In September of 2025, my work is generating the most income it ever has in my career. Yet, I'm being forced to shut down my successul operation, against my will, due to one cause alone: 95% of that revenue is being stolen by piracy and copyright infringement. I've lost more than $1 million to copyright infringement in the last 15 years, and it's finally brought an end to my professional storm chasing operation. Do not be misled by the lies of infringers, anti-copyright activists and organized piracy cartels. This page is a detailed, evidenced account of my battle I had to undertake to just barely stay in business, and eventually could not overcome. It's a problem faced by all of my colleagues and most other creators in the field.
I found this in an old stack of photos that I'd been meaning to scan for the blog a couple of years ago. This is my grandparents' 1982 Buick LeSabre station wagon on Crooked Creek Road in Teays Valley during a storm sometime during the summer of 1998. I'd been driving it for a few years during my college days, and eventually as transportation to work in Scott Depot. The cars' days were numbered at this point, being replaced by a company car that I started driving in 1999. I got my first Ford Ranger pickup in 2000 (which my dad still drives, now with nearly 250,000 miles).
My siblings and I grew up with this wagon model style. My parents had a 1985 Chevy Caprice wagon that we kept until around 1993-1994, a vehicle that was a fixture of all of our major family trips. Prior to that, we had an older late-70s Chevy wagon. The LeSabre wagon was identical to the Caprice, simply rebranded for Buick with a few minor detail differences. I learned to drive in the Caprice, went on my first storm chase in it in 1993 and, unfortunately, got into a minor sideswipe collision with it in 1992.
The '82 LeSabre served occasional local storm chasing duty during the 1995-1998 era. Here is a shot of the car during a chase in Montgomery in 1996:
These cars were nice and roomy on the inside, and pretty comfortable. The ride was smooth, the V-8 engine had great power and overall the things were built like tanks - but they obviously weren't great handlers. They were also gas-guzzlers and fairly breakdown-prone. The LeSabre seemed to be going into the shop every few months for something.
I'm not a classic car enthusiast by any means, but if I had to pick an old model car to own purely as a novelty item, it'd be a toss-up between a DeLorean DMC-12 or a Chevy Caprice wagon.
Nice read, Dan. Thanks for sharing! - Posted by Dann Cianca from Centennial (Greenwood Park), Colorado
Wow! What great memories. And I'm always amazed at your memories for details. - Posted by Katie from Melrose, MA
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From Dan: Please Read
To my regular readers, I offer my apologies for this heavy-handed notice. Unfortunately it has become necessary, so please bear with me!
Please don't copy/upload this site's content to social media or other web sites. Those copies have been a critical problem for me, seriously harming this site and my photography/storm chasing operation by diverting traffic, viewers, engagement and income. "Credit" and "exposure" does not benefit this site or my operation, rather they threaten my ability to cover my operating expenses. Please read my full explanation for this notice here.
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