Chasing as predicted 23 years ago

[Tim Vasquez]

I was going through some really files in my C64 archives and was amused to find this... written in November 1988. Hopefully this is not something I already posted and forgot about.

I'm kind of astonished that I foresaw a 70 mph speed limit, as 55-65 mph limits were in effect most places back in 1988 and Oklahoma didn't get 70 mph until 1995. What I didn't foresee is that 5/7/2011 was actually a down day, and I don't think I foresaw the Internet and how it would change the morning map routine and allow us to compare forecasts with one another.

Tim


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THE MAY 7, 2011 HAMMON STORM
By Tim Vasquez

The morning was gray and damp, a drab beginning to another spring day in Oklahoma City. Slowly recovering from a peaceful night of sleep, I stared out the window. It looked an awful lot like winter, but no one could expect much light at seven o'clock, and I knew that it was just as warm outside as it was in the house.
I walked over to my agent, a paralell-processing personal computer, virtually unsurpassed in speed by most supercomputers 20 years ago. Crossing my fingers, I asked, "Weather data". Fortunately, my agent had been instructed to retrieve all available data for North America every morning at 6:30 sharp, and sort it for me.
"Southern United States weather data, retrieved Saturday, May 7, 2011. Dryline indicated in eastern New Mexico. Low indicated over northwest Texas, central pressure 99.8 kilopascals. Front indicated in south Kansas and north New Mexico. Projected lifted indices from all 4 models minimum minus 11 over northwest Oklahoma. Please select data to print."
I glanced at the computer screen, and selected some maps displayed on a menu.
"Give me 1, 2, 4, 7, and 10," I mumbled.
"Invalid. Please select data to print."
At this time, I contemplated either programming the computer's voice recognitions with my sleepy morning accent, or politely introducing the computer to my axe. "Give me 1, 2, 4, 7, and 10," I said, rather clearly and condescendingly.
"Printing." The laser print hummed quietly to work as I went to the kitchen in search of breakfast.

I was westbound on Interstate 40 by noon, occasionally pushing a bit faster than the 70 mph speed limit. The car glided nicely down the highway while I frequently glanced upward at the cumulus towers, which replaced the bank of stratocumulus that I had left miles eastward. Already it was 86 degrees and I knew it would be getting warmer.
As I drove into Elk City around 2 o'clock, I could see a white layer in the sky past the cumulus towers--it was an anvil looming in the distance!
I anxiously picked up my videotape camera, powered it up, and pointed it southwest. Fortunately at this distance, no details would be lost--the high-definition video, now in widespread use, would make my footage at least four times clearer than that of chasers in years gone by. I decided it would be best to save my steroscopic splitter attachment for the wall cloud or tornado events, as I couldn't spare the extra tape speed required.
Another hour later, I was nearing the storm. I turned and headed north, to catch up with its northeastward progression.
By evening, a wall cloud had attached to the cloud base. I waited anxiously for the telltale signs of a tornado developing, but unfortunately I saw nothing more than an ominous funnel. Oh well, perhaps next time.
As the storm fell apart and turned into a giant rainstorm, I drove to the nearest restaurant in Shamrock and picked up some dinner. Ten bucks for a hamburger and a soft drink makes for a pretty cheap meal when out on the road like this. Unfortunately, about ten minutes from home, I had to change the tire--in the soaking squall line that had followed me eastward.
When I returned that night, I certainly was not exhausted. I spent another two hours playing my videotape footage to the agent computer, occasionally "grabbing" frames and sending them to the color printer. Perhaps I could edit the funnel to make it touch the ground--no one would notice. No--maybe not. If I'm that starved for a tornado, perhaps I should just browse through the April issue of Storm Track magazine I just got yesterday... the first 20 or 30 pages should be plenty to read.

 

[J Tyler]

That was AWESOME. I loved the combination of things you got right, mixed in with things you could have never guessed. Like your HD camera and "film speed".

I wrote a letter to my child 8 years before she was born. I was building my house at the time, and wanted her to know that I was already thinking of her. That letter had a lot of things in it like your post above. Anyway, thank you Tim for sharing that.

 

[Dave Kaplow]

Impressive, Tim, you pretty much nailed the price of a gourmet burger and a coke! Also the parallel-processing personal super-computer, and HD video. However, we are in the twilight of the “videotape camera,†to say nothing of 30 page dead-tree magazines. Predicting the future is damn hard, but you seem to have gotten it more right than wrong. You did better than many of the things I’ve seen written by so-called experts... Those old “futurist†predictions are usually laughably off-base.

I remember back when I was a young keyboard player struggling to make it in the music business, people would ask me if I knew how to read and write music, and I would always answer that in a few years computers would be able to output anything I play directly to sheet music, so why waste time learning all that notation? And I got that one exactly right, in fact I ended up working with a guy who wrote one of the very earliest non-supercomputer music printing programs back in the early ‘80s. Sometimes the writing is very clearly on the wall… But I don’t think anyone really foresaw how the internet would change things.

