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Monday, September 10, 2007 - 1:33AM

Tropical Storm Gabrielle report - September 2007

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.

Gabrielle turned out to be largely a non-event. I targeted the eventual landfall location of the storm just northeast of Beaufort, NC, and the circulation center passed directly over me at mid-day. However, Gabrielle was a struggling storm, with all of the convection (heavy rain and wind) located away from the center. Skies were clear and sunny for most of the afternoon, including the center's landfall - which is not a good sign of health for a tropical cyclone. Thge most interesting part of the storm came during early morning, when the sun began breaking through the outer rain bands to form some of the most vivid rainbows I'd seen. After that, the day was pretty uneventful and you'd never have known that a tropical storm was overhead if you weren't already aware of it. Heavy rain finally moved onshore at Morehead City by mid-afternoon - but by then I had already headed back home, unimpressed by the storm's remaining prospects. Although an unimpressive event, Gabrielle was still interesting to observe, and it was nice to have something so close to home for a change.