Spring Has Sprung!

Well here it is April 1st, which can only mean it's time for me to get into severe weather mode. No this does not not mean hiding under my bed and crying as some may have you believe. I'm just fascinated with Thunderstorms, and I do have to admit that this fascination was born out of fear, anough fear to have mild panic attacks (still no crying under the bed though).

About 4 years ago my life was in a tumultuous state, which is a fancy word meaning it sucked. I was dealing with the recent death of my Mother, a very uncertain future and also a very bitter and confusing ending to what I thought at the time was a strong relationship (Oh boy was I wrong, but that's another blog for another time). Well, I'm not one to just deal with the stresses in my life directly, usually it's funneled into one unreasonable obsession or another. Well in this particular instance it was the weather. At the time I had 2 crappy jobs driving for a living, which means that whenever the big storms hit and the sirens went off, I was out in that shit. It was especially scary for the School Bus job, because if anything ever went down while I had a bus full of kids then their lives were in my hands, and that scared the crap out of me.

Later on that summer (I drove summer school), we had the stormiest July in Chicago history. We set a record with 16 straight days of Severe Thunderstorms. Another record was set for number of warnings. Over a normal Summer, the Chicago office of the National Weather Service in Romeoville, IL may issue 60 to 70 Tornado and/or Severe Thunderstorm Warnings for northeastern Illinois and northwestern Indiana. Well in July of 2003 they issued over 200! Almost every night over that 16 day stretch i would sleep with the lights on with the TV tuned to The Weather Channel. (Still no crying under the bed).

I knew I needed to deal with this in order to function, it was almost to the point of affecting my work. What I did was educate myself more about severe weather. I knew that not every thunderstorm was severe, and even knew that not every severe storm produces tornadoes, but I wanted the knowledge to be able to see what was happening and hopefully gague the real chances of something bad happening. Watching the Weather Channel and looking up the National Weather Service website were tremendous sources of knowledge, as well as the Storm Prediction Center, which is the agency that issues severe weather watches (local offices issue warnings).

Another great source I discovered a few years ago was an annual severe weather seminar hosted by Tom Skilling, who is the chief meteorologist for WGN-TV in Chicago. Tom is probably the best in the business and is one of the few TV weather reporters that's a true meteorologist instead of some hack reporter with a Broadcast Meteorology Certificate. All kinds of speakers are brought in every year to discuss the latest research into severe weather, as well as insights into past events and what we've learned from them. There are also speakers from the National Weather Service that speak about updates to the warning system. All in all it's a very informative event and I would reccomend it to anyone, plus it's free!

So that puts us to here and now. I find myself getting excited about the Spring storm season now, and was even disappointed that I didn't get a good lightning show out of a squall line that passed through the area last night, but I also count my blessing because an apartment building about 10 miles away lost it's roof in what appears to be a microburst. I love tracking the storms on the radar, but still get a little quiver in my stomach when the heavy stuff is bearing down on me.

One other thing I'd like to share is some photography, although not my own this time. A local photographer goes on storm chases every year and shoots some amazing photos, you can find them here.... David Mayhew Photography

A couple other photo sites.... In The Clouds Photography and.... Cool Images from the Storm Prediction Center.

That's all for now.