First new item this year is what I’ve taken to calling the “baby computer.” It’s what will handle my live streaming and GPS this season, replacing the Dell tower PC that was seat-belted next to the second row seat in the old van. That PC gave up the ghost late in the season last year (actually, all that’s bad about it is the CMOS battery, but the 8-year jump in technology in the PC that’s replacing it was just too good to pass up).

The new streaming PC gets the name “baby computer” because it’s so small. Completed, it’s just a little larger than two reams of copier paper stacked on one another.

This is the view in the top of the PC. For a size reference, look at the 1-quart cup just to its left.

This is the view in the right side. As it will be installed in the van, this will be the top.

I’m still waiting on the wi-fi card, which plugs in the center of the motherboard, then I’ll be ready to put the operating system and other software on it.

I’ll be able to do about anything media-wise from this machine. It has a multi-card reader, so I can pull the SD card from my video camera, the MemoryStick Pro from my still camera, and pretty much any other format. The reader also supports a SATA hard drive, and has a USB port. But with six USB ports on the PC itself, I have more of those than I need. A bit of overkill on the FireWire card, too, though I could conceivably plug in and stream two cameras using it. The FireWire port on my older video camera died a couple of years ago, so I doubt I’ll be doing that. With a 500 GB hard drive, I’ll be trying to stream my Flash video to the drive as well as live, giving me a backup to the Mini-DV tape in the camera.

But the most exciting thing is that it can run directly off the van’s 12-volt power. No more inverter! (Actually, I’ll probably drop 2 of the 3 inverters).  I’m going to mount it to a platform that connects to the well that’s between the second-row captains chairs in the van, put some power filtering and surge protection in the package, and run the PC, the wi-fi router, the cell booster, and maybe one or more AA battery chargers all directly from the 12V plug that’s right there in the well. Eliminating the heavy-duty PC power supply and staying at 12V will have a huge impact on my battery and alternator drain/wear.

Add to it the DC-to-DC power converter I got for the laptop, and we’re just about AC-free. I haven’t decided whether to try and run the camera battery charger and the video camera off 12V or to leave them on an inverter this year.

That may be it for new stuff this year — we’ll see. But I’m pretty stoked about not needing all those inverters and wires running all over the place . . . just a module that can go in and out of the van at will. Chasing setup ought to go from over an hour to 10 minutes or less. That’ll be motivation to not leave the stuff in the van all season, reducing road-related jarring of the equipment. What’s not to like?!

I’ll have an update in a few weeks, when it comes time to make the mods to the van . . . I’m planning to run some power to both sides of the windshield where we can power the scanner and our phones. Looking forward to it!

This snap is from the Greene Vision Group parking lot on North Ridge Road, looking east at a storm growing in Butler county, just minutes after the watch issuance.

In spite of the growth of that storm, I felt it would be a while before there was any real action right around Wichita. So we went and had a late lunch/early dinner. After meeting the girls at Cristi’s school and getting the laptop and what I needed to get some data, we took off for western Sedgwick county. The northern part of the county was already under a severe thunderstorm warning.

We sat southeast of Goddard, at 31st S & 151st west, for quite a while.

This is the rain foot as the storm started to make a right turn.

(5:37pm) We watched this scud cloud be condensed from the edge of the rain foot until it was drawn back into the storm.

(5:40pm) Here it is as it was drawn into the cloud base

(5:54pm) We decided to move south. This was taken from 151st & Selma. There was sustained rotation in the clouds nearest us, but the cloud above was not showing the same rotation.

(5:57pm) With apologies to Ken Cox at the NWS — this is what I called in as a tornado, from 151st W & K-42. Why I didn’t think gustnado until someone else said it, I’m not sure. This is as the swirl was dying down. As we’d driven south, we’d crossed the gust front about half a mile N of where I shot this. The dust in the front was being blown then, apparently by some inflow, though it was being blown from SW to NE. If you enlarge the shot, you can see the outflow approaching, right behind the dust swirl. As this spun up, the swirl arced the full height of the gust front and looked briefly to me like it connected to the cloud.

We saw several more of these as we drove along with the gust front, and in each case it was right at the intersection of the gust front and southwest wind flow. each time, we were in southeast wind flow.

We pulled up in a church parking lot next to the fire station west of Haysville. As we got stopped, a sustained whirl showed up just to our west — literally on the north boundary of the fire station property. This one was different in character than the earlier ones. It was longer-lived, but not long enough for me to get a shot of it — partly because we were hit with heavy rain almost simultaneously. But there was just a different character to this one, too. Less than a minute later, the first tornado warning was issued for Sedgwick county. I don’t know if we were seeing the same thing, but I felt it at the time.

(6:30pm) This is taken from Meridian and about 87th South, looking back toward Haysville. There’s a hint in there that could be an obscured tornado, but I’m really not sure.

