Josh Morgerman
EF4
Moderators: I haven't posted here in a long while, so if I'm posting this in the wrong place, please tell me where it should go or please move it there. Thanks!
Hi folks!
I chased Hurricane Dean down to Chetumal, Mexico, and rode out the storm in a hotel in the downtown area. The hurricane's eyewall passed just to the N of the city around dawn on 21 August. I blogged about this extensively, in real-time, on my home forum, Eastern US Weather.
I spent the last week going through the footage from my chase, and then over the weekend I worked with my editor to assemble it into a 20-minute video documenting Dean's assault on Chetumal. This will be released at a later date.
In the meantime, you can check out a short (03:50) Trailer on my Website: www.iCyclone.com.
Quick comments:
*Quality Disclaimer! This was a challenging chase from a shooting perspective: 1) most of it hit at night, so there was no light; 2) because of the intensity of the storm, I was holed up in one location (a mostly-boarded-up hotel) for the whole experience; 3) during the height of the storm, the wind and rain were blowing in toward one of the few openings from which to shoot. (My camera died because of this.) I got back to L.A. feeling like I had very little. Actually, there's plenty there-- but the quality varies.
*Sounds. One of my strongest memories of Dean was the awful sounds it made as the wind hammered at the hotel. For much of the night, we were in pitch-black darkness, with just the howling, whistling, and crashing sounds. (My editor remarked that it's like a horror movie.
) I've included a few seconds of footage here and there to capture some of that, even when there's not much to see.
* Small Trivia. You might miss these things because it's all happening so fast: 1) the power goes out at 02:56:22; 2) you can hear a large window on the front of the hotel smashing at 03:47:55. (All timestamps in the video are local time-- CDT.)
*The Peak. The center passed very close to downtown Chetumal at around dawn. We were not in the eyewall but very close, and the city got hammered pretty hard. It was getting just light enough at this time to capture some of the action-- after about 6:30 am. I shot from a second-storey balcony at this time. There's not a whole lot of light and the camera moves a lot because of the turbulence, but you can make out what's happening. My favorite clip starts at 06:35:55-- it gets pretty crazy out there.
I'll be writing a complete chase post-mortem (a "chase study") within the next few weeks.
Enjoy!
Hi folks!
I chased Hurricane Dean down to Chetumal, Mexico, and rode out the storm in a hotel in the downtown area. The hurricane's eyewall passed just to the N of the city around dawn on 21 August. I blogged about this extensively, in real-time, on my home forum, Eastern US Weather.
I spent the last week going through the footage from my chase, and then over the weekend I worked with my editor to assemble it into a 20-minute video documenting Dean's assault on Chetumal. This will be released at a later date.
In the meantime, you can check out a short (03:50) Trailer on my Website: www.iCyclone.com.
Quick comments:
*Quality Disclaimer! This was a challenging chase from a shooting perspective: 1) most of it hit at night, so there was no light; 2) because of the intensity of the storm, I was holed up in one location (a mostly-boarded-up hotel) for the whole experience; 3) during the height of the storm, the wind and rain were blowing in toward one of the few openings from which to shoot. (My camera died because of this.) I got back to L.A. feeling like I had very little. Actually, there's plenty there-- but the quality varies.
*Sounds. One of my strongest memories of Dean was the awful sounds it made as the wind hammered at the hotel. For much of the night, we were in pitch-black darkness, with just the howling, whistling, and crashing sounds. (My editor remarked that it's like a horror movie.
) I've included a few seconds of footage here and there to capture some of that, even when there's not much to see.* Small Trivia. You might miss these things because it's all happening so fast: 1) the power goes out at 02:56:22; 2) you can hear a large window on the front of the hotel smashing at 03:47:55. (All timestamps in the video are local time-- CDT.)
*The Peak. The center passed very close to downtown Chetumal at around dawn. We were not in the eyewall but very close, and the city got hammered pretty hard. It was getting just light enough at this time to capture some of the action-- after about 6:30 am. I shot from a second-storey balcony at this time. There's not a whole lot of light and the camera moves a lot because of the turbulence, but you can make out what's happening. My favorite clip starts at 06:35:55-- it gets pretty crazy out there.
I'll be writing a complete chase post-mortem (a "chase study") within the next few weeks.
Enjoy!
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I had no idea folks here were following my Dean chase as well. I'm kind of honored, actually, given how many really hardcore veteran chasers this board has!
