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.
It's been a long time since I've typed out an intermediate (in-between weather events) post like this. As I said once before, maybe I just haven't been very inspired, but mostly, it's just been due to being busy with work. I'm severely ADD, so most of my work days carry long into the evenings to get everything I need to accomplished. Most days I don't even finish my to-do lists. That leaves little time to sit, relax and think of things to blog about in the evenings. All of this is OK, though. I actually welcome busy days during the long winter months, as it means I'm using the time to help ensure that spring will be freed up for storms.
So, about this winter. It turns out that this one is shaping out to be one of the long, cold winters with little end in sight. January is being January for a change. I brought up some long-range model graphics I use, namely the Euro and GFS models - and neither show much hope for a pattern change for the next 2 weeks. The deep trough in the east is reminiscent of the Hudson Bay vortex pattern we storm chasers hate to see in mid-May, with northwesterly flow continually pulling cold air down from Canada and the Arctic.
A long winter is usually good for making web site updates. I spent this past weekend making a major design overhaul to many sections of this site, including the main page, all of the subpages and all of the gallery pages. I also went through and added summaries to all of the years in the chase log sections. The storm chasing logs section, by the way, now has 20 complete years of storm chasing pictures and accounts.
Lastly, here are a couple of quick sunset images from the past few days. I shot both of these from here in town. The first image was from tonight (Tuesday the 22nd). The second image shows a sun pillar on Friday the 17th. We had a light snow event here overnight into Tuesday morning, but I just couldn't cover this one. I needed to be up during the workday to complete two web projects, and inverting my sleep schedule for another 'night shift' snowstorm wasn't in the cards this time.
It's only late January and I'm already sick of this winter weather, Dan. Wind chill's the worst. While it's actually being January for once, this is more like Canada than St. Louis at times. The early January cold wave produced the coldest temperatures I've personally ever seen! It's warmer in the western Canadian provinces than it is here. Waiting for spring. At least I can take my new anemometer for a spin. These temperature moderations get cancelled out by the wind, too. - Posted by Tim
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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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