(6:30pm) This one is a little better, but I’m still not sure. And I wasn’t sure when I was seeing it live. We continued south to Clearwater Road and went east to Broadway, trying to get to the southeast of the circulation. As we got to the Clearwater Road & Broadway intersection, Roxan and I both saw the cone stick down from the cloud, appearing to be about over the Turnpike about 3 or 4 miles north of us. We saw it too quickly and were turning south, so neither of us is sure whether it was visually connected to the ground at that point.

(6:44pm) We paralleled the storm on 119th South as it was being reported passing through Derby. This is taken from the west edge of Mulvane.

(6:56pm) We went through Mulvane on 119th, and stopped at Butler Road to take this.

We’d gone South on Butler Road to K-15 and were coming back to Wichita, as I wasn’t prepared for an out-of-county chase. As we passed Geuda Springs Road, we encountered the second storm. We had to stop on the side of K-15 due to field debris being blown across the road. As nearly as I can remember, we’d have been about where the marker is. The corn shucks in the air and the long grass in the ditch showed three distinct areas of circulation — wind’s I’d estimate at 60-70 mph — crossing us while we were stopped there. None was larger than about 25 feet in diameter, but each was a distinct column of circulation than moved through the air, which was otherwise full of corn shucks blowing NE to SW.

(7:22pm) This round bale and another were blown from the field at the west edge of the map above, at Oxford Rd and K-15. If you look carefully, you can see where this one crossed the vegetation at the edge of the field. The two bales were almost 90 degrees apart in their orientation from the field…the other bale was in the K-15 ditch. This one was also 90 degrees to the direction of the straight-line wind flow we’d experienced 3/4 mile away.

(7:25pm) This tree was down on the edge of the farmstead at 1256 K-15 Highway. The base of the tree is to the NE, and it’s laying to the SW. The trunk was about 2 feet in diameter. It’s about 3/4 mile NW of the hay roll.

(7:31pm) This utility pole was down just to the southeast of 1332 K-15 Highway, on the east side of the road.

(7:31pm) This tree was down right across the road from it, blown the same direction. The base is a little less than 2 feet in diameter.

We got home to find the power out, and it stayed off until 11:30pm. Haven’t done a walkaround of the house yet or gone to see the damage to our north.

It took a few miles to decide to at least try and get closer to confirm or deny my initial impression. These are a few shots taken when we got stopped, at the corner where K-42 meets the Cairo-Isabel Road (100th East in Pratt county).

Looking NW about 3 miles.

This has a somewhat wall cloud appearance to it. But a careful look shows it’s an optical illusion…this cloud is not attached to the could behind it. It’s a tail cloud, the moisture being pulled into the storm. The rain is to the left out of the photo.

Looking West Toward Sawyer

This view is about 45 degrees counter-clockwise from the one above. I’m looking due West. Now the rain shaft is to my right. You can also see the moisture being pulled into the southernmost part of the storm.

Looking due South

The grain elevator on the left is Isabel. We left just a couple of minutes after this photo. As we drove north, we experienced peak winds of about 45 miles an hour, maybe 50.

An interesting phenomenon — as the rain was blown across the road it was being pushed fast enough that it appeared to be clearing the east ditch and going directly into the adjacent corn field. I’ve never seen that before, so far as I remember. Unfortunately, there was too much water being blown across the windshield at the moment to take a photo, and I wasn’t about to stop in essentially zero visibility.

Not bad results for a chase decision made only 40 minutes earlier, and with no other data than my eyes and the radar on the cell phone. The camera in my HTC Incredible — wow…I can’t believe these are cell phone photos.

Other than the vehicles in the parking lot changing, this has been our view for the best couple of hours. Those who think chasing is all excitement ought to be here right now! This is almost as fun as the day Nolan and I streamed video of a beer sign and an oil storage tank for 3 hours. We’re still hopeful the day will be a bit more eventful than THAT one was!

The front of this building identifies it as ReadyBrake, but we also saw M&W Manufacturing on one of the vehicles, which is what Google Maps identifies the property as. It is just northeast of Kentucky & US 54. This view is from the northwest.

This is Michaels Truck Service, located east of the building above on US 54. Viewed from Monroe Street, to the North of the property.

Also at Michaels, on the northeast corner of the property about 100 feet from Madison St.

This home is at the corner of US 54 and Oak St. Viewed from the West. Tree looked pretty hollow in the base, but was leafing out, so it was still alive.

This pole and transformer were down in an alley just SW of Allen County Hospital. A gazebo on the hospital property, about this far directly behind me, was undamaged. We saw no damage on the hospital property.

I don’t remember the exact location of this tree, but it is within the larger box on the map below. View is from the North, through the windshield. The property is on the east side of the street.

These are the two primary damage areas we saw. We did not drive every part of town.