GoBoB Chasing

It is essentially a waiting game at this time. I still believe that Emily will jog to the North. There is a high pressure ridge, that the models have handled poorly. Any erosion or Eastward motion of this feature and the Republic of Texas gets run over. Monday evening we will make a definitive call. This is a strong and dangerous storm.

Steve Miller and I have defined the following mission rules.

1) Emily must remain at least strong cat 2 or weak cat 3 storm (should not be a problem).
2) Landfall must be projected durring daylight hours.
3) Primary landfall (the black line) must be no further south than Corpus Christi, TX.

It is pretty obvious that the NHC is carefully contemplating whether to include the US as a target. It is a tough call. Do you be ultra conservative and include Southern Texas and encourage people to take precautions this weekend? The risk is that it stays south and people in the future are less likely to heed warnings. As one of the NHC forecasters reminded earlier this week, the five day track has an inherent error of 300 nautical miles.

It will be interesting to see what happebs over the Yucatan.

From the 11:00PM NHC Discussion:

THE FORECAST REMAINS ON THE NORTHERN SIDE OF THE DYNAMICAL MODEL GUIDANCE ENVELOPE…. SINCE SOME OF THE MODELS… ESPECIALLY THE SOUTHERN OUTLIERS… DO NOT INITIALIZE THE POSITION OR SHORT-TERMMOTION VERY WELL. IF ANYTHING… THE MODELS HAVE TRENDED SLIGHTLY NORTHWARD SINCE THE PREVIOUS RUNS… SO I SEE NO REASON TO SHIFT THE FORECAST TRACK OVER THE GULF OF MEXICO. IT IS STILL TO SOON… HOWEVER… TO DETERMINE IF LANDFALL ON THE NORTH AMERICAN MAINLAND WILL OCCUR IN NORTHERN MEXICO OR IN TEXAS.

Slow Motion “Chase”. Hurricane Emily is a small but very powerful storm. She is running over better and better (warmer) water. Predicting a hurricanes past 48 hours is tenuous at best.

Texas is going to get run over in my opinion. Steve Miller and I will intercept next Wed/Thur if it appears that landfall will occur during daylight hours.

STAY TUNED!!!

A well respected storm chaser named Jeff Wear died tragically as his vehicle hydroplaned and he struck an oncoming truck. I believe I briefly spoke with him once. I have seen his distinctive personalized license plate COPUNCH several times on the plains. He died at the age of 27. I think it important to note that he was not engaged in a chase, but was returning home from a long journey after intercepting hurricane Dennis in Florida. It is profound how an event that is relatively removed from my life has had on me.

Every storm chaser has at some point hydroplaned and temporarily lost control of the vehicle. The roads that we drive experience very locally severe flooding as storms can drop an inch of rain in minutes.

I am going to be super respectful of the roads and whenever I catch myself or a chase partner getting a little too aggressive I am going to say “Jeff Ware” out loud.

My deepest condolences to his family and friends. Hopefully his death will serve as a reminder to all the chase community and prevent another horrible tragedy from befalling another member of our community.

Wow, I really need to get a life or maybe cable. A quick bit of history; during the first Gulf war with the first president Bush I became a CNN addict. It consumed me and I watched cable TV every possible moment. Upon a successful conclusion of the war, I recognized that I was addicted. My addiction to cable actually cost me the best relationship I have ever had. I have been clean and sober of cable for ten years. Today I was jonesing. I wanted to see the over-hype “experts” tell a story. I wanted cable.

I resisted and broke out all of the tools that I use to chase tornadoes. I had high speed internet and satellite based XM-WORX data. I spent five hours war gamming this storm as it made landfall.

Tornado chasing is a lot different than getting run over by a hurricane. Tactically it is a lot easier, logistically it is a lot harder. When chasing tornadoes we routinely burn 200 miles repositioning. Conservation of fuel (much like NASCAR) is the key to hurricane “chasing.”

I will chase a hurricane this year. I have the food and water requirements taken care of thanks to MRE overruns. These meals are expensive, but they work for our honorable fighting troops in the worst of conditions. Fuel is the main issue.

One of my best female friends in the entire world who could care less about storm chasing commented recently that storm chasing greatly resembled girl chasing. Tawana could not have been more correct. I am going to dive in here head first and allow those with psychology degrees to pounce.

Romancing the storm.

Dating in Oklahoma is about as hard as chasing in some aspects. A storm intercept is a date. As a single person, I have friends that want to see me in happily wedded bliss as they are. I also have dear friends that want to perform a scared straight routine at each chance. Back to the storms.

This is going to get really sick, scary and deep so bear with me.

I carefully look at models (Both the Human kind and computer generated). I appreciate a beautiful woman and a severe storm.

Chase day starts as slightly more than a blind date. As a chaser we ogle the long term and then short term models. We salivate in anticipation of what might be. Two days before the earliest opportunity to consider calling a girl we get giddy.

Time to meet your blind date.

On average I’ve driven 600 mile for this date. We are going to play around all afternoon. The storm will tempt us and we will follow.

This is exactly like the forth date in a serious relationship. You will either get “some” or you “won‘t“.

Good luck to all “chasers”
Don’t screw it up…