I don’t know if folks still like reading words, but I still like writing them. I’ve never called myself a writer, but I’ve always enjoyed writing stuff down.
I got my first computer when I was 13 years old - a hand-me-down from my tech savvy uncle. It was your generic, late-90s gray box PC with a bulky 13-inch monitor. It didn’t connect to the internet and had no games installed on it. So I typed on Microsoft Word.
I wrote fictional stories about storm chasing, and I journaled. I never really considered it “journaling” at the time, but most days I’d plop myself down at the computer and write a few paragraphs about the weather that day and what I’d been up to. Sometimes I’d sort out the complicated feelings that came along with being a teenager, other days I’d write five paragraphs about the pick-up basketball game I’d just played with my friends in the driveway, and when I was lucky I’d chronicle the latest storm that I’d observed from “the garage” - my storm viewing location of choice at my childhood home.
In high school I signed up for a Blogger account and got my own .blogspot.com public blog and did a lot of the same. Blogging was kind of an early social media pillar in the early and middle 2000s. There was this sweet spot as AOL Instant Messenger began to fade and Myspace & Facebook began to creep in where a lot of my peers had blogs or live journal accounts. You’d link them in your AIM chat profile or on your new social media page and you could spill all of your late teen and early 20s angsty hot takes.
Another thing happened when I hit high school age - I began driving. My dad took me out on my first chase in 2002, prior to that it had been entirely “watching storms from home”. Still, I really consider 2003 the first year that I began chasing storms in earnest as I got my drivers license and began taking the family van out when storms rolled into my stomping grounds.
I spent a few years leading up to this getting to know a handful of storm chasers on the internet. IRC chat rooms and web forums were big at the turn of the millennium, and it was a great way to expand my world and meet folks who did what I was hoping to do one day. I felt like I gained a lot of knowledge and experience from a handful of folks before I ever hit the road on my own.
There was one thing that all of the early storm chasers that I looked up to had in common - they wrote “storm chasing logs”. After their chases they’d write up detailed accounts, pages long, chronicling the forecast and chasing setup that day, their feelings and reasons for chasing and targeting where they did, the roads they took, and how storms evolved. YouTube didn’t exist and bandwidth was a premium, so you’d often be stuck with photographs or still video captures from the chase.
So, when I began driving and chasing storms on my own, I did what I knew to be the process and wrote up my detailed storm chasing accounts. That’s when I made the pivot from “blogging” or publicly journaling about daily life, and began keeping a weather & storm chasing blog. Not only did I write up accounts, but I wrote about the weather forecast. I still credit this early habit for a lot of my professional opportunities and successes centered on weather communication. If you want to be a competent weather communicator, practice communicating…
Present day, now in my middle 30s, a storm chaser of 20 years, and a childhood-dream-come-true professional meteorologist, that young weather blogger needs a new outlet. I still journal privately on my own, and highly recommend others do it too. Whether it’s just jotting down details of a fun weekend that I want to make sure I remember, or hashing out deep thoughts on a big upcoming project, I still find writing to be a wonderful way of “sorting it all out”.
My storm chasing blog has evolved and migrated over time, and I’m still mostly sure that it all exists out there where I left it. But I’ve been tossing around some new ideas in my head, and what’s been missing has been a location. I frequently get content paralysis when curating video content or weather forecast infographics. I can’t see how the perfect final version will turn out, so I just don’t start it.
My website, skydrama.photography continues to be where my multimedia content lives, an internet home base of sorts that I can point to from various social media platforms. It has a blog, but, I’ve just never settled in. It feels cold and uninviting, and so far as I can tell there is no great way of subscribing to the blog and thus no community around it. I crave interaction!
“STORMY WEATHER” has been a thing in my head for months, years? I’m exhausted by chasing the YouTube algorithm, and Twitter isn’t the environment for deep thoughts. I want this to be a place where I can “sort things out” atmospherically, share detailed accounts of stimulating weather events, and discuss dramatic skies captured across the globe. I’ve got thoughts about a “storm of the week” feature, and perhaps a “spot to watch” nugget as well.
None of it was going to land without a place to put it all, and thus the need for a post #1.
This is not directly related to my work as Sr. Atmospheric Scientist for Nutrien Ag Solutions, though I may write about things that I’m up to that are relevant to my work there. This is also not directly related to my work for Chambana Weather, a local weather resource for Champaign-Urbana/east-central Illinois that I independently operate, though I may write about things relevant to Champaign-Urbana local weather.
This is just me, writing about the weather.
Until next time, keep your head in the clouds.
I'm just going to assume "storm chasers that I looked up to had in common - they wrote 'storm chasing logs'" is about me. ;-)
Thanks, Andrew! I CANNOT WAIT. 4th grade me can't wait either.