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Chasing ERNESTO

HurricaneJosh

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turtlehurricane

turtlehurricane

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That video reminds me of my experience in the northern eyewall of Katrina in 2005. The winds leading up to the eyewall never exceeded 35 mph, it didn't seem like there was an intensifying hurricane just offshore. It fooled most non-meteorologists, my workplace at the time (publix) called me in to help with the hurricane shopping rush, I refused saying the eyewall was within an hour of hitting and they didn't believe me. And then it hit all at once, I remember getting an 85 mph reading on my handheld anemometer just as trees started crashing down around me and my mom started screaming for me to get inside. We didn't get into the eye either, only perhaps a slight lessening of the wind towards the very middle, and then an hour or 2 after that it was all over. Even the radar images aren't that different!

220px-Katrina_Florida_landfall.jpg

Excellent video by the way, hopefully this is only a tease for the real stuff to come.

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The Dude

The Dude

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Great video! And this might just be a record fast turnaround for finishing the trailer!

As always, I loved the minimal matter-of-fact commentary. Just enough to guide the viewer, but still allowing the weather to be the star of the show. I wish more chasers will follow your lead. (I know it must have taken some effort to edit out all of your shrieks of "Oh my God, this must be a Cat 4!!1!1!!)

Did the restaurant suffer any damage? How did the locals react to your presence? Friendly? Bemused? Cursing the white devil for bringing the wind?

On the tech side, have you ever considered using a tripod (or monopod) to help with stability? It probably won't help much during the peak, but it might be useful before and after. Also, have you thought about supplying your own lighting in some fashion? I imagine anything integrated into the camera would drain the battery too fast, but perhaps rigging a small LED flashlight to the camera would give you a light source without interfering with your battery life or ability to easily handle the camera.

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Uncle Bobby

Uncle Bobby

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I love the vid!

Could you tell us what chase was the single toughest go/no-go decision you ever made (but DID go) and what made that decision so tough? Is there a chase you regret? i.e. you went and wish you hadn't gone?

Granted, it's bad form for chasers to admit that they wish they hadn't gone on a chase, but surely you must admit that one stands out as being, oh... let's say "the most disappointing"? Also, what ranks as your favorite chase ever?

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HurricaneJosh

HurricaneJosh

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:thumbsup::wub:

Thanks, Tony-- glad you liked it. :)

Great video! Though I bet the guy at the light switch was just trolling you, waiting for you to say "the power's out..."

:lol::D

Thanks, man.

Great video man. Awesome.

Thanks, Scott! Thanks for checking it out.

Hey Josh, I had totally forgot I had saved a whole folder of Radar images and Sat. Pics for you, but your PM inbox is full! :P

Great video by the way, the darkness with the clanking and rattling of the place coming apart makes for a great drama! Well done and well played!

Thanks, James-- glad you dug the video! :) Scott and I really appreciated that navigational help you provided during the chase. That map you made-- showing my location on the radar-- was awesome. And thank you so much for the images!! :)

Great video as always Josh!

I was just about to make the same comment about the power of even a cat 1 or 2 if you're well positioned but I see hm8 beat me to it :P

Yeah, but I totally hear ya. I think this video really drives that point home. Glad you liked the video. :hug:

Awesome video Josh! The sound of the wind is amazing and the roof was really bouncing; looks like it would have come off if the winds had been much stronger. Did the restaurant suffer any damage? Really teaches that even a Cat 1 is nothing to mess around with.

Thanks, Jimmy. Yep-- my chief takeaway from Ernie is that even a high-end Cat 1/low-end Cat 2 is serious stuff if you get a direct hit.

The building got through surprisingly well. Most of the roof actually stayed on, although large pieces were blown off and strewn around the property. The sign in front was bent, and the trees were stripped of a lot of their foliage. I'll post pics in the chase account.

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HurricaneJosh

HurricaneJosh

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Bendy Barns!

great shots. Glad you are safe and that metal/pole roof did not blow off. Is this the most ricketty structure that you have weathered a storm in? the garage last year was pretty extreme in it's own right.