I’m curious, though, back before the internet, did you guys ever imagine or wish for the kind of in-car real-time radar, satellite and model data we have today? Just having constant up-to-date radar alone has changed the face of chasing, IMO. I wonder how many of today’s young chasers would still be out there if they had to do it old-style: pick a target and then strictly visual... Not so easy to do! Today’s technology has perhaps made things a bit too easy, in some ways.

 

[Dave Gallaher]

That was pretty clairvoyant, Tim. When I saw the title, I thought perhaps you were going to post one of David Hoadley's Funnel Funnies about future chasers.

So how about doing a REPORTS: 4/25/2027 Floydada-Childress TX? It might offer some clues for future investments...

Dave K, the most I ever wished for in the late 70s was great individual chase support (i.e. nowcasting) with a mobile phone. I never thought individual radar readouts would be affordable, so we are way ahead of the curve of my expectations. Still, I think the main force driving younger chasers out there is not the ease of it, but the publicity due to Twister and the cable TV chase programs.

 

[Jason Foster]

So how about doing a REPORTS: 4/25/2027 Floydada-Childress TX? It might offer some clues for future investments...

Yeah...probably a lot of us going to do some "long range forecasting". Wonder what the GFS 175,320 hours out looks like.

Oh..and investments. Look for materials that help produce chips that can produce faster, at cooler temperatures. Also look at food related commodities.

 

[Tim Vasquez]

I’m curious, though, back before the internet, did you guys ever imagine or wish for the kind of in-car real-time radar, satellite and model data we have today? Just having constant up-to-date radar alone has changed the face of chasing, IMO.

YES, and I think the perspective looking back is even more bizarre and interesting now that we're in an era where the Internet is almost Borglike in its saturation and reach. Back in 1989, David Hoadley and I collaborated on an idea of the "ultimate" chase vehicle, and you can pretty much see what was envisioned for data options:

You can see the 1980s influence here with data supposedly received by dish coming from GOES (which had WEFAX and a couple of data streams). No one really envisioned data coming in over a cellular phone network.. us doing Facebook updates on an iPad would have seemed like something out of Star Trek.

What was envisioned seriously, at least up until 1992, was NWS offices becoming saturated with chasers stopping in to look at data. This caused several offices in the SRH region come out with policy letters governing visits by chasers. It was widely known by chasers as far back as 1985 that it WAS possible to get data on the road with a portable computer and acoustic coupler (CompuServe and AccuData were around), but the hardware costs were astronomical. No one seriously started doing this until the early 1990s, when laptop costs finally went below $4-5K, and as we all know, by the end of the decade a lot of people were doing this.

Carson Eads was the guy who rode the cusp of this wave, and had a chasemobile sort of like what you see above with a 486 desktop computer and analysis table. He used my old WeatherGraphix program for an "AFOS workstation in the field" and was able to make printouts right there in his van to be hand-analyzed.

Tim

 

[Tim Vasquez]

Here is another gem from Stormtrack, written by Tim Marshall in May 1986:

What does the future hold for storm chasing? Although the future of storm chasing may be guaranteed for the short term, what about in 2086? George Orwell may have written something like this.

Storm chasing would no longer be as we think of it today. By 2045 cities would be so large, that storm chasing on the ground would be no longer possible. Ardmore and Tulsa may actually be suburbs of Oklahoma City whereas Wichita Falls and Mineral Wells would be suburbs of the Dallas-Fort Worth area. You could expect hours of traffic jams because of the lack of future highway planning. Air traffic would be the same. It would take hours just to get in and out of an airport.

What weather data? There would be no weather service stations since it will all be computerized right down to the observation.

Satellites will do everything. As a severe storm forms on the earth, a shield could be hydraulically maneuvered to shadow the storm below, thereby, inhibit local heating. This plan would have to be called SCUD (Storm Chaser Urban Defense). With the continued growth in population, storm chasing as we know it would cease.

So then, how lucky are we to have been born in a geologic time period where storm chasing is possible and successful. The future of chasing storms could be preserved if we start now. A group entitled PFTPOSC (People For The Preservation Of Storm Chasing) should be formed to promote the preservation of this sport. I envision a place, say in southwest Oklahoma where chasers can chase in peace. This "Storm Chaser Reservation" would be about 50,000 square miles centered around Hollis, Oklahoma. The name Hollis could be changed to Chase.

 

[Jeff Richardson]

Great post Tim...very nice look back at the past. Really gives us perspective on just how far technology has benefited chasers in the past few years. I remember the days when all I had was PBS's "A.M. Weather" and local NOAA weather radio broadcasts to help me prepare for a chase. The "BMW Interceptor" is a classic too!

 

[Paul Knightley]

I love the chase vehicle! Not enough light bars though, I'm afraid!