Deceiving The Beast

*First run in late May 2008; since it seemed a good precursor for the last tornado chase season, here we go agin...*

Note: The first storm chase opportunity came sooner than expected, and defied conventional logic: big tornadoes moving N/NW, close to the foothills. I may have gotten one funnel cloud in decay phase, nothing more :( The storms did better, direct hitting Windsor, CO and Parkersburg, IA. Both of which will recover; strong as a tornado can be, the human spirit's pretty feisty in small town America. Now on to the relevance of the photos...

The first thing one will notice here is the structural, aerodynamic, and philosophical design differences in the two photos. Both vehicles are not of one mission: one is a multi-purpose vehicle, with just one of it's various missions to pursue a good tornado photo*. The other is geared solely toward that objective.

From there, the specifics diverge a tad.

One vehicle is roughly 2200 lbs; the other is 16,500. One vehicle is front-wheel drive; the others is ten-wheel drive. One vehicle cost the owner $14,000; the other is costing it's owner(s) several hundred thousand dollars. One runs on regular unleaded gas; the other runs on diesel. One gets 35 mph on the open road, and even better with a 100 plus mph tail wind; the other gets 3 gallons to the mile...maybe.

One is equipped with all the latest nothing for storm chasing, save for the driver's car radio, fallible eyes, and highly questionable judgement; the other is equipped with all the latest meteorological tracking features, including wind-and-roll-resistant cupholders for four.

One can outrun any almost any storm that exists if the driver gets some sense before it's too late; the other has no intention of doing so. One plans to get close, shoot and scoot; the other...plans to do what the owner(s) claim has never been done before: photograph a tornado from the inside.

*snort*

Sorry, dudes: Dorothy and Toto already claim that distinction; ever seen The Wizard of Oz?

Houses, witches on bikes and brooms, flying monkeys...we already know some of the really weird crap that inhabits the inside of a tornado. Even Twister has been there and done that, as Bill Paxson and Helen Hunt got the ultimate blow*** from a CGI F-5.

Several hundred thousand dollars, dudes, and you've already been trumped.

Of course, if my angle of pursuit is incorrect, or my positioning in a storm's path is inopportune, I may beat the Tornado Tank to the 'perfect photo op'. With that possibility in mind -- despite earlier claims of being able to outrun trouble -- I decided to explore adopting some of the philosophy of the owners of the Tornado Tank, and figured a little 'armoring up' wasn't a bad ideer.

So I tried an experiment on my five year old Ion (*2010 makes it now seven years old*) : I lovingly layered it under sheets of kevlar armor. I reckoned that ten layers would give it sufficient protection in the event of a tornadic direct hit.

Initial tests were proof positive: the car was relatively impervious. And totally immobilized.

Unless I want to have a U-Haul truck tote my armor plating to east of Elizabeth, CO, and spend a couple hours or so strapping and fitting it on, and then just hoping that a tornado might form up and run right over the top of me. Which it would have to do once I'm armored up, because the car ain't goin' nowhere with all that armor on.

And the odds are almost as good of a tornado picking where I sit completely immobilized, as my buying a winning*** powerball ticket.

Then it hit me****: the most important -- and historically crucial -- difference between my storm chase vehicle and the vastly more technological and pricey version pictured above, would be in the disguise I give my armoring job: I make my weighted-down Saturn look like a mobile home.

*TOING*

I'm guaranteed to bring every tornado within a supercell thunderstorm down on me with that ploy; the Tornado Tank doesn't look enough like a trailer home to get much more than a passing "hmpft!" from a meandering leviathan. But an Ion, dressed out to resemble a double-wide on a wind-swept plain, with a nice bullseye drawn on it's roof, is a mesocyclonic magnet.

The end of May and June are just around the corner, and I might just beat the Tornado Tank to the punch.

Long as I have a long, downhill head start...or my Ion's disguise fools a mischievous tornado into a false sense of eagerly anticipated trailer park mayhem. Stay tuned...

* since G(overnment)M killed the Saturn product line, this won't be a future advertisement

** this is sometimes a family-friendly blog, I hadda remind myself...

*** well actually, I think the tornado's got a better chance

**** with my luck, prolly not...

Tornado Games

*a relevant repost from 2008, as the season of my idiotic discontent and potential relocation to Oz is fast approaching, meterologically-speaking...*

More than one somewhat aghast work or writing colleague has offered the observation -- after reading my various tornado chasing columns -- that I appear to enjoy "living my life on the edge". And that's the more civil version.

Hawgwarsh. My life is about as exciting as a popcorn fart, long as it's not unleashed in a crowded elevator.

