THE BLOG HAS MOVED!!!

Hey everyone! I have completed the transition of the blog, so this link is now old. You need to change your links to my main page at..

http://www.tornadoeskick.com

The blog has now been incorporated with my main site. All the RSS feeds can be found on there as well.

Also be on the lookout for a few new features on the website... those will be posted in detail on the new blog as they are completed!

Again, this link is now out-of-date. All new posts will be on the main page at...

http://www.tornadoeskick.com

Weather And Websites

A beautiful morning to start out the week as the much anticipated cold front is making itself very well known across the region with very chilly temps, some light rain, and blustery conditions. The models hang on to the closed low and keep these conditions around through Wednesday which makes me very happy given the earlier forecasts were hinting at this cool, wet weather only sticking around for today. Current forecasts have highs around 50 through Wednesday with overnight lows in the 30s! There is a chance, albeit slim for most of the Denver area, that overnight temperatures will be cold enough for snow flurries. Higher elevations south and west of town have a better shot of seeing this, but no accumulations of note expected anywhere west of the foothills.

Chase-wise, severe weather is expected in Oklahoma today as been talked about over the last few days. However, given the southeast OK targets and marginality of the setup, it wasn't justified to me to make such a lengthy trip. I see nothing today that seems overwhelmingly significant beyond a cold front enducing a nasty squall line. A couple of embedded supercells might spin up a nader, but today's main threat is winds with a shot or two of decent-sized hail.

The weather media nerd in me has been busy with multiple DVD/video projects over the last couple of weeks, but I have also been dabbing into some web work on some of the longer renders. I've been back at work with Wordpress and am currently trying to recreate the front page to tornadoeskick.com to basically make it the blog page.

My hope when all is said and done that my main page still has the slideshow, but the main page will be the blog itself. I am using Wordpress for this because of its customizability and the hope that I can make it part of the main page seemlessly and basically merge the front page and the blog to a one-stop shop. I am not doing any drastic redesigning of the site for this, its just an attempt to bring the most popular part of my site (the blog) to my front page in hopes of directing traffic to a center point on my site and let them branch out from there.

Because Wordpress does allow blog importing, I have every intention of bringing over the archives from blogger which as of this writing is well over 1,700 entries. Assuming I get everything to work, the biggest change will be the address of my blog which will go from the current blog.tornadoeskick.com to the main url of www.tornadoeskick.com.

Main features of the new main page will be the full blog, news slideshow, twitter, latest videos, latest chase logs, blog links, and other misc stuff.

Right now, I am aiming for a simple target date of January 1, 2010 as to when to launch this. My hope is to have it complete long before then, but my priority is knocking out the several DVD projects I am working on. I'm hopeful to have those out of the way by Halloween and will allow myself the early winter months to program my new front page/blog. Its entirely possible this could be running as soon as tomorrow, but only in a testing phase of it. Lots of work will be done to get it working as I want, thus the tentative Janusary 1 date is when I hope to have all the bugs worked out. With that said, don't be surprised if you see previews of it on the site between now and then.

So that's the scoop early on this Monday morning! Today is the last full day of summer, but don't tell Ma-Nature that. She's getting a jump start to fall a day early and I for one am lovin' her for it!

Oh, one last thing. I cancelled my MySpace account this morning. I'm a Facebook person and haven't used MySpace in forever. If you had me on MySpace, search for me at Facebook now!

Rams At Redskins, Game Thoughts

Nine points against the Rams?!?! That means 12 points against the Lions next week... we got the 'W', so in the end, that's all that matters, but really? Our defense bailed us out there at the end and most of the game given we couldn't cross the white line. Our stats won't tell the tale as we had well over 300 yards of offense, but that won't win games.

I liked Zorn's 4th down go-for-its, both of them. Yes, they didn't score, but it told the offense to get your heads out of your ass and win this game. I also liked it cause in the end, its the Rams verses our defense, and I had a hard time believing that they were gonna crawl out of the shadows of their own goal posts with no time outs and muster a game winning drive. They went 4 and out, thus we held on and managed to limp away with the win.

Campbell did well all things considered, and Cooley looked very good again. Portis had a good day given he averaged 4 yards a rush, so the offense looked good except when they got into the money zone. But it was against the Rams... they won't get away with this against the teams in the NFC East. It needs to get better.

But we're 1-1 with the Lions next week. They'll have to wait another week before they get their first week in a year and change.

Rams At Redskins, 1st Half Thoughts

The Redskins fear of the endzone continues this season as 200 yards of offense and several good drives result in two field goals and a fumble. Twice the Skins stall in the Red Zone and settle for field goals. As a result, the one good drive the Rams put together gives them the lead. Ironically enough, I had just texted my Dad about how the Skins defense had held Jackson to nothing. I literally hit send and Jackson breaks off for 60 yards setting up the only touchdown of the game to this point.

