It is now time to prepare for a TROPICAL CYCLONE CHASE! You are in a juiced and hot tropical air mass, getting your chase vehicle ready. Your putting your home-made WX station atop the vehicle, lashing up 4 extra 5-gallon gas cans and topping off all the fuel, even rain-X ing the windows! You sweat and rush, with no shirt in the tropical air. High cirrus clouds are overhead and a strong SE wind is setting the mood for a storm chase. Your schedule is cleared, you're deceased grandmother is "deceasing" again (only your BOSS knows that), and your chase-partners are all a "go 4 it", even the one with the possesive wife ;-)

This is it, the logistics are set! Everyone including yourself hits the road ... Usually for a long, long drive to the target area! Your well ahead of the storm, closing in on it fast. You pass through towns and cities, each with their own unique attitude, and meet many different people along the way. You can't sleep because you are too excited. You eventually close in on the watch / warning areas, right in the highest STRIKE PROBABILITY , and the police gladly let you pass road-blocks. The sky is ominous, almost scitzophrenic in nature, with fast-moving clouds yet with a hot, dead calm at the ground. You find out your storm is still strengthening, with still another night to go. Aaaah, your finally in your target area now, nothing to do but wait for the "show"!

How about being in the CORE WINDFIELD of one of the worst storms on earth? The true essence of the chase is felt with a feeling that is rewarding, thrilling, terrifying, and empathetic all at the same time. No matter how much training you got, your'e never prepared for a hurricane's core! The wind and rain increases, slowly but surely ... Then the eyewall arrives, the the "wall" of wind and rain does, in fact, hit you like a "wall"! Trees are flying, signs come down, and the power goes out. Your vehicle shakes, and you see the lil' needle on your barometer actually moving to the left as your ears go "pop"! The rain is not heavy, but horizontally violent, making a roaring sound on the windshield as power poles and trees make a omen-like moan. You try to stand outside, your yellow raincoat flaps and buffets in a blur, you finally reach a "critical angle" of lean into the wind until you can't stand up anymore. When the rain drops approach the "accupuncture feeling" you get back in the vehicle. Sudenly, a respite from all this violence and chaos ends abruptly as you pass through the eye of the hurricane. The wind dies quickly, then stops to a warm, dead calm, nothing moving. The sky above becomes a cyclonically structured STADIUM EFFECT, with blue skies and thin clouds overhead possibly with some sunshine. Your barometer is at its all-time low and you get the feeling of being at the bottom of a giant "party cup" or "fish bowl". You see the second half of the "doughnut" approaching fast, and hastingly pour a gas can or two of fuel in your tank (that's ofcourse of some media buddies, and you know who you are, whoever you are, didn't steal the gas). Soon, act II of Hurricane "Ruth" is upon you once again, with equal fury, and everything occurs in the opposite order as the increase of the storm before, even the wind is from the opposite direction. Your ears pop, the lil' barometer needle moves back to the right, and whatever was leaning in one direction is blown the other and collapses. Soon, the storm slowly moves on, and conditions slowly improve, as you continue leaving the storm, with a great story to tell and footage to prove it!

The storm is over, and you are returning home after a ultimitely successful and rewarding chase with you and your chase partners. You got great footage, and a lot of stories to "tell the kids", but there is one thing that has been kept "off the list" ... YOUR CAR! Yes, your lovely chase vehicle, your "Baby", the machine that took you to and through "hell", then safely returned you to "bring it all home"! Your vehicle is tired, dirty, salty, and needs to be nurtured ... So once the power is restored and the weather is nice, after all, you are now IN THE DRY SLOT, so bring that baby in and have it washed, the tires rotated, and most importantly ... Get an OIL CHANGE !! En Espanol: Lavar su caro, rotando las llantas, cambio aciete, engrase, y nuevo filtro para aciete tambien!

