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co-production lead DVD artwork
DVD authoring
web page co-designer
Video Production
March 21 chapter |
Jim loves all sorts of interesting weather, except maybe droughts. He is currently employed by the National Weather Service (NWS) at the Warning Decision Training Branch (WDTB) in Norman, Oklahoma. His job is to develop training materials for forecasters relating to NWS warning operations. He works as a bridge between research (e.g., NSSL) and the operational community. Jim has enjoyed working at WDTB for almost 10 years, however, he as also worked at the National Environmental Satellite and Data Information Service (NESDIS) in Washington DC right after graduating with a MS degree in Meteorology from the University of Oklahoma. In his 16 year career, he has chased all sorts of weather including hurricanes, tornadoes, and winter storms. He's probably just as home on a pair of skis in a blizzard as chasing a supercell. Part of his chasing and work life has included participation in various field projects including VORTEX, IHOP, and STEPS as well as presenting lectures in the US and elsewhere. He can often be found playing with digital imagery just as often as being outside hiking, skiing, kayaking and traveling. He often shares his activities with his wife, Daphne Zaras, a respected chaser herself and an OU employee. |
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co-production lead
web page content
DVD sound engineering
Video Production
June 5 chapter
Musical scoring May 12
June 5
June 9 |
Greg is a University of Oklahoma meteorologist who is contracted to work for the National Weather Service (NWS) to research and develop innovative severe weather warning decision making technology including Doppler radar algorithms. He is stationed at the National Severe Storms Laboratory (NSSL) in Norman, Oklahoma, and works with NSSL scientists to help transfer this new technology into NWS operations. Prior to this position, Greg served as an NSSL group manager responsible for warning application R&D. Throughout his 17 year career, he has had opportunities to participate in a number of special research projects, including several storm intercept programs (VORTEX, subVORTEX, SWAMP, and STEPS), as well as NWS warning decision proof-of-concept tests at about 12 WFOs nationwide. He holds a Master of Science degree in Meteorology from Colorado State University, and is becoming a world-renowned expert in warning and radar applications and theory, and has lectured in the Czech Republic, Austria, Brazil, and Australia. He has also chased storms as a hobby in the Great Plains since 1987, and has witnessed uncountable severe storms and tornadoes (about 115 tornadoes in 19 chase seasons). |
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Video Production
April 10 chapter |
Mike Umscheid is a severe weather enthusiast by profession and passion. He is currently a forecaster at the National Weather Service in Dodge City, KS and has lived in the sunflower state his whole life. Mike grew up in Overland Park, KS and attained his B.S. degree in Atmospheric Science at the University of Kansas in 2002. As a serious hobby, Mike has chased storms since 1997 from Southwest Texas through much of the Great Plains to the northern Dakotas and Montana, documenting and photographing many supercell thunderstorms and tornadoes in the past 9 years. When the warm season dies down, Mike enjoys the challenges of winter weather forecasting on the Great Plains, particularly blizzards and other severe unusual winter storms. Mike maintains a collection of storm documentation through photography on his website "Under The Meso". Digital SLR photography has become a growing spin-off hobby of Mike's in the past year. Outside of meteorology, storm chasing, and photography, Mike's other serious interest is competitive bowling. |
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Video Production
April 21 chapter |
Shane Adams resides in Norman, Oklahoma, where he has lived for the past ten years. A native of the Sooner State, Shane has been chasing since 1996. Although he appreciates all apsects of storm chasing/observing, video documentation of tornadoes is the driving force behind his chasing passion. Shane has witnessed some incredible and historic events, including the May 3, 1999 Oklahoma tornado outbreak as well as the June 12, 2004 Mulvane, Kansas supercell and tornadoes. He works Mon-Thu in Dallas doing semi tractor trailer de-indentification identification washing for Deep Blue Solutions, a company based in Norman, and comes home each Thursday evening through the weekend. He accepts this somewhat grueling schedule because it allows him the freedom to chase whenever he needs to. Away from work and chasing, Shane enjoys movies, writing, music, Sooner football, the Pittsburgh Steelers, and of course video production. Other than storms, his favorite weather is Winter weather, and most winters he can be found at home, the local pub, or online, lamenting about the lack of any semblence of winter weather in and around Norman. |
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Video Production
April 21 chapter |
