Sunday, May 31, 2015

Zoo trip

Rain, lots of rain. 1st dry day and a trip to the zoo.  My little minions are wanting to learn photography.  I've taken them on a couple low risk chases and had them shoot some cloudscapes.  I also decided to give them cameras and let them figure out what they wanted to shoot.  They picked out the chimpanzee and orangutan exhibit at the zoo.  So I let them go and wander while I took some time with the animals.

They're painting.

Baby chimps photogenic

 Tammy is baby chimp's mother and has been in residence at the zoo for a while.  Over the winter the zookeepers noticed she was not using her arm.  They found the elbow to be severely dislocated.  They tried to cast it, but it would not set properly.  They decided to amputate the arm after several infections.  She recently came back on exhibit.



Wednesday, May 13, 2015

04/24/2015 Storm Chase

This has been an odd year for storm chasing.  I'm at the tail end of moving houses and prepping the old one for sale.  I'm in a new local looking for my perch to find the storms again.  The old one is still out there in a farm field not far from the old house and I still go there,  It just takes a little more time.


This storm occurred on 4/24/2015 and caused hail damage to the town of Lucas.  The storm was tornado warned for about an hour and I ran up north to intercept, knowing my chances weren't great to catch anything.
 The storm had accelerated and was showing characteristics of turning into a squall line. We stopped at Coronado Heights and found a great place to see storms.  Unfortunately, by the time we made it to the top of the big hill, a wall cloud that we spotted had fallen apart and the shelf clouds were starting to form.  We stayed and watched lightning form the hill and left before the line caught us.  We hit some of the gust front but made it away before the hail hit.


04/14/2015 storms . . . meh

It's been a busy year for Ruminations of Thunder.  We've had art shows, Final Fridays, and moved. In the midst of moving and house repairs, I decided to chase a severe warned storm heading into the city. It was a beautiful storm that became suddenly outflow dominate before it fell apart.  Lots of movement in the atmosphere.