All new blog! Please update your links.

I've completely rebuilt my blog and moved it to a new address:

Perilous Planet Blog

My old blog will remain as an archive for a little while, but all new posts will occur at the above link. For those of you who have links to my blog, please update your links now - thanks and enjoy!

Rockfall mitigation work yesterday, back in Boulder tonight.

I spent yesterday afternoon shooting rockfall mitigation at 8000 feet on the Montana - Wyoming border. Hanging out of a car window with a thousand foot drop below me would normally be fun, but not so much when I'm sick. Hoping to shake this head cold soon. Looks like I got a few good shots but if I didn't, no one will have to twist my arm to get me back to Montana. And for the record, the best bagel in the world is at Coffee Factory Roasters in Red Lodge - wow.

Back in Boulder now after coring a thunderstorm on the way home. Saw some amazing storm structure at sunset. About a thousand frames from the last four days are awaiting the editing process, and they'll continue to wait for another night - I need some sleep.

Amazing lightning yesterday, two tornadoes today, more tomorrow.

Wednesday night's slow moving thunderstorms over the Northern Rockies gave me some of the best lightning shots I've ever captured. I was so excited I couldn't sleep last night! Trail running down a hillside in the dark with heavy equipment probably didn't help either. This photo is just a taste - I'll add a better one to my portfolio later next week.














A sleepy drive into southern Montana today put me right into position for a great show. Two small and short-lived tornadoes on the same storm east of the city of Billings. Reasonably photogenic, but nothing to lose sleep over tonight!

Tomorrow looks to be another great day with supercells in southeastern Montana. Could be a full day of severe weather actually. For now, it's goodnight from Red Lodge - I need a lot of sleep.

Severe thunderstorms along the Front Range last night.

After an unsuccessful night of shooting lightning, I spent the morning touring the damage path of the severe storms that swept through the Denver area last night. Lots of small- to moderate-size hail damage, such as defoliated trees. There were also many tree limbs broken and a few large trees knocked over. In some cases, limbs crashed onto powerlines, which eventually caused a power outage for tens of thousands of people. At one point, a tornado warning was issued for a small area west of Denver. However, there is no evidence that a tornado actually formed, and the few reports that were made were vague and unconfirmed (a common problem with night time tornadoes). All of the damage evidence strongly points to severe downdraft winds near the leading edge of the storm, which had a Doppler reflectivity value of 70 dbz for several minutes. This is readily evident in the flattened tops of standing trees, as well as the downstream orientation of the debris within the damage path. Based on my experience in disaster areas, I'm estimating downdraft (or "downburst") wind speeds up to 85 mph. The National Weather Service is also reporting that the damage was caused by downdraft winds. In any case, it was an eventful evening that developed rapidly and left behind some nice cool air in the middle of a hot July week.

Successful couple weeks of severe weather shooting.

Nine days and three thousand miles later, I managed to capture some essential imagery for a severe weather project. Covering Colorado, Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa, and Missouri, this is the largest project I've worked on yet. The photography covers a diverse set of atmospheric hazards, from tornadoes to flooding. I still need a couple more events in the Great Plains to complete the project. Hopefully, some July and August weather will yield something photogenic. In the meantime, I'm finishing up editing, gear maintenance, and a little writing as well. Additionally, I hope to have a couple new shots added to my portfolio in the next couple days.

An Unlikely Weapon, the story of Eddie Adams and his amazing photojournalism, opens this Thursday (July 2nd) at the Starz Film Center. I'll be attending at least one showing this week - hope to see some other Denver photojournalists there.

Another Colorado chase: several funnels, hail, and possibly one brief landspout tornado.

Once again, Weld County magic set up in my front yard and it was an easy catch with storms only moving at 10mph. Found some small hail, very heavy rain (which produced some flooding in Fort Collins), and several funnel clouds. This storm tried for hours to produce a tornado and I was right under it the entire time. A trained weather spotter called the National Weather Service to report a tornado, which there definitely was not at the time because I would have been in it! I would like to see our Spotter Network be more careful in what they call a tornado as this was definitely a false alarm. However, about 30 minutes later, I noticed some dust spinning up in a field just one mile from my location. Sure enough, a small landspout (non-supercell) tornado was trying to form. I noticed a small funnel at cloud base just above the spinning dust, and the dust had rotation and lifted rapidly. However, I never saw a fully condensed funnel so I'm hesitant to call it a tornado. In any case, it only lasted about 45 seconds and did no damage in this very rural area near Keensburg, Colorado. So, almost got my hat-trick, maybe I did, who knows. This photo is of two funnel clouds, which at first I thought were just "scud", but they both showed slight rotation and were firmly connected to the cloud base.

Street flooding, large hail, and another tornado makes for another $5.00 chase day in Colorado!

After getting drenched in torrential rain at my house in Boulder, I decided to head northeast to get in front of the developing late afternoon storms. Again, my primary goal was just to take all the gear through another test run but once again, Mother Nature produced quite a show. Southern Weld County was covered in hail, with many stones around one inch in diameter (one chaser reported hail up to two inches). Two cells merged into one large cell, a process which generated just enough shear to get things spinning (looking at the initial cloud structure and surface observations, shear seemed minimal today so I wasn't really planning a serious chase). Several funnels were reported, prompting tornado warnings. I stayed with the cell long enough to catch a view of one of the funnels. From my low contrast perspective, I could just barely see the funnel stretch and appear to make brief contact with the ground. This was later confirmed by one of the Denver Channel 7 storm chasers and thankfully, no damage or injuries were reported. No photos of the tornado this time because it was too small, poorly lit, and I was just a little too far away. I did get some nice shots of the updrafts thanks to a scoured atmosphere and a very defined rear storm line. Otherwise, I would call this a bust in the absence of good photos that I can use for any of my projects.

That being said, I only spent about $5.00 on this chase. Plus the water and soap to scrub the Weld County mud off the vehicle. So that's a total of $10 for two tornadoes this week. The cheap chasing is coming to an end however. Central Plains chasing begins soon and after these local chases, I think everything is ready. I'm now running signal enhanced mobile broadband in my chase vehicle, along with a couple portable surface weather instruments, GPS, and enough camera mounts to keep any photojournalist happy.