April 23 Storm Chase

chakalakasp · May 2, 2010

My chase partner and I went chasing this past Friday in central and Eastern Nebraska; we started out the day near Grand Island, waiting to see if the cumulus field would do anything -- this is a great sight to see and made it feel more like Spring than just about anything else that I've seen lately:

Eventually we gave up on central Nebraska and moseyed east to Nebraska City. We sat there and passed up on the sky's first attempt at initiation (didn't look too promising and was headed right for Omaha metro) and took off once it was clear that the storms firing to the southwest were going to be the only game in town.

We mostly stuck with the southern storm in the storm cluster, which had a stretched, almost LP look to it at the time:

We watched it drift by to the north and then paralleled it along 66A, stopping to snap shots along the way:

All in all a very fun chase and a very pretty storm, considering. Bring on May!

Ashley21 · May 2, 2010

Wow! I can't wait when I can become as good a photographer as this. Did you wait on one spot to capture all these or did you really chase the storm - as in literally? How long did all these takings took place?

scorpion_tyr · May 2, 2010

I like the lightning shot. Very nice. How long did it take you to catch that?

chakalakasp · May 2, 2010

Thanks for the kind words! Yeah, I was chasing these. I do try to position in a way that allows the scene to get better as the storm moves forward; once it's moved along too far I reposition, if I can. With tornadic storms, you generally are on the move a lot more, but these storms weren't tornadic so they afforded more of a chance to sit and watch.

The lightning stuff took about 100 exposures to get; I didn't have a lightning trigger on hand, so I just manually locked down the cable release and let the camera keep shooting until a bolt struck. Pretty lucky shot, actually!