Thanks, Sean. :wub:

As I mentioned on DBM... The place was a lot better constructed than I thought from a casual glance. When I looked closely underneath, there was a solid system of crisscrossing beams/bars in place, and that metal appeared to be really strapped down. This area was close to-- if not in-- Cat-5 Dean's eyewall five years ago, so anything old and still standing in this area has got to be built reasonably well.

That having been said... Yeah, this was not the most solid structure I've chosen to ride out a hurricane in. :D

That video reminds me of my experience in the northern eyewall of Katrina in 2005. The winds leading up to the eyewall never exceeded 35 mph, it didn't seem like there was an intensifying hurricane just offshore. It fooled most non-meteorologists, my workplace at the time (publix) called me in to help with the hurricane shopping rush, I refused saying the eyewall was within an hour of hitting and they didn't believe me. And then it hit all at once, I remember getting an 85 mph reading on my handheld anemometer just as trees started crashing down around me and my mom started screaming for me to get inside. We didn't get into the eye either, only perhaps a slight lessening of the wind towards the very middle, and then an hour or 2 after that it was all over. Even the radar images aren't that different!

Excellent video by the way, hopefully this is only a tease for the real stuff to come.

Wow-- weird! The experiences sound very similar, actually! It's funny hoe Katrina even as a Cat 1 in FL made such an impression-- a sort of foreshadowing of things to come.

Glad you liked the video, Turtle. : :)

Good stuff.

Thanks, Ed! Glad you dug it, and thanks for following along with the chase.

Great video! And this might just be a record fast turnaround for finishing the trailer!

As always, I loved the minimal matter-of-fact commentary. Just enough to guide the viewer, but still allowing the weather to be the star of the show. I wish more chasers will follow your lead. (I know it must have taken some effort to edit out all of your shrieks of "Oh my God, this must be a Cat 4!!1!1!!)

Did the restaurant suffer any damage? How did the locals react to your presence? Friendly? Bemused? Cursing the white devil for bringing the wind?

On the tech side, have you ever considered using a tripod (or monopod) to help with stability? It probably won't help much during the peak, but it might be useful before and after. Also, have you thought about supplying your own lighting in some fashion? I imagine anything integrated into the camera would drain the battery too fast, but perhaps rigging a small LED flashlight to the camera would give you a light source without interfering with your battery life or ability to easily handle the camera.

Thanks for the feedback, Scott! I actually narrated this one more than usual because of the darkness, and I was worried I was talking too much-- so I'm glad it didn't seem excessive.

The building was beaten up but did pretty well, I thought. (See my response to Jimmy, above.)

Re: equipment... I really need to consider these things-- to stabilize my shots. Jim Edds has really gotten on me about this. Part of the issue is mobility-- I really try to minimize equipment so I'm unencumbered and can travel easily (without checked luggage on a plane) and move quickly during a storm. Part of it is spontaneity-- once you get into really setting up shots, you miss things as they're happening fast-- like trees blowing down, roofs ripping off, etc.-- those things you can't predict. As shaky as my camerawork is, I'm usually happy with what I come away with-- I feel my videos have been able to capture some of the energy of even the smaller (non-major) hurricanes, and I believe it's from staying quick and responsive to what's happening around me.

This all having been said... Yeah, it would really, really help the quality of my videos if I stabilized my shots more! So maybe I should just look into what's available. There have got to be some more portable options.

Re: lighting... I've always relied on car headlights and street lamps. For Jova, that worked great; for this one, it didn't. So maybe I should look into that, too. Again, I'm worried about mobility, but on the other hand, anything to make a nighttime landfall salvageable is a good thing.

I have to say, I feel like I've gotten more than my fair share of nighttime landfalls lately and I'm getting really ticked off. Jova and Ernie would have bee really awesome by daylight-- especially Jova. Omg. Grrrrr. :angry:

Thanks, Scott, for the thoughtful comments. :)

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HurricaneJosh

HurricaneJosh

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Good work Josh! Not exactly the best structure to take video from, it limited you for better shots at the peak, but it was very nice for a rush time setup :)

Yeah, it was very limiting-- the video has a claustrophobic feel, doesn't it? :D I guess that's what makes this one unique. In the end, it made sense, because there was nothing to shoot outside-- just blackness.

