|
I knew this day was not going to turn out like I was hoping when I turned on my xm wxworx reciever south of Sioux Falls and saw the convection already going in central NE. SE SD was going to need plenty of sunshine all day long to help remove the cap and this whole area was quickly blocked out by cirrus from those storms to the sw. Oh well I guess. That is part of the game of chasing, you have to be at the targets before these things happen. I held out some hope for an area sw of Mitchell SD on the NE border, but it too was soon affected by the clouds. I end up parked east of the cold front in this area just waiting--for about 2 hours.
|
|
The cold front is now trying to initiate some storms. I'm not sure what time it is, but would guess a bit after 7. This is looking due west. The low levels were moving almost straight north while the upper anvil level clouds were blowing over to the south. This degree of turning never proves very useful that I've seen. Storms are of the pulse variety as they are raining into their own inflow. As the upper level storm moves more to the east this upper flow probably did veer a bit as one cell to the south does try to survive in the late evening.
|
|
Convection is now getting thicker, but still isn't very impressive.
|
|
Looking to the southwest now towards the end of the line of towers.
|
|
|
|
There were some severe warnings with the storms north of this area earlier, but I believe they have now expired and nothing is severe. I was rather shocked this was not severe as it was extremely electrified. There was now a constant roll and crackling of thunder coming from this storm(honestly no breaks in the thunder). I tried to get some twilight images with the lightning but wasn't having much luck. The lightning was very short duration and masked by precip under the anvil. This is a rare one where a bolt can be seen.
|
|
Now as it got darker I figured I'd be in business and the lightning would be a lot easier to capture. It was and yet it wasn't. You'll notice in these that there isn't a whole lot of bluring to the tower and storm. That's because all the shots were rather short duration(3-5 seconds mostly). They had to be short because of all the flashing in the vault with no visible bolts. When I was lucky enough to see a bolt I often had too many flashes in the same area already on the exposure. And heck, even the bolts I was seeing didn't want to show up unless I iso'd up to 200 and was at F4. There were some brighter ones way out in the anvil but they weren't that frequent. So, just getting some of these to show up was a bit hard.
|
|
Here is one shot with the brighter bolts out in the avnil a bit and not much showing from the more active region closer to the upraft.
|
|
Ok, it was already tricky enough to get something to show up, then these crazy "super-bolts" start up. I can't think of time I've ever seen such powerful looking bolts. When they'd happen I couldn't see crap for a second after them. It wasn't a bolt burn in type of thing where you can see the bolt when you close your eyes after it, it was just a blinding flash. This one and the next one were back to back and were on ISO 200. I knew when I saw it and was blinded there was no way it wouldn't be blown out at ISO 200. This exposure was only 3 seconds long--strobing flashes did not make that area blow out that much. The big nasty nuclear flash bolt in there did. The bottom image show a bit better how these super bolts were structured.
|
|
For some dumb reason I did another exposure with the same setting(this shot has same settings as the one above). ISO 200 isn't that high and that bolt isn't very close. I'm at F4. That nasty blow out is from one bolt. These almost looked like they began around the base and spread out quickly up and down. Many anvil crawlers you'll see a bolt go down then have it spread out across the sky. This was a much quicker process than your typical cg to anvil crawler. They were single strobe as well but not stacato. The few times it did this I said oh my god outloud. I only have 3 of them on here, this one, the one above, and the last one.
|
|
The majority of the lightning was this kind and it was constant up in the anvil. It wasn't doing those crazy bolts very often at all. The other nagging thing about this was the damn sprinkles. It was tracking east right along this highway so I'd keep jumping east. Each time I'd drive for a few miles after I escaped the precip so that I'd have more time to do these. It didn't matter, each time I stopped I was in sprinkles again within a minute of pulling over.
|
|
After blowing out all my "super-bolts" I stuck with ISO 100. It was annoying because this wasn't capturing the show at all. The crazy bolts were rare and I felt I was wasting my time hoping for one and not getting much while not on ISO 200/F4. I finally get another one on ISO 100/F5.6 and this is it. It was still very blown out. You can gather how bright they were by noticing how dark the edges of this image is. The part right by the updraft was simply too bright when they'd happen. You can see how much more branched it is there in this one even though it was overexposed. I'm wondering if you'd even see much of anything else if one was to capture that portion of the super bolt correctly. If only I had dropped south just a few miles I'd have had much more time to mess with this.
|
