I guess that makes it my turn...

Greetings and Salutations, y'all. I am Dewdrop... the South Georgian (originally a Yankee, but let's not hold that against me...), new to chasing, highly enthusiastic weather weenie. Sadly, I have never formally chased a severe weather event... attempted to chase a few, but being trapped in a weather abyss have not had the true opportunity... yet. For about the past year, I have been doing everything I know of to learn as much as I can about storm chasing, storm structure, chasing gear, etc. I have talked to experienced chasers, professionals, formed a working relationship with the national weather service, attended/worked through several Skywarn spotter training sessions, and other related training (so I am a certified Advanced Skywarn Spotter among other things - I'm actually currently training on analysis of the Skew-T chart, cause I'm cool like that), completed training on the enhanced fujita scale and got permission to participate with emergency management after a local severe weather event for damage assessment (which I happen to be certified in through the Red Cross, which I was a board member of for 6 years), obtained my technician license for amateur radio operation, and am soon to become a member of ARES. In addition to the chase team, I am in the process of setting up a South Georgia Skywarn team, which will be open to all spotters in the area, and we will work to enhance communication between spotters, the NWS and EM, keep training current and encourage a bigger spotter program locally... Besides that, I work on anything else I can do to better prepare myself for this (some might say crazy) hobby I've entered into...

I have always had a passion for weather and storms. I used to watch lightning on my front porch as a child while my brother hid under the bed. I have always loved the rain, to hear it, to feel it. I've always been fascinated with cloud structure, would lose in myself watching the cumulus towers boil. I have had a couple occassions where I had run-ins (before training and adequate knowledge) with some systems that packed a punch, one tornado chased a group of us into the adult video room at the video store many years ago, but I had watched the rotation of a funnel cloud off in the ditance prior to that (boy was that stupid!). I watched rotation in a meso, while trapped in traffic on the interstate in Jacksonville... I have had a huge pine tree barely miss my van once as it crashed down while I was driving down the road (missing my van by inches), which scared the day light out of me. Now, that I am trained and know what's right and what's wrong, I plan safely chase locally and eventually plan to one day (not too far off) chase in the plains and chase a few hurricanes...

As my experience in chasing grows, I will be seeing the storms through the lens of a camera and sharing the fury as well as the beauty of these incredible forces of nature.

Hmm... Jeff was right, I can go on about the weather, can't I? lol

Anyway, that's me, Dewdrop, looking to spread my wings on this phenomenal journey.

~Dew