Thanks, Jorge. :)

The raw data is posted here:

http://www.americanw...10#entry1688533

:wub:

Nice video, josh. It was a perfect end to a quick decision to go. As difficult as it was for Ernesto to cooperate it ultimately was the right call to go and experience it.

Awww, thanks, Andy! :hug:

You make such a good point-- I was thinking that exact thing the other day-- that despite having been so on the fence about it, I'm really glad I went-- it was a cool storm. I liked it more than a lot of the officially stronger 'canes I've been in.

I love the vid!

Could you tell us what chase was the single toughest go/no-go decision you ever made (but DID go) and what made that decision so tough? Is there a chase you regret? i.e. you went and wish you hadn't gone?

Granted, it's bad form for chasers to admit that they wish they hadn't gone on a chase, but surely you must admit that one stands out as being, oh... let's say "the most disappointing"? Also, what ranks as your favorite chase ever?

Thanks, Bobby-- and thanks also for the awesome archiving work! :)

I don't mind answering these questions with brutal candor. :D

I'd say Ernie was one of the toughest decisions ever-- I was so on the fence about it-- literally going nuts in those final hours-- and by the time I made the decision, I was already late: like, I should have been at the airport already! It was torture. There've been other hard decisions, but this one I think was the worst.

Least-favorite chases: Rina last year was my biggest bust ever-- actually, the only bad bust of my career: I flew all the way to the Yucatan for it and it fizzled to below hurricane strength before it came ashore. A small consolation prize was that I collected data that the NHC used in postanalysis. (I don't count Don as a bust, as I was in TX already and only drove an hour outside of my way to chase it.)

With regard to actual 'canes... Probably Irene in NC and Gustav in LA. Both of those cyclones just lacked that "edge".

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HurricaneJosh

HurricaneJosh

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How did the locals react to your presence? Friendly? Bemused? Cursing the white devil for bringing the wind?

Forgot to respond to this. :D

Generally, I find the Mexicans to be friendly and hospitable. These folks were fairly neutral-- not friendly but not unfriendly. But they were nice enough to let me stay there to ride out the cyclone-- I made sure to spend money when I first arrived, so as not to come off like a freeloader-- and they certainly didn't make me feel unwelcome. They expressed an interest in my Kestrel-- were curious what it was-- and at one point asked me how strong I thought the winds were. My Spanish isn't so hot, so that limits the conversation a bit. Overall they were cool.

On a more general note, however, I am feeling some discomfort in being-- as you suggest-- this random, pale-skinned gringo that shows up like some bad omen right before a cyclone strikes.

To Mexicans, I am the black raven or the jackal in "The Omen" movies.

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wxmeddler

wxmeddler

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Forgot to respond to this. :D

Generally, I find the Mexicans to be friendly and hospitable. These folks were fairly neutral-- not friendly but not unfriendly. But they were nice enough to let me stay there to ride out the cyclone-- I made sure to spend money when I first arrived, so as not to come off like a freeloader-- and they certainly didn't make me feel unwelcome. They expressed an interest in my Kestrel-- were curious what it was-- and at one point asked me how strong I thought the winds were. My Spanish isn't so hot, so that limits the conversation a bit. Overall they were cool.

On a more general note, however, I am feeling some discomfort in being-- as you suggest-- this random, pale-skinned gringo that shows up like some bad omen right before a cyclone strikes.

To Mexicans, I am the black raven or the jackal in "The Omen" movies.

Josh, The Jim Cantore of the Yucatan.

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LocoAko

LocoAko

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Great video! Really remarkable how frightening even a Category 1/2 storm can be. Makes me shake my head that plenty of people in NJ think they went through a "hurricane" last year. (Don't get me wrong - it was plenty bad, especially the flooding, but let's not act like the winds were close to hurricane force in 99% of places).

