We are two days away from meteorological spring, and twenty two days (or so) away from the official start of spring.  So here are some thoughts about where we are as storm season approaches.

• The first week of March will look a lot like the first week of January as an arctic cold front blasts its way south covering much of the country.  The longest winter ever just got longer, and it feels like spring will be pushed back to around July or so.
• Today there was a story floating around the internet about the "Great Wall of Tornadoes", an idea by a physicist to construct a wall 1000 feet high around the Great Plains, in theory disrupting the air flow and preventing tornadoes from having the ingredients to form.  Needless to say (but I'm going to say it anyways!), possibly the worst idea of the twenty first century.
• I'm so ready to get a new crop of photos.  I've stretched out last years photos about as much as I can, although I'm not sure how 1000 photos can not be enough.
• It will be interesting to see how chasing this year is affected by the Twistex tragedy last season.  My sense is that it won't have a lot of impact on how chasing is conducted, but it will be in the back of everyone's mind as we are out in the field.
• I'm looking into buying a new (used) vehicle this year that will also serve as a chase vehicle.  I have 210,000 miles on my Pontiac G6 and it's still going strong, although the a/c has been out for a couple of years now and it's starting to show signs of aging.
• I'm debating on whether I want to stream live this year.  It's tough to handle photography, live streaming, driving and navigating all at once and it would be one less task.
• I'm also considering taking on a chase partner this year to help with the aforementioned tasks.  I have mostly chased solo with friends or a family member with me at times, but I think it would be fun to have a partner to share the victories and the busts.
• I had a successful year in 2013 selling storm and landscape photography.  I'm hoping I can double my efforts this year.
  

Here's another entry into the chase logs that I hadn't imported into the new site.

Of the two cells that began the day I chose the closest to my position to begin with, which was the northern cell that passed through south of Hobart. After chasing it for a while to the northeast there was no way I could keep up with it so I moved south to the second cell which was the first cell to go through the Fredrick/Lawton area. Then another cell was developing to the west of that one and I chose to move towards it figuring there would be a lot less traffic (I was right). I had a straight shot to the storm on Baseline Rd then it inexplicably turned from paved to dirt/mud road...so I had to wait on it south of Indiahoma. This was the second cell that ended up going through the Lawton area. I then moved north to follow this storm and got into blinding rain on a north/south road south of Elgin so I had to sit and wait for the storm to pass before I could move northward. On the way home, I went through Chickasha and downtown power had been lost and dealt with flooding...somehow I made it through that. Quite an eventful day even though I didn't see any tornadoes.  Here are a few pics to start with, I have more that I have to weed through and will get them posted in a couple of days.

Continuing with the importing of my historic chase logs.

This was a confusing day because SPC had been showing an area in NW Oklahoma to be a 10% risk of tornadoes, but the forecast models were showing something completely different.  I was seeing storms initiating in the eastern Texas panhandle and nothing was happening up north, at least at the time I got out and was able to chase.  So, I headed west to Shamrock, Tx and sure enough storms initiated just to the west and to the south.  Since this was my third straight day of chasing I was a little worn out, so I stuck with a cell that was just southwest of Shamrock hoping it would take off.  But unlike the storms in Oklahoma the day before, on this one I chose poorly.  It slowly evaporated, leaving nothing but a small shaft of rain.  Meanwhile to the south near Childress, around 40 miles away there was a beast of a cell moving southeastward at about 30 mph and had a well defined hook echo, prompting it to go tornado warned.  The problem I had with it wasn't that I couldn't catch it, it was it that it was such a beast and it basically covered the only road to the south, so it would take a massive core punch and some luck to get through it safely because you didn't know what you might come out and run into on the other side.  But, I made my way down and it kept moving southeast and was just behind it when I reached Paducah, Tx.  As I was passing through, lightning had set of a huge brush fire to the west clouding up the sky and adding to the area's woes.  I went to the east and noticed debris on the road and just on the left side of the road was a barn that housed some classic cars...only the barn wasn't there anymore.  Luckily for the owner the cars were still there.  I'm pretty sure a small tornado had to have obliterated the barn...sheet metal was wrapped around a sign near the road.  Not long after that another cell had developed behind me, and it quickly went tornado warned.  The inflow winds were sucking up smoke and dirt from the fields into the storm creating quite a sight to see, but as for a tornado, I couldn't see so I didn't push my luck.  I didn't get many pictures that day because I was playing catch up for most of it, and the HP nature of the cells made it that much tougher.  Still a memorable chase, but not fruitful from a tornado standpoint.  Here's a couple of photos from this uneventful chase.

I'm in the process of moving over my chase logs from the last few years, so this is the first entry of many documented chases over the years.

The first big storm chasing event took place over the last few days, with storms from Colorado to Oklahoma and everywhere in between.  Although expectations were much higher for severe weather, there were a couple of good storms and the storm that was near Burlington, CO was a beauty.  I didn't see any tornadoes, but there were reports of small tornadoes and land spouts in the area.  What I did see was amazing structure and one of the most photogenic storms in recent memory.  I started out from Oklahoma and made my way north through Garden City, KS and up through the eastern border of Colorado in flat arid country.  I eventually watched this storm from initiation although I let it go because I thought there might be something better behind it.  After realizing that would be the storm of the day I quickly went back after it and caught it as it matured.  The rotation of the updraft was amazing and I also went through some good size hail, and called it a chase near dark.  Here are some photos from that day.