You Have To Watch Pecos Hanks' Storm Videos. Exhibit # 9,999,990

Storm chaser, storyteller and musician is back with another
 great storm video that's much more than a storm video. 

There's tons of weather porn out there. 

No, not XXX-rated stuff. No sex, no naked bodies. Sorry, this is a family weather blog. 

Weather porn is videos of extreme weather, usually storms to entice and excite weather weenies like myself. Heck, I indulge in making what I call soft weather porn for my YouTube channel. Soft core because storms don't usually get as wild in Vermont as they do in other parts of the nation. 

But at least Vermont weather tends to be pretty. 

The videos I make, amateurish as they are, still tend to be satisfying to make and I hope satisfying to watch.

Then there are the big time storm chasers. 

Some of them are rather loud, with a lot of shouting. I have mad respect for Reed Timmer and his extreme storm videos, since he has an uncanny knack for being in the right place at the right time. But he gets so excited he yells an awful lot, and my ADHD-addled brain has trouble handling that. 

And there's iCyclone, whose real name is Josh Morgerman, who travels the world to enter the eyes of as many hurricanes and typhoons as he can. The results come in unbelievable, amazing footage. And if you want a master class in calmness amid extreme chaos, he's your guy. 

Then there are the incredibly stupid storm chasers, of which there are many. These are the idiots who drive right into tornadoes, pretend to be police officers to clear the path for their own "videography," the ones that cause traffic jams to block escape routes if a tornado makes an unexpected turn, drive at 90 mph and on the wrong side of the road to capture their video, innocent crash victims be damned.

And then there's Pecos Hank, the most unique storm chaser out there, and easily my favorite. I've touted this guy before in this here blog thingy and I have to do it again.  I just hope he doesn't think I'm stalking him.  

The reason I bring all this up is because Pecos Hank  just released a video reflecting on his storm chasing exploits of 2022.

As always, what I love about this latest video is it's not just dramatic storms and tornadoes, though there's plenty of that.  His videos are so good because he doesn't just show clips, he tells a story in his easy Texas drawl. And he's quirky as hell. 

One incredibly endearing aspect of his videos is he's constantly rescuing animals of the creepy crawly variety from rural roads so they don't get run over by cars. 

He's such a fun narrator. In one part of his recent video, he highlights a relatively anemic tornado that has suction vortices, which are min-tornadoes within the main twister. His description: "As this weak tornado passed overhead, a carousel of suction vortices was on the ground terrorizing prairie dogs and flinging grasshoppers."

You cannot get any better cinematography, narration and creativity than that in a storm video.

When you get away from Pecos Hanks' dry humor and look at the cinematography, it's occasionally almost on the level of famed storm videographer Mike Olbinski

Pecos Hank is also an accomplished musician. He uses some of his storm footage in his music videos, such as in "Drive Under The Moon."  He also uses his music in some of his storm videos, like the review of 2022 tornadoes that I've been talking about.

 At one point, he uses the broken nozzle of a Do-It-Yourself car wash slapping against the machine in the wind on a stormy day to establish the beat for a song he sings toward the tail end of the video. 

Here's his Tornado of 2022 video. Click on this link or click on the image below if you see it to view, 

  

  

Review: Mike Olbinski's Latest Storm Time Lapse Video Is Sublime

My two favorite storm chasers on YouTube are Pecos Hank and Mike Olbinski.

Pecos Hank doesn't take himself too seriously, and he's a great storyteller. Plus unlike in so many other storm and tornado chasing videos, the ones Pecos Hank gives us are not yell fests.  The focus is on the storm, not the chaser.  

Olbinski is a favorite of mine because he is such an artist. He pays the utmost attention to the details in his cinematography.  

He's the best at capturing the grandeur of both the storms he captures and the landscape those storms affect. 

Olbinski's best video yet, "Shadows In The Sky"  has just recently been released.  I'm not going to show it in this post, as I want to make sure to direct all the clicks directly to the video.  He deserves each and every one of them.  

We all expect a sharp crispness to Olbinski's photography, and that's precisely what you get and more. After all, when he's not chasing storms, he's an accomplished Arizona wedding and portrait photographer. His editing technique comes through expertly.  He can make lemonade out of lemons  

You can tell that some of the storms Olbinski encountered that he used in "Shadows In The Sky" had sub-optimal light and surroundings. You can't expect every storm to do the work for you. 

But the photo editing made those problems disappear without compromising the reality of the storms. Nothing looks fake here.  That he is Arizona based helps, too, as he captures some awesome desert microbursts and haboobs.

With this video, Olbinski took a chance by using music with vocals. There's a big payoff with this. The song, "The Last Goodbye"  by Eric Kinny, featuring haunting vocals by Danica Dora, is the perfect accompaniment  to Olbinski's roiling storms. 

The music adds to the emotional mix of apprehension, awe, foreboding and excitement Olbinski's time lapses offer.  And it builds to a surprisingly satisfying crescendo. 

Weather geeks like myself of course will want to watch "Shadows In The Sky" repeatedly.  I also encourage people who are not the least bit interested in the weather to check it out.   If you like photography and art and fascinating video, this is the required viewing. 

I feel sorry for people who never pay attention to the sky, the clouds, the  heavens. Olbinski is creating converts to the happy club of people who are in awe of what nature can create when it is in a stormy mood.