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Wannabehippie

Wannabehippie

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I have a bunch of people to thank in this thread, and I'll do that later-- but for tonight, I just wanted to let ya know my chase video is now live!

Hey, it's not beautiful camerawork—the darkness and chaos made it almost impossible to setup a clean shot—but it captures the experience of riding out a direct hit from a small, strengthening hurricane in a roadside restaurant deep in the tropics.

The video starts quietly and it builds as the hurricane approaches. The roaring climax happens just after 12:30 am (note the timestamp), when Ernesto's center passes just a mile or two to the south and we're in the punishing inner north eyewall. Not surprisingly, this is also the time of the lowest pressure (975.0 mb). This radar image below is from that moment—with the red diamond showing my location.

You'll notice in the video that the cyclone doesn't last long—the whole thing comes and goes in less than an hour. It's a swift, hard kick!

I'll post a complete chase account tomorrow. In the meantime, enjoy the video!

post-19-0-26658100-1344829833_thumb.png

Fantastic video Josh. When you go on these chases to these small little towns, do the locals think you are a little crazy for coming out to feel the full fury of the storm and record it?

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The Dude

The Dude

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Re: equipment... I really need to consider these things-- to stabilize my shots. Jim Edds has really gotten on me about this. Part of the issue is mobility-- I really try to minimize equipment so I'm unencumbered and can travel easily (without checked luggage on a plane) and move quickly during a storm. Part of it is spontaneity-- once you get into really setting up shots, you miss things as they're happening fast-- like trees blowing down, roofs ripping off, etc.-- those things you can't predict. As shaky as my camerawork is, I'm usually happy with what I come away with-- I feel my videos have been able to capture some of the energy of even the smaller (non-major) hurricanes, and I believe it's from staying quick and responsive to what's happening around me.

This all having been said... Yeah, it would really, really help the quality of my videos if I stabilized my shots more! So maybe I should just look into what's available. There have got to be some more portable options.

It's definitely a fine line. Part of what I like about your videos is your ability to convey a good sense of the intensity of the minute. To do that, you definitely need the flexibility to move the camera quickly to capture the action. At the same time, added stability may allow you to better capture the type of stunning unforgettable images of a storm's power.

Something like the below monopods may give you the best of both worlds (without adding much to your luggage)

http://www.amazon.com/Manfrotto-681B-Professional-Aluminum-Monopod/dp/B0000WKYU4

http://www.amazon.com/Gitzo-GM5561T-Section-Traveler-Monopod/dp/B001G7PID0/ref=zg_bs_499314_14

I've had several Manfrotto travel tripods that I take everywhere with me. They aren't the most robust products, and tend to wear down after a couple of years, but they are fairly cheap. Their ultra-portability and minimal weight more than make up for the lack of durability.

If you decide to try a monopod (or tripod), I suggest starting with something on the cheaper end so you can see if you even like using it. If you do, you can upgrade later once you have a better sense of how you'll use it.

Re: lighting... I've always relied on car headlights and street lamps. For Jova, that worked great; for this one, it didn't. So maybe I should look into that, too. Again, I'm worried about mobility, but on the other hand, anything to make a nighttime landfall salvageable is a good thing.

These are the type of thing I had in mind. I don't know anything about the quality of these specific models, but it should be easy enough to find something small like this that you can mount to the camera to provide some light when you need it.

http://www.amazon.com/Flashlight-Advance-Focus-System-Distance/dp/B004VPWOLI/ref=pd_bxgy_e_text_c

http://www.amazon.com/BBQbuy-300lm-Flashlight-Torch-Adjustable/dp/B006E0QAFY/ref=pd_cp_hi_3

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HurricaneJosh

HurricaneJosh

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Josh, The Jim Cantore of the Yucatan.

No, he's the Josh Morgerman of commercial cable TV. :D

Fantastic vid. It's always fun to follow along with your chases! :thumbsup:

:wub: Thanks so much for watching it and following along.

