend I drove to Oklahoma City with Adam Lucio and Danny Neal, but came back with an extra member for my apartment. I brought back Steve Miller's cat Caruso.

Caruso is an 8 year old oci-cat with a great personality for a cat. He survived the 1000 mile trek without a problem, not getting angry with me until I was almost to Lansing. This is the first pet I have owned myself, so consider me a new pet owner. It's the first time I've ever really had a chance to take care of a cat.

On his adoption paperwork that Steve gave me, it says Caruso is a loud cat that likes to talk a lot. That is really true. He has been meowing at me a lot since I got him home.

I will be leaving Thursday night and heading down to Moore, OK for the 2009 National Weather Festival which takes place on Saturday at the National Weather Center in Norman. I will be accompanied by my storm chaser friends Danny Neal and Adam Lucio.

For everyone that will be there, I look forward to seeing you. It should be a good gathering of chasers and weather enthusiasts alike. I will most likely be streaming the event live on ChaserTV and this web site.

I've also noticed a huge increase in web traffic ever since the October 18th premiere of the Discovery Channel's Storm Chasers series. This past episode featured the May 5, 2009 supercell near Breckenridge, TX. Here's my video from that day:

So I haven't really done a personal update blog in awhile. This is more me neglecting this then lack of things to talk about. Since my last 'personal' blog update in July, I have gone on a couple fun trips and have some pictures.

I'll start off with my trip to Oklahoma in the middle of August. It's month and a half old news now, but I spent the weekend of August 15th in Oklahoma. I flew in Thursday afternoon, the 13th. I had a direct flight from Detroit Metro to Oklahoma City, which went otherwise uneventful.

My friend Steve Miller (OK) picked me up at the airport, and we got lunch then went out riding in his Jeep around Norman and then offroading around Lake Stanley Draper. The weather was hot and sunny - Just the way I like it. We ended up back in Steve's garage where we sat around for awhile talking. Scott Bennett and Bob Hall both showed up in the evening.

Steve Miller, Hans and Myself will be out chasing again tomorrow in Oklahoma or Texas, depending on how things look in the morning. My target right now is somewhere along I-35 near the OK/TX border. I will be streaming again on TornadoVideos.net.

This looks to be the last chase of my trip, as I plan to return to Michigan on Saturday. I can't complain about 8 chase days in a 2 week chase-cation!

Look forward to a big chase tomorrow, and hopefully things start shifting northward.

Today was a down day after yesterdays chase. I was completely exhausted last night, and slept in until 10am like a bum. After getting a pair of Pikepasses and lunch, Steve Miller and I went downtown Oklahoma City for some picture ops. We first went by the ballpark, and the bar district before going to the Oklahoma City Memorial.

I had been to the memorial once before, but it was in 2002 and we stopped by only for a short period of time after dark. Today I got a good chance to see it in the daytime, and to actually take some decent pictures.

Steve and I also went to the State Capital, and shot a few pictures. Parking was a little issue, so we only had a couple minutes to snap some photos. The weather was perfect for pictures, and great in the evening. Sunshine, 80 and a clear sky with a forecast of storms for the next 2 days. Who could ask for more?

Oklahoma City Memorial and Capital Pictures

I'm going to break this trip report blog down into 3 parts. The trip, the weather and the coasters. So first off, the trip.

The Trip
I put almost 3100 miles on my truck over the course of Tuesday Night - Sunday afternoon. My truck ran great, and I put about $325 worth of gas into the truck. I left work on Tuesday and drove almost 600 miles to Rolla, MO before crashing out at my friend Dylan's place. On Wednesday I made it to Oklahoma City area (Moore, OK) to hang out with Steve Miller (OK) and Shane and Bridget. Scott Bennett eventually showed up from Omaha, but he was a bit later. Steve treated us to some extremely tasty filet mignion, sweet potatoes and asparagus dinner. That was the tastiest dinner I had all weekend. It was also really good to meet Shane. He is as ranty and funny in person as he is on his show.

The drive down was mostly uneventful. It was the first time I had been west of Rolla, MO in 7 years on I-44 and the first time I had been in Oklahoma since 2002 as well.

This is footage from KFOR in Oklahoma City of the tornado that hit Edmond, OK causing significant damage to the city. KFOR's chopper was in the air and captured amazing footage of the tornado hitting power lines and throwing debris into the air.