| 2005
Chase Season Kicks off!
The
2005 storm chasing season is going to be different for Stormgasm
this year. Jim is living and working full time in Houston, Texas.
This limits the time he is able to chase. Although he has managed
to chase a few supercells in southeast Texas this year. Simon
and Tom still reside in Norman, Oklahoma. But with Tom working
full time, Simon may be chasing solo a few times this year.
March
21st: 
Simon
tracks 3 seperate low topped supercells across east-central Oklahoma.
While the video is poor, he did view a tornado from a very close
distance through an area of trees from the north. Chase pics coming
soon.
Jim
views classic supercell over south Texas.
March
24th:
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Page
Updates
May
16, 2004: More photos are finally online! |
2004
Tornado Highlight Video!
The
2004 Tornado Highlight Video is now available for purchase. This
year we did something amazing; we captured video of the largest
tornado ever recorded, a whopping 2.5 miles wide. Also, we have
unbelievable footage of a tornado hitting a building while we are
in it! This is a must see... Click
here. |
Record
Breaking Tornado! (Video Online)
That's
right, just leave it up to Stormgasm to capture video of the largest
tornado ever recorded. On May 22, 2004 we saw a tornado just
south of Wilber, Nebraska that reached a width of 2.5 miles! Go
to our chase
page from this event to download a sample video clip. |
Storm
Chases Pages Updated
May
29, June 11 and June
12 have been updated with video stills of the tornadoes. June
12 has a full chase account. |
New:
Message Board!!
The
Stormgasm.com Message
Board is up and running. Check it out right now.
This
site has entered a new stage in storm chasing websites. We, the
founders of Stormgasm.com, are very excited about the development
of the Stormgasm.com Message Board. This site has continued to
grow since its creation in 2001, and we continue to strive for
new levels of excellence. It is now possible for this site to
reach thousands of weather enthusiasts eager to communicate with
each other. Please submit your comments/questions on the Message
Board. Thank you for supporting Stormgasm.com. |
Two
Weeks of Chasing
May
22: Wilber, Nebraska massive
wedge!
May 16: Amelia, Nebraska Tornado Video
Online.
May 12: Kansas Tornadoes- Watch
Video
After
approximately 10,000 miles of chasing in Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska,
Iowa and South Dakota between May 11th and May 26th, we have finally
been home for more than a single day! After the amazing day we
had on May 12 in Kansas, we had an incredible day in Nebraska
on May 16th, witnessing a very photogenic tornado near Amelia,
Nebraska after seeing a large tornado 30 miles to our west in
the sand hills of Nebraska!
But
nothing could have prepared us for the outbreak that occurred
on May 22nd. After chasing a non-tornadic cell north of York,
Nebraska, we dove south to catch a violent tornadic supercell
that formed near Hebron, Nebraska. We witnessed a massive, dark,
violent mile wide tornado charging towards us just outside of
Wilber, NE. According to the NWS this tornado expanded to an unprecedented
2.5 miles wide, with a 62 mile long damage path. This may be the
widest tornado ever documented. It caused F3 damage in the southern
outskirts of Wilber, and F4 damage in the town of Halem. For photos
and information about the outbreak, click
here. We are working on video stills and video clips. Please
check back soon! |
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May
12 Kansas Tornadoes!
Simon,
Mark and I captured eight tornadoes in southern Kansas between
7 and 9:30pm. What a spectacular supercell and series of tornadoes
for one day. We are currently working on putting more photos and
video online. Click here
for the latest photos. |
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Six
Consecutive Days of Chasing!
Wow,
what an active week it's been. I (Jim) went storm chasing Sunday
(18th) through Thursday (23rd), one of which was a terrible time
in Minnesota. Simon had a couple unfortunate days in NW Oklahoma
last week, then also had 6 days of chasing this week. We just
haven't had time to get our film developed in order to have photos
online. It's tough enough trying to pass our classes while chasing,
much less keeping up with our photos online. Expect more video
captures over the next couple days.
April
18- Jim and a friend in Minnesota (didn't pan out)
April 19- Texas panhandle:
Two large tornadoes
April 20- Sapulpa, Oklahoma wall clouds/funnel
April 21- Central Oklahoma
supercells/wall clouds
April 22- Oklahoma: Prague lp supercell & Okemah funnel
April 23- Duncan, Oklahoma massive hp and wall cloud |
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April
21 Oklahoma City Funnel
Jim
Chases an hp supecell through downtown Oklahoma City with two
others. A funnel cloud threatened to touch down over the metro
area. |
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April
19 Texas Panhandle Tornadoes!
Simon,
Lela and Jim bag two wedge tornadoes about 10 miles south southwest
of Perryton Texas around 8pm. |
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March
27 W. Cental OK Tornadoes
In
west central Oklahoma we captured our first two tornadoes of the
season! This goes without mentioning the two amazing supercells
we chased! Click here for
more. |
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March
17th Central OK LP Supercell!
