Matt's Weather Rapport is written by Vermont-based journalist and weather reporter Matt Sutkoski. This blog has a nationwide and worldwide focus, with particular interest in Vermont and the Northeast. Look to Matt's Weather Rapport for expert analysis of weather events, news, the latest on climate change science, fun stuff, and wild photos and videos of big weather events. Also check for my frequent quick weather updates on Twitter, @mattalltradesb
Last month, I gave a totally rave review to a storm chasing video by Pecos Hank.
In that post, I mentioned in passing my other favorite storm chaser, Mike Olbinski.
Olbinski usually focuses on Arizona. Every year, in the mid to late summer moisture from the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific Ocean finds its way into the Desert Southwest, creating a "rainy season" of sorts. It's called the seasonal monsoon.
This rainy season in Arizona and surrounding areas consists of thunderstorms that develop over the region. Unlike the humid East, where haze often obscures the delicate yet powerful structures of thunderstorms, the visibility in the deserts remains great.
Most of what happens with the best of these thunderstorms are microbursts and haboobs, which are thunderstorm-generated dust storms.
Olbinski's beautiful time lapse videosusually focus on these microbursts and dust storms. When you speed up the footage of these phenomeneno, like Olbinski does, you really see the power of these storms.
As in the Pecos Hank video, I'm not going to provide you with the link, so you can click on it and give Olbinski more hits. At least I think that's how it works.
A still shot from Pecos Hank's new video "A Storm of Beauty"
I'm going to take a break today from discussiong snow and winter cold and highlight a new video by my favorite storm chaser, Pecos Hank. It's his best yet.
In his Texas drawl, he explains in the new video called "A Storm Of Beauty" some of the most breathtaking aspects of big thunderstorms. He explains how and where to view them, and how to photograph them.
For us Vermonters, who don't exactly live in Tornado Alley, Pecos (real name Hank Schyma) highlights some of the wonders of thunderstorms that we occasionally see and enjoy in Vermont, and pretty much anywhere else.
These include shelf clouds, mammatus clouds, and lightning. (Though you should always try to view and photograph lightning from a safe place.)
What I've always loved about the Pecos Hank videos is he avoids the yelling and screaming and dangerous moves that bring the chasers too close or even inside the tornadoes. For Pecos, he pays attention to art.
Pecos Hank, like fellow storm chaserMike Olbinski, appreciates the allure of thunderstorms, which frankly are my favorite kind of weather anyway. Most of the "A Storm Of Beauty" footage is time lapse.
Pecos is especially talented at establishing the foreground scenes in his videos. He outdoes himself with this talent in "A Storm of Beauty."
Below the drama he's capturing in the skies, we have scenes like a well-kept farmhouse, or some old, abandoned trucks, or grain bins, or train tracks, with a train zooming by as lightning flashes overhead.
You can see how Pecos Hank embraces the Great Plains of the United States. He's really a part of that world, and it shows. He is also an accomplished musician, and he feature his music in the video.
One spectacular example of his music in his song and especially video for "Drive Under The Moon." in which he uses some of his storm footage for a haunting and mysterious music video. Also definitely worth the watch. Seems like all his videos - both storm and music - are moody.
"A Storm of Beauty" ranks right up there as easily one of the best storm videos I've ever seen. Every weather geek, or photographer, or people who just love nature should definitely watch.
To be fair to Pecos Hank, I won't display the video in this post. You'll need to click directly on the link below, so he directly gets hits on his video and YouTube channel.
Greenish clouds associated with severe weather. Photo by Nicole
Ubalducci, via Lifehacker
The nation is getting into the heart of the spring severe thunderstorm and tornado season now, despite the mid-winter chill gripping much of the North.
Severe storms need warm, humid air to get going, so the areas that have gotten scary severe thunderstorms has so far been mostly, but not completely, limited to the South.
