Discovery Channel: Storm Chasers

A look at the June 5th, 2009 La Grange, Wy tornado from close range!!!

The TIV team had a very good chase last Friday in Wyoming! I will let the video speak for itself. We are working hard to catch a few more tornadoes as we come down to the wire. I have a good feeling about tomorrow and it not just due to it being my birthday. June 12th has been a good date for tornadoes in past years.  I caught tornadoes on June 12th in 2004 and 2008. Let's do it again! Stay tuned for more updates.

Brandon

and so it begins...

Hey everyone, Byron and Team TIV here. It's been a while, I apologize. We've been pretty busy despite that horrible ridged out month of May.

Today begins some great excitement and we are jacked up on energy drinks and headed to our first target of the day. As Brandon, one of our meteorologists put it this morning on the radio, "who here is NOT ready to see a tornado today?" We've had this itch for a whole month and it's time to start scratching.

We are not an official part of V2, but are still working with Josh Wurman and his CSWR crew when on the same targets. Today will be one of those days. Be sure to watch the excitement on the LiveTracker streams off of www.discovery.com/stormchasers and thestormreport.com.

This is going to be a wild week!

Byron

TIV Q&A (Send in your questions)

Hey everyone. There's just some bad weather ahead of us this next week or so, so I wanted to open up a Q&A and Ronan and I will answer a few of them for you guys! Stuff about our chasing history, favorite color, etc.

Of course, we will be chasing what we can, but should have some time to provide you with some answers

Send me some questions!

B

May 12th, 2009 TIV/Doghouse Texas Chase

The TIV team chased severe storms yesterday in West Texas.  The storms were fun, but yielded no tornadoes.  We hope that the storms today will be a little more "chaser friendly".  A moderate risk has been issued from Oklahoma to Illinois for this evening.  Another good chance at severe weather will roll into the central plains on Friday. Stay tuned as more updates and video will be on the way!

Meet Marcus, the TIV Medic

Marcus, a former Navy corpsman and current surgical assistant, has been chasing with us for many years and his current job is to keep us safe and in good health. I had a splinter the other day and had to work hard to convince him to not set me up with an IV drip. He is trying to convince us to let him do little procedures when he isn't helping out with the TIVs. Our crew is in good hands to say the least.

B

Wow! TIV is getting some action!

4 hours a sleep and wearing my less dirty pair of cargos, I wanted to share a still of my footage from yesterday! We were right in there and got some GREAT stuff.

This season is really giving us some good action and we expect it to only get better (I'm not a meteorologist so that doesn't count as a forcast).

Thanks for checking in and I'll keep posting.

B

TIV Producers prepare for the new season of Storm Chasers

Hey everyone, lots of action going on. We are out here in Midland, TX watching the models. Here's a video from a week ago. It's an inside look behind the scenes at the people who make the show out in the field. I have a couple more videos with our medic, Marc, and Ronan's birthday dinner in queue. I'll write up a blog when we get a break, there a lot of weather going on!


B

Our first chase day!

Big day today! Sunday looks to (potentially) be "the day" out of the next set of weather, but today looks plenty good. Why not grab a few tornadoes on our warmup run? Crossing our fingers, today should be a lot of fun.

Stay tuned to the LiveTracker and watch the excitement!
http://dsc.discovery.com/tv/storm-chasers/live-tracker/live-tracker.html

B

A little video from the adopted TIV garage

Utility Equipment Repair of Amarillo, TX has been gracious enough to lend us their garage to upgrade our TIV until this ridge wears out next week. Enjoy this video of the hard working TIV crew (I'm not in it because I am behind the camera). I will be doing videos for the blog with a Flip camera for the blog, hope you enjoy them!

B

Here we go again!

Here we go again!
Another season of storm chasing is upon us and before we get started, here’s a little look back. First, let’s revisit these clips from the most recent episodes of “Storm Chasers”.
Unfortunately, Discovery doesn’t let us embed its youtube videos, but just click on the links and come back.
“TIV Hits the Bullseye!”-A little misleading, watch this and see how heartbreakingly close we came last year. That only means we will try harder this time around.

Vehicle Tour Bloopers - A fun video worth watching is the outtakes of our vehicle tours. We are clearly not trained actors, only trained storm chasers.

Sean has been working diligently on TIV2. I’ve been helping out in my spare time and Ronan even flew out to LA. We are giving it another go this year with TIV2 and it looks to be a beast this year. With all that went wrong with it last year, it was almost even scarier taking all of those parts out and discovering future breakdowns waiting to happen. Be rest assured though, this vehicle has been road tested already and it’s still waiting on the finishing touches. We even have real tank seats. I’ll post picture of the beast in my next blog.

In the meantime, what have we been up to? Ronan’s only comment was, “overseas working on a secret job.” As for me, there’s a couple of articles I was interviewed for, check them out!
Article
Q&A

I also was interviewed/shot by a website called “Indie Cribs” and that’ll be out in a month or so.

And as I said, Sean’s been really busy with the renovations to TIV2 and being a father to his two beautiful daughters.

Come on back soon, we are heading out to Colorado to prepare for the weather very soon. I will have a look at the TIV2 improvements next time!

Look for the Storm Chasers group on Facebook!

Get Some!
B