tornados!

“A-Ha... There were two F-1s. One in Johnston, SC (Edgefield County, just across the river) and another along I-20, about 30 miles into South Carolina... no injuries... some property damage in Johnston.

I didn't see any hail yesterday, but I saw Plenty of water. Right about 5 pm I was driving the length of Washington Road from Martinez into downtown... The traffic going west was at a dead stop and backed up from National Hills to the Calhoun Expressway.

Looks pretty nice outside right now...”

“Crap! Those were close. We live near Evans.



I see some storms rolling through Alabama that look like they should come through here this evening. It'll be interesting to see just how interesting they'll get.”

“Yup. It's not over yet...

Here's a link to the story in the Augusta Comical.”

“Lizs wrote:

"I have a shot kinda like yours with the rain on the glass. I posted it on a
photo forum, called it something like, "Then your world crashes," and a few
people liked it... and couldn't figure out how it was done. LOL! (can you
say, inside your vehicle, with no wipers running?? LOL)

Here's the shot

I checked your photos from your webpage. Niiiiiiiiiice! What kind of camera
equipment do you carry backpacking?"

Sorry it took so long to get back to you but we've been having multiple warnings and watches every day since your post. This morning they swapped the Severe Storm logo on TV to a Tornado Warning logo without an announcement of any kind and when I checked the radar online I found it was headed directly at us. After about 45 minutes of increasingly bad news from the Skywarn network, we were treated to what was probably a funnel, wedge shaped down to one or two hundred feet above ground and less than 500 yards south of me. No pix, too much going on at the time.

I use a lot of different cameras depending on what's going on. Cameras I own or use or have owned include a Pentax MG, Nikon F3, Nikkormat, Canon Rebel EOS, Pentax Point N Shoot, a pair of Mamiya C330 twin lens reflex meduim formats, Nikon FM2, Nikon FE2, and my current favotire, an Olympus C4000 Zoom digital camera.

Most of the outdoor shots on my website were shot with the Pentax point n shoot or the Canon EOS. I'm looking forward to getting the digital camera out west this season.


What do you usually use?”

“Wow, you have a full arsenal there.

I have a Canon EOS Elan II, an old Canon AE-1 Program (never used any more), a Nikon Coolpix 880 digital for work and a cheapo Olympus D-100 digital that's mine.

So are you actively chasing storms now, or just sitting in the path of them?”

“Here in the Ohio Valley, twisters tend to be short lived...we get a lot of them along the gust front, and the more powerful ones will form near a rear flank downdraft like in supercells, but in the larger cells along a squall line. With a whole line scooping up the energy, we don't see the isolated updraft that punches through the cap and then self sustains, tapping a much wider area of energy like the supercells out in the plains, so they are over much quicker and are much more difficult to predict. The line also brings rain to a wide area unlike the supercells, so chasing usually ends up being an exercise in navigating flooded roads under high winds, downed trees, a lot of scrambling to catch up to fleeting events, and arriving to find you missed it. Most of the risk, few benefits, so anyway, I'm working on some lightning detection equipment that isolates certian electrical signatures, trying to correlate them to damaging events. Maybe once that bears fruit, I might look at streamlining the process and going mobile again, and I always watch for the right conditions passing through the Plains on the way to and from the Rockies, but mostly, I just wait for them to come to me these days.

How about you? I get the feeling you are starting to feel the pull yourself, perhaps?”

“We had a pretty bad (for Kentucky) tornado yesterday in Mercer County. It was an F2. Not huge I know, but tell that to the people who lost a house or the family that lost a loved one. I got called out at 6 am yesterday morning for it. It had happened around 5:45 and the county sheriff called the post and said "I don't know what it was, but send me every trooper you have!" He was pretty tore up. Stayed all day and they still hadn't found the missing person when I got off duty. They ended up finding the body around 7 pm.
First one I had ever been called to and seen the results of in person.”