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Storm chasing 2021 has begun! This is my 25th season chasing storms, though last spring was the first I spent no time in Tornado Alley, thanks to the pandemic. While the world is far from normal, my friend Alethea Kontis and I are vaccinated, taking precautions and on the road.

Today, May 14, was the first taste of a chase for us this season after driving out from Florida. We paused to take photos of golden wheat and a wind farm at Oklaunion, Texas, and kept an eye on storms in the Texas Panhandle.

We caught a little lightning in Shamrock, Texas, home of the beautifully restored Route 66 landmark U Drop Inn. While I’m still hoping to get a truly great lightning photo here someday, this fun little timelapse video and the photos were atmospheric, at least.

I’m already sleep deprived. More later! Meanwhile, you can roll over each image below to see a caption, or click on one to start a slide show of larger images.

I chased lightning storms tonight as they made their way into Brevard County, Florida. Farther west, the storms had earned severe warnings and even a tornado warning.

I headed to the St. Johns River first, seeing a beautiful lightning-illuminated shelf cloud on the way. The shelf had eased over my position by the time I stopped and got a few photos of the lightning as the wind rushed through the tall grasses and palms. It started to rain before better photo opportunities presented themselves, so I headed east and parked in a few locations in Viera to snap the rest of the photos here.

The culmination of the evening was a gorgeous lightning crawler that filled the sky. And let’s not even talk about the bolts I missed!  (There are always bolts I miss.) All in all, it was fun to nab some good lightning. It’s been way too long.

Click on the thumbnails to see a slide show of the larger versions.

As I’m not chasing in the Plains this year because of the COVID-19 plague, I’m trying to grab a chase here and there near my home in eastern Florida. This wasn’t a great night for lightning, but I caught a couple of bolts on May 26, 2020, in Viera, Florida. I’ll take what I can get in this very difficult year.

N.B.: Backdated so it makes sense in the chase report. 

Today was the first real chase day for Alethea Kontis and me in 2019. We’d driven out from Florida a couple of days before. It was Alethea’s second year of storm chasing, and she hadn’t seen a tornado yet. This day would deliver a beautiful one near McCook, Nebraska, that we saw from just south of Culbertson. At times it had a “Wizard of Oz” appearance. We met up with more chaser friends, and later that night, we saw a gorgeous lightning show from Lexington, Nebraska.

We drove about 450 miles this day – some of which was a large and frustrating circle. Pretty much par for the course on a storm chase.

Roll over the gallery images for more information about each photo, and click on a photo to see larger images.

I’ve posted one more year-end video: Storms of 2016, consisting mostly of time-lapses of the incredible supercells and tornadoes I saw during my storm-chasing season in Tornado Alley. I doubt I’ll ever see another year like this one. The video is just over two minutes, accompanied by Very Dramatic Music. I hope you enjoy it.

In case you missed it, I previously posted a video slide show of my favorite storm photos from this year, too.

 
This year was challenging personally but was the most impressive I’ve ever had when it came to chasing storms. Tornado Alley lived up to its name in a dramatic fashion during my 20th season, and though Lightning Alley wasn’t particularly productive, a once-in-a-lifetime capture at home in Florida made the lightning season pretty exciting, too.

I’ve wrapped up some of my favorite storms and skyscapes of the year – along with a handful of rocket launches – in both a highlight video and a slide show set to music. (You can see more of my storm photos and buy prints in my official weather galleries, and find chase accounts on the Sky Diary pages.)

Thanks for watching. A peaceful new year to you all.

I had a fun moment this evening when I got to present a metal print of a once-in-a-lifetime lightning photo to the mayor of Cocoa, Florida, at a city council meeting. Cocoa is a town here on the Space Coast, and it’s proud of its award-winning water tower. I didn’t even know there was such a thing as an award-winning water tower, but Cocoa’s was named 2015 Tank of the Year. It’s also been a frequent target of my photography efforts. I’ve nabbed a few lightning photos with it over time, but on Sept. 28, I hit the jackpot. I snapped multiple photos of the tower with extremely close cloud-to-ground lightning bolts. Though I got multiple shots, each photo is just ONE exposure, of one flash.

I have just made the most spectacular photo (above) and an additional shot available in my online photo gallery for print orders. Both are available in various formats, including canvas, metal and fine art prints.

Photo links: Photo 1 | Photo 2

 
This was one of those spontaneous “gentlemen’s chases” (or lady’s chase) just a few minutes from home on Florida’s Space Coast that resulted in one of the most spectacular lightning photos I’ve ever captured.

A small, isolated storm was headed toward Cocoa, Florida, on September 28, 2016, not far from my home. At first I thought I might try to intercept it along the water somewhere, but I realized this might be the chance to get lightning with the Cocoa water tower (I’d tried before). I stopped at one location but was frustrated by the trees, so I thought I’d take a chance and see if the storm would cooperate and drop lightning close enough to the tower that I could capture it if I was right across the street.

For a while, it seemed the storm was dying, and then it pulsed up with stunning results. I posted the most insane of these lightning flashes on Facebook, and it went viral, with a few of the usual “this is Photoshopped” skeptics chiming in. The only “Photoshopping” on that photo was the kind of minimal adjustments to contrast and reduction of highlights that photographers do on all photos. The exposure was nearly perfect, so I made minimal adjustments later (bringing down the slight overexposure of the bright-white water tower) and trimmed a thin slice off the right edge to achieve 4×5 dimensions. Settings: ISO 100, f/11, 11 seconds.

In fact, this is one of the more perfect lightning exposures I’ve ever achieved. Luck, experience, patience and perseverance all played a role. You can read about how the chase and photos evolved in the captions below, with settings.

Roll over each image to see the caption, or click on one to see a slide show with larger photos. Interested in prints? Learn more.

 
On May 21, Kathy Velasquez and I focused our chase target to Leoti, Kansas, along with legions of other chasers, and were treated to a stunning supercell with amazing structure.

We barely saw the first tornado and missed the others but chose to hang back and appreciate this rare beauty of a storm rather than tangle with the rain. This supercell ranks among my favorite storms of all time for its beauty.

 

Roll over each image to see the caption, or click on one to see a slide show with larger photos.

 
Sometimes, as a storm chaser, I take a chance on a marginal forecast rather than chase a higher likelihood of severe storms in a place I don’t want to chase.

On May 11, I targeted an area with decent upper-level winds and dewpoints – where Colorado meets the Oklahoma Panhandle and the northern Texas Panhandle. I refined the target to a storm coming out of New Mexico, and after driving in a rather frustrating loop (road network issues), I ended up in front of a storm coming out of Clayton, New Mexico, that just got prettier and stronger until it ended up being warned as severe.

This storm and its sister storm had incredible lightning that I chased all the way back to Amarillo.

Roll over each image to see the caption, or click on one to see a slide show with larger photos.