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Friday, March 20, 2009 - 4:33PM

Spring in downtown Charleston

By DAN ROBINSON

Editor/Photographer

From Dan: How the crime of copyright infringement took $1 million from me and shut down my operation.

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.

We made it - official spring! Here are some shots from this morning around town. Plenty of trees in full bloom and even some green starting to show up in places. It's a little early for this, granted (due to more 70+ degree March days than normal) but a welcome sign that winter is fading (almost - see my comments after the photos).

click to enlarge

Annoying model behavior

We're in the 8th inning and spring has a commanding lead, but the models want to allow winter to poise for another last-ditch rally. The last few runs of the extended-range GFS and the Euro (ECMWF) have shown a large trough setting up around late next week/next weekend. The 00z GFS run (yesterday evening's) turned it into a monster over the eastern US:

GFS 500mb pattern for March 29

GFS 850mb temps for March 29

Those are some cold mid to low-level temps shown there - along with some precip thrown in the mix, which unfortunately would mean snow. The new 12z runs of the GFS today maintain a huge trough, but keep it farther west. The Euro still shows the trough early on, but moderates it as it moves east. So, I really don't expect this trough to be quite as huge, if it actually comes to pass (remember, we're talking flaky long-range models here) - but this is definitely something I'll have to keep an eye on for the next week. In addition to the snow on the back portion, the leading edge of such a trough would likely feature a significant severe weather outbreak (over 2 or 3 days) as well for the southern, eastern, Plains and possibly midwestern US starting late next week.

Awesome downtown shots, Dan!
- Posted by Tony Laubach from Westminster, CO

Thanks Tony! Always great to see this happen every year - a sign that storm season will be ramping up.
- Posted by Dan R. from Charleston, WV