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Texas Chemical Fire Causes Its Own Weather

November 17, 2011 By Leave a Comment

One of the most incredible, but also one of the scariest sights to see is a large chemical fire. Not knowing what is exploding and burning leaves many folks to wonder what might go up in flames nearby, plus the after-effects from a health standpoint.

However the chemical fire in this video showed us some truly unique aspects that one may not expect to see. In this large chemical fire in Wacahachie, TX on 10/03/11, the fire was so intense along with its powerful explosions that it literally created micro scale weather events happen at the site of the fire! The first one you will see is what is known as a Firenado. This small, tornado-like whirlwind forms when you have rapidly rising air above a large fire. In this video, the fire is so intense that it literally gets wrapped up into the circulation with incredible speed!

What’s even more unusual in this video is that the rising hot air actually rolls the air horizontally into the updraft/plume of the hot rising air to the point where the horizontal roll actually rotates into the updraft and tightens enough to form a landspout funnel cloud aloft!

Filed Under: Environment, Videos Tagged With: , ,

Photos: Lightning Storm Over Frisco, Texas

September 4, 2009 By 6 Comments

Tonight we had another massive lightning storm. We got a lot of these here in Texas, and I was workin it with my camera this evening.

I stayed out capturing these photos until the lightning was within about a mile or two of me. The sound was deafening! I literally had to put ear plugs in because it was painful. My wife thought I was crazy too. ;-)


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Filed Under: Photography, The Man's Videos Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Texas Tornadoes Come on FAST!

June 11, 2009 By 5 Comments

Dallas Tornado WeatherLast night seemed like any other normal quiet evening. Well, up until the tornado sirens started going off throughout the city!

Below is a simple little video I threw together illustrating the speed with which Tornadoes pop up in Texas. Luckily, in Frisco we have an early warning system to notify people when a serious storm is approaching. This system is truly a lifesaver, and if you ever hear it going off it’s time to get the heck inside a building!

Well, I was at home last night when that sucker started going off! And within a few minutes I began recording the clips that are assembled here. Now, there is no dramatic tornado footage, but once you understand the speed with which they appear, destroy and leave, you can understand what makes them so dangerous.

And if you didn’t have the early warning sirens, just imagine getting caught outside in this while jogging or walking the dog. You’ve got a real problem!
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Filed Under: The Man's Videos Tagged With: , , ,

“Condition 1″ Antarctic Weather

June 9, 2009 By 7 Comments

antartic-weatherIt’s getting kind of hot here in Texas. Like it’s nearly 100 degrees already. So even though we’re used to the heat, we’ll all be whining about how hot is is really soon. And really, that’s fair. I mean people do occasionally die from heat exhaustion.

Then again, if you compare Texas heat to Antartic cold… we’ll, they’ve got us completely whipped! Here. See what I mean…
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The Coldest Walk Ever! After Pizza at Gino’s East in Chicago

January 16, 2009 By 9 Comments

Gino's EastTonight I had dinner with a group of guys from work. We had traditional deep dish style Chicago pizza at Gino’s East at Wells and Ontario in downtown Chicago.

chicago-freezeThe Pizza was good, especially if you love deep dish smothered in tomato sauce. Personally I’m a bigger fan of thin crust New York style pizza. But hey, I’m not complaining. Anyway, after we pigged out on pie and it was time to to back to the hotel, we had a decision to make.

Should we take a cab? Or should we just walk – even though it’s -8 degrees outside? (That’s -22 celcius for my friends across the pond…)

walk-through-chicagoSo, I fired up the old iPhone and brought up Google Maps. It’s a great little app because you can put in any address and tell it to navigate you to that spot from where you are. You can even tell it if you’re in a car or walking. When I put in the hotel address it informed me that the walking time was going to be 9 minutes over a distance of half a mile.

This didn’t help with the decision process. I mean, if it had been like a mile, there is no way we would have walked. If it was like 3 blocks, we were totally down with it. But damn if it didn’t split the distance perfectly!
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Filed Under: Photography, Thoughts, Travel Tagged With: , , , ,

The Ravages of Hurricane Ike

September 13, 2008 By 2 Comments

Hurricane IkeHurricanes are always serious, but it’s rare that they actually have direct strikes on highly populated city centers. Well, Ike may turn out to be another one for the records. After weaving his way through the countries in the Gulf of Mexico, Ike headed straight for Texas and came ashore in Galveston while making a bee-line directly for Houston.

My brother lives down in Houston, and at least 8 hours before Ike hit his house he snapped this very short clip of his dog out in the front yard getting gusseted by winds from the far outer edges of the storm.

Then just a few hours later, this video shows the fury of the storm as it made landfall in Texas. Within about 1 hour, over 1.3 million people were without power, and the worst is still yet to come.


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Filed Under: News, Videos Tagged With: , , , ,

The Weather in Texas

February 12, 2008 By 10 Comments

Once again from the mind of Colby Jones, the truth about weather in Texas.

The Weather in Texas
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Video of Hail Storm in Dallas Texas

August 10, 2007 By 10 Comments

Hail StormDown here in Dallas we get hail. I’m not talking about little flecks of ice like sleet… I’m talking about golf ball to baseball sized hunks of ice falling from the sky at 80 miles per hour. These things rip through roofs, destroy cars, and kill people.

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MIT’s Friendly Robotic Weatherman

April 7, 2007 By 4 Comments

WeatherI know my buddy Hrafn over at Inkblot Earth is going to get a kick out of this (he’s an AI expert)… I just got finished getting the local weather update from MIT’s artificial intelligence weather forecaster, Jupiter.

All you do is give Jupiter a call on your phone and ask him for the forecast. He reads it off to you, and you’re on your merry way. Especially useful if you’re traveling somewhere and don’t want to have to find an Internet connection to look it up on the Web. I even made a recording so everyone could listen to a sample…
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