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I wasn't expecting much this night, but figured there was a slight chance storms could build southwest from Iowa, or just pop on the sagging cold front. While going on my nightly trip to walk my parent's dogs in this hills behind their house, I decided it'd be best to take my camera with. I could see some very weak towers on the way there. By the time we were coming back down I could see a couple had a lot more vertical growth to them. This was a bit after sunset. So I looped the radar over and over. I then walked outside to look and noted a newly formed thick band of lower clouds overhead. Then went back in. Then came back out and while watching north I saw a flicker not too far away. Then another flicker. Whatever it was, it certainly wasn't on radar yet. So I grabbed the camera gear and setup. I wasn't seeing any CG activity, but kept taking stills anyway. I then see a bright flash which made me squint a bit. I never saw any bolt, but thought I should check the image. Sure enough, got the above CG on that one. It would be the first and only CG the storm produces, other than anything it does as it moves right of the shot here, behind the trees. After this I drive around town looking for new viewing locations. I tried the park on the hill at the end of College Drive again, but people were up there. Said screw that. I the drove out on highway 91, taking a gravel road south...without my GPS and laptop. I didn't figure I could get too lost with various light sources to drive towards. The road twisted down the hills and I soon wound up not far from where I got off highway 91. Giving up on that area I decided to drive across town again and into Iowa. I stopped over there and watched, but was seeing no CGs, just in cloud crap. Then I see a car heading down the road I was on. Not wanting to bother with the, "yeah I'm watching the storms" explaining, I turned the car on and left. It was a frustrating outing up to this point, so I said screw it and went home. Couldn't buy a CG anyway.
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I showered and was all ready for bed, but was not tired yet, like normal. So I farted around online, keeping an eye on some tiny returns to the north. I knew in the back of my head there was a good chance I'd be suckered back out, even if it meant putting my contacts back in, etc. I glanced out the window and could see a fair amount of flashes. So, being how I am, I got ready and went out again, just to see what would happen. I have a hard time skipping out on anything, let alone anything in the local area...even if I expect it to suck again with in-cloud lightning you really never see. My desire is to capture very close CG strikes, even if it is in the rain. Only way to do this is under some cover that you can shoot out from. So where to go. I opted to try my parent's porch again, hoping I could do it without waking up the dogs, as they'd surely bark. I get setup on the porch and see the same sort of situation as earlier....plenty of flashes but no visible bolts anywhere. This time though, these flashes would pick up to absurd levels. I quickly wished I had brought my video camera out with. I also wondered what the heck they looked like on radar now as they sure weren't much when I left home. Above is a shot a while into this second outing. It's looking straight north. The Cargill plant is off to the right and is what is putting off a lot of white light. The red coloring to the left is coming from the lights in Blair. It was quickly obvious what would be the best thing to do in this situation....shoot longer exposures to "paint the night sky" with the help of the city and plant lights...and these storm clouds.
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Bored shooting the same thing over and over I decided to jump into the shot. Notice you can see through me. That's because I locked the cable release and jumped into the scene, so the area I'm in front of now had been exposing, as well as doing so as I was running back out of the shot to stop the exposure. Sure I could have just used the timer to jump in, and a set exposure time so it would end on its own, but it wasn't that important to me. The blue coloring to the right is from lightning activity back in there.
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I tried to iso up some and see if I could freeze things a bit more, to show this scud factory getting going.
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Yet more ISO and less shutter. This was probably 1 second and 1600 ISO. This was all joining together right now and forming a brand new shelf. It was fun to watch the scud play in there. It was interesting as it sure seemed something was going down that would be a little more fun than that of what I watched earlier. One moment these would all be pushing west, next minute they'd all be surging east, then soon back west. None of them were pushing out ahead yet. The lightning above this was simply a strobe light effect. You couldn't see any of them, and I never saw any CGs but it was still fun because of how fast they were.
