Got That Twitter Name Finally Changed Over

It's a new year and I have finally changed my Twitter name to @StormVisuals after being known as @weatherzine since the Fall of 2008. I have the best followers and I just wanted to thank everyone for the support and sharing of my name change over the last 72 hours. You've been a big help! If you already follow me on Twitter, then you're all set and don't need to do anything, but I will no longer be maintaining my old handle of @weatherzine from this point on.

Loving The G+

Also, you can follow me on Google+ as well by searching for +JeffGammons or clicking the icon above. I've really come to like Google+ too, with the clean layout and a community of very creative people. Awesome place for photographers to share their work and network with others.

2012 Severe Storm Season Ahead

Besides the name change and working on other video off season projects, I'm beginning to look toward the early spring severe storm season and beyond. Winter sure has been strange across the United States so far and here in Florida, with little snow up north and a hot December here in FL, followed by a new year freeze. It will be interesting to see how the severe weather season shapes over the South early this year. We know how tragic last year was with the tornado outbreaks in the Deep South.

I wish you all a very Happy New Year, and all the best to you in 2012. I look forward to bringing you more of my adventures with the weather visually throughout the upcoming year. - Jeff

I had a very nice long Thanksgiving weekend with my family, and catching some good football games, even with the Dolphins losing in Dallas. I also enjoyed some personal time out shooting amazing views of the Atlantic Ocean with glassy waves, fanatic sunsets and the Moon and Venus in the evening twilight sky. A great weekend and a lot to be thankful for.

Thanksgiving Eve the winds shifted offshore along the Florida east coast ahead of the next weak front making for smooth ocean surface waters. The remnant ground swell still was moving in from the east, and combined with the offshore winds, the waves were super clean. The rocky coastline of South Hutchinson Island also made for some interesting photography with the waves, and produced some relaxing sounds at the same time that would put you to sleep in a nice beach chair.

Saturday evening after the sunset, there was a nice treat in the twilight sky looking to the southwest just above the horizon. A beautiful crescent moon with the planet Venus just above the moon to the left vividly hanging in the sky. After waiting out for the perfect light and fighting the mosquitoes off with the spray (yes we still have them here in South Florida during the Fall) I was able to capture a stunning shot over Lake Okeechobee. This pictures has made the rounds on Twitter, Google+ and FaceBook with thousands of views the last 48 hours. Thank everyone for sharing the picture!

Lastly, the sunsets over the last few evenings have been just as amazing. In late November and December, the farmers burn off the sugarcane fields (not the best for air quality) which the lingering smoke hangs low in the dusk sky making for wild looking sunsets. I even squeezed in a sunset timelapse over the weekend that came out great! Watch out for my 2011 weather highlight web video coming soon here on the website.

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving weekend, and I guess I can officially say Happy Holidays to you. :-) 

Jeff Gammons captures large swells on Hutchinson Island, FL. - October 2011

It’s Over, For This Season

It’s a new month and the end of the Florida storm season for me. November usually marks my end to filming storms and hurricanes, and I begin to focus on the off-season projects and look ahead to the upcoming year. I’m currently editing together a highlight video of 2011 that I should have up here on the site very soon, so keep tabs on my Twitter and Google+ feeds over the next few weeks. I’ve also locked in two non-weather related filming projects that should keep me sane while the storms are away.

No Hurricane Chasing For Me

I filmed no hurricanes in 2011, as most of the tropical cyclones never reached the United States outside of Hurricane Irene. I opted not to chase Irene in North Carolina as she was forecast to be weakening at the time of landfall, and I felt that it wasn’t worth the time and investment for a storm on the downward trend in organization and intensity. If you were going to feel the full force of Irene’s core, you had to be in the Bahamas like my fellow Hurricane Chasers Jim Edds and Mike Theiss when she was at her strongest as a category 3 hurricane. One thing I know is the 2011 Atlantic hurricane season was truly a strange one.

Wild Florida Storms Make It All Good

When it came to being busy shooting weather and storms, the Florida wet season sure paid off. My season started off covering an impressive wild fire season due to the drought conditions across Florida, but quickly transitioned into an active sea-breeze thunderstorm season. From June through October, I was busy filming some of the best Florida storm structure I have seen in years. Even spending a significant amount of time filming long-duration timelapses of many of the storms, which you’ll get to see many of them in my highlight video soon.

I always have that comfort of falling back to my Florida storms when I’m not out in Tornado Alley chasing, or intercepting tropical storms and hurricanes in the summer. Once again, Florida came through with some impressive stormy skies to frame up with my camera’s, and helping to keep my creativity flowing.

Eyeing 2012 Tornado Season

I have passed the last few years on chasing in Tornado Alley for many reasons (including my pre-kidney transplant years), and I truly miss it. I was active out there for so many spring seasons in the past and I plan to return in 2012. I did chase one High Risk event in Mississippi, Arkansas and Tennessee earlier this Spring getting on several Supercell thunderstorms. It was great to be back out chasing real cyclic Supercells away from the palm trees of Florida, and I am really excited to roam the Great Plains once again this upcoming season. - There is a lot of work for me to do over the Winter months… and I have already begun.

