Hey everyone,
My name's Brian, and I've been lurking here for a while, and I'm just now getting around to posting one of these. Let's see, weather has always been a big part of my life. When I was little, thunderstorms terrified me. Yet at the same time, they fascinated me. I remember being in first and second grade and just reading every book I could on storms and tornadoes. As I got older, I decided I wanted to become a meteorologist.
But as I got into college, my interests changed a little bit, and I got into other things. After my first year of college, I decided I wasn't the scientist type, and turned my attention to other things. Despite my change in major, I still had a fascination with storms. It was either during my later years of highschool or during college that I started going ontop of my roof during thunderstorms with my parent's digital camera. My goal was taking pictures of cool looking clouds, storm formations, lightning (though I failed at that one), and even the occasional funnel cloud.
After my first semester of college, having moved away from meteorology and having not yet decided on a new major, I decided to kind of stall things for a while. So I joined the Army Reserve. I ended up being a graphic designer for Army Psyop, which is where I still am today. After returning home after a tour of duty overseas, and being presented with many educational opportunities (good ol' GI Bill,) I once again started getting into meteorology.
Now, I am in my last semester at my local community college (I will have my associates in fine art,) and I am debating whether to pursue a bachelors in graphic design at NIU, or to take up the meteorology program at College of Dupage. Though, in the excitement of all the spring storms I am definitely leaning towards meteorology at COD.
This May, after school gets out, I am planning to go for a short storm chasing trip to the plains. This past Sunday I actually went for my first mini-storm chasing trip within my area. It was a spur of the moment thing, and I decided to go after a nasty looking, but non-severe, storm moving towards Rockford, IL. I decided I would intercept at Marengo. Unfortunately, by the time I was ready to go (I had to run to best buy to buy a power inverter for my car, and then put the ram mount laptop mount in my mustang,) and made it out to Marengo (about a twenty minute drive,) the storm had gotten north east of me.
I tried chasing it down, but it managed to get away from me as I neared the Wisconsin border. I saw another cell to my north west, and tried for that one instead. However, I was too far south to catch that one as well, and I gave up when I got to Lake Geneva. But the whole experience was a lot of fun, and definitely gave me some much needed experience in the field of storm chasing.
I've come to know some chasers up in this area, but not that many compared to the plains. I've been chasing since the late 90's primarily in Wisconsin area. I took my first plains trip last year during the May 22, 23 2008 outbreak which was something I will never forget!