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More farting around. Again you can see through me from my jumping into the shot and back out of it. It's dark out so nothing shows up unless it is in one place for a while..hence you don't see any blur from me running to that spot and back. Since I'm sure some will want an idea of the settings used, this was 10mm with my canon 10-22 EF-S, F4.5, 17 seconds, ISO 400. Long shutter night stuff is easy. It's pretty hard to screw up. Just don't have any real bright objects in it at a close distance.
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It's too bad I think of things after the fact all the time. This might have been cooler had I grabbed my other camera and held still like I was photographing the storm. One could even push the button so the LCD lights up for the shot.
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Here is a closer to reality shot. 1600 ISO, 1 second. That is close to how it looked in person, minus the noise.
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F4.5, 32 seconds, ISO 200.
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The scud wall is now getting closer, yet still no rain. The shelf was certainly not pushing out ahead of things yet.
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I'm now getting a little wet on the front porch. I haven't seen it pour this hard in a while. Not sure what Blair got, but I'd assume over an inch in the 30 minutes or so it rained. I know Valley received 2.15 inches(think it was 2.15....it was over 2 anyway). There were some gusts likely around 50mph during this, but the whole time it sounded windy as hell, just because of the rain in the trees. It almost sounded like a train at times. It was now around 1:30 a.m. Another chaser from Blair I know gets off at 1:30 and I'd been talking with him on the phone, letting him know he's not missing much in the way of lightning. Well he was driving home through town now and said it was pretty hard to see where you were going. While chatting with him Randy beeps in, so I let him go and answer. Not long after this some bolt hit off to the right only about 1/8 to a 1/4 mile away. I never actually saw the bolt, but the flash was bright and the thunder was down right scary. If I had to rate thunder instances I'd say it was a top 2 or 3 crash. It wasn't as close as many others, but it may have been the loudest! It was very rare to get a cg from this stuff, so it must have took some real build up to create one. The bases on these in this setup left them incredibly high.
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I had some hope that maybe one could see the lit up towers from behind the line. So Bob and I drove up to the hill in hopes to get some better shots this time around. Turned out you really couldn't see the actual lightning from behind things either. Just as soon as we go there we could see a roll cloud on the horizon way down there. Then it got bigger and bigger.
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Just like earlier, it looked like the best(only) thing to do was do longer exposures to light up the night sky. This really didn't disappoint either.
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If only we knew how cool and windy this thing was about to make things. It continued moving north at us, ushering in fairly high sustained winds and cooler air. I had even thought about picking up a sweatshirt at home on the way out here. T-shirt and shorts weren't making it very enjoyable, but the sky was worth the trouble.
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I looked at a few of these on the LCD and it just made me think of it like it was from another world.
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The bit of blue above the center of the horizon is from some infrequent lightning activity in that area.
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Around this time we both heard an odd noise off in the distance a good ways. I heard it and wondered if it was just me. I turned and looked at Bob and I'm not sure I even asked and he said, "You heard that too?" So I said, "What the hell was it?" He says back, "It sounded like Sasquatch just got hit by a train." SIGH!!!! This stupid program just crashed out on me, and I didn't save the remaining text. God I hate that. Had this all done too. SAVE Good grief, too bad this wasn't gmail and had auto draft save. SAVE Anyway. So we hear that noise. It was one of those times where you wished your mind had an erase feature with it.
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It was now 3:30 a.m. I'm not typing all I had here again, so screw it, will just end it shorter than it was. A car pulled into the lot, lights shut off, car alarm started to sound from it, then barking, then it stopped....then see a person coming....then see flashlight....it's a cop.....good it's not someone else as it's very late and well, it's likley better no one stops at this hour....he informs us of what the running water noise we heard was....sorry for the run on....blame this piece of crap for crashing at the wrong time(I save frequently most times). Went home and went to bed.
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F4.5, 165 seconds, 800 ISO. Oh yeah, something else I had already typed about before it crashed. This was now the only storm around, one well west near Fremont Nebraska. It's too bad the sky was so hazy so the stars weren't any brighter.
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