A subtropical disturbance over the Yucatan Channel and southeast Gulf of Mexico struggled to organize on Tuesday, but had enough organized embedded rotating storms as it moved east to produce several tornadoes across South Florida during the evening hours.

One of these tornadoes ( now confirmed by the NWS Miami as EF-0 85mph winds) ripped through the small town of Lakeport, Florida around 7:30pm. The small community of Lakeport is located in Glades County along the western rim of Lake Okeechobee. 

When I arrived at first light this morning, I first noticed a debris field crossing Highway 78, with wood and metal debris scattered on both sides of the road, and the sugarcane fields to the right flattened by what look to be very strong winds. I toured a small neighborhood with about 15 homes just to the south of 78, which all had some type of damage. Most of the damage looked to be from carports, patios, landscaping and power lines. A few of these homes had some roof damage as well, and some of that debris was laying on the other side of Highway 78.

I moved on to 721 Rd which brought me back to the south behind the first neighborhood, and here I found even more damage to several short blocks of mobile homes. Residents and power crews were already cleaning up a lot of the debris that was still scattered everywhere. Again, most of the damage I could see was to carports, patios, docks, and several roofs peeled back. There was a pontoon boat flipped upside down and thrown into the canal between the two hardest hit streets.

The width of the damage only appeared to be about 100 yards and maybe a mile or two long. It is hard to tell since the damage path starts over wetlands and continues on into prairie lands after crossing 78.

Several other tornadoes were already confirmed earlier today, with one in Sunrise, FL rated an EF-2 with 120mph winds, another in Indian River County, FL and Indiantown, FL. All of the tornadoes produced structural damage, and the Indian River tornado has been rated an EF-0, as well as the Indiantown one per The National Weather Service in Melbourne, FL. 

Ocean Lightning Puts On A Great Show…Finally For Me!

A few weeks ago I posted that I was out during the pre-dawn hours on the hunt for lightning over the ocean for a timelapse video sequence project. This was one of the shots I was looking for all summer to complete my storm season here in Florida, but the last few attempts failed with the storms weakening or moving too far offshore closer to the northwest Bahamas.

Last night finally paid off with an amazing lightning display of deep convection over the Gulf Stream waters just east of Jupiter Beach, Florida. I was able to capture some vivid cloud-to-water lightning strikes, along with a fantastic sequence of high resolution stills for the ocean thunderstorm timelapse. I didn’t plan on posting this video just yet, as I plan to post my Florida storm highlight video later this month that includes all of my video from this year, including numerous timelapses. But there was a lot of interest on Twitter overnight and today from some of the stills I posted last night, so I thought I would go ahead and post the lightning timelapse video for everyone to enjoy.

Note: I've had numerous requests for the title of the song, and I should of put it in the credits of the video from the start. The song is by: Sun Araw and is only titled as "Track 2" available on Vimeo.

Update: 10/12/11 - I just wanted to thank everyone for the huge response on all the social media outlets, TV and the comments below. I really appreciate all the support for the storm timelapse video above, and wanted to post a BIG THANK YOU! I will be uploading a Florida storm season highlight video later this month that will include a lot of the weather footage from 2011. This will also include the numerous timelapses you always hear me tweeting about or on Instgram. So, keep checking back!

Another note: 01/23/12 - I have recently added a new secondary blog on StormVisuals that will focus on daily Florida weather updates through pictures and video. Be sure to check it out daily! Thank you, JG.

Developing Storm Brings Gale Conditions To Florida

The last 48 hours has brought gale force winds and flooding rains to the east coasts of South and Central Florida. A possibly developing sub-tropical storm at the time (never fully developed) off the Florida east coast, along with strong high pressure over the Mid-Atlantic states, has helped to produce a tight pressure gradient making for very strong and gusty winds. This also lead to heavy rain bands training over the same locations and dropping 3-7 inches of rain in some locations all day Saturday.

The strong winds have also produced extremely rough and chaotic Atlantic waves from Miami to Jacksonville, and causing some significant beach erosion situations up and down the coast. Winds have been sustained in the lower 30’s and gusting up to 45mph over the coastal beaches and offshore. This has produced some minor tree damage along the coast, and sailboat damage in the intercoastal waterway near the Jensen Beach causeway bridge on Saturday as seen in the storm pictures above.

This is actually the closest Florida has gotten to experiencing any type of tropical system all hurricane season long, and might be the last for 2011 unless there is a late October surprise out of the Caribbean Sea.

The strong winds and heavy rain are forecast to relax starting tomorrow as the low pressure system weakens and lifts to the north taking the bulk of the weather up the southeast coast.

Note: Some of my storm video I shot over the weekend of this event is now airing on The Weather Channel 10/9/11.

Playing With Florida Storm Spiders

I have mentioned over the last few years that almost every time I’m out chasing and filming thunderstorms in southern Florida, I come across the vivid Golden Silk Spider (Nephila clavipes). These spiders (I’m not an expert on spiders) are most frequently seen in trees, shrubs, powerlines and sugarcane fields here in Florida, well, that‘s where I see them the most.