Jim
films an LP supercell from Norman, OK. Click
here for a sweet time lapse video of this low topped supercell. |
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Stock
Footage Page
After
a couple hours of dedication the stock
footage page is in finally online. We still have to add information
about our gustnado, hail, and lightning videos, but the tornado
section is ready.
Update
The
stock footage page is currently being expanded. We have several
more tornado videos from various days available to download. We
also have one gustnado
video clip online as well! |
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| Manchester
Tornado Video on PBS March 30
On
Tuesday, March 30th, 2004 at 8pm EST PBS aired NOVA's "Hunt
for the SUPERTWISTER". For details, visit the NOVA
section of the PBS website.
Post
Program Commentary
Wow!
The program was impressive. It provided a very good description
of where the current tornadogenesis research is and where it is
going. I didn't expect to see so much of Dr. Bluestein or Dr.
Warman, but it was good coverage.
When
the program got to the Manchester tornado it focused on Roger
Hill's "Silverlining Tours". That's all good and fine,
but not when they talk about them pursuing the tornado *while
showing* mine and Reed's tornado footage! To someone who knows
nothing of this event, one would assume that video was from Roger
Hill. But that is incorrect. He had footage shown, but it was
video from the rope stage, not the wedge stage, and certainly
not video of the house being destroyed (abandoned house actually).
Nonetheless,
I feel privileged to have my (and Reed's) tornado footage on such
a credited educational program on tornadoes. Something like this
is only made once a decade.
-Jim
Bishop |
| |
Stormgasm's
Popularity Suddenly Soars!
On
January 9th, an unknown source placed a link to Stormgasm.com
on a message forum (fazed.net).
The very next day we received nearly 4,000 user sessions, more
than ten times the number of user sessions typically observed
in any given day! It didn't stop there. For several days following
the site saw more than 6,000 users a day. Stormgasm pictures began
appearing in several major websites across the world, including
flabber.nl and themorningnews.org. Stormgasm.com had a weekly
total of nearly 40,000 visitors during the week of January 11-17!
As
a result, we have been receiving many different emails from people
around the world about our photographs. The Photo Gallery has,
so far, been a major success for the website, drawing in thousands
upon thousands of unique visitors to our site. We love reading
your thoughts about Stormgasm.com, storm chasing in general, weather
phenomenon, photography, ect. One side note: I very recently discovered
that a friend Gerard submitted the comment on fazed.net. Thanks
Gerard!
There
is almost always a negative side to something so incredibly great.
Due to the sudden explosion of visitors we have had an enormous
number of video clip downloads. Consequently, we were forced to
take down Simon's May 8th tornado
video, along with the new June 24th tornado video clips in order
to lower the daily bandwidth usage. We are working on a much better
and shorter promo clip for our highlight
video, but we have not come up with a solution to the bandwidth
problem itself.
Traffic
has slowed down quite a bit since the Stormgasm "traffic
jam", but our average daily user session numbers are still
about five times what they were last month. Overall, this is absolutely
HUGE for us because we now have roughly 50,000 people talking
about, writing about, linking to, and sending emails about Stormgasm.com.
This marks the first step in what this site could potentially
become. And in case any of you were wondering, we due plan on
putting up an incredible message board for the spring. School,
money, and really just time have been preventing this for quite
a long time now. So if you like Stormgasm now, visit frequently
because it's only 'gonna get better with time!
- Jim Bishop |
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Manchester
Tornado Video Coverage on Storm Stories
Follow-up
On December 9, 2003 The Weather Channel had a show on Storm Stories
covering the tornado which
destroyed Manchester, South Dakota on June 24, 2003. Parts of
Jim Bishop and Reed Timmer's video (Tornado
Fest) were shown.
I
must say the show was very good. It showed how the victims of
the tornado took action in the heat of the moment, and how they
were affected.
Clips
from our tornado video were shown frequently throughout the show.
In fact, almost all of the tornado video shown was ours! I was
a little upset when the show implied that the meteorologist from
Sioux Falls shot the video. He explained what he was doing while
chasing the tornado, but they showed our video. I feel Reed Timmer
and I (Jim Bishop) were not given the proper credit. |
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Being
a Hardcore Storm Chaser is Expensive!
For
us, the chasing season began in early March with a trip down towards
the Rio Grande. Then came a very active April with one period
of six consecutive chase days. Halfway through May we had used
nearly all our chasing funds. Keep in mind the gas prices this
entire time (ouch!).
I
know most of you have been expecting to see photos (rather than
video stills) from the many chases we have had this year. We have
so many rolls of film in our refrigerator that it would cost a
lot of money to develop them all. While they will be developed
and put online at some time in the future, we just don't have
the money right now to get them developed! Given our predicament,
I'll see what kind of video stills we can grab from these chases.
Simon does have one undeveloped roll from the May 16 Amelia, Nebraska
tornado. Due keep an eye out for those pics as they should be
great.
Now
it's June. There has been about one week of relatively inactive
weather, so we haven't missed much. However there are a few days
coming up that could prove to be great chase days. I only wish
gas prices were not so high. We'll see what we can squeeze out... |
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