Inside the Storm Chasing Van

My storm chasing setup is almost never the same from year to year, but it usually includes three things that can be easily seen in this video.

1. Main van computer running Mobile Threat Net radar system.

2. Second laptop system running high resolution radar.

3. Amateur (ham) radio for weather frequencies and emergency communications.

As technology continually gets smaller, so does the equipment and pieces of gear that I have to lug around tornado alley. The three pieces of equipment here are vital though, the MTN system gives me reliable radar updates every 5 minutes that you can almost set your clock to, the laptop is primarily used to download weather information and high resolution radar from private Internet sources and while cell phones are largely replacing ham radios - I wouldn't feel right or comfortable without having my radio with me while I'm storm chasing.

At the time I shot this video there was a tornado warned supercell (after dark) near Greensburg, Kansas - this is not from May 7th, 2007 - that is just a highly active location for torandic thunderstorms. To our west was a line of severe warned cells that were coming towards us.

So we were pretty much boxed in because we needed to go South into Oklahoma to setup for the following day's chase - which meant that we just waited out the squall line and dealt with it, then proceeded south into Oklahoma to our hotel for the evening.

Category:

Travel & Events

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• storm
• chasing
• van
• setup
• laptop
• sony
• computer
• monitor
• mobile
• threat
• net
• tornado
• warning
• severe
• warned
• radar
• weather