View allAll Photos Tagged stormchasing
April 26th—I was willing to risk hail here because I wanted to see what would happen with a storm interaction. This right moving supercell got intercepted by a left mover between Mentone and Kermit, Texas. This was the choppy phase before the storm reorganized into a magnificent beauty. Left tail light got cracked from a probable golf ball hail piece as I tried to maneuver back out of the iciest areas.
Mud puddle for scale.
A rain wrapped, backlit tornado on a beautiful storm southeast of Kim, Colorado yesterday afternoon. If you zoom in closer beneath the main funnel, you can see a possible sub-vortex down there. (This was at 7:22:30PM / 00:22:30Z)
It was a challenging area to chase, with the storm cutting across the Cimmaron River Valley not long after the tornado. Some took the unpaved routes through that area. I opted the long way around through Campo & Boise City...which couldn't be helped due to a gas tank plunging toward empty.
With the clear air and initially high bases, there were a lot of photo opportunities on such a slow moving storm that then tossed out ominous mystery silhouettes after dark. Things can definitely look like hair raising wedge tornadoes during brief lightning flashes at night, especially when deceptively subtle hills makes it look like it's in contact when the ground when it may not be. I grabbed time lapse of that to see if I can make out anything later, but probably won't be anything definitive—the storm wasn't cranking out frequent enough lightning to make those things clearer.
A little earlier than this shot (6:00:30PM / 23:00:30Z) a concentrated plume of dust kicked up beneath the storm. I think that got reported as a landspout. It was beneath the updraft at the time, but there was a lot of turbulence at cloud level and I couldn't distinguish any hint of a connection, so I figured it more likely to be a gustnado instead. I grabbed some shots that I'll put up when I get a chance to process things for the day.
Interesting colors collected during a 20-30 second exposure in central Oklahoma during a severe thunderstorm. Had the the sky not turned a number of colors from city lights, traffic and distant lightning, this would have been another throwaway shot.
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On the days we "could have done better" like this one, at least we still snag some cool scenes. The Texas panhandle is something! A bit north of where we saw the Canadian, TX tornado during 2015.
Blobs of rambunctious storms skidded down off the rim and hustled toward the Colorado near Bouse on September 1st. I loved what was happening with color in this one from the mix of deep intracloud flashes, reflected landscape strikes, and city lights. Limited road options and other storms wouldn’t let me stay ahead of it so I let it engulf me at this point. Caught some surprisingly excellent CG lightning after that.
April 22nd—a strengthening storm approaching the same spot east of Fort Stockton, Texas, where similar views led to photogenic tornadoes in 2019 & 2023. Not this year though. But still a fun storm to surf southeast as it strengthened and became a mighty, dust eating beast.
September 4th was a great time at Cinder Hills Overlook. Usually my favorite spot to set up a telescope for dark sky observing, but this night it was alive with approaching electricity. Inside the car at this point, seeking the mercies of Faraday & skin-effect.
The lightning stroke traveled out from the main body of the storm and connected with the ground about 1/2 mile in front of me. I was extremely lucky to capture such a shot, as I was holding the shutter open on my Olympus OM-2S for about 3-4 seconds at a time. I wasted a considerable amount of film but this shot makes it more than worth the trouble.
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Another shot, this time from my video, of the storm that produced the Brookville EF-4 tornado over Memorial Day weekend. The tornado is in there somewhere at this point.
While stormchasing, I spent the night boondocking in southern Iowa. This view shows the lights of Bloomfield illuminating the horizon about 5 miles to the east—15 March 2016.
We targeted NW Oklahoma for the day then a cell fired two hours away in the TX panhandle. Rather than being patient, we went for it... to see it die as we got there. A tornado later occurred in NW Oklahoma (we didn't see it).
A line of nocturnal thunderstorms light up the early morning sky near Bloomfield, Iowa. I woke up to photograph the lightning display while boondocking the night before a storm chase in Illinois.
Lightning photographed in central Oklahoma in May 2001 driving back from a day of storm chasing in the Texas Panhandle.
Fuji Velvia 50. This is the closest shot I've ever taken, at around 250 feet, and you can see that the stroke easily overexposed the film in places.
It ruined the shot, but I still find a lot to like in this one. Other problems include the freeway overpass in the top-left corner and the severe underexposure of the right side. But like I said, had it not been so close this would have been a throwaway shot.
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The rotation of this monster is a little more clear here, as it blasts across the Kansas landscape with gigantic hail and the threat for some uber tornadoes.