I got a late start to this chase but it was okay as I intercepted the supercell just east of Allegan, MI. Had some of the best lightning I have been able to capture in years. The second in the series of photos would have been the best shot of the night, but I had just dropped my f-stop back down to 6.7 because the bolts were still pretty distant. Boom overexposure. Amazing lightning. the first three were taken one mile north of Hopkins. It started to rain so I dropped south to one mile south of route 222. Found a nice open spot overlooking a corn field. This is where I was able to capture some more amazing lightning. A local resident, Nick and his girlfriend, were out watching the storm as well. It was nice to meet Nick and his girlfriend as we watched the supercell approach from our west. The lightning was illuminating the supercell and the photos do not give it justice. The supercell looked very classic and near the end transitioned into an HP. It had a very strong vertical stacked vault region and still amazing lightning. Enjoy the images. All content is copy written.
An early morning MCS developed over lake Michigan after producing tornadoes in Wisconsin. This line of storms still had some rotation in the north end comma head about 15 miles north of my position. I headed out to take lightning shots and was successful in doing so. The following is a sequence of lightning shots from b/w 12 am and 1am. The lightning was pretty intense. I missed many excellent shots, but I was able to capture several nice staccatos. This storm produced several tornado warnings, one of which prompted sirens for my area. I was frustrated that they had done so because there was no reason for it. The was reason for them to my north but not my area. My guess is they issued the sirens because it is such a populated area. They also issued the warning because some one had reported funnels near Ada. This report I am highly skeptical about. Often times there are SCUD tendrils that look like funnels but are not. These “Tendrils” are ingested by the shelf cloud which usually has strong out flow winds under near it often times under cutting any type of ground circulation. I saw many of these from my location.
I got out of work and came home to eat a small bite. I then went out the door and headed east to stay a head of the squall line that was coming across the lake. I dropped south from I-96 to Nashville, MI, on M-66. I caught the shelf cloud near Vermontville.
I proceeded a few miles east to catch I-69 south. I stopped and let the storm over take me. I would have to say there were sustained winds of at least 40mph, with gusts up to 50 at times.
I saw the next wave of storms starting to move east from IA/IL on radar and thought I might as well try for a lake lightning photo opt. I took I-69 south to I-94 west. I stopped just west of Kalamazoo and got some coffee at McDonalds. I witnessed an amazing sunset here as well.
This is when I also ran into Ben Holcomb, and the LaForce Duo (Father and Son) at Culvers just up the road. We sat and chatted for a few while Ben was uploading video to GRR Channel 8 News. I t was good to finally meet the LaForce’s
From here I checked the radar once again and determined that I was going to make a go at capturing some lightning, since I had so few shots this year. I found a public access beach just west of Stevensville, MI south of Benton Harbor.
The following shots are the end result. I was very pleased with what I was blessed to see and capture on “film”.
Below is the image gallery with the full set of pictures from the day:
Bob Hartig and I left Grand Rapids, MI, shortly after 12:00pm EDT. We arrived at Burlington, IA around 5:30/6:00pm EDT. I could see on satellite that this area had ample heating for several hours and a possible boundary to work with. The satellite also revealed a mid-level impulse or in other words a cloud deck that was aiming right for the warm moist atmosphere with excellent sever parameters. Bob and I decided that it would be wise to stay ahead of the leading edge of the cloud deck . We caught this storm from it inception. It started as a small little base and continued to grow into a classic supercell. It was within 10 minutes that it started to show signs of becoming a supercell.
We followed the supercell for several miles as it gained strength and then took another series of structure photos. We were south of route 34 on some nice paved farm roads.
This storm had an extremely beautiful tilted updraft tower with low level striations
It began to lower and form a wall cloud. This storm would continue to cycle and form several wall clouds.
Below I stitched some shots together because this storm would not fit into my wide angle lens. Great banding and wall cloud
Soon after this stitched pic we witnessed a funnel for about 2 minutes south of Abingdon, IL. We did not see any debris but this is what I believe was counted as tornado#1 and is on the SPC storm reports.
This wall cloud we witnessed as we were on route 8.
Bob Hartig, has a much more detailed write up of our chase, so if you visit his site you can get more details as to our locations.
The next series of photos is of the third tornado which struck Elmwood, IL. The storm was showering lightning in very close proximity to the tornado during the whole 13 minute life cycle. We were with in 1/4 of a mile and could hear the tornado. It sounded like a rocket engine and we could hear the building rip apart. The next shots are video grabs:
Lightning actually went through the tornado. Probably the only shot of this out there on the web.
Another close strike:
You could see where the bolt hit the ground here:
Tornado as it is hitting Elmwood. What some have described as a second funnel was actually inflow into the wall cloud, but it very well could have had horizontal rotation. Again my thoughts and prayers for those affected by this natural disaster.
Full HD video of the Elmwood Tornado life cycle:
We continued on after this and another tornado touched down 3 miles to the east of Elmwood. We caught several more tornadoes as seen in this video below:
We also caught a night time tornado. It is barely visible in this video grab but it was definitely there. Bob reported this tornado on Spotter Network. Another chaser did as well, so we were not seeing things.
These lightning shots were taken just on Route 24 just before I-57
