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Wednesday, June 14, 2017

Great Plains trip #2 preliminary recap

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.

As it became increasingly clear that Monday's event (June 12) was going to have high-end tornado potential (and therefore be worth the marathon drive), I ended up packing up and leaving Sunday afternoon (June 11) for Plains trip #2 for the season. I returned home from the 2,200-mile, 4-day chase today (Wednesday the 14th). As usual, I have a lot of photos and material to go through and edit, including the full-event dashcam timelapses. All of that will probably come this weekend, as I have to return to work tomorrow.

A detailed account of each chase with photos will be posted eventually, but here is a quick summary (Days 1-4 were logged during Trip #1):

Day 5 (Sunday, June 11): Travel day from St. Louis to Grand Island, Nebraska.
Day 6 (Monday, June 12): Monday's event lived up to the expectations. After a chance meeting with Union Pacific steam locomotive #844, I witnessed and captured at least five tornadoes in the Wyoming-Colorado-Nebraska tri-state region, including a photogenic one at very close range. Several baseball-sized hailstones were collected and brought home in a cooler for close-up photos!
Day 7 (Tuesday, June 13): Marginal severe storms in central Nebraska. This previously-primary day of interest turned out to be mostly a dud in my target area.
Day 8 (Wednesday, June 14): Travel day from St. Joseph, Missouri to St. Louis, including a few marginal storms in the STL metro on the way home.

Here is a quick collage of images from Monday:

And video from the day:

This likely wraps up my 2017 Great Plains storm chasing season, but I'll hold off on declaring that until I make my final Trip 2 detailed summary post (again, most likely coming this weekend). Stay tuned!