How someone lives their life often differs considerably between reality and perception. To me, someone who rock climbs, hang glides, races crotch-rocket motorcycles, wrestles alligators, runs with bulls, or teaches a class of five year olds...now those people are living their lives on the edge. Comparatively-speaking, my brand of storm chasing for photos is relatively risk-free. Moreso than the offers to give me the business I get from the Nigerian and Russian 419ers; and it's probably safer than my daily commute to work, playing golf, or asking a woman out for a date after 50.

Now that's living my life on the edge, especially the latter, but I digress.

Tornado chasing can be easily and safely done from the comfort of your easy chair, merely by ordering the DVDs of it from The Weather Channel. But for me, that's too boring (and I already have the videos). So I enhance the experience with a little reading, a little research, and a little donating my sparse supply of common sense for redistribution in a future gene pool (according to some of you).

In any event, my other reason for partaking is simple: I want my own photos. It's really no more complicated than that. Call me a tornado art snob if you will; I simply want to shoot, frame, and hang, my own photos. Period.

And don't think for a moment that the storms haven't noticed.

They know that if schedules coincide, I'll be right there, camera in hand and sphincter in check (perhaps), depending on the success of my angle of pursuit. A storm knows this; and a tornadic storm may actually appreciate it.

Uh, not my peeing on it, but what follows next.

Follow my (assumed) logic hyar: if a tornado thinks about it, it will be flattered. It has, at the absolute best, a two-three hour shelf-clearing/flattening/scattering life on this Earth. I think fruit flies might live longer. If I -- or anyone -- catches a particular tornadic image on film, that one storm achieves immortality. Fame. Recognition. It potentially gets air time and honorable mention from Seattle to Miami, from weather babes the likes of Becky Ditchfield or Kathy Sabine (Denver's KUSA 9), as well as highlighted on future National Weather Service/The Weather Channel videos.

Think that most young, aspiring hook-echoes don't dream of this? Think again. What makes you think a tornado has any less desire for it's 15 minutes of fame, than any human lunkhead who goes on Who Wants To Make A Fool Of Themselves On National TV In A Faux Reality Show? Don't you think a tornado -- casually dismissed as a mindless, arbitrary leviathan, a violent anomaly of meteorological Nature -- craves a little limelight and recognition, too?

Count on it.

If lawyers can argue that sand has rights, if vegans can argue that chickens have hopes, dreams and a genuine appreciation for Thanksgiving, wouldn't it logically follow that something far more awesome and powerful than sand or chickens, would wish to aspire to something greater than a mere EF rating on The Weather Channel?

Of course, I don't wish for those rogue leviathans, seeking the kind of fame suggested, tearing into populated areas. Too many achieve infamy with just such demonstrations, and more are sure to in the future (and recently did in 2010 Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, etc).

But hereabouts, there's no need for that: there's plenty of room on the eastern plains of Colorado, plenty of open, sparsely-populated space where a fame-hungry tornado can do all the dusty dirty dancing with the stars, haystacks, fence posts and random farm implements it desires; where it can say to a fellow funnel, "it sucks to be you", and mean it as a compliment; where it can go where the deer and the antelope play, where seldom is heard a discouraging word -- since deer and antelope don't apparently have an audible discouraging equivalent for "oh SH**!" -- and the skies can stay stormy at least some of the day.

Unless it miscalculates and shows up near some inhabitation, and everything Man and otherwise scatters with a torrent of "oh SH**!"s, or whatever the animal equivalent might be after all.

Which could digress to another issue: tornadic psychological problems. But that's another story, one better taken up by Dr. Laura or Dr. Phil, and not moi.

So to those who think I'm living my life on the edge by trying a little tornado photography, I hope you now realize I'm merely performing a somewhat pseudo meteorological service, with a side of self-service therein, for the greater good of a misunderstood creation of Nature and some wall decorations at home.

Though, being thrice-concussed, I will admit I probably have a screw loose. I can occasionally hear it rattling around in there.

Anyway, perhaps one day I shall give up my photo pursuit of the leviathan: some schmuck lawyer might get around to suggesting down the road that I'm shamelessly contributing to the delinquency of a tornado by trying to photograph their antics, and right there will be the ACLU*, peeing in my Wheaties. *Sigh*

*American Cyclonic Liberties Union...some bastard lawyers are into anything these days...

Night of the Tomatoes

While my pet rock, Seymour, has recently decided that he wants to learn meterology, I may have to curtail this pursuit, if he's going to try combining real science with science fiction, HIS way. Especially when the genesis of it is a verbal gaffe by a real weathercaster.

