Tuesday, July 27, 2010 - 6:23PM CDT   
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July storm slowdown; learning local climate
An isolated thunderstorm over south St. Louis viewed from New Baden blocks out the sun this afternoon, flanked on all sides by convection. Everything is nearly gone now (as of 6PM).
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A slow late July pattern has taken hold in the Midwest. With the upper support far to the north and the atmosphere seasonably warm and thick (in height), storms are moving slowly, disorganized, heavy rain-laden, and generally have less of a punch. Summer in the Midwest is quite variable, with the full spectrum from downtimes to severe weather events possible at virtually any time. Whether this pattern will persist remains to be seen.
After 17 years of living in West Virginia, I had a pretty good handle on what to expect as far as the typical weather patterns throughout the year. While there are occasionally deviations from the norm, I knew what to expect, because I'd seen nearly 2 decades of it. This year, I'm having to start nearly from scratch on building my 'mental climate notes' on the Midwestern patterns. Climate data is plentiful, but there is really no substitute for 'living and chasing' the weather to get the best handle on it.
With little to no topographical or maritime features to influence our weather here, things are mostly at the whims of the upper patterns, and therefore can vary greatly from year to year. Much more so than in the Appalachians. For example, I consistently observed that the summer storm season in and around Charleston, WV is typically on its way out around the first or second week of August. That's not true here in the Midwest, where storms frequently continue much farther into the fall season. In the Appalachians, eastbound storm complexes frequently weaken/dissipate on approaching the mountains. There is no such weakening mechanism here - storms dissipate when they outrun an instability axis or upper support, which are much more variable factors in time and space than a fixed mountain range. By late September in most years, the central Appalachians have seen their last thunderstorms of the summer. A relatively quiet period lasts into late October, at which time the first upslope and mountain snows begin. No such reliable timeline can apparently be expected here in the Midwest. Winter severe weather/tornadoes are more common here (my town was hit by an F3 in December of 1982), meaning there's no chasing 'off season'. And so on.
Having spent only one spring/summer here, I can't make too many assumptions on what to expect in the future. The only thing to do is just to be ready for anything at any time. Should be an interesting ride.
Friday, July 23, 2010 - 10:58PM CDT
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Checking in
I thought I'd break the 16-day silent streak here even though there's not much to talk about. The reason for my blogging hiatus was due to heading for surgery in Pennsylvania at the beginning of the month. To make a long story short, the surgery wasn't needed, and I'm finally back home and back to normal. I basically took a very unwanted 2-week vacation, and in the process missing many St. Louis storm events and losing 2 weeks of work on my business.
But, all is well now - thankful to be back home and ready to get things rolling again, Lord willing.
To add at the very least one photo to this post, here is sunset over I-64 in Lexington, Kentucky on my way home yesterday (I made my usual Charleston, WV stopover after leaving PA).
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Glad you're Ok Dan.
- Posted by John from North Texas |
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Wondered where you had been Dan, Glad everything is OK bud.
- Posted by Mick from UK |
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Thanks guys! Been an interesting month but things are pretty much back to normal now. Just waiting for some more storm opportunities now.
- Posted by Dan R. from New Baden, IL |
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Wednesday, July 7, 2010 - 6:53AM CDT
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High water on the Mississippi
This is the view of the St. Louis riverfront, looking south from the Eads Bridge back on July 3. Flood stage at St. Louis is 30 feet, and the Mississippi River has been running anywhere from 1 to 5 feet above that for several weeks, at times submerging Leonor K. Sullivan Boulevard (the street below the Arch). Here the road is about 2 feet under water.
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The Mississippi crested at 49.6 feet in St. Louis during the 1993 flood. That's almost 20 feet higher than where the river is in this photo.
Tuesday, July 6, 2010 - 6:53AM CDT
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Web design services for St. Louis
LINK: Midwest 64 Web design services
With spring storm chasing season over and the slow summer setting in, I'm back in full-time web development mode. I will be living and breathing web sites again from this point onward! I've totally revamped the Midwest 64 web site and am now in the process of getting the word out about the business, both locally and nationally. My main focus is on the St. Louis area, but I have successfully completed projects remotely via telephone/email for clients in other states. If you have a telephone and an internet connection, I can work with you!
The main item I want to highlight right now is the $499 web design package I am offering through the end of summer (through October 1). This is a very low price for a completely custom, 'built-from-scratch' site by a professional - about a third to a fifth of the price of a typical design package of this caliber (which runs $1300-$2500). The web site special page has more details. I also offer all manner of by-the-hour web services, including graphics, Flash, SEO, social media integration and video editing. I also introduced a new 'Web Site Repair' service to fix virtually any problem that an existing site may experience (like broken layouts, missing graphics, etc). The hourly services are billed at a flat $60/hour, and estimates are free.
