All images were shot in RAW format and edited to JPEG for internet viewing. If you would like to purchase a high quality image contact me via khulst at midwestchasers dot com

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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.

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.

1).When I am chasing this year I will be using ChasetTV to stream live weather video. You can view my live chase stream on my Live Stream link

2). I hope to be airing live video on Wood TV 8 here in Grand Rapids covering all of SW MI.

3).I added a Verizon USB760 broadband aircard to my arsenal of tech that I will be using this year to help get a good stream online.

4). I added a few lightning images to my banner logo and re-sized my whole site, both blog and main site, to 1000px wide to keep up with today’s higher resolutions. You may have to use the scroll bar for lower resolutions but this should fit most screens.

Life has been pretty busy as I have been working a new job for about 5 months now.  On top of that my wife and I have been raising our new baby boy who is a little over 3 months now.  There have been a lot of really good changes in our life but changes that have kept both my wife and I pretty busy.  I have not had much time to get out and chase since my son was born in September. Frankly there was not much to chase any way except a few hit and miss systems. Now we’re in to the full swing of winter. The only chasing I am able to do now is vicariously through the chase cases posted on stormtrack.org/forum.  However, I did capture a few anvil crawlers in mid November which I still have yet to process.

I have also found a new hobby that can keep me busy during the down time of storm chasing.  Espresso, mmmmm!!   I have been honing my skills on the espresso machine and becoming a home barista. I have found that fresh grinds with freshly roasted beans are the way to go. I am thankful for a few coffee roasters that are local in Grand Rapids. One in particular is Grand Rapids Coffee Roasters.  I bought a Saeco Aroma Espresso machine that was refurbished that does a fine job. Its not a top of  the line but its a good starter machine.  I also bought a new Ascaso i3-mini espresso grinder.  It does a really good job at getting the grind fine enough for espresso.  There are a lot of so called espresso grinders out there that just don’t cut it.

So all in all it has been a crazy busy couple of months but has been very beneficial. I gotta head to work in about a half hour so time to play with the young man.

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:

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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