Midwestchasers.com/Kurt Hulst

August 23, 2011: Grand Rapids MI Lightning

Kurt — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 13:49:31 +0000

After waiting all afternoon for the storms to develop this evening I was treated to some nice lightning off my porch here in Grand Rapids. I also went a little west toward 131 by the metro hospital missing several good shots but coming away with one really good one. I was blessed to capture the following sequence of images. I feel that these are some of the best lightning shots I have taken from this spot (the porch). Hope there will be more chances before win$%#@ gets here. I best not swear.

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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August 2, 2011: Lightning at the South Haven Pier!

Kurt — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 14:48:13 +0000

PHOTOG update: Great time at the beach in South Haven MI. Bob Hartig has a great write up of the evenings events.

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July 18-19 Severe Storm and Lightning: Kalamazoo MI

Kurt — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 14:59:38 +0000

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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July 11, 2011: West Michigan Severe Weather

Kurt — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 15:25:54 +0000

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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. Western Michigan Severe Weather

Kurt — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 15:24:16 +0000

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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.

May-June Photo Update

Kurt — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 19:44:15 +0000

have not had much time to write forecast information and detailed write ups with my chases this year. Life gets busy being a dad.

Here are the latest pics from the latest chases from May-June 5th.

May 28, 2011: Litchfield IL. Elevated supercell and hail fog.

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May 29, 2011: Olivet MI, Storm aftermath damage.

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June 4, 2011: IL and IN storm chase lots of lightning

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June 5, 2011: Choudrant/Ruston LA

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June 7, 2011: Chased a marginally severe cluster of storms East of Monroe, LA. Caught some cool downbursts and deadly lightning in Rayville, LA.

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April 26, 2011: Grand Rapids and Kalamazoo Michigan Supercells

Kurt — Sat, 30 Apr 2011 18:35:38 +0000

Caught the funnel that produced the Burnips, MI, tornado rated an EF0. Was unable to capture video because I was to busy making a report to the NWS and WOODTV8. After that storm passed over me i dropped south without any internet and caught the storm coming through Kalamazoo. It had some nice structure and rotation. As I drove through Richland, MI, I encountered a hail core of quarters to ping pong size hail, covering the ground. I caught some video of this but it was way to shaky to even bother putting in this report. The storm then became tornado warned and my GPS went on the fritz. I could not restart my computer and had to stop and regroup. By the time I was able to get things back online the rotation had passed just over head and I followed the cell until it was evident it was in its dying phase near Woodbury on M-66 and M-50.

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March 20, 2011

Kurt — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 12:49:15 +0000

The first day of spring in 2011 and we officially had our first thunder storms here in Michigan. I was not expecting much but I was happy to capture at least one shot of lightning.

Anticipating the 2011 Season

Kurt — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 04:33:03 +0000

A few updates for this years season (2011).

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.

Dealing with Life

Kurt — Sat, 18 Dec 2010 18:59:58 +0000

It has been a great period of time since I have posted anything on my blog or even looked at comments that had been left. I want to thank everyone who has left comments in the last couple of months and especially to those who have commented on the June 5, Illinois event.

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.

July 22, 2010: Allegan MI, Supercell and Lightning

Kurt — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 16:41:32 +0000

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.

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