8-13-10 Electrified North/South 100

A perfect example of why I should take my camera everywhere, even if I am not planning on taking photos. To bad I had dirt on the main unit lense... Oh well. Here are my first daytime lightning shots ever. This was before one of the crown jewels of dirt late model racing, the North/South 100 at Florence Speedway got started a few weeks ago. A severe squall line went through the area with a TON of cloud to ground lightning. The racetrack luckily sat on a hill which gave me a great view to the north. Luckily the majority of the rain stayed to the north and south and they got the show in later in the evening.


Here is the racetrack in the foreground with the lightning. These were all taken with ~2 second exposures, f-stop at ~20 and iso at 100.


I zoomed in for some closer shots, awesome. Probably the luckiest I have ever been with lightning.




The shelf cloud organized as the storms went outflow dominant. Here is my buddy Links about to be eaten alive.


A dark panorama of the shelf cloud. Don't like to edit my images so I left it how it was. How photography should be done, enhancement free.


This just flat out furiates me. Look at all the people standing around still and standing on the bleachers. You can see lightning in the background at the edge of the shelf. How stupid can you be to not take cover when lightning is hitting that close? Can't people ever listen and understand a killer part of nature when they see it?


I got a SINGLE meteor a few weeks ago as well but it was so faint I didn't feel it needed posted. Will likely shoot the CRA Super Series race this weekend at Columbus Motor Speedway. No tstms in the forecast for the next week or so either...hello SDS (supercell deprivation syndrome) developing again...going to be a long winter...

-Chip

A conglomerate of storm photos from the past two weeks.

Over the last two weeks, there has been quite a bit of severe weather in the north/north central region of Ohio. Through the period I played with storms on four different occurrences to get some shots. Below are a few from each of the four days.

Sunday, July 18th:

Quick moving squall line moved through southern Summit County. I blew through it four different times, shot out ahead of it again, then let it overtake me. Lightning was all shrouded in rain so nothing in that department. A very pretty sunset also followed.

When it was first taking shape:

The second intercept showed just how narrow the line was as the setting sun was breaking through the rain back-illuminating the shelf cloud:

Once the line finally moved through, the sun's final light of the day provided a pretty, multi-cloud deck sunset with the remaining anvil and low level cumulus:


Wednesday, July 21st:

A few isolated storms developed and quickly died during the early afternoon hours around northern Ohio. Around 2pm a storm went up near Sandusky, just offshore on Lake Erie. This storm developed off of an old outflow boundary from one of the dead storms from earlier. This storm latched onto the boundary as it moved southeastward onto shore. If it remained on the boundary, it could remain established for quite some time, and that is in fact what it did. The storm moved further southward into Medina, where my original intercept was. Remaining on the boundary, the storm looked very supercellular on radar. After core-punching the storm westward, here is the view of it looking eastward. With such copious amounts of rain and hail, I decided to just stick behind it and watch the base from there. It was moving rapidly so keeping it sight soon became an issue. It eventually shelfed out in Stark County and finally died after trekking over a hundred miles.

Here is the storm looking eastward into it. Notice the large amount of hail within it and the rain/hail foot:


Very strong winds also occurred with this storm. Here is a damaged barn in Wayne County, on 604 a few miles east of route 3:

Friday, July 23rd:

After a race in Lakeville, I headed northward to Rittman where I met up with a friend and we shot some lightning just after the gust fronts passing. Not a whole lot to mention about the intercept. Not much lightning that was shootable once again because of the rain, but it went well into the night after the storms passing.

Lightning striking on the other side of the field we were in...behind my camera, but the backlit gust front looked cool. The very edge of it is lit up by city lights in the distance:

Got a few anvil crawlers but most not very prominant with the rain. Here is one of the best of the day:

Saturday, July 24th:

By far the best day with storm firing along Lake Erie around 5pm and moving south/southeast through the evening. Set off to meet Angela again in Rittman but first, I let it catch me at my house. Alot of wind damage this day as well, however we didn't get to see any as it was mostly pretty far to our east.

Here is the rain shafts along the developing shelf cloud over the neighbors:


Shelf cloud/gust front over ran me by the time I got to Rittman. The edge of it is in the left with the core to the right:
Let the storm's core go over us in the middle of nowhere in Wayne County. A TON of lightning with this storm and they were hitting darn close. With the time of day and rain, nothing was coming out. I waited till dark and was treated to a beautiful updraft being lit up by lightning:

The best, money-shot of the night was the gorgeous sunset. The anvil with some low cumulus still trying to fire being lit up by the sun was amazing. In the anvil to the right, there was some pretty mammatus as well, though they aren't shown well in this panorama:


With all the racing lately, I have gotten alot of cars and will try to get a few on here at somepoint. In the meantime, check out Ohio Valley Dirt Track Racing for them.

Upcoming photoshoots? One word, and its a favorite of mine, PERSEIDS! They are already starting and expect me out in the country darn near every night its clear!

-Chip