Now you are home, the storm you intercepted is history. You are now all rested up, remember, you went nearly 48 hours without any sleep during that storm! Now it is time to go through your footage ... Develop those pictures, update that web-site, answer all those messages from the local newspaper, BNVN, CNN, TWC, Rick Sanchez, Channel 5, Channel 7, Channel Z, the Radio Show, Niel Rogers, you name it, you WILL be a star ... You will be plugged, sponsored, paid, re-warded, and commended for your work as a storm chaser!! You will make new friends because of your footage, definitely with Jim Edds and Jim Leonard, possibly chasing with them dirt-cheap when they go to chase a typhoon in, let's say, Asia (no pun intended, you know the deal)! Even better, RICKY CATES, will actually wanna chase with you and apologize to you and your buddies just because this intercept was a "Lucky Break" at earning some extra respect! I think we should CELEBRATE! By the way, did I also mention that you are FIRST ON DA LIST on the next major military "Hurricane Hunter" flight out of Puerto Rico? ;-)

"Oh darn", or should I say, "Oh fu--" (oops can't say that)! The problem here is that you missed the storm and that what you read up to this point, well never happened, in other words, "you got sh--" (oops I meant "jack")! The way to miss a really good tropical chase is to simply NOT GO, like some people I know did with hurricane "Isabel" back in September of 2003, but that's all I'll mention about that, because I do not wanna "go there"! You MISS a hurricane, you most likely would NOT be lucky for a second chance later on in the season, and if you have TSDS (tropical SDS), that can just down right HURT! Family and job opportunities can always use an EXCUSE ... For example, my grandmother, who passed away back in 1994, has died an additional 12 times to make excuses to my current and former bosses to chase tropical cyclones. It ALWAYS worked for me, and my deceased grandmother should be almost 90 by now (I use dead people for the excuse because first of all, I am not really lying because I think of it as another funeral, don't people go on second and third honey moons? Also, doing this with a person who is alive is BAD LUCK - I am a bit supersticious and I don't wanna mess with a self-fulfilling prophecy)! Other ways to miss a storm are if the storm track is too far away from a chaseable area (target area), the worst example of this being the dreaded FISH STORM , which remains far out at sea during its entire life, too far to even get large swells from the thing. Nothing you can do here, just go home and cry.

If you are gonna miss a storm, or at least the core of it, a great alternative is being close to some kind of thunderstorm activity, especially on the forward, right side of the storm! In the area depicted here, it is relative to a northeast-ward bound storm, so the SE quadrant is this area. Make sure you are ahead of the DRY SLOT, where squall lines develop in the moist air ahead of it, and if you are lucky enough to have backed-winds at the surface, a TROPICAL SUPERCELL just might be on order! Don't fret, take advantage and chase, but I would not rigg-up the "grandmother funeral" type excuses just yet, remember that you are only dealing with rain and thunderstorms. If you are closer to the storm, and especially if there is a high-pressure area nearby to bring up the wind-pressure gradient, a strong wind-corridor will form between the log and the high. If this happens, you can't miss it on a weather map because the isobars are literally "packed up" between the two systems. This should treat you to some gale forced winds, especially near the coast. Have a good chase, then punch back into the dry slot to get that oil change!

The dreary and gray area of the storm is far away from anything GOOD and only presents the chaser with boring grey skies, light rains, with only your weekend getting screwed up by the storm. This is usually the part of the storm that hits you when you can't chase because of a job tie-up or family resposibility. Remember the "My grandmothers funeral" excuse? Use it, and do the kids really need to be picked up from practice that early? Another chilling possibility is that if you get to actually chase, roads may be closed by authorities. Waiting by a road-block and being denied passage is a really, and I mean REALLY MISERABLE experience, expecially, as in most cases, the road-block is in this light rain area far from anyting "GOOD"! If you can't get to chase the storm, and you are stuck in this rainy area, you will not only be depressed because you are only looking at cool, dreary, grey weather, but also you WILL be eating your heart out because you know that the "GOOD STUFF" is just over the horizon and you can't get to it ;-(