A quick interjection here for us Vermonters: After yesterday's snow, another snowfall will miss us by a long shot Sunday, and the chances of a snowy nor'easter on Tuesday or Wednesday keep dropping, which is good news for most of us.
Anyway, severe storms. There was another batch of them last night, including one that looked like a monster on radar that was about to destroy the city of Choushatta, Louisiana. Luckily, that tornado weakened some by the time it got into the city, so there was lots of damage, but it wasn't as bad as it could have been.
I'm sure some people that that got hit by severe storms in Texas and Louisiana on Friday saw green skies as the storms approached.
Which leads me to a video by musician and storm chaserPecos Hank. He's just about the best storm videographer out there, mostly because of his wonderful time lapses, and especially his storytelling abilities. Most storm chasers just video tornadoes and scream and yell. Pecos Hank puts together video packages that are engaging and so well done, as he unfolds his story in a deep Texas twang.
A recent Pecos Hank video explains wonderfully why the sky sometimes turns green - an eerie greenish/bluish/ugly - when severe weather approaches. (The cliche has always been if the sky turns green, you're screwed.)
Pecos Hank explains how low angle sun in the late afternoon and evening, when severe storms are most likely, scatter light in storms that contain a lot of rain, hail and blowing dust from strong winds.
Next, watch his great video, then below that another video - not as good as Pecos Hank's, but still really dramatic showing the hail storms and severe weather in Texas and Louisiana yesterday.
First, Pecos Hank:
Here's a good overview of several Texas hailstorms on Friday:
Storm chaser, videographer and musician Pecos Hank.
Like many weather geeks, I while away the hours sometimes watching storm chasing videos on YouTube.
It's what I and many others call "weather porn." You get a rise out of watching dangerous twisters and severe weather. It's a vicarious thrill.
As entertaining as many storm chase videos are, I do get a little tired of all the raw video on YouTube and Facebook and such in which the videographers can be heard screaming and yelling about multi-vortices, and their heated debates on whether they're too close to the tornado.
"Back up!
NO! We're OK1
Back UP!!!
Turn the wipers on!! What a BEAUTIFULWEDGE!!!!!!
No, no, keep getting close to it!! Oh My God, the HOUSE blew away!
Oh GOD!! BACK THE FUCK UUUPPPP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
Yeah, I understand the emotion of the moment, but geez!
He takes more time to edit and narrate his storm videos. I get the sense he writes the script beforehand. At least part of it. He's a good writer.
Bonus: Pecos Hank is a musician, having fronted the band Southern Backtones for about 15 years. He just released a solo album last year., too. Check out his web site.
Anyway, in his weather and storm videos, Pecos Hanks is a great storyteller. He injects a sense of humor into his deep Texas drawl. He creates an arc of a story as he conducts his chase, his supercell surprises, his tornado drops from the swirlling clouds.
He's just put out my favorite video he's done, and it explains better than anyone could why an East Coast amateur like me would never chase tornadoes. I go out to South Dakota to visit my relatives every late spring or early summer, but I let other people chase any tornadoes that begin to drop, thank you very much.
Sure, the weather can be entertaining as hell out there that time of year, but as Pecos Hank makes it clear in his latest, most entertaining and most informative video, there's a lot that can go wrong
It's worth watching the video at the bottom of this post as he describes tornadoes that literally turn on you, hide behind curtains of rain to sneak up on you, or are much bigger and more ferocious than they appear.
There's other hazards, like clots of dozens of storm chasers that get in each other's way when it's time to flee an approaching tornado, escape routes blocked by everything from stalled trains to missing bridges to oxen.
Tornadoes are most likely in the late afternoon. Rush hour. In urban areas, imaging getting caught in the gridlock on a jam packed highway amid panicked commuters as a tornado approaches.
So, yeah, I'll leave to the experts like Pecos Hank to watch and film the tornadoes and severe storms for me. I'll sit back in my Vermont house, far from tornado alley, and watch the adventures from the sidelines.
And be entertained and informed by the great Pecos Hank.
