Posted 2:34 PM by Amos Magliocco

Quiet little Northfield, Texas has a pretty important intersection for storm chasers: Ranch Road 656 to Turkey and FM 94 to Matador. These paved, two-lane roads diverge around a large wilderness of thousands of acres and a choice one way or the other commits you entirely to that direction. That’s why in Northfield I stopped around 4:00 PM to wait for more isolated storms than the ones in the far northern Texas Panhandle. From Northfield, I thought, better storms to either my north or south were in reach.

I was finishing a cold chicken burrito from the Sonic in Childress when an isolated cell west of Brice caught my attention. This intercept required I go through Turkey and use the roads north from there. I had plenty of time, but none to waste since I suspected an outflow boundary was present up there—had counted on it in fact— though I hadn’t found it yet on the West Texas mesonet or radar and visible satellite. Still, with the intensity and orientation of earlier storms a remnant boundary seemed likely, and if an isolated storm anchored to that boundary it could organize rapidly. This was the reason I wasn’t in southwest Kansas or southeastern Colorado. I was putting my seatbelt on when I noticed a sign thirty feet down the RR 656 toward Turkey: BRIDGE CLOSED AHEAD.

It's funny how fast a chase will go from lazy and relaxed to batshit crazy.

Because I was unwilling to risk another closure among the tangle of county roads leading to SR 86, my long return trek brought me back through Cee Vee, north again into Childress, and northwest on 287. Like many others I turned north on SR 70 out of Clarendon and spotted the tornado located immediately southwest of Jericho.

I pulled over to shoot the tornado and over my left shoulder saw a tornado-shaped object far in the distant southwestern sky. I ignored it, already preoccupied with a new DSLR and new 10-22mm lens, but when I checked again the tornado look-alike had changed shapes from a large cylinder to a classic cone. The radar presentation suggested a light rain shower, which is why I assume Amarillo NWS didn’t warn for several minutes despite Spotter Network reports. I continued shooting the ominous Jericho tornado, a large cone silhouetted in black. Looking southwest a third time I conceded that this was indeed a real tornado, the most distant one I've ever witnessed and tried to photograph. My guess is I was between five and seven miles from the “Goodnight” tornado, named for the nearby town. I mounted my old 17-40mm lens but it wasn't much help: this thing might as well have been in New Mexico. Luckily a horse strolled into my foreground and offered at the slim hope of a salvageable image.

I shot the Goodnight tornado for fifteen minutes while the storm approached. I probably should have followed the Jericho storm to Alanreed like others, because they saw some interesting tornadoes that I missed, but the Goodnight storm produced another small tornado around 6:05 PM. Also another storm, a third supercell, was approaching the outflow boundary. I hoped the magic could last, but too much cool outflow from the prior cells disrupted the process. This storm took on the flat, high-based appearance of a storm that has crossed into the cool side of a front.

Up on I-40 I joined a caravan with Jeff Snyder, Gabe Garfield, Dan Dawson, Robin Tanamachi, and others, and we turned south for the Matador supercell. Bob Fritchie caught us around Swearingen, Texas, where we tried to spot the large tornado reportedly on the ground to our west. That marked the end of the chase.

While fueling up in Paducah I was happy to meet Connor McCrorey, Kris Hair, and Kris's chase partners. Bob and I found chicken fried steak in Wichita Falls and parted ways.

Labels: caprock, Jericho, photos, Texas Goodnight, Texas Tornado, tornado

Posted 8:51 AM by Amos Magliocco

Last night I learned that someone had used one of Eric's Mulvane photos as the backdrop for a corporate logo, a storm chasing tour company out of Missouri. I won't name the company or make a big deal out of this since the operator agreed to remove the image right away, and I'm grateful for his cooperation. It wasn't clear if this is a functioning tour company or someone making plans for later, and I doubt that any sort of serious monetary damages are relevant. If it looked like the guy was turning a dime from unauthorized usage, then the agency which issues the commercial licenses for Eric's pictures, Corbis, would probably take an interest.

I always figured it would be a matter of time before some chaser checked to see anyone was "minding the store" when it came to Eric's pictures. The answer is yes, I'm minding the store and so is one of the biggest stock photo agencies on the planet. I think this is pretty clear in the message I've posted on Eric's front page, but perhaps I should post it also on his tornado gallery page, since that's where 80% of his visitors enter the site. Most never see the main page of mesoscale.ws.

I posted the following to Stormtrack in an effort to get the word out:

Thanks, Lanny, for pointing this out. It does indeed appear to be one of Eric's series of Mulvane images, overlaid with a strange graphic, but still the same photo. I have contacted the MySpace account holder through the page, though I was unable to locate a name for the tour operator.

For those who don't know, I've been handling Eric's photo catalog since his death. Most of Eric's images are licensed through Corbis International, the stock photo agency. The royalties for all these images go to Eric's wife and two young sons. The Mulvane tornado continues to be one of the most widely-licensed and reproduced tornado images, as anyone in a bookstore this Christmas could see. As you can imagine, it provides a small but steady stream of income to the family and it is the one image, when stolen by a business or publication, that brings immediate attention from Corbis and their highly experienced lawyers. Corbis aggressively pursues unauthorized usage, not only for the money taken from them, but because Mulvane is a valuable property which they license and release in a strategic way over time to maintain and maximize value.

I don't bother with people who steal small JPGs and post them to their blogs or Flicker accounts. I did at first, but there's no end to it. Corbis could not care less about individual theft. However, a business or for-profit publication is another matter, entirely.

So the point of this post is to make people aware that Eric's photo catalog isn't being neglected, and his intellectual property rights are as important to his friends and family now as they were to him when he was alive. As with anyone's intellectual property, you have to ask permission to use or license it, via Corbis if you're a publication or a business, or with me if it's a non-profit usage or educational materials, which Eric always donated free of charge.

I know the overwhelming majority of Stormtrack members respect the property rights of other chasers the same as they wish for their own to be respected, but there's always a few people in any crowd, knowingly or not, who might seek to take advantage of a situation they misunderstand. They should not misunderstand this one.

Labels: copyright, Corbis, Eric Nguyen, mesocale.ws, Mulvane, photos, tornado, violation