As a storm chaser I’m use to driving endless miles in search for photogenic storms. But one of the perks of having a home in Oklahoma is that on occasion great storms come to you, as was the case last night when I took these lightning photos.

Recently, I have had a few bad experiences with television media companies, as well as print media companies concerning the ability to sell a product – either video or prints. I thought maybe I was doing something wrong; perhaps I was out pricing myself (even though I consider my prices to be extremely decent). I’ve been doing this for years, but it is a quickly changing market.

The National Hurricane Center has had some fun with Invest99l, which became Tropical Depression Two, which was then downgraded to an Invest after a few days, and then upgraded back to Tropical Depression Two and then just this morning upgraded to the first named storm in the Atlantic Basin for the 2009 Hurricane Season – Tropical Storm Ana.

The Atlantic Basin might actually be coming alive – maybe. A low pressure area associated with a tropical wave just off the western coastline of Africa is organizing near the Cape Verde Islands. The system is moving to the west at 10-15 mph and the National Hurricane Center has given it a 30 percent chance of becoming a tropical depression within the next 48-hours.

Scientists at The Florida State University’s Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies (COAPS) have developed a new computer model that they hope will predict with unprecedented accuracy how many hurricanes will occur in a given season.

How to be a Storm Chaser? It’s one of the most popular questions that I receive from readers, so I’m creating this multi-part series to help the newcomer who is interested in Storm Chasing.

Finally, there is a tiny little piece of action happening in the Atlantic Basin this very quiet hurricane season. Here is the gist of it from the National Hurricane Center: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/gtwo_atl.shtml

If you woke this morning in east Oklahoma and were lucky enough to see the sunrise, you had a great treat to relax to while enjoying your morning coffee!

Last month USA Today reported that Five U.S. Patent and Trade Office patent applications, made public on July 9, propose slowing hurricanes by pumping cold, deep-ocean water in their paths from barges. If issued, the patents offer 18 years of legal rights to the idea for Gates and co-inventors, including climate scientist Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution of Washington.

I recently read Storm Chaser and respected tornado scientist Dr. Chuck Doswell’s latest essay titled – “An Incident Leading to an Implication of Unfullfilled Promises,” which as Chuck’s essays usually do made me do a lot of thinking. The gist of the essay refers to the fact that on June 12th, 2009 at 10:23 PM CDT a tornado formed in the “heart of meteorology” (Norman, Oklahoma) and it ended about 10:38 PM.

Dr. Rick Toracinta was my chase partner on several great storm chasing occasions and I was extremely fortunate to befriend him. Rick was a rising star in his research field of Polar Meteorology at the Byrd Polar Research Center, The Ohio State University.

The GOES-14 (GOES-O) satellite was launched on 27 June 2009, and is undergoing its Post Launch Test. The first calibrated full disk visible image (above) was received by the SSEC Data Center beginning at 17:30 UTC on 27 July 2009.

Overnight (June 7th, 2009) a rare atmospheric phenomenon occurred in south-central Oklahoma. No it wasn’t a tornado, it was much more rare than that – even during 2009! Suddenly at about 3am CDT in Jefferson County the air temperature became very hot and dry, the temperature shot up to 97 degrees F, literally within minutes. The event that happened is called a Convective Heat Burst, it happens when a parcel of very cold and unsaturated air within a dying storm descends very rapidly and warms due to compression (at a rate of 9.8C per 1,000 meters) and overshoots its equilibrium level and reaches the surface.

Conditions are finally becoming a bit more favorable across the High Plains for severe weather. However, the past few weeks have been extremely limited due to lack of flow, lack of moisture and you guessed it – lack of quality storms. We had been reduced to being extremely happy with rainbows lately – it’s not what we’re here for, but they still make a great photo!

So what do storm chasers do when the weather is horrible (that is sunny with a light breeze)? They drive around and take artsy photos of anything that they can pass the time with. I snapped a few shots of a wind turbine in NE Kansas last week and made this composite image from them.