The Rams beat the Redskins last year cause the Redskins couldn't put them away. Right now, its shaping up to be the same result as the Skins, while dominating in offensive statistics, cannot get into the endzone!

Upshots... Cooley continues to pile up great stats and Campbell actually looks somewhat good today. Hard to put the blame on him for today, but would like tos ee him get the team into the endzone in the second half.

Rams get the ball first, so would like to see a quick drive and get the ball back in our hands and open up the playbook a bit.

Not Chasing Monday

My lack of motivation to exchange Monday's work hours to today pretty well decided the fate of Monday's potential chase for me. With that said, I will not be venturing to Oklahoma for what will likely be a squall line with high winds and maybe some hail.

I've been in discussion with Ed Grubb regarding Monday's setup, and unfortunately the wishcasting I did the other day likely won't unfold, thus we've decided to bag the venture.

However it won't change the act that this system will bring a strong change to the region. Temperatures on Sunday will be in the 80s, then struggle to close in on 60 by Monday. With that, the first few days of fall will definitely feel like the season. I'm looking forward to the change and am looknig ahead to the cooler seasons.

Tomorrow is another day of football! The Redskins play at home verses the Rams tomorrow in the early game and I am hopeful for an offensive assult on a rather sad Rams team. Given we lost to them last season in a game we should've won, I'm not going to get all high and mighty, but I'm hoping they take out some frustrations tomorrow.

Fall To Come Roarin' In

Was checking out the models for next week's system and think Fall certainly has the chance to come in like a lion for a few folks across the states.

Latest GFS hinting at an open system on Monday before closing off the low Tuesday with a chance at some severe weather across areas of central Oklahoma into southern Kansas. The 500mb flow doesn't race over the higher CAPE areas progged by the model, but the faster SW flow does clip northwest Oklahoma just behind nearly 3000J/kg sitting over central Oklahoma. SPC's morning outlook for the 4-8 has a cold front event highlighted east of this area and it this latest run of the GFS were to hold, I would think the best potential for chasable weather would sit in northwest Oklahoma IF we can generate some better CAPE in that area to match up with the progged flow. Moisture seems to be the issue as dewpoints are forecasted in the mid 40s across the panhandles to mid 60s along and east of I-35. Again, matching up the upper flow with the surface features will be key to make this event worthy of the trip.

The models do not move the system much, but as it closes, the speeds increase across the region, but the front blasting out all the CAPE for Tuesday. With that said, it would be a one-day shot for this if it were to verify.

With that, I am keeping tabs on the situation and will see how the WRF/NAM/ETA starts to handle it as it closes in. It will also be interesting to see if the GFS holds this system with such decent parameters and if it will remain consistant. If so, then it appears that at least one more chase sits possible.

Minor Tweaks, Upcoming Week

This entry is a quickie to make mention of a couple added/changed links on the blog list. First of all, Steve Miller has recently changed over his blog to an updated WordPress version that looks very nice! Also added was Scott Bennett's blog, so give them both a look!

The week ahead looks very benign weather-wise. Mostly sunny with highs in the upper 70s to near 80. The GFS brings the next big system into the US later in the weekend with a stronger blast of northwest flow clipping the state. Beyond that, it doesn't appear to be too significant for us as it ill slide off to the east before it digs. Of course, that's just this morning's run, so plenty of time to change, but that's how it shapes up now. Regardless, it will be a quiet warm week for the front range.

Redskins At Giants, Game Thoughts

This was a little delayed thanks in part to a severe-warned cell that got me off the couch just as the Skins went 0-1. The storm, like the Skins, showed some potential, but ultimately didn't do anything impressive (at least when I got to it). Half-dollar sized hail was reported in Coal Creek Canyon, but the storm died a quick death as it moved off the higher elevation. I did break the warning box just before it was lifted, so with that, I got on a severe-warned storm today.

I'm definitely left feeling a bit empty with that game. Had I not seen the game myself, I would've been pretty happy with the closer-than-it-should've-been score, but the truth is we looked horrible. My expectations going into this game were not high, but I was hopeful for something more than I got. Rid of a fake field goal and the two-minute drill, they really did nothing.

The defense gets some praise as they held the Giants on several occasions to field goals as opposed to touchdowns. Randle El took advantage of his playing time and Cooley did help a couple fantasy teams thanks to his late score. Other than that... I'm glad this one is over. I'm hopeful the offense starts to wake up a bit or I am gonna be quick to jump off the Campbell bandwagon. The Rams at home are next, and on paper, we should have no issues with that. But I'll try not to jump too soon.

I guess it could've been worse, and my biggest concerns are with the offense. The defense, I think, played well and I hope that carries through the year and our offense gets on track. One week doesn't tell a story, so I am hopeful for more in the coming weeks.