The other day, a local weather maven (and hottie) was discussing with morning show hosts the agreement that all were "sick of winter", and were more than ready for spring. Then, she went onto remind listeners of what spring could bring: the kind of conditions that generate severe thunderstorms, unbelievably large hail, powerful microbursts and downdrafts, and those vortex leviathans that make for all kinds of inexplicable geographic rearrangement.

She's so meterologically sexy when she talks like that, but I digress.

Whatever she was thinking at the time of speaking, she apparently crossed two subjects in the translation, as she spoke of the usual probability of "tomatoes on the Eastern Plains".

Tomatoes?

The morning show hosts didn't let that one by. They had some fun at her expense.

Unfortunately, neither did my pet rock let the opportunity by, but his *TOING* was of a different notion.

Instead of focusing on the humor in the faux pas, Seymour -- overnight, while I attempted to sleep -- apparently scribbled furiously on about every sheet of paper I had left in the place, crafting what he calls a 'script' for a movie. One Seymour insists combines twists of Nature, man's meddling with same, and the injection of imagination from a mind full of..er...something, to be fleshed out by a special effects studio, and made into a movie called...Night Of The Tomatoes.

I read it. It sucks (figuratively AND literally).

"Does NOT!"

I'll let you read key excerpts from his script, and YOU decide.

In a plot sure to gain acclaim and impetus with the vegetable rights movement, unscrupulous government bureaucrats and businessmen -- all represented as conservatives, Seymour insists, because Hollyweird won't make a movie about unscrupulous liberals -- work clandestinely to engineer genetically-enhanced "super tomatoes" on a confidential, well-guarded government preserve in eastern Colorado, and in the heart of Colorado's "Tornado Alley". On one fateful late May day, summer of '10, a mesocyclonic supercell thunderstorm hits the area head-on, with a resulting tornado plowing right through the heart of the preserve. And in a metomorphosis explainable by neither Man, science or Science Fiction Theatre 3000, one of the largest, genetically-enhanced tomatoes, combines with the fury of Nature, creating....an F-5 Tomato.

This just plain has "bad" written all over it.

"Does NOT!"

At any rate...as the killer veg advances to the east, acclaimed researchers and storm chasers swarm into the path of the wrathful supercondiment, seeking answers to not only how did this happen, but how they can stop it before it garners an Academy Award for Worst Picture in the History of Cinema.

"Will NOT!"

In one of what Seymour insists is a more seminal, gripping sequence of the movie, two researchers -- somehow interconnected sexually in an on-the-rocks relationship that only dire peril and bad script-writing can change* -- encounter the relentless, ravaging leviathan along the I-70 corridor, approaching Genoa, and the "chase" is on (along with the really BAD dialogue..."is NOT!"):

Female: Oh my GAWD...there it is...it's BEHIND US!" *into cell phone*...it's an F-5...we have an F-5 tomato on the ground, moving east at a high rate of speed! Are you tracking?

(Response from person on the other end of the phone is the equivalent of DUUUHHHHH, of COURSE WE'RE TRACKING, with suitably colorful metaphorics accompanying).

Male: Have we got time to deploy?

Female: Deploy WHAT? We have TOTO, not HOTDOG!

Male: Let's get OUT OF HERE!

(music uptempos as the "chase" is on...after a few moments and credulity-stretching scenes of tomatic destruction in their wake, the dialogue resumes)

Female: It's closing on us! FASTER!

Male: I...I can't believe this...it..it HUNTS!

Female: *glares at him*...that's NOT in the script...

Male: I know...but we best get our Heinzes outta here!
Female: *another glare*...keep it up, buddyboy...

(music uptempos more...)

Female: you need to go FASTER! FASTER!!!

Male: I'm trying! It seems determined to ketchup!

Female: *sound of bone-jarring THWACK*...you just HADDA say that, didn't ya?

Male: What are you getting all stewed over?

Female: *another bone-jarring TWHACK*

Male: *into cell phone*..Ow..we have debris..I say again, we have debris!

Female: one more bad pun, and you're gonna think DEBRIS, lizard lips...

Before the climax ripens -- and before he finds himself in the soup and she can paste him for one more pun -- the movie is wisely cancelled by Paramount, only to be picked up by The Cartoon Channel and the South Park gang.

"Is NOT!"

Night of the Tomatoes. A real chili-ing meterological thriller.

*TWHACK* Ow...

*this appears borrowed from the movie Twister, only more poorly-written..."IS NOT!"