Mickey Ptak was born and raised in Oklahoma and, with no doubt, is no stranger to the Southern Plains' wild weather. However Mickey's interest in storm chasing didn't start until the mid 90's and his first chase was June 13 1998. That chase set the stage for his passion for chasing and for the past seven years his love for it and learning more about weather has grown from a side hobby to a small one-man business producing various storm chasing videos for chasers. Aside from storm chasing Mickey is afamily man and is also perusing a Bachelors degree in Computer Science. |
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Video Prodcution
May 12 chapter
Musical scoring May 12 |
Dave Lewison is a New York native, currently working as a mechanical engineer in the Mid-Hudson Valley. Even though his degrees are in engineering, he has always been interested in weather and photography. Throughout childhood, he would videotape the furious winter nor'easters down by the Long Island beaches, or drive after summer thunderstorms near home in Westchester County. A college graduation gift in 1997 gave him his first real taste of Great Plains storm chasing, as a guest on one of the storm chasing tours. He learned as much as possible about forecasting and intercept skills alongside veterans like Jim Leonard and Charles Edwards. In 1999, he and his chase partner found success chasing on their own, and both have been doing so every year since. |
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Video production
June 4 chapter
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Michael Peregrine is a native of the Kansas City area, where he is assigned as the local video stringer The Weather Channel, on which his video can be seen weekly. Mike has maintained an active interest in weather from the time he was a boy, when he and his family made regular trips to watch storms roll out of Kansas across the Missouri River valley. His entire family still gets in on the act, with his brother Andrew as his chase partner in the spring, and his brother Mark, who chases on the East Coast. "Storms are a part of my family history," he says, noting that even his grandmother used to love observing powerful weather. Some of his noteable intercepts include the June 13, 2001 Narka-Munden, Kansas tornado, the May 4, 2003 Gladstone-Liberty tornadoes, the May 29, 2004 Concordia tornadoes, and the historic May 22, 2004 Hallam, Nebraska supercell and tornadoes. Mike's video has appeared on most networks, including CBS, Fox, PBS and The WeatherChannel, and he maintains a website of his storm chase activities at http://www.stormseason.com. |
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Video production
June 9 chapter |
Amos Magliocco began chasing tornadoes nine years ago in Texas and has written about stormchasing for Weather.com, the online home of The Weather Channel, Weatherwise, as well as Stormtrack Magazine. He has traveled well over 10,000 miles each year in pursuit of supercells and tornadoes. As a fiction writer whose work has appeared in national literary journals, Amos enjoys the stories of the Plains and its people as much as the atmospheric fireworks that motivate his yearly trips. He is a Lecturer at the University of North Texas where he teaches English Composition and Creative Writing. He is currently completing revisions on his first novel. |
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Video production
June 12 chapter
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Jason Politte's chasing career began in 1999, and from that point forward, he's felt no more at home than on the Plains floor, where he enjoys the vast expanses of land and the storms that form there. Always conscious of the effects these powerful storms have on the people who experience them, Jason's proud to be associated with this fundraising project. Jason's previous video accomplishments include co-producing with Scott Blair the winning production in the National Storm Chasers Convention video contest and the highly regarded highlight videos, Timeless Journey and Season of Significance. Jason's other main area of interest is photography. |
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Video Production
Hurricane Katrina chapter
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Martin Lisius began his storm chase career in the mid-1980's. He is founder of Prairie Pictures , a film and video production company and StormStock , the world's premier storm footage library. In addition, Martin founded and chairs the Texas Severe Storms Association (TESSA), a national non-profit dedicated to severe weather education. Martin produced, directed and wrote several television programs relating to severe weather including "Chasing the Wind" (1991), "Beneath Stormy Skies" (1994), and "The Chasers of Tornado Alley" (1995). He directed, co-produced and co-wrote "StormWatch" for the National Weather Service, which employs it nationwide as their official storm spotter training video. And, he photographed the first-ever violent class tornado on 35 mm motion picture film on May 30, 1998 in Spencer, South Dakota. In 1999, Martin teamed with Chevy Trucks to help create their "Storm Chaser" commercial for S-10 pickups. Member of the legendary "Spencer 4." |
