High Plains Drifter

April 26th was a very productive storm photography day.  Lightning was nothing short of spectacular with a supercell thunderstorm that moved slowly across the San Angelo area.  On the way north to Abilene late in the evening, another storm produced spectacular lightning. 

I intercepted and photographed the San Angelo high-based supercell. AsI was en route to the San Angelo area from Big Springs, I ran into BillReid as the storm was in its incipient stage. The storm underwent a classic split after initiation to the south of Sterling City.Eventually, the right split finally took over, and I followed the storm southeast on approach to San Angelo. I decided to take Ranch 2288south, to bypass the city. This was a good choice as it offered me a wonderful view of the storm without the nuisance of dealing with the city. I connected the Lightning Trigger to my Nikon D200 after it became apparent that photogenic CG lightning was occurring at a reasonable interval around the updraft. It worked like a champ. The success rate with the Lightning Trigger is about 20-40% or so, I am finding, when shooting at a 1/10 to 1/30 shutter speed, depending on the on the return strokes after initial flash that triggers the device.There was so much lightning with this storm — high-quality, brilliant lightning. I cannot recall a storm of recent memory that I had so much fun photographing with respect to lightning. The supercell really became outflow dominant as it came into San Angelo. Overall supercell structure was pretty good, but the CG lightning was what made this storm a real treat to the photographer. East of San Angelo, I was leap-frogging Bill Reid and Paul Sirvatka’s COD team, staying ahead of the storm on Hwy 87 to Eden. I was able to capture a fantastic image looking west down Hwy 87 of a spectacular CG with COD’s chase vans in the distance on a hill.

I went south on Hwy 83 about 10 or 12 miles to photograph a little more…which was when I lost internet connection. There’s a data hole in this area. The SCIT track had the storm crossing Hwy 83 about 7miles south of Eden, so I waited patiently until the core of the storm crossed in front of me to the north. I went back north to Eden after about 20 minutes to find a wintry scene of hail covering Hwy 83 several inches deep over a couple mile stretch. From the last radar image I saw before data loss, there was another small supercell taking bead on the Ballinger area in time. I was planning to head to Abilene anyway, so I was hoping for a little more lightning. I was pretty greedy at this point — having an awesome good time! I stopped a couple times around the Paint Rock area for more incredible lightning. It was a staccato-fest! Bill Reid said it best after I saw him the final time when we were west of Eden: "It was like taking candy from a baby". What an incredibly fun chase. Below are a few crudely processed images that I did on my laptop. I have a couple more on my blog:  

Below are a few of the best images of the bunch from yesterday’s chase:

I was able to leave work right at 4pm for yesterday’s chase. As Iposted in the FCST thread, the area I was most interested in was alongand north of US-24 to Nebraska. I met up with Tony Laubach and VerneCarlson for a short time east of Ness City as some cumulus weresomewhat intriguing at the nose of a small scale mixed-out warm plumewhere convergence was locally maximized. I told myself that if the Cudidn’t look any better in 45 minutes, I would bolt northwest where Iwas extremely confident there would be a sustained surface based severestorm where the deep tropospheric forcing was much better acrossNorthwest KS. The first storms were developing with some decent echoesaloft around Goodland, and at that point, I continued north toWakeeney, then northwest to Hoxie, to my first stopping point south ofRexford. The southern storm had some nice shape to it and appeared tobe supercellular, but it was small. Of interest at the time was alarger mass of convective updraft due north. These two storms mergednorthwest of Rexford, and the storm really took off. Of course, it wasgetting well into the evening by this point, but the supercellstructure was quite fine…although high based. The westernmost portionof the storm revealed an interesting lowered feature, which I guess youcould call a wall cloud, but there was a lot of outflow dust beneath itlooking roughly west from near Hwy 23-83 junction at Seldon. It was toodark for handheld photography, so I tried my best to get the tripodsetup for some 1-3 second wide angle exposures amidst strong eastinflow winds and blowing dust.

Now,idiot me, I continued east on Hwy 9, instead of joining the massesheading south on 23. I guess I was expecting the storm to move more dueeast…and from my perspective due east of the storm, the structure waspretty good from a photography standpoint. I stopped briefly about 6 WNew Almelo for more long-exposure photography on the tripod before Ibegan to get pelted by quarter-size hail. Looking to thewest-southwest, the supercell structure looked pretty darn good fromthis vantage point on Highway 9, so the decision to head east insteadof south I guess wasn’t so bad after all. Of course, by the time I gotfar enough east to reach a south option again at Hwy 283, it was dark,and there was little if any decent lightning illuminated structure. Ireached Hill City amidst blaring tornado sirens, continuing southhopefully far enough south to get out of the cloud canopy so I can geta nice distant view of supercell structure. It really wasn’t to be. Idid stop at a high spot south of Hill City where other spotters andchasers also stopped, but by this time, the supercell circulation waseast of Hill City. There were a lot of lightning illuminated "hangydownies" just west of where the radar had strongest rotation near HillCity. There was nothing more to shoot of interest photography wise, soI headed south towards Wakeeney in hopes that maybe a very distant viewof the storm could be interesting, but even that wasn’t all that wascracked up to be, so I continued to Wakeeney, ate dinner, and headedhome. A fun little chase. Below are a few images (all 12mm wide angle):