Weather Resources for Nerds

Posted on Jun 28, 2021

It’s thunderstorm and hurricane season, so, in the spirit of finding your eternally amazing storm to chase this year, let me share with you some of the neatest tools for tracking your favorite storms.

I use RadarScope for the Radar products on my iPhone/iPad. I kind of prefer using my iPad during storm chasing – just because I can get many different products on a single screen. My preference is to have both the reflectivity as well as the velocity, on the same tilt, usually zoomed out a little bit so that I can get a good situational awareness of what’s going on.
Usually, in a safari tab – either on my iPad or on my iPhone, I have the IEMBot Monitor set for audio alerting on the area in which I’m at.
Depending on where I’m chasing (Country always, City, not so much), I’ll bring my DJI Mini so that I can take pictures of the storm from some altitude.
Usually, I’ll either have my iPhone 12 or my DSLR handy for storm pictures.
For movies in my vehicle, I have a DJI Pocket 2 or a GoPro (probably a GoPro 3 or 4 – haven’t had the need to ever really replace it in the last 10 years.
For Communication, I have my Kenwood TM-D710GA for my main mobile transceiver, and a Kenwood TH-D74A for portable use when I’m calling in reports to local amateur nets, and my NX-5000 Mobile/Portable for calling in reports to my local EMA.
I think this year’s plan is to finally bite the bullet and get some warning gear in my Truck. My biggest fear when storm chasing is getting hit when I’m outside of my vehicle taking pictures. I’ve got a high visibility vest that I wear when I’m out of my vehicle, and generally follow guidelines of being in front of my vehicle, with the wheels turned to the guardrail (so, if my vehicle is is hit, it goes into the guardrail and not me). I’d like to get some front, side, and rear warning lighting, get my radios professionally installed (so that my middle armrest can return to its state of handling napkins and other odd items).

If you storm chase, and have other items or suggestions, I’d love to hear them.