storms » Page 2

With only one system coming through that has produced thunderstorms here in Grand Rapids I was able to capture several lightning shots. There were several storms during the day but there was little to no structure. We did manage to get 1 inch hail and close to Kalamazoo they had 2 inch hail that did heavy damage to homes.

It was nice to sit in an open field and watch a weak storm produce some lightning. I was only able to capture one near Middleville, MI, and capture three or so back at my apartment when another round of storms came through around 2am. It seems that the lightning is always north of my apartment and i never catch any good ones. Any way here are the one i came a way with from that night. Nothing to fantastic but still really nice to see.

[Show as slideshow]

[View with PicLens]

Announced by Rich Thompson the other day, a format update for the meso analysis page will be coming in March. To test the updated version visit this link

I really like the fluidity of this newer look. After visiting the page for no more than five minutes I became very comfortable with its use. It is very user friendly. I look forward to using this coming up this spring.

Small Sector Capture

For some odd reason I get caught up in changing the look of the site around this time of year. I want something simple to work with. I found this template at WordPress. This has become the new look for the blog and will leave the main home page as is. I would prefer to have the blog and website layout the same. However, I am having issues with the change over in the weather pages. I am not very familiar with PHP, and several of the javascript, HTML, and CSS codes do not want to cooperate. PHP allows me to make one change or addition and it is changed on every page, rather then going through every page there is and manually changing it (time consuming).

Current changes include:
rounded corners except in IE.

It is optimized for Firefox.

The navigation bars on the right are collapsible and are movable (you can move the media bar below the links bar if you wanted).

New top navigation buttons.

The house icon takes you to the blog home page

Main Site tab, takes you to midwestchasers.com main page

The Blog tab will give you links to photography/storm reports by year and also a link to video’s

A new featured post box

I will keep my latest updates here on the blog. Not that any one comes here anyway. . .

“On a special note, my wife and I are expecting and will be due around the 30th of August.”

It’s official, we have had the first tornado watch of the year on January 20, 2010. There were reports of several waterspouts and a tornado in California just yesterday. Today there has been one preliminary tornado report in Southern Louisiana. Tornado watch #2 has been recently issued for NW LA, NE TX, and SE OK.

Tornado warned NW of KSHV (Shreveport, LA).

I have revamped my GRlevel3 reflectivity palette and I can’t seem to find anything that I like better. It’s brighter than many hi def resolutions on GRlevelxstuff.com. The color also keeps close to the DBZ color pallet used by the NWS, COD, and several other radar sources. I have made this palette available to you below for download. You can manipulate it to the colors you would like or just use it as is. I have made several tries at a color palette that I like, and this one tops my list.

Download color palette here.

Midwestchasers.com/Kurt Hulst

April 6, 2010

SPC Meso Anlysis

Testing Out a New Look

GRlevel3 Pal and First Tornado Watch of the 2010 Season.