As I was out working in the yard after work on Thursday, April 7th, a small storm developed to the southwest of my house with the sound of distant thunder becoming increasingly persistent. This storm rolled south of me, but in its wake a fairly vivid rainbow appeared off to the east-southeast:
Before this occurred, however, I noticed a plume of smoke behind my neighbor’s house to the east. I figured this was due to a small control burn of CRP grass on property close to my house. The control burning conditions were fairly ideal with light winds and very manageable relative humidity. After that first small storm moved away, I noticed that they were beginning to burn off the small field of CRP grass 1-acre lot away from my house to the north. I grabbed my Nikon D200 camera with the 80-400mm lens on it and began shooting away. Shortly thereafter, a few of my neighbors showed up and we all enjoyed a nice little chat as the field was burning away.
Another small storm developed to the northwest around sunset which provided a nice backdrop to the remaining flames and smoke from the burned field. This storm, obviously very small and rather insignificant in nature, did reveal some fairly clean updraft and rear flank structure! This was a nice little surprise for being only a short 50 yard walk from my front yard!
Yet another cluster of weak storms formed after sunset, and I drove up north a few miles to try my hand at some lightning-illuminated structure shots. I did manage a few images of some marginal storm structure from this group of weak, short-lived storms:
All in all, a nice little photo shoot for an evening I was totally not expecting to break out the camera at all!
Are you thinking of a career change? Maybe to a firefighter? Great pictures. I love them. You never know when a great picture will happen, usually when you don’t have a camera.
Comment by Henry Diehl — April 9, 2011 @ 10:24 am