Sometimes an "oil change", especially when you are "IN THE DRY-SLOT" can and does NOT go the way you want it. For example, you might experience BAD SERVICE, long waits with some poor EXCUSE such as "Oh sir, we are unusually busy today", or even the worst nightmare, having your car sabotaged by a comission-obcessed mechanic (examples: sand in the oil, rice in the radiator, sugar in the gas tank, your new CV boots cut, etc). I know, because it has happened to me, IN THE DRY SLOT too! And speaking of "Dry Slot", why do most oil change and car care shops offer "Rainy-Day Oil-Change Specials"? I guess if you change your oil "IN THE DRY SLOT" it probably will cost more too!

Mechanic: (with a smile) "Good morning sir, and welcome to Fire Stone. How may I help you?"

Customer: "Oh yeah, I would like to have my oil changed and my tires rotated--" (gets cut off)

Mechanic: "--Sssssss" (sign), "Oooooh, sir, today is not your day. That's not going to happen, sir."

Customer: "W-Why? It's only 7:30 AM?"

Mechanic: "Well it's UNUSUALLY BUSY this morning, you got about 15 cars ahead of you, we are short a mechanic ... If you wait around until about 5 or 6 PM we might be able to squeeze you in, but we close at 6 so it is NOT LIKELY, sir--"

Customer: (grabs keys with long face) "--Okay, well just gimme back my keys, don't fill that out, 'cause I gotta get to Jiffy Lube early too!" (notice how the customer brings up 'the nearest competitor')!

Mechanic: (Silently signs with guilt) "......."

And so then you leave, the same way you came in ... with NOTHING ACCOMPLISHED ... Seeing 'RED', frustrated, pissed-off, smoking your tires because you couldn't get your oil changed! As the ole' saying goes "The early bird gets the worm" ... But in this case, the worm "was not up yet!"

Mechanic: (with a smile) "Good morning sir, and welcome to 'Performance Brake And Tire'. How may I help you?"

Customer: "Oh yeah, I would like to have my oil changed and my tires rotated."

Mechanic: "Certainly, sir. Today is your lucky day. We have an after-hurricane clean-up, lube, and filter special today."

Customer: "Great! What's the wait?"

Mechanic: "Well, you're the first customer here and we can get you all set in 15 minutes. We'll even give you the service for half-price."

Customer: "Fantastic! Here's my keys and thanks alot ... I guess I'll grab a bite to eat next door and pick up my car when it's done."

Mechanic: "You got it, chief ... And I will see you in a few."

You are so exuberant, you have a nice hearty breakfast, and 10 to 15 minutes later, you return to 'Performance Brake And Tire' to pick up your car, only to find something is terribly WRONG!

Mechanic: "Hello sir, we're all done with your vehicle, but we did find some problems. First of all, your CV boots are busted, you see what my mechanic put here: 'Needs CV boot on right front axle'."

Ofcourse, you decline the service, which will cost a bundle at this shop ... After all, you are in THE DRY SLOT and all you wanted was an OIL CHANGE. Upon closer examination of your vehicle later that day, you see your brand-new CV boots, which you JUST spent nearly $500 bucks to replace a month or so ago before hurricane season started, cut with a razor. You know it was CUT, because you can see the marks! You return back to 'Performance Brake And Tire' and speak to a different person, most likely the manager.

Customer: "Hello, Bob, I think the guy you signed me up with the other day took a razor to my CV boots and then ... 'Cut the boot!'--"

Manager: "--Ooooh." (sign), "Sorry to hear that, sir ... I thought he was an honest man."

With no way to prove it and nothing else that can be done because "BOB" fired that mechanic as a coincidence just after you visited and the vandalism was done. All you got was an empathetic APOLOGY from "BOB". Time to re-replace the CV boot(s) and cough-up another $500 bucks ;-(

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