I had a bigger blog post all written up on my laptop, but I managed to drop it last night and smash the screen, so it's to the backup laptop. Anyway, while I'm sitting here at Hotel Bennett in Omaha, waiting to go out chasing today. It's brought me back to the memories of April 29, 2009 exactly one year ago today. This was my first major tornado day. I chased with David Drummond, and it will be one of my best chase days of all time. You can read my Chase Account from April 29.

Here is my video from April 29.

With any luck, I will be heading out to intercept some supercells in Southeast Nebraska today. I'm going to try and get my live stream up and running. We'll see if I can on my backup laptop.

I went to sleep somewhat early last night as I was a bit tired from all the driving, which has allowed me to wake up in Moore, Oklahoma early and do a bit of forecasting, and update this blog before I hit the road and venture out to the Texas Panhandle.

First of all, today looks good. April 29, 2009 good. The 12Z RUC (which is slowly trickling in) is showing almost 3500 CAPE in my target area, which is just west of Childress, TX.

The Storm Prediction Center has out looked a 10% tornado probability for the Eastern Texas panhandle. Supercells are definitely in the cards today, and hopefully a big tornado or two.

I will be leaving Moore here in the next 2 hours and will be heading down I-44 to US-62 and taking that west to Texas. As always, you will be able to watch my live storm chase stream on my Live ChaseCam Page.

Good luck to everyone out there. Hopefully mother nature treats us well this earth day!

This is a bit of a delayed update (3 weeks) as I just haven't had a lot of motivation to post this blog post. I've also been busy with the actual layout, look and some technical aspects of the site including revamping the gallery. I am working hard to get my website ready and better for the 2010 chase season. One of the new features this year will be blog thumbnails/images.

During my visit to Texas and Oklahoma, I decided it would be a good time to go meet my friend Michael who lives in San Antonio. This was for two reasons - One it would be very warm in San Antonio and Two - Michigan State was playing Texas Tech in the Alamo Bowl. I hate Michigan State (even if I live in Lansing) and am a big Michigan fan, so this seemed like a great time for me and Michael (who is also a Michigan fan) to wear Michigan stuff to the stadium and have a good time.

It appears the city of Longview, TX or just east had a tornado rip through this afternoon. What prompted me to blog about it, though, was the insane hook-echo on the Shreveport Radar at 2242 UTC as pictured below.

Hopefully everyone that was affected by this is alright!

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.

Just went through a MASSIVE hailcore. Truck fared very well. I finally got some real dents on my truck too. Small crack in the windshield.

Hans' car didn't fare as well, with him almost completely losing his windshield in some monster hail. His windshield is all spidered. I will have chase accounts up shortly, video and pictures!!!

This is the video from my video camera yesterday near Cedar Hill, TX. I will be typing up a chase recap tomorrow, but need some sleep tonight.

This is part of the video David Drummond and myself shot yesterday near Cedar Hill, TX which is about 45 minutes Northeast of Lubbock. All in all, we have about 45 minutes of Tornado footage to go through, and will be getting some of the best stuff up and online in the days to come.

** Update: Here is the footage from my camera **