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I recently wrapped up a month of storm chasing across the American Midwest. It was fun to make some new friends, spend time with old friends, and realize you can’t stand extended travels with some of your asshole friends, like Miles Morgan. Although I do have a doozy of a story from our trip to use as blackmail against him in the future, so that’s a silver lining of our time together. 😉
Proper storm chasing the past couple of years has caused a new addiction for me and my clunky camera. It’s a unique type of nature photography that mixes often fast-paced shooting, adrenaline, on-the-spot composition decisions, a tiny bit of occasional “dangerous” scenarios, and a serious understanding of meteorology… which I don’t have. But chasing with my great friend Steve Saviano means I don’t end up somewhere in Oklahoma under totally clear skies, which is exactly how it would be if I chased solo. Luckily I’ve learned a lot about forecasting over the past couple years from him. He’s honestly brilliant at meteorology.
But also, neither Miles or Steve came to my aid when I was aggressively approached by a guy in a cowboy hat and a not-so-concealed weapon… all because we had California license plates on our vehicle. He was pretty concerned about these supposed Californian liberal communists in his tiny Midwest town. So uhh… thanks for having my back, lads.
Anyway, all of the images I made from this year's chase-season are up on my website. If you’re into pictures of severe weather, you might like a couple of them… hopefully. As for this shot, it was a fairly underwhelming high-based storm, but had some great color and texture along with the occasional CG lightning strike. But the landscape of South Dakota’s Badlands almost can’t be beat. If you want to join us for chasing next year or just see some storm photography, check out our new page www.skyscapephototours.com
Thanks for scrolling far enough to see my dumb little picture. If you are interested in seeing how I create my dumb little pictures you can head to www.ryandyar.com or check out the link in my profile.
Incredible close range lightning strike from a severe warned thunderstorm near Kadoka, South Dakota on June 8th, 2018. This storm produced a constant barrage of cg strikes which allowed me to capture some of the most intense lightning pictures that I've ever gotten out of any storm. This strike is the closest I've ever come to lightning, shooting 16mm on a full frame body. This bolt was definitely a bit too close for comfort. Hope you enjoy!
As the messy part of the meso started to move over my area, I was about to blast east to get out from under it, but stopped and stood outside as the storm glowed a beautiful turquoise blue. I've seen videos of storms that appeared a green/blue due to the sunlight's angle on the storm, but seeing it first hand in person was absolutely mesmerizing. Lightning was striking all around, and the hail shaft came extremely close up on the left of this photo as I snapped away. While I didn't notice it during this time, after looking back at this image I noticed a part of the storm that looked like it was producing a funnel. It's rather hard to tell due to how wide angle I was shooting, but in the center of the frame above the road, let me know what you think it might be. Scud, or a funnel cloud? Anyways, I was going to post pictures of the supercell I saw back on the beginning of October, but I came across this photo from June and thought it was much more post worthy. Hope you enjoy!
After sitting on the side of highway 44 photographing an intense lightning barrage that this storm was producing, things got a bit too dangerous, so I blasted east until I got far enough away of the storm. Once I got away from danger, I then drove south down Highway 83, ending up watching this storm coming in from the west just outside of Mission, South Dakota. As the sun began to set, this once extremely intense supercell began to lose its energy and started to become outflow dominant. It turned into a very mean looking hp supercell, glowing an ominous blue/green, something I haven't seen in person until I saw this storm. However, as this storm came over the gas station I was parked at, the whale's mouth engulfed the area and turbulent skies hung overhead. This thing was coming in fast, but I ended up running down the street to get this shot right before the core hammered the area. Quite an apocalyptic scene overall, so I hope you enjoy this shot. Hopefully 2019 is a much more eventful year in terms of producing tornadoes!