Great video, as always, Josh! :thumbsup:

Thanks, Mallowberry-- always nice to see you around these threads. I hope you can participate more this summer, like you did in 2008. :)

Amazing video Josh! Loved 3:54-6:37. The sounds are incredible.

Thank you so much. I really appreciate such specific feedback like this-- I'm always curious what specific parts others find most interesting. :)

The Dude had some great suggestions, Josh. Thankfully you made the decision to head to MX and capture a nice microcane in some very challenging circumstances. Here’s to more data in the days ahead.

Thanks, Steve! Yep, I feel like this was an awesome appetizer-- now I'm ready to hunt the big game. B)

Great video! Really remarkable how frightening even a Category 1/2 storm can be. Makes me shake my head that plenty of people in NJ think they went through a "hurricane" last year. (Don't get me wrong - it was plenty bad, especially the flooding, but let's not act like the winds were close to hurricane force in 99% of places).

Totally-- that is my key takeaway from this chase-- that any hurricane-- even a tiny non-major-- can be really ferocious. Glad ya liked the video, Jake.

Fantastic job! You really captured the full force of the storm!

Hey, thanks, Martin! It ain't a pretty or polished video, but I do feel it captures the energy of the storm.

It's too bad hurricanes can't adapt themselves to flourish in the artic circle so that you wouldn't have to keep getting plagued by landfalls when it's dark.

:D

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HurricaneJosh

HurricaneJosh

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Fantastic video Josh. When you go on these chases to these small little towns, do the locals think you are a little crazy for coming out to feel the full fury of the storm and record it?

Hey, thanks! (And nice to see you here-- long time, no see!)

I definitely think they think I'm a little weird. I mean, put yourself in their shoes-- you live in a small town in the remote Yucatan jungles, and late on a Tuesday night, some random gringo dude shows up with equipment and stuff and starts filming things. That's got to seem a little weird. But, hey, they were perfectly nice about it.

 

Total admiration for you Josh. Quality work!

wub.png

Thanks, man! By the way, I've been missing your forecasts this year! Wtf? Please start making them again. smile.png

 

It's definitely a fine line. Part of what I like about your videos is your ability to convey a good sense of the intensity of the minute. To do that, you definitely need the flexibility to move the camera quickly to capture the action. At the same time, added stability may allow you to better capture the type of stunning unforgettable images of a storm's power.

Something like the below monopods may give you the best of both worlds (without adding much to your luggage)

http://www.amazon.co...d/dp/B0000WKYU4

http://www.amazon.co...zg_bs_499314_14

I've had several Manfrotto travel tripods that I take everywhere with me. They aren't the most robust products, and tend to wear down after a couple of years, but they are fairly cheap. Their ultra-portability and minimal weight more than make up for the lack of durability.

If you decide to try a monopod (or tripod), I suggest starting with something on the cheaper end so you can see if you even like using it. If you do, you can upgrade later once you have a better sense of how you'll use it.

These are the type of thing I had in mind. I don't know anything about the quality of these specific models, but it should be easy enough to find something small like this that you can mount to the camera to provide some light when you need it.

http://www.amazon.co...d_bxgy_e_text_c

http://www.amazon.co.../ref=pd_cp_hi_3

Hey, thanks, Scott. Some of these items looks awesome-- worth my looking into. I'm a little embarrassed I haven't done the research myself! I've always been lazy about equipment-- I think because I've always considered myself a stormchaser and not a videographer. But there can be no harm to upping my game and improving quality-- so thank you! smile.png

 

Have you thought about a video camera with infrared capability...something with a built in infrared light? Kind of like the stuff you see on those ghost hunting shows. If you find yourself in near total darkness, it'd be one way to keep filming.

Yeah, I was thinking to go to the camera store here and ask them for their advice Re: my "problem"-- that I'm often having to shoot in remote areas in the dark. Maybe they'll have some special model to offer. I use a Sony, and one of the reasons is that I noticed-- when I was last choosing my videocam model-- that the Sonys seemed to perform best in low light.

 

 

Very nice Josh. Your living my dream every time you intercept a 'cane.

wub.png

What a nice thing to say-- thank you.

 

 

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