From my short research online they’re know by several names like The Golden Silk Orb-Weaver spider, Yellow Silk, or Banana spider. Growing up in South Florida I have always known them to be Banana spiders, but not to be confused with the very dangerous Brazilian Banana spider that I have just recently learned about.

The video above shows a large female on her web that got my attention while out chasing storms last week in extreme western Palm Beach County, FL. A thunderstorm had just moved through the area, and I stopped to stretch my legs on this side road, and this is where I noticed the very large spider web backlit by sunlight. I knew when I saw her I had to shoot some video. She was mending to her web that looked to have been damage some by the strong storm winds, so she was very active and worth setting up the tripod and camera to get some close up shots in the drizzle. Kind of creepy for me, but enjoy the short video!

Anvil lightning crawlers dance in the night sky over the palms.

Last night was one of those nights I wait for all season long, when thunderstorms develop late into the evening hours and remain isolated. After dinner, I noticed a small isolated storm that was ongoing up in Central Florida that developed along the east and west coast breeze boundaries colliding. Radar showed the cell slowly back-building to the south-southwest along the boundary, and I just knew I needed to head out and take a peek.

I grabbed my mosquitoes spray (which was significantly used) and my cameras, and headed out to the Kissimmee Prairie State Park located in northern Okeechobee County. The storm was slowly tracking southward just west of the Kissimmee River over extreme eastern Polk and Highlands counties, and this location provided me an awesome wide-open landscape view of the lightning show.

I shot off some test exposures and set my frame for the storm movement, and then let the lightning timelapse roll. I had to return to the car several times due to the very aggressive mosquitoes, but the camera continued to shoot away on remote for about 45 minutes as the sky filled with vivid anvil crawlers and cloud-to-ground lightning strikes. 

This was one of the nocturnal lightning events I had been waiting to film all season, although over the Atlantic Ocean, but I'm very pleased how the timelapse sequence came out after doing my post-edit work on it this morning. It looks great! There looks to possibly be one more round of evening thunderstorms tonight before the first stout cold front of the season moves in drying out the Florida atmosphere for the next week. I will be out there again tonight if the storms roam in the dark.

Note: Many of the weather timelapses and footage I have blogged about over the last few months will be featured in a web video I will publish here on the site later in October. Have a great weekend everyone!

Cloud-to-ground (CG) lightning strike at sunset earlier this month over the Florida Kissimmee Prairies.

Update: 5:37am ET - Sunrise about an hour away, and all the convection has been well to the east over the Bahamas with only isolated showers over the Gulf Stream. Packing it up and will try the evening storms moving offshore later tonight for the lightning sequence.

Hunting For Ocean Nocturnal Lightning Before Season Ends For Timelapse

I’m on a mission the next two overnights and pre-dawn hours for nocturnal lightning storms to film a few HD video timelapses. Yesterday was the first day of Fall, and the Florida wet season will be coming to an end real soon as we move into October. The last few days have been active with afternoon seabreeze thunderstorms, and nocturnal storms just off the Atlantic and Gulf coast waters.

There is a trough moving into the Southeast United States and northern Florida the next 24-48 hours, and another weak trough currently over the Bahamas. Both of these features, including elevated moisture levels, are helping to enhance the showers and thunderstorms each day and overnight. I fear the end of the  rainy season is near, and I have yet to capture one of the timelapse sequences that I planned earlier this summer. I have shot over two dozen storm timelapses this summer and very pleased with the results, but I still need to capture that vivid long-exposure lighting storm convection off the Atlantic waters that I seek prior to dawn.

I’m hoping early this morning will pay off with the land breeze boundary setting up offshore and giving me some storms to work with before the sun breaks the horizon. I’ll give it another go early tomorrow morning (Sunday) even if I’m successful today as long as it looks to be active offshore between St. Lucie County southward to Miami-Dade County. I’ll let you know how it goes…wish me luck!

Hurricane Irene was a big wake up call for the eastern United States the last few weeks, with significant life-threatening flooding and power outages. But, Irene tracked through the Greater Bahamas Islands first as a category 3 hurricane, and a new film has just been released sharing an interesting story of a journey into the eye of Hurricane Irene at her strongest.

Veteran and award winning storm photographer Jim Edds (@extremestorms) has just released his new hurricane DVD / Blu-Ray title: “Hurricane Irene - Journey To Hope Town”. Jim takes you along on his self-narrated journey to intercept and film the eye of Irene in the northwestern Bahamas. His travels take you from Florida to Great Abaco Island, where he continues his journey to the smaller outlying island of Elbow Cay about 5 miles to the east of Marsh Harbour Great Abaco. Here he meets several of the great local residents of the small village of Hope Town, and where he will ride out and film the eye of dangerous category 3 Hurricane Irene. 

Currently Unavailable

The new Hurricane Irene video is now available in both DVD and High Definition Blu-Rayand includes shipping.