June 2007 Camp Chief Little Turtle, Ashley, Indiana

Above are a few sweet shots of a storm passing just to the North of camp. My boys are in the Scouts, they noticed the front development and hunted me down. I really like the waves in the second shot. Nature is awsome!

I promised a brief explanation of what INCHASE is/was is going to become...

Indiana Chasers of Adverse and Severe wEather was started a number of years ago in Indianapolis by a number of weather enthusiasts was were disillusioned with the rising amount of reckless chasing. They wanted to chase severe wx but in a responsible way. The early days saw a lot of activity, meetings, group chases and even other groups such as: ILCHASE, MICHASE and OHCHASE...

Jump forward a couple of years, the group got less active, people moved on, so in stepped my current chase partner and myself. We liked the concept, and so we adopted it with the blessing of the past group and are currently working at resurrected it. Unfortunately, the URL has lapsed, and has been acquired (not by us) and so another group is reborn!

Clay Stahlka and myself have been working the last few seasons to get ourselves experienced and able to chase with confidence. We have a new site in the works and have been working on getting people involved again. We are doing this because we love weather, we love to chase and in doing so we if we can help the NWS and the public with our efforts, then we have accomplished what we wanted to.

I will give more details about our chase strategy, the tools and our chase vehicle.

Keep stopping by, as I will be adding more material each day.

Regards, Johnathan Brouwer

The National Storm Chaser Convention

I have updated the blog with the The National Storm Chaser Convention link to the right... The gathering allows chasers the opportunity to gather, listen, learn and to network. Many well known speakers will be presenting, including:

-Dr Greg Forbes from The Weather Channel
-Dr Josh Wurman and Sean Casey as the keynote. (Rumor has it that the New TIVII will be there too!)
-Dr Howie Bluestein
-David Hoadley
-Tim Marshall
-Tim Samaras
-Jon Davies
-Mike Umscheid

I think there are others that have not officially committed, so this list could grow. Please check out the link to the right to go directly to the Convention site.

Hope to see ya there!

More on me

I am not a well known chaser.

I have preferred up to this point to lay low and bring myself up slowly. I know that sounds stupid, but why rush things right? Each season, myself and the others at INCHASE (more on them later) have set specific goals and milestones to achieve. "Working the weather" and using the data to drive your chase is extremely difficult and even if the data tells you one thing, sometimes the other thing happens. I have the highest level of respect for our NWS meteorologists, my fellow highly experienced chasers and enthusiasts. As I said, each season since 2004, we have set goals. One was to better understand the the predictors and initiators for storms. In doing this, we busted a lot for our target areas. We learned and have refined that skill. Another goal was to get better at removing our faces from our laptops and using the signs around us once we are close. Not doing that can get you in trouble. Overall, my personal goal was to experiment and use the technology from my professional life and bring it to the storm chasing table. In my Real life, I am a media producer. I get paid to come up with ideas and figure out the best way to implement them. Sound like fun? It is. I have produced commercials, feature films, corporate video and for the last 8 years I have worked on long-form documentaries. I have brought most of my cameras with me on chases. I got some great footage and some really bad footage too! I also brought my technology along. My wife calls our chase van the rolling geekmobile...I call it my home for many hours of driving and spotting. We use the spotter network, GPS, Skype, Yahoo IM and live video to report our position. We feel we have a fairly good system put together. We really look forward to 2008 as we have blocked our schedule for a number of days out on the plains. I will do my best to post more on myself and my geekdom. Stay tune!

Up next: The National Storm Chaser Convention is fast approaching.
After That: The INCHASE Group

Testing 1-2-3

Hello everyone. I'm calling you from my cellphone, using it to make entries in to my StormCam blog. I will be using this in the 2008 storm chasing season. I hope it works out and I thank you for coming to StormCam. listen

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Sorry for the drought

Yes I am still around, the last storm season was a total bust for our team. We all have too much going on BUT I promise I will post a review of what we did get this year including the last outbreak in OCTOBER in Indiana.

Please keep checking in, I will also update the links section so you can find out faster what is happening in the chaser community.