Midwestchasers.com/Kurt Hulst

Spur of the moment trip to Kalamazoo at midnight. Storms developed just to the south of Grand Rapids, and were moving SSE away from me. I thought I should stay home but seeing some good bolts come out of the top of the storms hooked me and I went south. As I drove, low level clouds obscured my view of any bolts. I wound up having to drive all the way to Schoolcraft, MI just to finally get a good view. These images are my image account of this night. The flashes were continuous but the bolts that were far and few between from the back side of the storm. I was not sure if it was worth getting home at 2am. But after reviewing my images I would say it was semi-worth it.

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Caught a severe squall line North of Caledonia, MI. Was able to provide on air coverage for WoodTV 8 here in Grand Rapids. Below is a time lapse of the shelf cloud as it approaches. I then show some stills of the shelf cloud and then a stitched panorama shot. Pretty nice color. Sadly a man was killed by a fallen tree in Cutlerville this day. Thoughts and prays to the family, he is survived by his wife and six children.

The day ended with a spectacular sunset.

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June 21, 2011, brought severe storms to Michigan that developed right along the lake shore with an initial supercell. I had to use some archived video from my chasertv stream as I was not recording to tape. So the small frame is of the FLV archive. This video starts with a time lapse of the initial supercell. Before I reposition, it produces 2 mid level funnels near the vault region of the cell. I zoom in briefly but had to move due to oncoming traffic. Second scene is of the cell organizing with some classic/HP supercell structure fairly descent for MI which is time lapsed near Hudsonville. I later enter the north side of Hudsonville and encounter some outflow inflow wind interactions. I observed a semi-vertical white funnel that lasted for a brief time (time lapsed). There was rotation evident as scud clouds merry-go-round in a centralized area as a tail cloud formed to the North East. Shortly after a brief small funnel protrudes (in real time). The final scene is a mile or two SE and I watch a semi rotating wall cloud continue to develop and even produce a 20-30 second cone funnel. I zoomed in on this area and played it in time-lapse mode half time and then restrung the clip in full 10x time-lapse. After this, the storm goes completely outflow dominate.