I have over 13 years in the business and over 15 years experience in web design, starting back when the web was still in its infancy. I do not use pre-made templates or editing software - everything is custom-built to my clients' specifications. I hand-code all of the pages, again, from scratch - allowing for any type of layout or configuration. My business goal is simple - to provide small businesses, organizations and individuals with a high-end web presence that they can afford and be proud of at the same time.
I promise to keep the business plugs to a minimum on this blog. But since it does pay the bills, thereby making what you see on the rest of this site possible, I think an ad now an then isn't too out of place. If you are a business owner or know of one that could use a good deal on a new or redesigned site, I'd appreciate the referral.
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Good luck son. My thoughts are with you. Wishing you the best of success!!!
- Posted by Sally |
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Saturday, July 3, 2010 - 11:53PM CDT
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July 3 St. Louis fireworks
I took Metrolink into downtown from Scott Air Force Base to shoot some photos of the 'Fair St. Louis' fireworks (the precursor to the normal July 4 display). The city was packed. My usual vantage point on the Front Street levee was blocked off by the police, so I settled for a spot on the Eads Bridge.
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This was the first chance I've had to try out the Metrolink light rail line, and I was very impressed. Clean, fast, smooth-running, infrequent stops and just an overall well-run system. It didn't take much longer to get downtown than it does driving, when you consider parking in the city. A big event like this weekend made the trains actually the faster option, since traffic downtown was gridlocked. Even though the trains were packed to standing-room capacity near downtown, I encountered no problems. This will definitely be the way to go for future baseball/football/hockey games or any other big event in the city.
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Sunday, June 27, 2010 - 9:36PM CDT
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6/27 St. Louis storms
A fairly uneventful storm day in St. Louis this afternoon, with a line of strong/severe storms collapsing just before arriving downtown.
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Dirt and dust kicked up in the strong outflow winds:
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These are great pictures Dan! My wife and I were going to her softball game in St. Louis at about this time that the storms were moving in. On I-64 it looked very similar to the second one here like we were driving through a cloud or a sand storm because the wind had kicked up a lot of dust from some gravel lots. I had my camera with me and was able to get some pictures (not the best because they were taken from a moving car in low light), which I put up on my panoramio.com account. I then Google searched to see what other people had done with storms over St. Louis and I not only came across your great site, but that you also got pictures of the storm we were in tonight! You've got a lot of great images here, especially of the rainbows over the arch. Also, my wife and I live in New Baden, so it's nice to see pictures of the area (especially with the train and the sunset). I really like your site and I hope you keep up the good work!
- Posted by Jesse D. from New Baden |
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Thanks Jesse, good to hear from a New Baden neighbor! I'll plan to check out the Panoramio photos. The blowing dirt was pretty dramatic, I wish I'd taken a few more shots of it.
- Posted by Dan R. from New Baden, IL |
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Hi Dan is all this extra storm activity having an impact on your work ? Look's like you are out and about a few times a week now.
- Posted by Mick from UK |
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Mick, it's been pretty busy for sure. Thankfully most of the storms are local events that I can go out during the afternoon/evening that don't impact my daytime work too much.
- Posted by Dan R. from New Baden, IL |
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Sunday, June 27, 2010 - 1:08PM CDT
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Chicago lightning expedition #6
HD CHASE VIDEO: Lightning over downtown Chicago
Another trip to Chicago for lightning this weekend. This has been a pet subject of mine that I've been working on for 4 years now (links to previous trips here and here). It's also been one of the more frustrating and difficult ones. I seem to have a knack for choosing to not go the days when epic lightning happens, and choosing to go when the storms are not cooperative. I decided against a trip earlier in the week due to models showing storms initiating to the south and east of the city. To my dismay, they fired to the west and passed over downtown with incredible upward lightning (hitting all three major skyscrapers) that made huge news around the world. Still feeling the sting of missing that, I went ahead and jumped on this weekend's setups, which turned out to be total disappointments. The MCS activity simply fired too far west (over western MN), and didn't make it far enough east before losing their characteristics that made them favorable for upward lightning.
I did get one round of nighttime storms just before dawn on Saturday morning, but these were also not very cooperative. Not one upward discharge event. You can hear on the video that my DSLR has a one-second delay in between 10-second exposures - and two of the three nice anvil crawlers behind the city happened during that little gap! Hopefully I can figure out why it's doing that soon, apparently the odds are somehow in favor of it missing lightning even though it's getting 91% open-shutter time coverage.
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This was a fairly close CG in the middle of the storm's core of heavy rain (blocking the view of the city here). The attachment point to the building it hits is visible, but the rain is so heavy you can't really see anything remarkable. Another example of lightning not striking the highest object, as the Sears Tower is just behind and to the right of this bolt (maybe less than a half mile away).
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